Since the election of Ma Ying-jeou as Taiwan’s president in 2008, tensions between Taiwan and mainland China have faded dramatically. Long gone is the crisis atmosphere that marked the presidencies of Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian. Instead of searching for ways to assert the island’s de facto independence—and perhaps move toward making that independence official—initiatives that occurred repeatedly under Chen, Ma has sought to reduce tensions with Beijing in multiple ways.
Over the past three years, the two governments have signed agreements establishing regularly scheduled commercial airline routes, improving procedures for tourist visits from the mainland, and most significant, creating the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement. The last measure establishes the basis for a Taiwan-mainland free trade community.
In addition to these important economic measures, a political dialogue that had been on hold since the late 1990s has resumed. Beijing also no longer seeks to entice the handful of countries that have diplomatic relations with Taipei to sever those relations. The Chinese government even agreed to let Taiwan have observer status in the World Health Assembly.
Washington welcomes the easing of tensions and is relieved about Ma’s conciliatory approach to dealing with the mainland. From the standpoint of U.S. officials, the current status quo is nearly ideal. Taiwan maintains its de facto independence, thus keeping Beijing from controlling the island and being able to project its military power out into the Pacific, but avoids engaging in the kinds of provocations that characterized the Lee and Chen years. Provocations greatly increase the risk of a military confrontation that would likely involve the United States.
Washington’s sense of relief is understandable and to some extent justified. However, the temporary easing of tensions between Taipei and Beijing needs to be seen as just that: temporary. The underlying, fundamental dispute has not gone away, nor is it likely to. Beijing still insists that Taiwan someday accept political reunification with the mainland. But the overwhelming majority of Taiwanese have no wish to see their self-governing island come under Beijing’s control. Ma’s accommodating posture merely postpones the day of reckoning.
When the United States invaded Iraq, General David Petraeus famously posed the question: “Tell me how this ends.” A similar question ought to be asked about the Taiwan issue: “Tell me how this ends peacefully.”
The various scenarios for a peaceful outcome do not inspire optimism. One theoretical possibility is that Beijing ultimately accepts Taiwan’s right to self-determination, even if Taiwanese voters choose independence. But the chances of that development are infinitesimally small. Both because of nationalist emotions and strategic calculations (Taiwan’s crucial geographic location within easy striking distance of the major sea lanes in the Western Pacific), no Chinese government is ever likely to accept the island’s legal separation from the mainland.
Another scenario is that the status quo (de facto but conciliatory independence) goes on indefinitely. Washington would certainly prefer that outcome, and it is the course the majority of Taiwanese endorse. Public opinion polls over the past two decades consistently show about 50 to 60 percent in favor of the status quo, compared to about 30 percent who want to push for formal independence and a mere 10 to 15 percent who advocate reunion with the mainland.
But however much U.S. leaders and the Taiwanese people might want the status quo to go on forever, that position is not acceptable to Beijing. As China’s military and economic clout grows, the timetable regarding a willingness to tolerate this ambiguous situation is shrinking. The status quo might continue for another decade, perhaps even two decades, but at some point the Chinese government is going to insist on substantive moves toward reunification.
Which brings us to the third scenario for a peaceful resolution: Taiwan capitulates to Beijing’s demands and negotiates a deal based on a version of the Hong Kong model—extensive autonomy but with full acceptance of Beijing’s sovereignty. That is the most likely of the three scenarios, but it is still a long-shot. As noted, few Taiwanese favor reunification. The growing economic ties between Taiwan and the mainland might increase that total modestly, but probably not more than that. A transformation of the mainland’s political system to a democracy would likely boost the percentage still more, but there is little likelihood of such a transformation in the foreseeable future. Moreover, even if China did become democratic, there are still sizable economic and cultural differences that would make most Taiwanese reluctant to embrace reunification.
Comments
These "let's sell out Taiwan!" pieces that have been cropping up lately are all written exactly the same way, presenting a slanted and highly decontextualized picture of Taiwan. Carpenter's is a splendid example of this genre.The "Taiwan issue" isn't a Taiwan issue at all; it's a China issue. The issue with Taiwan, as it is with India's Arunachal Pradesh, Tibet, Xinjiang, the South China Sea, the Senkakus and several other places, is Chinese territorial expansionism. If giving Taiwan to China would solve that problem, then it might be a permissable solution. But it won't, because the problem isn't caused by Taiwan, but by China.Taiwan is linked in Chinese minds to two other claims, to the Japanese Senkaku Islands, and beyond that, to Okinawa. President Ma of Taiwan, an ardent Chinese nationalist ideologue, said that several times in his AP interview last year (http://udn.com/udnplus/Ma_english.pdf) and he is hardly the only one. Indeed, anyone who has discussed this topic with a Chinese right-winger has heard the lecture on how China owns Okinawa.Thus, selling out Taiwan to China will not solve the problem, it will merely transfer it to a new set of territorial claims on Japanese (and other) territory. Which brings us to a second major missing component of Carpenter's presentation: Japan.Anyone who wants to argue that Taiwan should be sold out must remove Japan from their discussion (note that it is not present in Carpenter's). Even if we let China know we won't intervene in an invasion, offensive operations against Taiwan are very likely to take place in Japanese air and sea space, meaning that Japan will be dragged in. And Japan has a defense treaty with the US. Even if somehow China occupies Taiwan without bringing in Japan, it is obvious that the next step is the Senkakus, which are covered under the US-Japan security treaty. The two nations have even conducted military exercises in the islands for just that purpose. In other words, the proper context here is the entanglement of Taiwan and Japan with Chinese territorial claims. Once that context is restored, it is easy to see that selling out Taiwan won't solve the problem of US involvement in East Asian security issues. Indeed, it will merely increase our headaches, from intensified pressure on Japan to an even greater claim on the South China Sea, augmented with Beijing's control of the airfield on Dongsha Island in the Spratlys. It should also be noted that Ma has not "reduced tensions." His party is allied to Beijing and he himself is ardently pro-China. But because his party is quietly selling out the island to China, Beijing is now free to ramp up tensions elsewhere along its border. Less "tension" over Taiwan -- and remember that "tension" is a *policy* of Beijing designed to gain it leverage over the minds of observers, not something that occurs without human agency -- means that tensions have merely been redistributed to other areas of the Chinese borders, not lessened. Ma's policies are actually enabling Chinese territorial expansion, which as a right-wing nationalist Chinese ideologue he himself desires.Of course, another issue is to consider whether China would refrain from further territorial expansion if it annexed Taiwan. There is no need to speculate on that score; we already have the answer, and it is "no".Consider Tibet. In the 1950s China annexed Tibet. Using Sellout Logic, this should have resulted in a quiet Himalayan frontier with no further territorial claims. But of course the exact opposite has happened: the world has acquiesced in the annexation of Tibet, yet China has moved on to claim the entire Indian State of Arunachal Pradesh, on the grounds that it contains lots of ethnic Tibetans who are now "Chinese." It is using the same battery of techniques against Arun Prad that is has used against Taiwan, including playing games with visas and attempting to suppress international loans and other international attention to the state. It has also ramped up its military presence in the Himal.There isn't enough time or room to get into the other numerous errors and misunderstandings in Carpenter's impoverished presentation of this critical issue. Suffice to say in one respect Carpenter's thesis is correct: we are headed for war. Unfortunately our choice isn't going to be "avoid war or plunge into it, but rather, "which war do we want to have?" Michael Turton The View from Taiwan
I've posted a longer and more developed deconstruction of this on my blog:http://michaelturton.blogspot.com/2011/0...It's high time that Taiwan was restored to its proper context of Chinese expansionism instead of being treated as an isolated irritant in US-China relations.Michael