The New China Syndrome vs A Taipei Personality

“Every election in Taiwan is to some degree about China… It’s always going to be about identity or are you Chinese or Taiwanese?... This is baked into the party system.”

Nathan Batto, a longtime scholar of Taiwan’s politics at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Political Science

In 1972, China’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and Mao Zedong’s life (1893-1976) were nearing an end. To put it mildly, the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) was a mess, isolated and very much mired in the past; the Cultural Revolution had dramatically eroded most of that nation’s functioning institutions. Her population was then pressing toward 900,000, making her the most populous nation on Earth. To us, she was a communist nightmare, our military opponent the Korean War two decades earlier, without direct diplomatic communications with the United States. We only recognized the Republic of China (ROC or Taiwan) – Chang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist island nation – as the legitimate “China.” US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger changed all that, secretly working behind the scenes. He organized a visit by Republican Richard Nixon to Beijing in 1972, a president whose party had been vehemently anti-communist.

The United States thus opened a diplomatic door with Chairman Mao, but there were a lot of strings attached. Foremost, the United States had to acknowledge that there was but one legitimate China, and that eventually Taiwan would be absorbed within the Peoples’ Republic. Mao seemed to have won his battle against the Nationalists. The PRC instantly replaced the ROC in the permanent membership of the UN Security Council, our “embassy” in the ROC was closed and replaced by the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), a non-governmental organization mandated by the Taiwan Relations Act to carry out the United States’ unofficial relations with Taiwan. Yet our support of Taiwan, militarily and economically, remained strong right into the present day.

Despite some threats, bold speeches and flurries of military brinkmanship over the years – as the PRC asserted its territorial claim over Taiwan as an inseparable part of China – the status quo of a de facto two-state reality remained in place. Taiwan remained in the Western alliance camp, and the US guaranteed her territorial integrity arguing that the absorption of the ROC into the PRC would have to be voluntary and peaceful. Indeed, the two Chinas began trading with each other, and the status quo seemed assured. After all, as Joyu Wang, writing for the January 13th The Wall Street Journal, observed: “The latest polls tracking Taiwanese identity show the proportion of people on the island who identify primarily as Chinese plummeting to below 3%.”

And then, in 2012, President Xi Jinping assumed the leadership of the PRC, rapidly consolidating his power, eliminating term limits to his presidency and began pushing against the billionaire oligarchs whom, he believed had too much power. He supercharged the development of his Peoples’ Liberation Army (the PLA, which is actually under the Communist Party and not technically a direct part of the government itself) and began asserting hegemony if not direct control of vast stretches of the region’s waterways, even going so far as to expand (lots of new soil artificially added) an island in the Spratley chain into a menacing military base.

But most of all, Xi let the world know that the time when Taiwan would become a formal part of China, by force if necessary, was rapidly approaching. Tensions between the United States – which is actually one of the PRC’s biggest trading partners – and China deteriorated to a new low. US Navel vessels and jet aircraft played a dangerous cat-and-mouse game with their PRC counterparts in regional international waters claimed by the PRC. See the above photo of a near collision between US and PRC naval vessels in the South China Sea. Xi’s brutality with Hong Kong served as a red flag to many Taiwanese contemplating a possible reunification with the PRC.

It is within this historical contest that Taiwan held its most recent presidential election. Young Taiwanese, disillusioned with equality and housing affordability under the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DDP), supported a rising third party. The old-world nationalists were the real threat to the DDP. Still the PRC raged against any notion that favored a “separatist” candidate. They rattled sabers. Bold anti-separatist rhetoric abounded. PRC hackers slipped in a powerful online campaign, roiling with mis- and disinformation. To the PRC’s chagrin, the ROC reached a result that promised to continue if not exacerbate the already strained Sino-American relations.

“China’s least preferred candidate won Taiwan’s presidential vote on Saturday [1/13], extending the dominance of a ruling party that Beijing has denounced as a separatist force and raising the specter of four more years of geopolitical tensions around the island democracy… Taiwanese Vice President Lai Ching-te claimed 40% of the vote in a rare and volatile three-way race, beating out second-place finisher Hou Yu-ih of the Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, by nearly 7 percentage points.

“The result gives the ruling Democratic Progressive Party an unprecedented third straight term in the presidency, and signals that self-ruled Taiwan will continue to travel along the political and economic trajectory away from Beijing established under outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen, who is stepping down due to term limits.” WSJ. China’s response was immediate: “Our stance on resolving the Taiwan question and realizing national reunification remains consistent, and our determination is as firm as rock,” said Chen Binhua of the official Xinhua News Agency.

Will China risk an armed assault in the near term? Later… or can some other peaceful resolution find a place. As China cozies up to Putin’s Russia and fails to rein in Kim Jong-Un’s threatening militarism in North Korea, it is easy to see how an already fractious world just become even more unsettled. Did Democracy win one or simply escalate the rise of global authoritarianism one more notch? Even our 2024 elections are very much in the headlights for both Chinas.

I’m Peter Dekom, and given the willingness of our long-standing enemies to engage in military force, our own presidential race may well determine the future of democracy around the world.