China-Taiwan relations: a modest proposal
Everybody's business * Negotiations without preconditions * China's new strategyWhy war won't workAfter the Chinese Communist Party won the civil war against the Kuomintang (KMT, Nationalist Party) in 1949, the KMT government of China retreated to Taiwan, which it had taken over from Japanese occupation in 1945 and two years later established itself by massacre--a historical fact frequently conveniently forgotten both in China and in the rest of the world. While the Communists frequently vowed to capture Taiwan and mop up the remnants of the Kuomintang, the Kuomintang dictatorship equally vehemently threatened to "liberate" the mainland and destroy the Communists. During the 1950s mutual hostility erupted into exchanges of artillery fire which in later years subsided into exchanges of propaganda. Taiwan's eventual abandonment of the state of war with China (which it had previously regarded as in a state of "communist rebellion") was a mark of the political maturity that it gained after the lifting of martial law in 1987. For its part, China moved from its position of insisting on "liberating" (implicitly by military force) Taiwan when Deng Xiaoping took power in 1978. Almost immediately, Deng offered Taiwan the solution of "one country, two systems"--which was instantly rejected. China also offered Taiwan the "three links" (post, trade and transport) which would allow cross-Straits relations to develop without any change of political sovereignty in Taiwan. Again, the Kuomintang government firmly repulsed China's proposal. Talks between the two sides eventually got under way in the early 1990s against the background of rapidly growing trade and investment flows between the former foes. But these broke down after Taiwan president visited the US in 1995. China has consistently refused to renounce the use of military force to take Taiwan and in 1996 it demonstrated that it meant what it said when the People's Liberation Army launched missiles near Taiwan's two main ports, damaging seaborne trade and temporarily sabotaging economic growth. By August 1999, weeks after Taiwan's then president Lee Teng-hui had announced that China and Taiwan were two separate states, China appears to have got the message that the people of Taiwan do not want to be part of China. With the political option appearing ever more remote, China seems to have then decided that the only way to get Taiwan was by using, or (preferably) threatening to use overwhelming military force. In the months leading up to the election of Chen Shui-bian, the candidate of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), as president, China stepped up its military threats and the world is now wondering if its leaders now believe their own rhetoric about being able to defeat Taiwan in a few days, despite assurances by western military experts that they will not have the capability to sustain an invasion of the island for at least five, possibly ten years. Even if China's military forces can invade Taiwan, they would damage the interests of both China and Taiwan if they did so. Under the terms of China's "one country, two systems" offer, Taiwan would be allowed to keep its own government and even its own armed forces. Perhaps the only visible change would be the raising of the Chinese flag over the presidential palace. No mainland officials would be sent to Taiwan, but Taiwan would be able to nominate one of its own to a high position in the Chinese government. Why risk devastation for such small changes when a few decades of patient dialogue might (if the Taiwanese agree) achieve the same result? The outcome of a military conflict is difficult to predict even if the composition and disposition of the forces on both sides are known. Add some elements of uncertainty (do China's pilots have the flying experience to take control of the air, even with their superior Su-27s? does Taiwan have a secret store of nuclear weapons?), lots of misinformation, and the situation is even harder to interpret. The involvement of the US, perhaps even Japan, would complicate the picture further. If China's military planners have got their sums wrong, they may find that they can not (as they appear to promise) smash Taiwan's forces before the US had time to move its forces in. A cross-Straits conflict might therefore be impossible to contain, both in duration and geographical outreach. The theatre of war might be confined to a few beachheads on the west of Taiwan; it is more likely that it would quickly engulf the whole island and much of Fujian; it is conceivable that Hong Kong would be drawn in. What would be the benefit of all this destruction? Nobody knows. If China lost the battle for Taiwan, the fruitless loss of young Chinese lives would be accompanied by a loss of matériel sufficient to guarantee that no further attack could be mounted on Taiwan for many years--and there would be an insufferable loss of face and international reputation. Foreign direct investment, so important for China's economic reform and development, would collapse. There would of course be no investment in China from Taiwan. But even if China won, the victory would be a hollow one. China would have earned the hatred of a people who have shown in repeated opinion polls that they want to be left to run their own affairs. The Taiwan president would have to be deposed (otherwise, why invade?) and replaced by a puppet ruler whose credentials would be even less democratically legitimate than those of the Hong Kong chief executive. Taiwan has gone through a long struggle to escape violent tyranny and establish a working democracy. That struggle is still not over: the old ruling party retains its wealth and much of its power. A Chinese invasion would reverse the political gains made since 1987, arousing the resentment of the Taiwanese people and throwing away the opportunity for China itself to study both the positive and negative lessons of the Taiwan example. It is also possible that the strong-willed pro-independence minority in Taiwan would begin an underground guerrilla war (a "people's war", in pre-1990s Chinese communist parlance) against the occupation force, a fight that could smoulder for many years. As Winston Churchill said, "better jaw, jaw than war, war". © Ken Davies, May 2000. |
Taiwan page
Last updated 25 May 2000.
