China and East Asia 2004

The Taiwan Strait

Had Peking believed, until about two years ago, that Taiwan's ever growing dependence on the Chinese market (in 2003, bilateral trade was about US$ 52 billion with the PRC replacing the US as Taiwan's major trading partner) would prevent Taipei from moving into the direction of independence and eventually return to the motherland's fold, recent developments have served as a kind of wakeup call to the PRC leadership. Obviously, the most important of these developments was Chen Shuibian's reelecetion to the presidency of the Republic of China that may have have left the oppositional "blue camp" in shambles. Already before the elections, Peking had blamed Chen for resorting to unacceptable provocations and had been rather successful in selling this message worldwide. At the same time, however, China's own attempts to reduce Taipei's international margin for manoeuvre by, e.g., once again vetoing the island's accession to the WHO as an observer at the height of the 2003 Sars epidemic, further contributed to an estrangement that Taiwan's democratic leaders may try to exploit, but may certainly not ignore. Chen Shuibian's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) emerged from the Formosan independence movement in the 1980s and has always called for a formalisation of the island's de facto independence. Following his first election in March 2000, Chen Shuibian under US pressure had distanced himself from such demands, provided that Peking would not resort to force. Since then, the PRC has deployed some five hundred short distance missiles opposite Taiwan, thus alerting the Pentagon to the possibility of a conventional surprise attack. Given budgetary and political constraints, Taipei could also lose its present military control of the Taiwan Strait with a new debate underway of substituting cheaper offensive capabilities (i.e. medium-range missiles) for the more expensive and difficult to procure submarines and airplanes. However, a US$ 18.3 billion special defence outlay proposed by the government right after the presidential elections is expected to fill in the gaps in fields such as submarines, anti-missile equipment, and anti-submarine aircraft over a 15-year period. The proposal apppears to have alerted the PRC to the point of repeating an earlier offer to withdraw its missiles in exchange for Washington stopping to sell weaponry to Taipei.

During the Taiwanese presidential election campaign starting in late 2003, Chen Shuibian had succeeded in improving his position by announcing constitutional amendments to be finalised by 2008, i.e. the end of his second term and the date of the Peking Olympics. Whereas certain amendments would indeed be required to eliminate some of the shortcomings of the island's semi-presidential constitution, the PRC remains concerned that Chen could be tempted to tackle with the definition of the Republic of China. If the Taiwanese public thus far has been supporting the status quo, then out of fear of a PRC aggression rather than any nostalgia for unification. Chen's extremely narrow victory in March 2004 was helped by testing Taipei's margin of maneuvre, and thus by a parallel referendum on improving defences, although the latter missed the quorum amidst a backdrop of US warnings. The DPP candidate's victory was further assisted by an assassination attempt against Chen and his vice president on the last day of the campaign, with a subsequent recount of ballots confirming the earlier result.

These moves and developments notwithstanding, the elections have shown that a separate identity has consolidated in Taiwan that will not accept the Hong Kong formula "one country, two systems", especially not with the PRC increasingly ready to renege on Hong Kong's autonomy. China has thus far refrained from talking to Chen, but even the Taiwan opposition has had no other choice but defering the unification issue to a distant future. At the same time, China succeeded in prompting the Bush administration to openly criticise Chen Shuibian for a "readiness to change the status quo", and there have been suggestions of Washington assuming a mediating position, but all this on the basis of Bush's 2001 statement that he would "do what it takes" to defend the island republic. Neither does it look like, for the time being, as though Washington would be ready to trade progress in North Korea against concessions over Taiwan (when Vice President Richard Cheney visited the PRC in April 2004, he reconfirmed the US commitment to the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act that by implication commits the administration to the island's security.)

As a matter of principle, China's economic agenda and other priorities would make an armed conflict in the Taiwan Strait rather unlikely, and contrasting with earlier occasions, Peking this time refrained from trying to influence the Taiwan vote by large-scale manoeuvres and missile tests. At the same time, however, the PRC's civilian and military leaderships let it be known that they would be ready to sacrifice both the economic agenda and the Peking Olympics in case of Taiwan moving closer towards independence. Since the elections, there have been conflicting messages coming out of Peking with negotiations apparently nowhere on anyone's agenda. The problem here is one of two diametrically opposed political legitimacies that implicitly encourage the kinds of nationalism that could at some point become difficult to control. Chinese observers have pointed out that the 1989 Tiananmen sanctions barely outlasted two years. They have also suggested that the domesday scenario would unravel once former head of party and state Jiang Zemin surrenders his continued chairmanship of the Peking military commission, but even if this were true, nobody presently could predict when this will be the case.