The Future of Taiwan: Unification or “Silent Normalisation”?, by Jean-Pierre Cabestan, Senior Researcher, CNRS

Since President Ma Ying-jeou’s election and the Kuomintang (KMT)’s return to power in 2008, Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have entered a period of unprecedented detente. Unofficial contact and meetings between the Taiwanese and the Chinese governments have increased; twelve commercial and technical agreements have been signed; in June 2010 an Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (EFCA) was concluded, deepening Taiwanese economic dependence already stimulated by ever-increasing bilateral trade (US$120 in 2009); PRC tourism in Taiwan is developing very rapidly (over a million visits since 2009); a genuine rapprochement is taking place between the Nationalist Party and the Chinese Communist Party, easing a reconciliation between the two arch-enemies of the civil war period and promoting its “Chineseness” again in an almost militant way and having gotten rid of its “Taiwaneseness”, the current KMT government is daring less and less to make decisions that might offend Beijing (such as refusing to meet with the Dalai Lama or issuing a visa to Rebiya Kadeer). In other words, Taiwan is increasingly under the PRC’s influence.

Map of Asia / © 2010 - Réseau Asie

Nevertheless, does this evolution favour the peaceful reunification process that Beijing has been hoping for since 1979? Can it hasten Taiwan’s reintegration in China, or even the former’s absorption by the latter?

It is clear that many factors appear to force Taiwan to take this path.

First of all, Taiwan’s economic prosperity depends more and more on its continued cooperation and integration with China. If the EFCA is fully implemented, it is estimated that by 2020, Taiwan’s sales to China will represent 62% of its exports, as opposed to 41% today. The island has been and will probably remain unable to rebalance this dependence, especially in favour of South East Asia. Between one and two million Taiwanese live in China, contributing to weakening or at least moderating their minnan (South Fujian)-dominated Taiwanese identity. The professional future of a growing portion of the young Taiwanese is located in or developing through mainland China. Attracted by Taiwan’s democratic and free environment, PRC tourists continue, however, to adhere to a very nationalist approach to the Chinese nation: there is only one China, the PRC, and Taiwan is a sacred and inalienable part of it.

Model of the Chiang Kai-shek memorial and square (the latter has been renamed "Liberty Square" in 2007) à Taipei / © 2010 - Stéphane Corcuff	Statue of Chiang Kai-shek at his mausoleum. The butterflies - a post-modern and ironic work added at the end of the Chen Shui-bian presidency - deemed disrespectful, were taken away by the KMT / © 2008 - J-P. Cabestan
Statue to the glory of the People in front of Mao Ze-dong's mausoleum / © 2010 - J. Auriac	Crowd in front of Mao Ze-dong's mausoleum / © 2010 - J. Auriac

Since 2005, the military balance in the Taiwan Strait is clearly detrimental to Taiwan. Although Taiwan continues to receive a large quantity of sophisticated weapons from the United States, it does not invest enough in its defence (2.5% of the GDP instead of the 3% promised by Ma). While the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)’s threat is becoming more and more credible, Taiwan has decided to abolish the drafting system, weakening the vital bind between the army and the nation and, as a consequence, the Taiwanese’s will to fight, a will that has already been rapidly fading since the end of the Cold War in a society that is radically hedonist and post-modern.

In spite of the diplomatic truce decided by Ma and tacitly accepted by Beijing, the international status of the Republic of China (ROC), Taiwan’s official name, was only marginally improved: “Chinese Taipei” (the ROC’s “politically-correct” name) has only acquired a folding chair in the World Health Organisation (an observer seat in its Assembly) and can only seek solace from maintaining official relations with 23 micro-states without any international and little territorial influence.

In other words, we are entitled to ask which side does the current detente in the Taiwan Strait benefit the most? Although the Chinese government has cleverly made calculated trade concessions for Taiwan, especially when negotiating the ECFA, it has not budged on the crucial issues. The PLA’s military threat against Taiwan has continued to intensify, unabated: it is not only based on around 1,100 conventional missiles but also a Navy and an Air Force that is increasingly able to project forces over the Strait. Moreover, the PRC is flexing its muscles and asserting its power all over the continent, testing the US (e. g. the US Impeccable incident in the South China Sea in March 2009) or Japan’s (e.g. the Chinese fishing boat incident in the Diaoyu/Senkaku in September 2010) resistance to its ambitions more frequently. In such circumstances, the ROC-Taiwan has few chances to join the international community again, even through the back door.

Nevertheless, the very limits of this detente, as well as its concrete outcomes in terms of peace and security, may contribute to strengthening Taiwan hold, as the island is protected both by its democracy and, it should not be forgotten, the USA. The US’s de facto support for Taiwanese security has helped keep some kind of strategic balance in the Strait.

China's Missile Threat on Taiwan / © 2005 - Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique

It is obvious that the KMT and the Taiwanese business community have decided to play the economic integration card. However, this integration will most certainly continue to be tightly managed and limited in a number of strategic sectors. Ma Ying-Jeou’s government is very much aware of this. For instance, the island will only very carefully and selectively open its economy to PRC investments, in order to avoid any “Hongkongisation” of its industry or financial sector.

Although more moderate and pluralistic, the Taiwanese identity (and language) probably still have better days ahead of them. The identification between Taiwan and the ROC political entity will continue to feed it (them), forcing all election candidates to factor it in and manipulate it. Taiwan’s democratic reality, if, of course, Taiwan’s democracy continues to gain strength, will remain one of the best ramparts against any deal or agreement with China that might jeopardize the island’s sovereignty. Because in spite of their divisions, the Taiwanese are united to consider their island as a nation-state distinct and separate from the PRC as well as asking that their relations with the latter be established and developed on an equal footing.

Interestingly, since 2008, the increase in contact and visits between the Taiwanese and the Chinese governments has favoured what I am tempted to qualify as a “creeping and silent normalisation” of the relations between both Chinas. It is clear that this “normalisation” will remain unassumed and incomplete as long as mainland China stays controlled by an authoritarian polity. But isn’t this “quasi-normalisation” the true meaning of Hu Jintao’s “peaceful development of relations across the Taiwan Strait” policy?

Protest against the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement. Taipei, juin 2010 / © 2010 - Gwénaël Derian

Beijing authorities must know this pretty well and have thus decided to keep a strong military hold on an island that is nevertheless ruled by a more than accommodating KMT government; as if they did not fully trust the efficiency of their dependence-based seduction strategy; as if they mistrusted the Taiwanese electorate, an electorate that democracy has made unpredictable – the possibility of a return of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to power (today, the DPP gets around 45% of the votes) is not as easily ruled out; as if the US’s interest was precisely to perpetuate the division of China into two separate states, as it was our interest, as French, to keep Germany divided as long as possible.

But, while Japan may nourish this hope, this is not the case of the US. All American administrations have remained “agnostic” about Taiwan’s future and final status, provided that this status is not decided under duress but fully embraced by a clear Taiwanese majority. Here we reach the heart of the question: what do the Taiwanese want? As we have suggested, they wish to be fully reintegrated into the international community, a community which, in their view, they were wrongly forced to leave in 1971 when the PRC replaced the ROC at the United Nations, to maintain the status quo in the Strait and to postpone any decision regarding their relations with mainland China to better times. Of course if China becomes democratic tomorrow, this political upheaval would constitute a real challenge for the Taiwanese, forcing them to make a choice, and would probably deeply divide them: the KMT and the “blue camp” would lean towards unification while the DPP and “green camp” would opt for de jure independence.

As we are still all waiting for this positive but unlikely development, Taiwan will provably continue to require and receive US military support and the Chinese know it pretty well. This reality helps to better comprehend the PLA’s new ambitions: to not only be able to rapidly destroy Taiwan’s key military facilities but also, in adopting an asymmetrical strategy, become powerful enough to neutralise any US aircraft carrier and carrier group dispatched to the area. It is sensible to ask whether an armed conflict between two nuclear powers is conceivable. However, we can but observe that in both Beijing and Washington (as well as in Honolulu and Okinawa), militaries are preparing ready for the worst, in order to more decisively influence the best possible outcome: a negotiated settlement of the differences across the Taiwan Strait.

Is a negotiated settlement feasible today? The conclusion of an end of hostility agreement, let alone a peace accord between two states that do not recognise each other still seems unachievable in the foreseeable future, particularly because the Taiwanese have remained divided about the boundaries of the ROC with the whole Chinese nation for the blues or Taiwan and the small islands that it controls for the green. Thus, at this stage, we can only hope for the opening of discreet military confidence-building negotiations as well as the continuation of the current “creeping normalisation”, a process that, in spite of everything, has contributed to keeping risks of war away. However, it is unrealistic to expect more from the current detente.

Yes, Taiwan is under China’s growing influence, and as a result is constrained to adopting a more accommodating policy towards it than before. But options are still open for the future, in view of the political uncertainties on the mainland, Taiwan’s intention to follow its own democratic path and the conflicting interests and responsibilities shouldered by the Asia-Pacific great power in and around the Taiwan Strait. China’s influence in this region is getting stronger every day; but other powers, especially Japan, India and Russia, have not capitulated whatsoever: on the contrary, in asserting its power too rapidly and often too clumsily, China has contributed not only to strengthening the US strategic role there but also to convincing many of its neighbours to come together in order to better balance its ambitions.

East Asia's Strategic Environment and US Intervention Capabilities
© 2005 - Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique

Jean-Pierre Cabestan, Senior Researcher, CNRS, Professor & Director, Department of Government and International Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University, Associate Researcher, Asia Centre at Sciences-Po, has recently published: (with Tanguy Le Pesant), L’esprit de défense de Taiwan face à la Chine. La jeunesse taiwanaise face à la tentation de la Chine (Taiwan’s Will to Fight, the Taiwanese Youth and the Temptation of China) Paris, L’Harmattan, 2009 and La politique internationale de la Chine. Entre intégration et volonté de puissance (China’s Foreign and Security Policy. Between Integration and Will to Power), Paris, Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 2010.