Chiang Ching-kuo’s decision to launch a transition to democracy in Taiwan changed the game for Beijing as well as for the self-appointed guarantor of “peaceful resolution” of the Taiwan issue, the U.S. Now that the democratic electorate in Taiwan had a voice in determining its own future, Beijing and Washington had to figure out what the Taiwan voters wanted and how to influence them. China did not change its goal, to exercise sovereignty over Taiwan, or the four prongs of its strategy—the offer of special autonomy within the PRC, diplomatic isolation, economic integration, and military threat. But a success that had seemed near at hand now faded into the indefinite future as Beijing scrambled to respond to changes in Taiwan’s cross-strait policies that were rooted in the evolution of its domestic politics.
CHIANG’S CHOICE
Before Taiwan’s democratic transition, Taipei and Beijing officially agreed on the legal status of Taiwan. Both held that Taiwan was part of China: that Taiwan’s separation from the mainland was a feature of an unfinished civil war between two political parties contending for control of China; and that the end of the civil war would bring about the divided country’s reunification. In the 1972 Shanghai Communiqué, the U.S. said it did not challenge that view (chapter 4). When the U.S. switched official diplomatic relations from the ROC to the PRC in 1979, China pressed its advantage with an offer based on these premises—a party-to-party deal that would give KMT elites an honorific place in the Chinese political system and leave them in control of local government in Taiwan but without international statehood.
But Taiwan’s president, Chiang Ching-kuo, replied, “No negotiations, no compromise, no contacts.” Instead, at a moment when he seemed to have no options, he found another way out. He had prepared the ground to some extent over the previous decade by promoting Taiwanese cadres in the KMT (a process called “Taiwanization”), allowing elections for a limited number of so-called supplemental seats in the Legislative Yuan (the national legislature), building up the ruling party’s local electoral machines, going down to the grass roots to create a populist personal image, and tolerating limited activity by a pro-democracy movement called the dangwai (or “outside the party”). But no one expected his decision in 1986 to allow the dangwai to violate existing law by forming a new political party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). People were surprised again by his 1987 decision to lift martial law, which had been in place since 1949.
Scholars have speculated about Chiang’s motives. Among them surely were his awareness of his impending death from diabetes, his lack of a plausible successor within his family or immediate circle, the growing challenge to the regime presented by the pro-democracy movement, and his government’s international isolation after the U.S. switch of recognition to Beijing.1 Under these conditions, there were two ways the regime that he headed might have survived beyond his death. One—accepting the patronage of Beijing—would have left in charge a hardliner faction that had diminishing local support, with all the prospects of turmoil this situation would have implied. The other—relegitimating the regime as the democratic representative of the people it ruled so that it could preserve its separate existence as long as it needed to in order to strike the best bargain with Beijing—was the option he chose. The latter choice ran the risk of eventually separating Taiwan from China, which would have been an historical crime in the eyes of a Chinese patriot such as Chiang, but it gave the 23 million people of Taiwan a chance to bargain over their fate with a regime in Beijing that Chiang deeply distrusted.
Early in 1988, Chiang died. He was succeeded as president by a Taiwanese whom he had selected as vice president, Lee Teng-hui. Serving as president until 2000, Lee completed Taiwan’s transformation into a full democracy. Elections took place in fast succession: the first full election for the Legislative Yuan in 1992 and new elections every three years thereafter; the first direct presidential election in 1996 and every four years thereafter; and elections for mayors, county magistrates, local legislatures, and other offices almost yearly from the late 1980s on. Lee’s government allowed the Taiwanese dialect to be used in schools and in the media. It conducted an inquiry into a government massacre of civilians that had taken place on February 28, 1947, during the KMT takeover of the island, issued an official apology, and created a memorial to the victims. Universities began to study and teach the previously forbidden subject of Taiwan history. Music, literature, architecture, cuisine—all reflected a resurgent pride in Taiwan’s unique historical accomplishments and often a sense of tragedy at the people’s suffering during the colonial and authoritarian periods.
WHAT DO TAIWAN VOTERS WANT?
Taiwan’s voters had no shortage of policy issues to debate, such as the environment, the economy, and social welfare policy. But the main electoral issue was the island’s relation to the mainland. On this issue, politicians pressed the voters to consider the conflicting imperatives of identity and pragmatism.
The identity issue was rooted in the ethnic history of Taiwan. Aside from some five hundred thousand aborigines, about 85 percent of the island’s population consider themselves Taiwanese because they are descended from Han Chinese who came from the mainland before 1945, most of them speaking Minnan (southern Fujian) or Hakka dialects (the Hakka, or Guest People, are a distinct cultural group within the Han category, who are centered in various locations in southeastern China as well as in Taiwan). The other 15 percent of the population consider themselves to be mainlanders (waishengren—people from provinces outside of Taiwan) because they are descended from officials, soldiers, businessmen, and others who came from the mainland with the KMT regime starting in 1945. From 1945 to the late 1980s, the authoritarian KMT regime enforced a Chinese identity on the entire population, outlawing the use of the Taiwanese dialect in education and the media, teaching loyalty to the ROC as the government of all China, and governing Taiwan not as a nation, but as a province.
The DPP positioned itself on the side of Taiwanese pride with emotional rhetoric, symbols, and music. As the political system democratized, the KMT too increasingly emphasized the local roots of most of its politicians and its commitment to “Taiwan first.” Beijing contributed unwittingly to the rise of Taiwan identity by denouncing it and by threatening to use force if the voters elected pro-independence officials. In public-opinion polls, the number of respondents who said they “thought of themselves as Chinese” declined from 54 percent in 1989 to 4.2 percent in 2008. Those who thought of themselves as Taiwanese went from 18 percent to 50.8 percent, and those who thought of themselves as “both” went from 28 percent to 40.8 percent.2
Cross-cutting the question of identity was the question of policy preference: Did the voters want unification with the mainland, independence, or preservation of the status quo? As Taiwan identity increased, so did the desire for independence. From 1991 to 2003, those who wanted independence provided that “Taiwan can maintain a peaceful relation with the PRC government” increased from 42.1 percent to a high of 75.8 percent in 1996 and then fell back to 63.2 percent in 2005. Those who would like unification—provided that “China and Taiwan have the same social, economic, and political conditions”—declined from a high of 76.3 percent in 1991 to a low of 46.6 percent in 2005.
But Taiwan voters knew that the cost-free assumptions of these hypothetical questions were contrary to reality. Thus, when the Taiwanese were asked in polls dating from 1996 to 2008 whether they favored immediate unification, only 1–5 percent of respondents said “yes.” Likewise, voters knew that if Taiwan declared independence, it would not be able to maintain a peaceful relationship with the PRC. So only 3–14 percent said they would like independence no matter what. Robust majorities favored one or another version of the status quo, including “status quo now, decision later,” “status quo indefinitely,” “status quo now, independence later,” and “status quo now, unification later.” Although it is hard to know exactly what respondents had in mind when they said they favored the status quo, at a minimum it included avoidance of armed conflict with the mainland. The electoral environment thus constrained political leaders while also leaving space for creativity. The government had to assert Taiwanese identity in some way—which ruled out accepting unification on the terms Beijing had offered—but it had at the same time to maintain peace across the Taiwan Strait and allow the growing benefits of economic interactions across the strait. Within these constraints, political leaders could pursue their agendas for cross-strait relations.
LEE TENG-HUI AND THE “TWO-STATE THEORY”
Under these fluid political conditions, Chiang Ching-kuo’s successor, Lee Teng-hui, created a revolution not only in Taiwan’s domestic political system, but also in Taiwan’s international stance. He came to office as the head of an authoritarian one-party system and as custodian of his predecessor’s position that Taiwan was a part of China. He left office with Taiwan a full democracy, claiming an equal status with the PRC as one of two states in what he called “a special state-to-state relationship.”3
Lee was a surprising revolutionary.4 Chiang Ching-kuo had selected him as vice president in 1984 because he was the archetype of a loyal technocrat. To be sure, he had briefly flirted with Marxism in the 1940s, but he had become a faithful KMT member and a Presbyterian after that. With a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Cornell University, he spent his early career in the agricultural policy bureaucracy in Taiwan, then rose to a series of appointed administrative posts, including mayor of Taipei and governor of Taiwan. When he succeeded Chiang as president in January 1988, both the old mainlander elite in Taiwan and the leaders in Beijing expected him to uphold the orthodoxy that Taiwan was a part of China. It emerged, however, that Lee was a superb tactician, able to bide his time and keep his counsel. His presidency revealed what—at least in Beijing’s later view—must always have been his aspiration: to establish during his term in office the bases for Taiwan’s eventual claim to permanent political separation from the mainland: first, to make that claim politically legitimate by grounding it in the will of the people expressed through an institutionalized democratic system of government; and, second, to make it internationally legal by gaining acknowledgment of Taiwan’s existence as a sovereign entity distinct from the PRC. Lee was willing to conceive of some pro forma framework linking the island and the mainland, but not to meet Beijing’s goal of full political unification. His strategy to fend off China’s pressure was to drag out the process of cross-strait rapprochement and at the same time to engineer domestic political reform and pursue diplomatic initiatives to shore up Taiwan’s international standing.
Lee’s cross-strait strategy had three components, which he phased in over time. The first consisted of what observers labeled “pragmatic,” “substantive,” or “flexible” diplomacy. This component sought to buttress the ROC’s deteriorating position in the international system by modifying the traditional stance that the ROC must be recognized as the sole Chinese government, instead moving closer to the German and Korean models, which allowed foreign governments to recognize two states pending unification. Lee argued that the ROC was a distinct system or “political entity” within a vaguely defined broader China, having historically continuous sovereignty since its founding on the mainland in 1912, currently maintaining effective control over a certain piece of territory, and hence possessing the attributes of legitimate statehood. This argument was no more than what Chiang Ching-kuo had said years earlier, when the U.S. broke relations with the ROC.5 What was new was that Lee now acknowledged as a corollary that the Beijing government was a parallel entity: no longer an insurgency (what the KMT used to call “Communist bandits”), but a legitimate state governing another part of China. The larger China entity had therefore become “one country with two governments.”
Taipei fought hard on this basis for diplomatic ties with small countries by using its well-funded International Economic Cooperation and Development Fund, prompting Beijing to accuse Taipei of “dollar diplomacy.” These efforts produced short-lived gains. Taipei’s roster of diplomatic recognitions rose from a low of twenty-one in 1988 to a high of thirty-one in 1995, then fell again. Taipei also made known that it would accept recognition as the ROC from countries that recognized the PRC without, as in the past, requiring them to break relations with Beijing. But because Beijing would not accept dual recognition, the few third-country attempts to grant it never survived.
In countries where Taiwan could not get full diplomatic recognition, it increased its subdiplomatic representation by opening offices that did consular, trade-promotion, and diplomatic business and that even enjoyed diplomatic status without being called embassies and consulates. The model for this approach was the system of representative offices established between Japan and Taiwan after Japan switched diplomatic recognition to the PRC in 1972. The U.S. followed this model with the switch of recognition in 1979, establishing formal diplomatic ties with Beijing while establishing ostensibly nongovernmental relations with Taipei. The U.S. established the American Institute in Taiwan, staffed by foreign service officers on leave from the State Department, to handle relations with Taipei, and Taiwan established the Coordination Council for North American Affairs (later renamed the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office) in the U.S. Taiwan followed the same model elsewhere in the world. With the end of the Cold War, Taipei’s delegates were welcomed in the capitals of most trade- and aid-hungry post-Communist states and even in the capital of Communist Vietnam. As of the early 2000s, Taiwan had about a hundred quasi-diplomatic offices around the world under various names.
Taiwan also cultivated membership in as many intergovernmental organizations as possible, including the WTO, the Asian Development Bank, the Asian and Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the World Customs Organization, the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, the International Seed Testing Association, the Interim Scientific Committee for Tuna and Tuna-Like Species in the North Pacific Ocean, and others. On a case-by-case basis, Beijing dropped its opposition to Taiwanese participation in such organizations, in some instances because it was trying to gain entry itself (as in the WTO), in other instances in hopes of enticing Taiwan into increased contact. To find a rubric acceptable to both Taipei and Beijing under which Taiwan could participate as a governmental entity but not a state, the two sides played the “name game.” Taiwan joined the WTO as the “customs territory of Taiwan, Kinmen, Penghu, and Matsu” (Kinmen [Quemoy], Penghu, and Matsu are island groups administered as part of Taiwan) and the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna as the “Fishing Entity of Taiwan.” But the most common name was “Chinese Taipei,” which had been brokered by the International Olympic Committee in 1981 to facilitate Taiwan’s return to participation in the Olympics after the PRC had taken the China seat in the international Olympic movement. This “Olympic formula” came to be used to describe Taiwan’s delegations to many international forums because its ambiguity made it acceptable to both sides. Beijing translated it into Chinese as the equivalent of “Taipei Belonging to China” (Zhongguo Taibei), and Taiwan translated it as “Taipei That Is Culturally Chinese” (Zhonghua Taibei)—differing by only one syllable.
Taiwan also pursued membership in as many international NGOs as possible. It performed especially well in the international Little League movement, winning numerous championships. It gave high priority to its membership in the Olympic movement as a powerful symbol of nationhood. These measures stabilized Taiwan’s international position and, virtually unnoticed at the time, laid the initial conceptual foundation for the later claim of statehood.
Lee phased in the second aspect of his strategy starting in the early 1990s. He created a thaw in relations with the mainland by putting forward proposals that policymakers in Beijing interpreted as conciliatory, then used the relaxation in relations to move Taipei further toward equality with Beijing as one government negotiating with another government. In 1991, he revoked the “state of Communist rebellion” that Chiang Kai-shek had declared decades earlier. In doing so, Lee formally acknowledged the PRC as a “political entity that controls the mainland area” and described the ROC as “a sovereign state on Taiwan.” On their face simple statements of fact, these formulas differed critically from Taipei’s traditional claim to be the sole legitimate government of all China. They vacated the ROC’s claim to sovereignty over the mainland and thus logically suggested the existence of a separate state on a territory limited to Taiwan (plus a few smaller islands held by the ROC).
In March 1991, Taipei issued the Guidelines for National Unification. The guidelines envisioned unification in an affirmative manner and posited that it would take place in three phases, which seemed to be a step in the direction of meeting Beijing’s demands, but the document described these phases as so protracted and as placing such high reciprocal conditions on Beijing that the reunification process would stretch into an endless future. In the first phase, Taiwan would continue people-to-people contacts. In return, the mainland was to cease threatening the use of military force, denying Taiwan’s existence as a political entity, and restricting Taiwan’s activities in the international arena; at the same time, it was to carry out economic reform and democratization to make itself a more acceptable partner for unification. Had the mainland met these conditions, it would have given up all its bargaining leverage over Taiwan. The guidelines put off to the second and third phases the establishment of government-to-government contacts and final consultations toward unification.
Meanwhile, Lee pursued direct talks with Beijing. First, he built trust by conducting secret talks through intermediaries in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, in 1990 Taipei established a nominally private but government-funded organization, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), to conduct talks with Beijing. Policy guidance for the SEF was provided by a new government body, the Mainland Affairs Council. Because the SEF was private, it was able to negotiate as an equal partner with a parallel, ostensibly private, organization on the Chinese side, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS), headed by retired Shanghai mayor Wang Daohan. The two sides cleared an obstacle to talks in 1992 by agreeing to the principle of “one China with separate interpretations” (yige Zhongguo gezi biaoshu). This formula, later dubbed the “1992 consensus,” satisfied Beijing’s “one-China principle” while committing Taipei to nothing in particular. The two sides’ delegates met in Singapore in 1993 and signed agreements on technical matters such as how each side could authenticate wills, deeds, and marriage certificates for the other side and how to deal with each other’s lost registered mail. These agreements facilitated interaction by citizens across the strait and pointed the way toward solving other issues, such as how to handle fishing disputes, stowaways, and hijackers.
But the two sides had difficulty agreeing on ground rules for their third meeting. Meanwhile, Lee derided China’s “one country, two systems” offer as inadequate, pointing out that Taiwan was not a colony like Hong Kong. He proclaimed the superiority of Taiwan’s economic and political models to the PRC’s and talked about his personal preference for Japanese language and culture, which he had learned as a student during the colonial era. He promoted Taiwanese identity through changes in educational policy and by memorializing the KMT repression of Taiwanese citizens on February 28, 1947. He abolished the provincial level of government in Taiwan, so that the island was now governed directly from the national level as if it were a nation-state. Democratizing reforms increased the degree to which Taiwan looked more like a self-standing state. Institutions brought over in 1949 from the mainland were overhauled: the National Assembly was abolished, and the Legislative Yuan and presidency were directly elected by the voters of Taiwan alone, without mainland representation.
Beijing had thought at first that Lee was jockeying for more autonomy within an eventual unified China but now began to perceive a drive toward independent statehood. In 1993, China issued a warning to Lee Teng-hui in the form of a white paper titled The Taiwan Question and Reunification of China.
It should be pointed out that notwithstanding a certain measure of easing up by the Taiwan authorities, their current policy vis-á-vis the mainland still seriously impedes the development of relations across the strait as well as the reunification of the country. They talk about the necessity of a reunified China, but their deeds are always a far cry from the principle of one China. They try to prolong Taiwan’s separation from the mainland and refuse to hold talks on peaceful reunification…. The Chinese Government is closely following the course of events and will never condone any maneuver for “Taiwan independence.”6
Beijing followed up with a statement by CCP head Jiang Zemin on Chinese New Year 1995—the so-called Jiang Eight Points—which repeated Beijing’s standing offer to negotiate anything on the basis of the one-China principle but also warned of China’s determination to use any means to counter what it called a “growing separatist tendency.”
In response, Lee toughened his own position, and his China strategy entered its third stage. His six-point response to Jiang asserted that the one China—whose existence he continued to acknowledge, although Beijing considered such references hypocritical—contained two political entities,7 neither subordinate to the other, which must negotiate as equals. He asked Beijing to recognize this fact, renounce the use of force, and allow the two governments to join international organizations on an equal footing. At the same time, as a result of lobbying by a firm hired by Taipei, the U.S. Congress adopted a “sense of Congress” resolution urging the U.S. administration to grant a visa to Lee to attend a reunion at his alma mater, Cornell. Lee’s Cornell visit shocked Beijing, both because it violated standing U.S. policy to allow only tightly restricted transit visas to the Taiwan head of state and because Lee’s speech at Cornell—delivered in his official capacity as the ROC president—was an ode to Taiwan identity.
Lee’s toughness was matched by Beijing. To turn up the pressure—not only on Lee, but also on the Clinton administration—China suspended negotiations over the next stage of the SEF–ARATS talks. In July–August 1995 and again in March 1996, it also conducted missile exercises in the Taiwan Strait to demonstrate its determination to oppose Taiwan independence. The U.S. responded by dispatching two aircraft carrier strike groups to the vicinity of the Taiwan Strait.
The standoff ended without a military clash and contributed to Lee’s reelection to the presidency in March 1996, but it led to the Americans’ reevaluation of their policy. The Clinton administration decided it could not afford to freeze relations with Beijing in order to advance Lee’s Taiwan statehood agenda. In 1998, Clinton took the opportunity of the first presidential visit to China since before the 1989 Tiananmen crisis to repeat longstanding American policy that the U.S. “doesn’t support independence for Taiwan, or ‘two Chinas,’ or ‘one Taiwan, one China,’ and we don’t believe that Taiwan should be a member in any organization for which statehood is a requirement.” These “Three No’s” helped to repair Washington–Beijing relations. Because of the way they were delivered—as a presidential statement in the rival capital—they marked a setback for Lee Teng-hui.
Lee moved into the last year of his presidential term determined to consolidate his gains as a gift to his successor, whoever that might be. In secret from his own advisers, he convened a study group headed by international law specialist Tsai Ing-wen, who would later join the opposition DPP and become its chairperson and 2012 presidential candidate. Based on their planning, in July 1999 Lee used an interview with Germany’s international radio station, Deutsche Welle, to state that relations between Taiwan and the mainland were not a relationship between a legitimate government and a renegade group or between a central and a local government, but a “special state-to-state relationship.” Taiwan would not declare independence, he said, because it was already independent.8
Lee’s two-state theory drew a storm of condemnation from Beijing, which called Lee “a dog in the water” and “the scum of the nation,” among other epithets. Just weeks before the election, China issued a second white paper on Taiwan that stated more clearly than ever before the three conditions under which the PRC would use force: “if a grave turn of events occurs leading to the separation of Taiwan from China in any name, or if Taiwan is invaded and occupied by foreign countries, or if the Taiwan authorities refuse, sine die [for an indefinite period of time], the peaceful settlement of cross-strait reunification through negotiations.”9 The third condition was new and the most threatening to Taiwan because, however vaguely, it suggested a deadline.
WEAKENING LEE’S LEGACY: CHEN SHUI-BIAN’S CHINA POLICY
Lee’s successor was the leader of the DPP, Chen Shui-bian, who served two terms as president from 2000 to 2008. This was the opposition party’s first chance to hold power—a chance that many of its members believed might not easily come again given the KMT’s tremendous resources. Although Chen often obfuscated his goals for tactical reasons, he and his advisers sought to consolidate the juridical independence Lee Teng-hui had claimed for Taiwan and make it irreversible. But these aims were frustrated by the ambivalence of the electorate, the firmness of Beijing, and the opposition of Washington.10 Chen left Taiwan in a weaker position than he had found it.
During his campaign for president, Chen tried to defuse KMT charges that his election would cause war with China by promising a “journey of peace” to the mainland, expressing his interest in cross-strait transport and economic links, and advocating what he called a “new middle way,” which he said would avoid unification on the one side and war on the other. To support Chen, the DPP replaced its former “independence platform,” which called for establishing a “Republic of Taiwan,” with a softer-sounding resolution that used language already made familiar by Lee Teng-hui: that “Taiwan is a sovereign independent country” that happens to be named the Republic of China. The resolution, however, added the twist that the country could not change its status except by means of a plebiscite—a concept that was anathema to Beijing because it implied a right of self-determination.11 Neither Beijing nor Washington had any doubt that Chen’s real agenda was to consolidate the elements of statehood that Lee Teng-hui had won for Taiwan and to expand them as far as he could, and Beijing did not bother to test the sincerity of Chen’s conciliatory rhetoric.
Instead, two days before the election, Chinese premier Zhu Rongji appeared on television to wag his finger and threaten Taiwan voters “not to act on their impulse since this juncture will decide the future on both sides across the strait. I am afraid you won’t have another opportunity to regret.”12 When Chen was elected anyway, China conducted military exercises designed to demonstrate its newly created capability to seize offshore islands under Taiwan’s control if it chose to do so. The increase in tension alarmed the U.S. government. The Clinton administration had already invited Chen to Washington before his candidacy was official to warn him privately not to provoke Beijing. In his Inaugural Address, written with direct American involvement, Chen committed himself to “Four No’s.” “As long as the CCP regime has no intention to use military force against Taiwan,” he said, his administration would not declare independence, change the country’s name, write the doctrine of special state to state relations into the Constitution, or conduct a referendum on unification or independence.
President George W. Bush came to office in 2001 favorably disposed to Taiwan. Shortly after he occupied the presidency, he announced a large arms sales package and told a TV interviewer that the U.S. would do “whatever it takes” to help Taiwan defend itself in case of attack. But after September 11, 2001, as relations with Beijing became a priority for Washington in the new war against terror, Washington cooled on Chen. Every time Chen pushed even slightly beyond the rhetorical boundaries that Lee Teng-hui had already established, both Beijing and Washington pushed back. This process led to a sharp rebuke of Chen in 2003 when Bush appeared on television with visiting Chinese premier Wen Jiabao and stated, “[T]he comments and actions made by the leader of Taiwan indicate that he may be willing to make decisions unilaterally to change the status quo, which we oppose.”
Chen needed some progress in cross-strait relations in order to show Washington and above all the Taiwan electorate that he could manage Beijing politically as well as to help his constituents profit from China’s economic growth. China was interested in tightening economic bonds with the island but vigilant against Chen’s attempts to use such progress to make political gains. China did make an interesting rhetorical concession shortly after Chen took power. It floated a new version of the one-China principle that replaced the standard “Taiwan is a part of China” with the new phrase “both the mainland and Taiwan belong to one China,” which made the two sides’ status sound more equal.
But this change in wording did not alter the bottom-line price Beijing was asking in exchange for any economic breakthrough: Taiwan would have to sign the deal in some other capacity than that of a sovereign state. No elected leader of Taiwan could pay this price. Chen was therefore able to take only unilateral steps that had little economic significance, such as opening direct postal, transportation, and trade links between the ROC’s island outposts of Jinmen (Quemoy) and Mazu (Matsu) and several Chinese cities in 2001. With great labor, his administration negotiated Chinese New Year charter flights between Taiwan and the mainland in 2003 and additional charter flights for both cargo and travelers in 2006. Other than these steps, however, little progress was made at the official level on cross-strait economic ties.
Chen’s main agenda was at home. His election in 2000 after a hard-fought campaign was a historic first democratic turnover of power between two parties in any part of China, but his domestic political position remained weak. The DPP, as a new party, lacked a base in the bureaucracy from which it could generate patronage to build local political machines. Its appeal was mostly identity based, but given the ambivalence of the electorate about both identity issues and risk taking in mainland relations, the DPP’s vote share in Legislative Yuan elections—the best measure of its core electoral strength—never exceeded 39 percent. Chen won the 2000 election with a plurality because the KMT candidate and a breakaway candidate split the majority of the vote. He won reelection in 2004 by a margin of only one-tenth of one percent because, analysts believe, of a sympathy vote that was generated under suspicious circumstances: the KMT candidate had been in the lead until just hours before the election, when a mysterious assailant shot Chen, which put him over the election edge. The injuries turned out to be minor, and the shooter was found dead, arousing suspicions—which have never been substantiated—that the incident had been staged.
To turn such narrow victories into long-term viability for the DPP as a competitive party, Chen needed to achieve conflicting goals—to keep his base motivated and to expand his appeal to the center. This conflict led him to issue ambiguous statements about Taiwan’s international status to different audiences. Thus, he told a pro-independence audience that there was “one country on each side” of the Taiwan Strait, but in his second Inaugural Address he called for “a cooperative and mutually beneficial relationship” across the strait and promised “no unilateral change to the status quo.”
Chen found it useful to generate crises in which he positioned himself as a fighter for Taiwan’s democracy against repression from Beijing and Washington. He suggested writing a new constitution because the existing ROC Constitution, written long ago on the mainland and now encrusted with amendments, was no longer efficient. The proposal drew condemnation from Beijing and behind-the-scenes cautions from the U.S. because writing a new constitution would break the historical legal tie of Taiwan to China. In 2004 and 2008, Chen placed referenda before the voters on such questions as whether Taiwan should strengthen its self-defense capabilities and whether Taiwan should seek to rejoin the UN and under what name. The questions were so vaguely formulated that they could not have guided policy if they had passed (which they did not because not enough voters cast ballots on them to produce valid results), but, again, they provoked opposition from Beijing and Washington on the basis that the mere conduct of referenda implied a right of self-determination.
Instead of consolidating Lee Teng-hui’s foreign policy legacy, Chen’s presidency left it weakened. Taiwan lost diplomatic recognition from half-a-dozen African, Central American, and Caribbean partners, bringing the number of recognitions down to twenty-three by the end of his term. Despite U.S. support, Taiwan failed to gain observer status at the WHO during his term. Its annual campaign to gain some form of representation at the UN made no progress. Its military posture also deteriorated, in part because the money to take advantage of the arms sales package offered by President Bush in 2001 remained tied up in budgetary infighting in the KMT-dominated Legislative Yuan. Relations with the U.S. were frayed as many American policymakers came to believe that Chen had placed his political interests ahead of American security interests. As Chen Shui-bian’s term ended, his approval ratings reached a low point, due in part to troubles in the economy, in part to the public’s exhaustion with his style of leadership, and in part to a wave of corruption scandals that enveloped many of his subordinates, his children, his wife, and—soon after he left office—Chen himself.
Meanwhile, Beijing’s Taiwan policy continued to advance. In 2005, shortly after the start of Chen’s second term, China’s national legislature adopted the Antisecession Law (chapter 8). Beijing kept building up its missile force and conducted military exercises that demonstrated its increasing capacity to project forces cross the strait and to deny access to American forces that might seek to intervene. China reached over Chen’s head to private entrepreneurs and citizens in Taiwan, intensifying economic ties and developing educational, cultural, and media exchanges. Such ties served to soften suspicion of Beijing among Taiwan voters and to tie many Taiwanese communities’ prosperity to the mainland economy. Chinese leaders welcomed KMT leaders to Beijing on a party-to-party basis, sending a message about how cross-strait relations would improve if the voters put the DPP out of office. They also reached out to DPP leaders they perceived as moderate, seeking to encourage evolution within the DPP. In Washington, Chen was blamed for provoking Beijing, creating a needless risk of a war that would involve American troops, and failing to maintain Taiwan’s ability to defend itself. The American commitment to defend Taiwan seemed to soften politically.
MAYING-JEOU AND THE FUTURE OF TAIWAN–CHINA RELATIONS
It was little surprise that the 2008 election resulted in a return to power of the KMT, whose candidate, Ma Ying-jeou, promised to lower tensions with Beijing and repair the relationship with Washington. Ma was a mainlander, a graduate of the New York University and Harvard law schools, a former aide to Chiang Ching-kuo, justice minister under Lee Teng-hui, and a former mayor of Taipei. He regarded Lee Teng-hui’s position that the ROC was an independent sovereign state in existence since 1912 as being consistent with the ROC Constitution. But he did not press Lee’s logical corollary, that the ROC could relinquish its claim to control the mainland and go on with its historically continuous existence as a sovereign state on Taiwan. Although logically Ma’s position implied a continued ROC claim to sovereignty over the mainland, he left unstated his precise position on that tender question.
Instead, in his campaign against DPP candidate Frank Hsieh (also a relative moderate on cross-strait issues), Ma proposed to put theoretical disputes about Taiwan’s status on hold and to subject mainland relations to a pragmatic thaw. He planned to eliminate obstacles to travel, tourism, trade, investment, and financial transactions, thus embracing the benefits of economic relations with the mainland at a time when Taiwan’s economy was struggling. To calm political tensions, Ma offered to reinstate Taiwan’s recognition of the 1992 consensus (“one China with separate interpretations”) that Chen Shui-bian had abandoned, promised not to change the ROC Constitution, and said he would seek an agreement with the mainland to live in peace. To Washington, he promised a “surprise-free” relationship. On defense, he said he would proceed with the long-delayed arms purchases from the U.S. while pushing the military to develop an effective strategy to deter mainland attack. In all, his policy was for “Three No’s”: “no unification, no independence, and no use of force.”
Beijing was responsive. After Ma took office, SEF and ARATS resumed meeting and signed a range of economic agreements. Beijing turned down an offer from Paraguay to switch diplomatic recognition, thus accepting Ma’s proposal for a truce in the diplomatic competition between the two sides. China accepted the posting of an ROC observer delegation to the World Health Assembly (the WHO’s governing body) under the label “Chinese Taipei.” Direct air and sea travel and shipping began. After two years of negotiations, in 2010 the two sides signed the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, which led to large increases in trade, investment, and tourism across the Strait.
But Beijing remained on its guard against slippage in its legal or power positions on Taiwan. It continued to hold a stiff line against any hint of separate ROC sovereignty, insisting that Taiwan delegations attend international meetings only under the names “Taiwan, China” or “Chinese Taipei.” The PRC protested vigorously when the U.S. agreed in 2011 to supply equipment upgrades to Taiwan’s aging fleet of F-16 combat aircraft. It was hard to tell who benefited most from the partial thaw. The mainland tightened its grip on Taiwan’s economic welfare, but in doing so it contributed to the island’s viability and self-confidence. In all of the complicated negotiations, neither side made any concession on its core sovereignty claim—Taiwan’s to be a sovereign government, China’s to hold sovereignty over Taiwan. On the basis at least in part of this ambiguous progress in cross-strait relations, Ma Ying-jeou was elected to a second term in 2012.
Taiwan–mainland relations continue to be dominated by a dilemma of mutual vulnerability. The more the mainland tries to constrain Taiwan’s options, the less safe Taiwan feels; the more Taiwan tries to increase its freedom of action, the less safe the mainland feels. A solution that serves the needs of both sides is imaginable in theory, but hard to reach in practice. Mutual trust would dissolve the security dilemma, but the dilemma makes trust hard to achieve. Even if future generations of Chinese leaders were to feel less nationalist fervor about recovering Taiwan than the cohorts of leaders who have governed the PRC so far, they would still want to control Taiwan’s international relations in order to prevent the island from being used by others as a base for hostile action. Mainland economic prosperity and political reform may reduce the Taiwanese sense of estrangement, but the residents of Taiwan will still want to maintain their own political system, way of life, and foreign policy without domination from across the strait.
During Ma’s first presidential term, some American policy analysts began to argue that the U.S. should end its involvement in the Taiwan issue because Taiwan no longer needs the U.S. to protect it from the PRC.13 But a retreat from the U.S. commitment to protect Taiwan from the mainland use of force would damage American credibility as an ally in Asia so long as the PRC continues to deploy its forces for a possible attack on Taiwan. The Taiwan issue seems set to occupy a central place in Chinese foreign and security policy and in U.S.–China relations for a long time to come.