Reflections on China’s Taiwan Policy

By Jing Huang

The Taiwan issue has remained the “core” interest of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) ever since its establishment in 1949. From Beijing’s perspective, Taiwan happened to be among the first pieces of territory China had to concede to “imperialist powers”—in this case Japan—after the Opium War in 1840, and it remains the only one that still is separated from the motherland after China reclaimed its sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997 and Macau in 1999. Thus, the “Taiwan problem” involves not only China’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity, but also national pride and the accomplishment of the “the nation’s rejuvenation.” Moreover, although over 15 years have passed since the end of the Cold War in 1991, Beijing still sees Taiwan, with its substantial military capability, as a potential threat, given that both the Yangtze and Pearl River deltas, where nearly 50 percent of China’s economy and 40 percent of its population are located, are within the striking distance from Taiwan.

Yet the reality is that the Republic of China (ROC) has maintained its rule on Taiwan since it lost the Civil War on the mainland and withdrew to the island in 1949. Moreover, the PRC can hardly afford to “liberate Taiwan” by force because of the devastating political, economic, and military consequences to both sides of the Taiwan Strait as well as the entire East Asia. Thus, while retaining “reunification” as the ultimate policy objective, the first and foremost task of China’s Taiwan policy is not necessarily to bring the island back to the “embracement of the motherland,” but, more urgently and challengingly, to prevent Taiwan from becoming independent of China. Four generations of Chinese leadership—Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao—have concentrated on preserving Taiwan’s de jure inseparability from China despite the de facto separation between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.

After the normalization of U.S.-China relations in 1979, Beijing has remained uncompromising on its “one-China principle,” that there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of China. In practice, its Taiwan policy consists of three major components aimed at preventing Taiwanese independence. First, Beijing has worked relentlessly to isolate Taiwan in international affairs. Nowadays, only 24 states have diplomatic relations with the ROC, and virtually all the international organizations have refused to admit Taiwan as a member with sovereign statehood. Secondly, with an economy-in-command approach, Beijing has made a remarkable effort to promote economic integration across the Taiwan Strait. As a result, the mainland has long become Taiwan’s largest market as well as the biggest destination of investment. Now over 80 percent of the island’s trade surplus—over $200 million in 2006—comes from the mainland. Last but not least, Beijing has maintained a high degree of military pressure on Taiwan. As a matter of fact, the military balance across the strait, which had been miraculously maintained for over 60 years, now begins to tilt toward the mainland due to China’s remarkable military buildup in the past decade. This mounting military pressure, as Beijing claims, is to keep a “creditable deterrence” against Taiwan’s independence, rather than preparing for achieving reunification by force.

Meanwhile, Beijing has been casting a wary eye upon the “separatist forces” in Taiwan and the “foreign forces supporting Taiwan independence,” with the latter being seen as a far greater threat for the obvious reason that the “Taiwan separatist forces” could hardly prevail without international “instigation and support.” In this regard, it is ironic that despite Beijing’s insistence that the Taiwan issue is an “internal affair,” international politics, especially the inalienable U.S. factor and its implications for overall Sino-American relations, have always weighed heavily in the making of China’s Taiwan policy.
But essentially, it is China’s growing integration in, and its deepening interdependence with, the international system since the early 1990s that have inserted an increasingly important international dimension into China’s Taiwan policymaking. As a result, while never ceasing to emphasize the “domestic” character of the Taiwan issue, Beijing has nevertheless evinced a keen interest in developing some degree of coordination, or even cooperation, with the international community—primarily the United States—in maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, which is in turn intertwined with the prospects of sustained peace, stability, and prosperity in China as well as the Asia-Pacific region.

Nowadays, China’s Taiwan policy is no longer made to merely address the problems of cross-strait relations per se, but has become an integral part of Beijing’s “peaceful development” strategy centered on promoting regional stability and prosperity as well as Beijing’s own “strategic interests”—particularly its relations with Washington—in the international system, a system in which China is now a “stakeholder.”
This subtle but significant change has been clearly shown since President Hu Jintao’s rise to power in 2003. Noticeably, Beijing has ceased to strive for the “early accomplishment of the reunification of the mother land” but for “the prospect of (eventual) peaceful reunification.” In practice, the Chinese leadership advocates for the promotion of “peace, stability, and development in cross-strait relations.” This newly adopted pro-status-quo approach reflects Beijing increasing confident that time is on its side as China is ascending to be a global power. More importantly, this approach has not only enabled Beijing to regain the much needed policy flexibility in engaging the persistently pro-status-quo majority in Taiwan but also maximized the “strategic common ground” with Washington, upon which the two great powers have entered into some sort of de facto co-management of the Taiwan issue. Indeed, Beijing now shares a mutual interest with Washington in maintaining cross-strait peace and stability and keeping the “Taiwan separatist forces” in check, lest their increasingly reckless provocations destabilize the entire Asia-Pacific region.

Nevertheless, the status quo across the Taiwan Strait is vulnerable and ultimately transitory. First and foremost, the three cardinal players in the Taiwan issue—Beijing, Taipei, and Washington—are not of the same mind in defining the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait. For Beijing, this status quo means that “although the motherland is yet to be reunified, the two sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one and the same China.” To the current Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government in Taiwan, however, this status quo signifies that Taiwan has already become a “sovereign and independent country” on its own, only with its national title and flag continuing to be from the “Republic of China.” Washington, on the other hand, has astutely remained ambiguous as to the legal character of cross-strait relations, although it has always considered the maintenance of peace and stability in cross-strait relations as essential to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait. Essentially, the U.S. definition of the status quo is not fixed, but depends on Washington’s assessment of the cross-strait situation and its implications for regional peace and stability. In other words, what really matters for Washington is not necessarily the definition of the status quo per se, but the right of definition itself.

Moreover, on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, there exist strong political forces in pursuit of changes to the status quo. In Taiwan, a formidable and substantial political movement has been relentlessly pushing for Taiwan’s de jure independence; whereas on the mainland, clamors for “the motherland’s reunification” have remained strong and constant. To complicate the matter further, this status quo, signifying neither “reunification” of China nor “independence” for Taiwan as yet, is not shored up by any legally binding formal agreements among the three cardinal players in the Taiwan issue. As a result, it has become increasingly difficult, if not yet impossible, for the United States to maintain this status quo alone, not only because of the increasing capability, influence, and confidence of a rising China, but also because of the apparent determination of the “Taiwan separatist forces” to “push the envelope”—as evidenced by President Lee Teng-hui’s and later President Chen Shui-bian’s repeated “provocative surprises” to both Beijing and Washington.

Fortunately, Beijing’s current pro-status-quo approach on the one hand and Chen’s reckless provocations on the other have cleared the way for the de facto Sino-American co-management of the Taiwan issue in recent years. Nevertheless, this de facto co-management also has its own vulnerabilities: without any formal agreements between or even recognition by Beijing and Washington, it is practically an ad hoc mechanism for crisis management rather than an institutionalized arrangement for long-term stability and peace. In this regard, Beijing and Washington need to make joint efforts to transform this ad hoc mechanism of crisis management into one of strategic management of the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, with an eye toward maintaining and promoting their shared long-term interests in peace, stability, and prosperity in the region.

Given the vital importance of a peaceful and prosperous environment to the long-term development of both China and the Asia-Pacific region, it remains a formidable challenge to, as well as a great opportunity for, the Chinese leadership to manage and eventually resolve the Taiwan issue peacefully and constructively in the best interests of people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait as well as the international community. Toward this end, not only does Beijing need to seek further consultation and cooperation with the international community over the Taiwan issue, but, more importantly, it must promote cross-strait dialogues and reconciliation, not just with the opposition party Kuomintang, but, more importantly, with the DDP administration in order to develop mutual trust across the strait. Ultimately, only when the two sides of the Taiwan Strait truly join hands in forming a veritable “community of common destiny” —as Beijing recently took to describe cross-strait relations—can an enduring “framework for peace, stability, and development in cross-strait relations” be established and perpetually maintained.

Jing Huang is a senior fellow at the John L. Thornton China Center of the Brookings Institution. His recent book is Inseparable Separation: The Making of China’s Taiwan Policy. 

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