With Taiwan, U.S. Misreading of Its Influence on China Continues

The current outbreak of renewed tensions between Beijing and Taipei underscores the perils of world power. A war between the mainland and the overmatched island would be a disaster for U.S. foreign policy and could well reverse the hard-won gains in Sino-American relations of the last 20 years. This crisis--for which Washington bears little responsibility--will be a major test of the Clinton administration’s capacity for wise statesmanship.

Ostensibly, the conflict is between a Chinese Communist government determined to bring Taiwan under its control and a U.S. policy intent on preserving the independence of the island regime and a society successfully taking its cues from Western models of free enterprise.

But the conflict runs far deeper than arguments about Taiwan as part of China proper or as an independent state tied principally to the United States. A separate Taiwan, much like a British-controled Hong Kong, is symbolic of China’s century-old humiliation at the hands of the West and imperial Japan. Both represent vestiges of the bad old days when external domination made China more a warring ground of imperial ambitions than an autonomous, sovereign state.

U.S. reluctance to stand aside while Beijing pressures Taiwan into “reunification” also rests on enduring American assumptions about our role in Chinese affairs. For more than a hundred years--from the Treaty of Wanghia in 1844, regularizing trade with China, through the Open Door documents of 1899 and 1901, opposing partition, continuing through the alliance against Japan during World War II and support of the Nationalists during the Civil War of 1945-49--Americans saw themselves as China’s benefactors. We envisioned ourselves as ardent anti-imperialists, eager to preserve the independence of a backward but potentially great nation receptive to instruction from and trade with the West.

Passively accepting Taiwan’s incorporation into an undemocratic China runs counter to the long history of U.S. efforts to advance republican government and freedom for the Chinese people. It raises the ghosts of Munich and Kuwait as well; reminding the Clinton administration that the gobbling up of small states by larger ones does not sit well with Americans who remember the run-up to World War II and George Bush’s successful resistance to Iraqi aggression in the Gulf War.

It also stimulates memories of the critical 1950s debate about “Who Lost China?” Accusations that subversives or “fellow travelers” or naive dupes in the Roosevelt and Truman State Department allowed the Communists to seize control of mainland China made Democratic administrations from Harry S. Truman’s through Jimmy Carter’s--and now Bill Clinton’s--apprehensive about the domestic political consequences of any failure to meet the “communist threat” in Asia. Truman’s decision to fight in Korea, and the commitments from John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson in Vietnam, were certainly considered within the context of what “losing” South Korea and South Vietnam to communist aggression might mean to their administrations and to the future of the Democratic Party in national elections.

Never mind that Washington had far less power to shape Chinese affairs than it believed. The myth of the China market--where we were supposedly capable of selling U.S. goods to hundreds of millions of Chinese--combined with exaggerated assumptions about our ability to influence political developments to produce wild accusations about unwise and even “traitorous” actions that turned friendly China into a hostile communist state. For example, Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the conservative China Lobby asserted after Mao Tse-tung took power in 1949 that the defeat of the Nationalists by the communists had more to do with U.S. decisions not to intervene directly in the civil war than any long-term developments in China.

In this scheme of things, China’s history was largely irrelevant, and a determined America could work its will anywhere in the world. Hopefully, this misreading of China’s ability to shape its own destiny and the limitations of U.S. power will not reoccur.

There is, of course, a real case for supporting Taiwan’s independence from mainland control. Self-determination for peoples everywhere has been a central proposition of the American ethos since the Declaration of Independence and the war for freedom from British rule. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which rejected colonialism by promising to give acquired territories access to the union as co-equal states, elevated anti-imperialism to a principle of American life on a par with sacred guarantees of freedom embodied in the Bill of Rights.

Yet, America’s affinity for supporting national autonomy for distant lands has sometimes created insurmountable problems. Our failure in Vietnam can be ascribed partly to a stubborn determination to assure the independence of a South Vietnam incapable of effective national unity and stable self-governance.

Taiwan is different. It has achieved the political independence and economic well-being Saigon never came close to gaining. But U.S. support of Taiwan against mainland control poses other problems that strongly echo the difficulties confronted in the 1960s and ‘70s with Vietnam. Like Hanoi, Beijing is determined to restore the island to what it sees as its natural place in China’s national life. No amount of U.S. muscle flexing seems likely to deter the communists from their goal. Sending aircraft carriers into the China Sea or threatening economic sanctions seem unlikely to dissuade Beijing from a policy strongly bound up with national pride and autonomy.

Yet, in its drive to incorporate Taiwan, Beijing must realize it will pay a heavy price in international trust and investment. Washington is certainly determined that a free, prosperous, independent ally not be forced into unwanted political and economic arrangements. Beijing needs to understand that a military campaign to bring Taiwan to its knees would not only require a heavy cost in blood and treasure, but also would enrage Americans unable to protect a trusting, reliable country. It would also fan suspicions of Chinese imperial designs--making East Asia, generally, and China, in particular, a less desirable place for the investment Beijing so badly needs to raise its national standard of living.

There is a better way out of the current Sino-American dispute over Taiwan. Displays of military force on both sides will only add to the tensions. Threats of economic boycotts and reduced trade will simply make both sides more adamant about protecting their interests.

If ever there was a time for quiet diplomacy in U.S. relations with China, it is now. Clinton would do well to ask Richard Holbrooke, architect of the recent Dayton accords for Bosnia and a former assistant secretary of Asian affairs, to begin a dialogue with Beijing about Taiwan. The Chinese would do well to listen and respond.

There is a model for resolving current difficulties in Anglo-Chinese arrangements for Hong Kong. An agreement bringing Taiwan into Beijing’s orbit in 12 or 15 years, with guarantees of economic and political freedoms comparable to those given Hong Kong, could provide a reasonable way out of this conflict.

No one should make light of the resistance Taiwan will likely show to any arrangement reducing its current autonomy. But Taipei, like Beijing and Washington, must understand that a bloody struggle over Taiwan would be a disaster for everyone--for Taiwan’s freedom, for China’s immediate economic future and for Washington’s amour proper as a great power capable of helping friends and preserving some measure of self-rule around the globe. As Winston Churchill once said, “It’s better to jaw, jaw, jaw than war, war, war.