In the past 10 years, as China came to realize that it had actually been moving away from its core mission of unifying with Taiwan, Washington has exploited Taipei’s efforts to internationalize cross-strait relations and tried to make the nation a pawn in its overall strategy of preventing China from becoming a superpower capable of challenging its hegemony.
The complicated interplays of these forces and the resulting complex dynamics significantly increase the probability of a kinetic war in Taiwan.
If such a war does break out, the biggest losers would be people residing in Taiwan, as evidenced by the thousands of casualties and millions of refugees in the Russia-Ukraine war.
Yet Taiwanese, from the government to the public, do not seem to have their fair share of say in whether or how to initiate such a war, because the prevailing thinking is that Taiwan’s future is codetermined by the US and China. It does not have to be this way.
The fundamental reason China and the US wield such an overwhelming influence over Taiwan’s destiny is because Taiwanese are internally divided and cannot forge a unified voice that points to a distinct direction of where they intend to go, nor can they show the resolve to take matters into their own hands. The real danger in Taiwan’s impasse is caused not so much by international conflicts, superpowers and their schemings, as by the intramural divisions among Taiwan’s political forces that prevent the formation of a single united front.
In Taiwan, there are two major schools of thought on Taiwan-China relations. They seemingly share a common ultimate objective, which is preserving Taiwan’s democratic way of life, but make drastically different assumptions about China’s future and behavior.
The pan-green camp believes there is no chance of China evolving into a liberal democracy, especially with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm, and that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership is capable of reneging on formal agreements, as evidenced by its forceful and unilateral passage of the Hong Kong National Security Law. Against this backdrop, the pan-green camp has set its mind on establishing Taiwan as a country independent of China, and refuses to recognize Beijing’s “one China” principle. Because the administration of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has consistently rejected the “1992 consensus” since taking office in 2016, China has since cut off all official ties with Taipei, including any back channels for conflict resolution and peace negotiations.
As a result, the only strategy that the pan-green camp can come up with to protect Taiwan’s democratic way of life is cajoling the US into its forever military deterrence and confrontation against a Chinese invasion. Unfortunately, as far as buildup of military force is concerned, time is not on Taiwan’s side.
Having Chinese roots and the Republic of China Constitution’s backing, the pan-blue camp is willing to accept Beijing’s “one China” principle and the “1992 consensus,” which allows alternative interpretations of what “one China” means.
Although such a stance significantly reduces the risk of a war of unification by force and opens the door for peace negotiations with China, the key issues in a negotiation process remains largely unresearched, let alone satisfactorily answered: Given the US is likely to oppose unification, how can Taiwan extract a unification deal without the US’ sponsorship that would provide a stronger guarantee for its existing democratic way of life than what Hong Kong got with British help in 1997?
The best-case scenario for the pan-blue camp is to convince China to arrive at a unification schedule in which the democratic progress in some regions of China, such as Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hong Kong, has advanced to a level comparable to Taiwan’s when the two entities are officially unified. These regions would thus serve as buffer zones that implicitly protect Taiwan’s democracy.
Fortunately, regarding democratic progress in China, even with its single-party system, time might be on Taiwan’s side.
Neither school’s strategy clearly wins the day. The optimal strategy might well be a hybrid one that combines the best elements of the two.
However, the major political parties in Taiwan are so busy immersing themselves in political fights and electoral competitions that they lose sight of the biggest prize, which is preserving Taiwan’s peace and democratic way of life, and the only way to win it: a unified voice backed by the entire Taiwanese public.
From the standpoint of electoral calculus, it is unlikely that Taiwan’s major parties will openly put aside their political differences and concentrate on deliberating an optimal China-engagement strategy that is acceptable to all of them. Yet this is exactly what needs to be done as soon as possible.
To break free from this dilemma, an intellectually credible and politically neutral institution, such as National Taiwan University or Academia Sinica, should step up to the plate to hold a strategy conference that gathers the best minds from the think tanks of major parties and Taiwan’s academia, with expertise ranging from geopolitical dynamics, international relations, global economy, the CCP’s thinking, negotiation strategies and military force projection. They should conduct war games to enumerate, investigate, elaborate on and poke holes in all conceivable strategies that remotely make sense. They should keep working until they devise a strategy that secures every major party’s backing.
If the strategy does not align with the electoral interest of a political party, it would be unlikely to integrate the strategy into its platform immediately.
However, over time, hopefully all major parties would do so, based on the understanding that only a strategy that has the backing of all parties would carry sufficient weight to stand up to China and the US.
Failing to recognize the critical importance of having a unified voice in taking charge of one’s own destiny, Taiwan has wasted too much time on infighting for petty political gains. Given the imminence and increasing escalation of the US-China conflict, the time for Taiwan’s major political parties to get their acts together and arrive at a consensus strategy on how to preserve Taiwan’s peace and democratic way of life is now.
Chiueh Tzi-cker is a professor in the Institute of Information Security at National Tsing Hua University.
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