Bridge Across Formosa Strait

The Taiwan government considers itself to be still at war with the communist regime that has ruled China since 1949, but this conflict--for many years now fought only with words--is one the 20 million people of Taiwan find increasingly wearisome. In 1979 Beijing seized the propaganda initiative by proposing direct links across the Formosa Strait in transportation, trade and postal service. Taipei responded with its familiar and stale formula: there would be no contact, no negotiations, no compromise with its enemy. Only now are the first official cracks in this wall of negativism beginning to appear.

Taiwan’s ruling Kuomintang has announced that certain Taiwanese will soon be allowed to visit their relatives on the mainland; civil servants and the military would still be barred from such travel. This modest and grudging reform falls well short of the more sweeping changes in mainland policy that many on Taiwan want and that some, risking official wrath, have been agitating for. As a clear departure from earlier attitudes it is nonetheless a step to be welcomed.

The change was hurried along by the recent unauthorized visit to China of two Taiwanese reporters. What they wrote, particularly contrasting the mainland’s gloomy poverty with Taiwan’s generally high living standards, could hardly have disturbed the authorities. Some in the government, in fact, see the new travel rules as a sure-fire way to spread the word among mainlanders about Taiwan’s prosperity. Unfortunately, Taiwan intends to let few mainland Chinese see for themselves. Only those 75 years or older will be welcomed as visitors. Presumably the authorities remain worried that some Taiwanese are vulnerable to political seduction by messengers from the mainland. That insecurity is hard to understand.