Dangerous Decade

Taiwan’s Security and Crisis Management

Brendan Taylor

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000760699
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: National Security
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Taiwan's position looks increasingly precarious, and tensions threaten to grow into a major strategic crisis. Chinese President Xi Jinping has made reunification with Taiwan a central pillar of his vision for China, and has ramped up diplomatic and economic pressure on Taiwan. Its inhabitants are increasingly estranged from the mainland, and Tsai Ing-wen's administration refuses to conduct relations with China on Beijing's terms. Taiwan could take on renewed strategic significance amid the backdrop of the deepening rivalry between China and the United States, and find itself at the centre of a Cold War-style superpower confrontation. Ble Washington's support and military power has historically guaranteed Taiwan's security, this is no longer a certainty. This Adelphi book argues that China's military modernisation has changed the cross-strait military balance, and the ability of the US to prevail in a conflict over Taiwan may have evaporated by 2030. As China feels increasingly empowered to retake Taiwan, there is significant potential for escalation, particularly given the ambiguity of Beijing's 'red lines' on Taiwan. Neither Beijing, Taipei nor Washington want such a conflict, but each is challenging the uneasy status quo. Taylor calls for the introduction of a narrower set of formal crisis-management mechanisms designed to navigate a major Taiwan crisis.

Chapter One
A shifting status quo

Since Chiang Kai-shek’s retreat to the island in 1949, Taiwan has been the focus of three international crises – in 1954–55, 1958 and 1995–96. But major conflict has thus far been avoided. Peace has been preserved through a deceptively simple arrangement known as the cross-strait ‘status quo’. This term encompasses a series of tacit commitments made by Beijing, Taipei and Washington to maintain stability across the strait, until such time as a peaceful and more permanent solution to the so-called ‘Taiwan problem’ could be found. Provided Taiwan did not issue a formal declaration of independence, Beijing for decades was largely resigned to its inability to reincorporate the island militarily. Taipei, in turn, committed to living with a political status short of formal statehood so as not to provoke a Chinese military attack. The US sought to preserve this uneasy equilibrium, both through deterring Chinese military action and by dissuading Taiwan from a declaration of independence that would trigger it.

The cross-strait status quo is vague. A leading authority on cross-strait relations, June Teufel Dreyer, characterised it as a ‘largely meaningless phrase and a dangerous ambiguity’.¹ Yet it is the very flexibility of this construct that has traditionally appealed most to policymakers. As this chapter shows, Taipei, Beijing and Washington have advanced differing interpretations of the cross-strait status quo. Moreover, these definitions have evolved over time, often directly in response to definitional shifts from at least one of the other parties. However, this approach is no longer sustainable. All three capitals are currently challenging the status quo, pushing it in increasingly divergent and, indeed, incompatible directions. Writing a decade ago, Teufel Dryer asserted that ‘there is no status quo on the issue of China and Taiwan, nor has one ever existed’.² Should present trends continue, this once controversial claim could well become conventional wisdom.

The view from Taipei

Taiwan has been subject to numerous claims over the course of its turbulent history. The Dutch East India Company administered the island for a short period during the seventeenth century (1624–62), for instance, at China’s suggestion. The Chinese warlord Zheng Chenggong subsequently seized the island and used it as a base for waging a campaign against China’s ruling Qing dynasty. The Qing prevailed over Zheng in 1683, however, and for the next two centuries ruled the island. As other foreign powers, namely France and Japan, began occupying parts of Taiwan in the late 1800s, the Qing formally recognised the island as a province of China. As part of the price for their humiliating defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95, however, the Qing were forced to cede the island to Imperial Japan under the terms of the Treaty of Shimonoseki. This ushered in four decades of Japanese colonisation, during which time the island also underwent important economic, social, infrastructural and technological reforms.³

When the Second World War ended, China – then known as the Republic of China (ROC) – was ruled by the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT). China had fought on the side of the victors and its leader, General Chiang Kai-shek, successfully made the case that Taiwan should be returned to the control of the mainland. China was soon embroiled in civil war, however, in which Chiang’s forces – severely weakened by the conflict against the Japanese from 1937 to 1945 – were defeated. Chiang and his remaining troops retreated to Taiwan, where they re-established the ROC. The KMT pledged to reclaim the mainland from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which in 1949 established the People’s Republic of China (PRC) under the leadership of Mao Tse-tung.

The KMT imposed martial law on Taiwan in May 1949, a situation that would remain in effect for 38 years. This was justified on two grounds. Firstly, the island faced the threat of imminent attack from the mainland and was thus, in effect, in a state of emergency. Secondly, because the KMT claimed to be the legitimate ruler of all of China, government had to be suspended until elections could be held on the mainland.⁴ Chiang’s rule started out as repressively as the half-century of Japanese colonisation that had preceded it. Already in February 1947, prior to his retreat, Chiang had famously ordered the suppression of an uprising that resulted in the indiscriminate slaughter of thousands of the island’s residents. The anti-KMT embitterment generated by this episode lingered among Taiwan’s locals for decades to come. So too did Chiang’s fears of sedition. He put his son, Chiang Ching-kuo, in charge of internal security. In this capacity, Chiang the younger carried out a ruthless purge that came to be known as the ‘White Terror’.⁵

The legitimacy of KMT rule was increasingly called into question, however, as Taiwan’s international position weakened. In October 1971, the ROC lost its seat at the United Nations to the PRC. By decade’s end, most countries had responded to this development by switching diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing. Most importantly, as a product of the historic normalisation in Sino-US relations – which unfolded throughout the 1970s and officially came into effect on 1 January 1980 – Washington de-recognised Taiwan. Although the KMT continued to maintain its right to govern all of China, the credibility of this claim sharply diminished in light of these developments.

Chiang died in 1975 and was succeeded by his son. Significantly, Chiang Ching-kuo recognised that continued KMT rule hinged upon the party’s ability to reflect the will of the Taiwanese people. By this time, the island had developed into a relatively prosperous and increasingly well-educated society. While Chiang was certainly not as committed to democracy as the founding father of the KMT, Sun Yat-sen – who was a key figure in the overthrow of the Qing dynasty and served as the ROC’s first provisional president (1911–12), and who envisaged China’s eventual democratisation following an initial period of Party rule – he did recognise that greater political liberalisation was necessary to stave off a major political crisis. Although he did not completely relinquish the use of repressive techniques, Chiang Ching-kuo relied gradually less upon these than his father. In October 1986, less than two years before his death, Chiang even allowed the formation of an opposition party – the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) – with the aim of maintaining stability within a Taiwanese society that was growing wealthier, better educated, more cosmopolitan and hungrier for political liberalisation. He also announced his intention to lift martial law.⁶

Chiang’s deputy, a Taiwan-born academic named Lee Tenghui, assumed the leadership of the KMT and continued this program of liberalisation. On 23 March 1996, Lee became the island’s first democratically elected president, securing 54% of the popular vote. This democratisation of Taiwan had important internal and external ramifications for the cross-strait status quo. Externally, it significantly enhanced Taiwan’s international image. This was particularly so given that it was occurring against the backdrop of the June 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, which placed Beijing’s repressive policies and practices in the international spotlight.⁷

On the island, Chiang the younger’s reforms significantly broadened the political spectrum. Views previously regarded as taboo were expressed more openly. In the early 1990s, for instance, the DPP stated that its fundamental goals included the establishment of Taiwan as an independent country and the drafting of a new constitution. By the end of the decade, the DPP’s position was that Taiwan was already an independent state and that this reality could only be changed via a national plebiscite. The KMT, on the other hand, maintained its stance that there was only one China: the ROC. Hence, two competing conceptions of the cross-strait status quo had developed on the island.

From the mid-1990s, a more distinct sense of ‘Taiwanese’ identity also gradually started to emerge. The Election Study Center at Taiwan’s National Chengchi University started polling on this issue in 1992. In the first of these polls, 46.4% of respondents indicated that they regarded themselves as ‘both Taiwanese and Chinese’, 25.5% said they were ‘Chinese’ and 17.6% identified as ‘Taiwanese’. By contrast, in their June 2019 poll, 56.9% of respondents identified as ‘Taiwanese’, 36.5% as ‘both Taiwanese and Chinese’ and a mere 3.6% as ‘Chinese’.⁸ Consistent with these trends, a July 2019 Taiwan Foundation for Democracy poll found that 68.2% of respondents were willing to defend the island if Beijing sought to annex Taiwan by force.⁹

Such views are most pronounced among Taiwan’s younger generation. According to recent polling, 100% of those under the age of 29 see themselves as ‘exclusively Taiwanese’.¹⁰ This result is unsurprising given that many in this age bracket were born on the island. Unlike their grandparents, they have little or no affinity with the mainland having never lived there. This generation is also ostensibly more willing to defend Taiwan from Chinese aggression. According to another recent Taiwan Foundation for Democracy poll, for instance, 70.3% of those under 40 years of age would be willing to fight for Taiwan should Beijing attempt forceful reunification. Consistent with this, an even higher 73.3% of Taiwanese in this demographic category indicated their opposition to unification with the mainland, even if China were to become a democratic country.¹¹

Taiwan’s leaders have had to acknowledge these shifting sentiments. Lee Teng-hui, his KMT credentials notwithstanding, provoked Beijing’s ire during an interview in July 1999 in which he described cross-strait ties as ‘a special state-to-state relationship’.¹² Lee’s successor, Chen Shui-bian, went further still. The first DPP president, Chen sought to send a message of reassurance across the strait in his inaugural address. Provided Beijing ruled out the use of force against the island, Chen pledged that he would not declare independence, change Taiwan’s name, include Lee’s ‘state-to-state theory’ in the constitution, nor endorse a referendum on altering the cross-strait status quo. However, in August 2002 – two years into his first term – Chen publicly stated his belief that China and Taiwan were separate countries and called for a referendum to decide Taiwan’s future.¹³ Chen subsequently initiated referendums to coincide with Taiwan’s 2004 and 2008 presidential elections. The first dealt with cross-strait issues and the second asked whether the government should seek to re-join the United Nations under the name of Taiwan. These referendums were ultimately declared invalid due to a low voter-response rate. In January 2006, however, Chen did succeed in terminating Taiwan’s National Unification Council – a government agency established in 1990 to promote reintegration of the mainland into the ROC.¹⁴

The election of the KMT’s Ma Ying-jeou as president in March 2008 considerably eased cross-strait tensions. Relations between Taiwan and the mainland deepened considerably during his two terms in office. A total of 23 cross-strait agreements were forged in this period, including the high-profile preferential trade agreement known as the ‘Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement’, signed in June 2010. Direct flights linking Taiwan with the mainland were implemented and Chinese tourism to the island boomed.¹⁵ In September 2015, Ma became the first Taiwanese leader to meet his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in Singapore. Reflecting the uneasy status quo between Taiwan and China, however, they greeted one another simply as ‘xiansheng’ (meaning ‘mister’) to avoid diplomatic complexities.¹⁶

A range of domestic factors – including Taiwan’s stagnating economy, rising labour prices and a growing gap between rich and poor – contributed to the defeat of KMT candidate Eric Chu in Taiwan’s January 2016 presidential elections. Yet Ma’s perceived closeness to the mainland also played a part. The so-called ‘Sunflower Movement’ – a term used to describe large-scale demonstrations by Taiwanese students and civic groups, which occupied Taiwan’s parliament from 18 March– 10 April 2014 to protest the island’s growing dependence upon the mainland – was a harbinger, while also highlighting the dangers of not being sufficiently attentive to shifting sentiments on the island.¹⁷

In January 2016, Tsai Ing-wen was elected president of Taiwan in a landslide victory that also saw the DPP take control of the island’s legislature for the first time. In her inauguration address, Tsai sought to reassure the mainland – just as her DPP predecessor Chen had done. She observed, for instance, that ‘the stable and peaceful development of the cross-strait relationship must be continuously promoted’, based upon ‘existing realities and political foundations’ – including ‘the existing Republic of China constitutional order’.¹⁸ Yet Beijing had made clear in the months leading to Tsai’s inauguration that it expected her to more clearly commit to the terms of the so-called ‘1992 Consensus’, just as Ma had done. This was an agreement allegedly reached in Hong Kong between two semi-official organisations negotiating on behalf of their governments – the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) of Taiwan and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) of China. It purportedly holds that there is only ‘one China’, even if both sides have differing interpretations of it.¹⁹ As leader of the independence-leaning DPP, however, it would be politically untenable for Tsai to unambiguously support this consensus.²⁰ Indeed, unlike the KMT, Tsai and her party maintain that the ‘1992 Consensus’ never existed.²¹

Taiwan non...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter One A shifting status quo
• Chapter Two A complex balance of power
• Chapter Three Tipping points
• Chapter Four Policy options
• Notes
• Index