The 15th Straits Forum opened on Friday last week in Xiamen in China’s Fujian Province, with invitations sent out to Taiwan’s opposition parties. However, Chinese People’s Liberation Army jets and vessels have continued to conduct gray zone incursions around Taiwan. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) thinking has a bearing on what effective countermeasures Taiwan can take.
Most people agree that Xi is a different kind of Chinese leader from his predecessors Jiang Zemin (江澤民) and Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), both in terms of personality and the system in which he operates. Xi’s authoritarian leadership style is not enough to explain the differences between him and his predecessors as to the logic of their actions. The presence or absence of a 10-year limit on their time in office is one key factor that cannot be overlooked.
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) 20th National Congress in October last year removed the ceiling on the supreme leader’s power, thereby fulfilling Xi’s wish to become a modern-day emperor. This institutional shift is likely to change Xi’s attitude toward Taiwan, compared with the preceding 10 years.
The Chinese government has repeatedly said it would strive to achieve “peaceful reunification,” but it has also not promised to renounce the use of force. This can be interpreted as “peaceful reunification” being China’s highest strategic goal, while “reunification by force” is a tactical application — a point borne out by decades of historical reality. However, since the 20th Congress, the dividing line in Xi’s thought about “peaceful reunification” and “reunification by force” might be a matter of whether the PLA is ready to use the second option.
Speaking at the Straits Forum, CCP Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Huning (王滬寧) made a great fanfare about democratic consultations, joining forces to oppose Taiwanese independence and implementing a Taiwan version of “one country, two systems.” These proposals reveal that Chinese leaders think that Beijing is not yet militarily prepared, and since it cannot win a fight at this time, it is better to talk instead.
The moment at which China thinks it is ready, or when there is an imbalance of military power between the US and China, will be the moment Xi is most likely to take a risk. At several meetings of the CCP Central Military Commission since the 20th National Congress, Xi has said that entire Chinese military must continue to focus on combat readiness, speed up the establishment of new training systems, and enhance their capability to fight and win.
It can be deduced from Xi’s pattern of thought that, to make him stick to a policy of “peaceful reunification” and make sure that he is unable to resort to “reunification by force,” the most important thing is for Taiwan to continuously improve its defense capabilities, expand its military alliances with friendly democracies and operate jointly with other militaries, so that Xi wakes up every day knowing that the forceful option will not work.
The wrong approach is to think that by going to the other side of the Taiwan Strait, declaring support for the so-called “1992 consensus” and agreeing to opposing Taiwanese independence would make Xi happy, and to pretend that this would make China’s strategy of “peaceful reunification” last forever. Calling it a pretense means that we are basically willing to believe that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party are being genuine when they advocate the “Republic of China.” If, on the other hand, these political parties are lying about it, it means that what they really want is “peaceful reunification.”
Taiwanese should not harbor any illusions about “peaceful reunification.” Since Xi reinstated the imperial system, his new version of “peaceful reunification” is completely different from what China’s 1979 “Message to Compatriots in Taiwan” states. Xi’s actions during and after Hong Kong’s 2019 to 2020 protests against extradition give us some idea of what he has in mind. Beijing’s eradication and imprisonment of Hong Kong’s space for dissent is a “mirror,” but still not a “portrait” of what would happen to Taiwan in the unlikely case that it agrees to be ruled by the CCP.
Taiwan is different from Hong Kong. In the course of its democratization, Taiwan has succeeded in establishing a national consciousness that has continuously gained strength. Hong Kong has not undergone such a process. When Xi seeks to impose total control over these two different territories, he would exert a very different degree of force.
Dealing with Hong Kong was and is a piece of cake for the CCP. To deal with Taiwan after “peaceful reunification,” it would doubtless follow the model it has used in Xinjiang and Tibet — and it would come as no surprise if it acted even more harshly. When Chinese Ambassador to France Lu Shaye (盧沙野) openly stated that Taiwanese would be “re-educated” after unification, he was of course reading from the playbook of Xi’s China.
Chinese pro-unification academic Li Yi (李毅) boasted that “140 million Chinese could die for the sake of reunification.” If Chinese are worth less than ants in the eyes of an autocrat, what would he care for Taiwanese? There is no lack of historical lessons about the brutality of authoritarian countries, and the same thing is happening now in territories ruled by China. What Taiwanese voter could ever accept this kind of “peace”?
Tzou Jiing-wen is editor-in-chief of the Liberty Times (the sister paper of the Taipei Times).
Translated by Julian Clegg
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