A post I made last week, and several subsequent conversations, have made me want to revisit the issue of China's relationship with Taiwan. The relationship between these two countries hasn't been on the U.S. radar since 2001, when President Bush foolishly pledged to come to Taiwan's defense in the event of any aggressive action by China. This changed 50 years of purposefully ambiguous policy on the part of the U.S., who didn't want to be forced to pick between looking like liars or precipitating a nuclear war with a superpower (ask Georgia which way that goes).
China's almost certainly not going to attack Taiwan. They haven't had any explicit control over the island in almost 60 years, and there's not a desire on the part of the domestic Taiwanese population for that to change. Despite this reality, China's attitude toward this "renegade province" remains tense, helping entrench the image of China as surly international curmudgeon.
Question(s): if you're China, what's the point of being so eternally vigilant over something so fake and destabilizing? What's useful about the half century old party line of, "We're the ones that are really in charge and you better not say we're not...or else." What benefit does this accrue the Chinese government? Are they worried that Taiwan will turn into some sort of liberal democracy and start buying military hardware from the West? Oh wait, they already do that (though we suspended arms sales recently).
Wouldn't it engender quite a bit of international goodwill if China were to finally acknowledge Taiwan as an independent nation and set up formal relations? China's reality defying position creates a situation where everyone's tip-toeing around basic facts, constantly worried that the universe as it exists will constitute some kind of rhetorical affront to China's imaginary influence. Everyone should have learned from the United States by now that petulant assertion does not equal demonstrable fact. China's far better off treating international relations (oh, sorry, I meant "domestic" relations...really I did) with enough realism to note that pretending you have strength and influence may put you in the position of having to exercise power that you don't have. Combine that with being predisposed towards engaging in pissing contests and brinkmanship, and you've got a recipe for an avoidable and unnecessary headache.
Update/P.S.
I can almost feel reader "pw", our resident Chinese expert, writing something in the comments section that makes me look foolish and ill-informed. I would like to allay the concerns of my other readers by assuring them that I am, profoundly and demonstrably, both.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
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5 comments:
I've wondered about this myself. What does China want out of Taiwan? It's not as if they lack for material resources. You'd think that sixty years of separation would be enough to let people get over this kinda stuff, although I guess the "War of Northern Aggression" crowd would say otherwise (to say nothing of the centuries old resentments that mar the Balkans).
But it is incredibly, almost unbelievably silly that China will look the other way as long as Taiwan is independent but everyone pretends to ignore it. That's how eight year olds act, not superpowers.
It all just seems odd. I remember in at college, the university would have to have separate Chinese New Year's festivals for the Chinese and the Taiwanese students. Very strange.
Why not Tibet, too? The gains they could reap in worldwide esteem would seem to lap the value of maintaining two regions either openly or practically autonomous already, without the resources to profit the central government, and which are the subject of inevitable and continuous headaches and expense.
(I notice after I've typed this that the foregoing description -- except for the resources (oil) part also apply to U.S. foreign policy.)
The Sino-Taiwanese relationship is like the platypus- it's pretty @#%&ed up and probably shouldn't be, but there it is.
There're lots of possible answers here, and all are lengthy. The easiest one is that because when Mao was drawing his incredibly expansive boundaries for China (which included such questionable choices as Tibet and inner Mongolia, but inexplicably excluded places like Vietnam, over which China had at least as viable a claim)he decided to include Taiwan, probably because he really didn't like the Nationalist forces who'd retreated there, and no one since has had the political stature to overturn his now long dead will.
But Mao would hardly have endorsed capitalism either, so this probably isn't the whole story. A really excellent book on this, Susan Shirk's "China: Fragile Superpower," points to the mixture of complex domestic phenomena that guide policy decisions here.
Part of the problem is universal to any imperial state- if you let Taiwan go (rhetorically), why not let other places go as well?
Vast military resources are arrayed across Fujian province, where they practice constantly to execute the cross-channel invasion of Taiwan, an island they can actually hit with long-range artillery. The danger of the US 7th fleet interfering has justified expenditure on a host of advanced weapon systems, including submarines. So Taiwan gives the army and navy a stick to beat the bean counters with. (for more on this, see the way-cool sinodefense.com, a website either run by CIA/MI-6 people in their spare time, or some guys with their own satellite network).
But the main reason for the continued relevance in current Chinese society is one of Shirk's main arguments, that the government needs these external stress points to keep right-wing political activists on-side. Shirk suggests that having frozen civil society out of politics, the only people prepared to stand up and protest are extremists. Beijing works to suppress extremists on the Left, but to placate them on the Right. (Sorry Dr. Shirk- I realize that really doesn't do it justice). So social unity is created by giving people a cause to unite around.
The US side of this debacle is at least as complicated- we bought in for our own reasons, having been extensively lobbied by Chaing Kai Shek's family and eager to draw a cordon around "Lost China" by supporting our ally from WWII. Of course, at that point mainland China's massive armies couldn't have gotten to Taiwan without swimming, so the guarantee was an easy one to make. As nuclear weapons have proliferated and the Chinese military becomes increasingly sophisticated, the potential price tag becomes harder and harder to guess at.
As for the perspective from Taiwan, that's even more confusing. The native Taiwanese were butchered by the arriving Nationalist Chinese, who have retained a lock on their politics ever since. Yes we've sold them some quite sophisticated weapon systems, but I rather doubt that would compensate in the long run for the fact that mainland forces probably have the whole place bracketed. I'd really like to visit Taiwan someday, to get a better grasp on the intricacies of the complex scene on that island.
Despite dp's generous faith in these ramblings, I'm far from expert on this stuff, and recommend some of the above listings for reference to people who are.
pw, thanks for the great brief primer on the subject. I still don't know exactly what the US should do, but I do feel like I'm a bit more aware of the situation now. Very helpful, thanks. And I'll be sure to check out China: Fragile Superpower when I get the chance. One of the bad things about living out of the country is the inabilty to get books like that.
Not sure if you've tried it aaron, but I used to get books from Amazon mailed from San Diego to the absolute middle of nowhere- you might try amazon.fr if you don't mind shopping in Euros.
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