China’s Threat Was Calculated Political Move

To many in Washington, China’s recent warning to Taiwan not to risk war by dragging its feet on reunifying with the mainland seemed a deliberate poke in the eye of Sino-U.S. relations.

After all, high-ranking U.S. officials who were in Beijing at the time were given no notice of the policy paper, which was released only hours after they left. China’s trade status with the U.S. and its entry into the World Trade Organization remain uncertain at best. Supporters of Taiwan in Congress, as well as Republican presidential candidates, were given new ammunition against President Clinton, who advocates engagement with Beijing and opposes upgraded ties with Taiwan.

But to view the Chinese white paper merely through the prism of U.S.-China relations is to misjudge why Beijing issued the document.

The fact is that China, despite its single-party rule, has domestic pressures to grapple with, which can be just as, if not more, important in formulating policy as what Washington thinks.

In this case, domestic politics demanded that China’s Communist Party leaders give some sort of response to next week’s presidential election in Taiwan, an island Beijing regards as a breakaway province.

Ever since the fleeing Nationalists took over Taiwan in 1949, the Communist regime here has written itself into the box of having to talk and act tough toward Taiwan whenever the island seems too much of an upstart for Beijing’s taste. To maintain “face” among its 1.3 billion citizens, the government cannot afford to look weak.

“Taiwan’s election is attracting a lot of attention. Just having an election--especially a direct presidential election--gives most people the impression Taiwan is a sovereign and independent nation-state, which Beijing says it isn’t,” said John Copper, an expert on Sino-Taiwan issues at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn. “So just having an election creates a problem.”

Four years ago, during Taiwan’s first direct presidential election, China tried to solve that problem by lobbing missiles into waters off the island--an exercise that backfired when Clinton sent U.S. naval ships to the area to protect Taiwan.

Last summer, the Beijing regime reacted in fury again when Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui defined ties between the two sides as “special state-to-state” relations, which junked the long-standing “one China” policy. But China’s ire was confined to mostly aggressive rhetoric, unaccompanied by military maneuvers.

Now hard-liners in the Chinese military are believed to be pushing for a stronger stance on Taiwan. Last month’s white paper warned Taipei that “indefinitely” postponing reunification could provoke an attack by the mainland. The threat broadened China’s conditions for use of force but didn’t set a specific timetable for talks between the two sides.

No Chinese leader can afford to ignore the People’s Liberation Army. The current president, Jiang Zemin, has had to work hard to secure the support of the military, which hasn’t been one of his natural power bases. On Saturday, before the opening of China’s annual parliament this morning, Jiang reiterated the mainland’s threat to “take all possible drastic measures” if Taiwan indefinitely delays reunification.

Nor can the Beijing regime, despite its image abroad as an all-controlling state, entirely dismiss popular sentiment. Many Chinese view Taiwan as rightfully part of China, to be reunited by force if necessary, especially now that Hong Kong and Macao are under the Chinese flag.

In this regard, Beijing is reaping the fruit of centuries of Chinese history and the Communist Party’s own actions of the last 50 years. The notion of a unified China runs deep in the Chinese psyche; it’s no coincidence that the most admired dynasties in China’s imperial past are those that were able to stitch together a single nation from feuding factions, starting with the reign of the first Chinese emperor, Qin Shihuangdi, more than 2,200 years ago.

Communist rule itself was founded largely on the strength of being able to unify a country riven by division and war. In the half a century since, the Beijing regime has continued to encourage such nationalistic ideals--and is now trapped by its own success.

“I don’t think the pressure [on China’s leaders] comes from the PLA only. There’s also pressure from society,” said Yan Xuetong, an analyst at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, a government think tank. “People weren’t very happy with the soft response to Lee Teng-hui’s two-states theory.”

A poll published Thursday said that nearly 90% of those Chinese surveyed said that reunification “should not be delayed and that a deadline should be imposed,” the official China Daily reported.

Experts also see the white paper as Beijing’s effort to wrest control of the initiative on cross-strait relations away from Taiwan.

For most of the latter half of 1999, the central government here was forced into a reactive position, scrambling to respond to Lee’s two-states theory, which attracted wide support among voters in Taiwan.

The policy paper allowed Beijing to make sure Taiwan’s current presidential candidates know what China expects after March 18.

Speculation has abounded that the intended target of the white paper is Chen Shui-bian, one of the three leading presidential contenders, whose Democratic Progressive Party supports Taiwanese independence. The other two leading candidates to succeed Lee are Vice President Lien Chan and independent James Soong, both of whom support better relations--albeit not immediate reunification--with the mainland.

But “this is not aimed at any [one] of them--this is aimed at all of them,” Yan said.

“It defines the bargaining after the election,” said Phillip C. Saunders, a project director at Northern California’s Monterey Institute of International Studies, a private graduate school. “It stakes out the position with a harder edge, but it has flexibility.”

Saunders noted that the new policy appears to allow for the two sides to be treated as equals, a first for Beijing.

“It’s also important to note what’s not happening. There aren’t military exercises; there aren’t missiles getting ready to be fired,” Saunders said. The new white paper lays out a tougher line, “but there’s also a willingness to talk.”

For its part, Taiwan, now a scrappy, vibrant democracy of 22 million people, says it will talk about reunification only after the Communist mainland reforms politically.

As for damage to Sino-U.S. ties, there is some evidence that Beijing was caught off guard by the firestorm of international criticism in the wake of the white paper’s release.

A few days ago, Vice Premier Qian Qichen appeared to be engaging in some spin control by maintaining that the white paper represented no great departure from policy but rather a clearer reiteration of it.

Scholars point out that the mainland still hasn’t committed to any specific timeline for talks and reunification, which preserves the ambiguity that Beijing hopes will work in its favor.