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US-CHINA: QUEST FOR
PEACE
Opinion by Henry C K
Liu
Part
8: Avoiding another no-win
war
Part 1: Two nations, worlds apart
Part 2: Cold War links Korea, Taiwan
Part 3: Korea: Wrong war, wrong place, wrong
enemy
Part 4: 38th Parallel leads straight to
Taiwan
Part 5: History of the Taiwan time bomb
Part 6: Forget reunification - nothing to
reunite
Part 7: The referendum question
Taiwan residents nowadays take more than a
million trips to the mainland annually, out of a
population of 22 million, conducting business, visiting
relatives and touring, as well as undertaking scholarly,
cultural, and sports exchanges. More than 10 million
visits have been made to the mainland by residents of
Taiwan since cross-Strait contact was first permitted a
decade ago.
Until a Taiwanese so identifies
him/herself, there is no other way to distinguish
him/her from other Chinese.
As of 2003, the
United States exported US$20 billion worth of goods to
Taiwan, and imported $30 billion. Taiwan is a world
leader in several key information-technology areas, such
as notebook computers, liquid crystal displays (LCDs)
and associated technologies. Taiwan is also positioning
itself to be a player in emerging fields such as
bio-technology and nano-technology. Taiwan is playing a
key role in the emergence of a high-tech sector in the
mainland economy. According to Taiwan's official
statistics, Taiwanese private investment on the mainland
exceeds $5 billion annually. According to China,
Taiwanese investment exceeds $20 billion. The
discrepancy has to do with Taiwanese funds flowing
through Hong Kong and even through the US to the
mainland. Funds directly from Taiwan amount to 8 percent
of total foreign investment on the mainland, second only
to Hong Kong's 60 percent and ahead of investment from
both Japan and the US.
Trade between the
mainland and Taiwan was in excess of $50 billion in
2003, up 25 percent from the previous year. The number
of cross-Strait phone calls has passed 180 million
annually. That is almost nine calls per capita for
Taiwan and is still increasing at a phenomenal rate as
China enters the communication age. The number of trips
made annually by mainlanders to Taiwan for cultural and
educational activities exceeds 13,000, and is expected
to jump exponentially as soon as the political problem
is resolved and tourism from mainlanders opens up, as it
did recently for Hong Kong.
To facilitate
cross-Strait consultation, the Republic of China (ROC)
government established in February 1991 the
quasi-official Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF). The
SEF acts on behalf of the ROC government in dealing with
cross-Strait affairs that the government cannot handle
directly because of mutual non-recognition between the
ROC and the People's Republic of China (PRC), but which
require public authority. Ten months later, the PRC
established an SEF counterpart, the Association for
Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS). These two
organizations held in neutral Singapore the historic
Koo-Wang talks of April 1993, out of which four
agreements were signed, and issues stemming from
cross-Strait exchanges continued to be discussed during
another eight rounds of pragmatic talks.
Lee
Teng-hui's visit to the United States in June 1995 in
his official capacity as president of the ROC violated
the "one China" principle, causing Beijing to suspend
all cross-Strait discussions. In response, Taipei
adopted a more restrictive approach toward private
investment on the mainland. Taipei currently does not
allow direct transportation links between Taiwan and
China except for a few strictly limited exceptions. This
imposes substantial additional costs on Taiwanese
travelers between Taipei and Shanghai, where several
hundred thousand business people from Taiwan reside,
because they cannot fly directly but must first stop
over in Hong Kong, adding hours to the trip and
inflating the cost. Lien Chan, the Guomindang (GMD,
known on Taiwan as the Kuomintang or KMT) candidate for
president, has said that if elected, his government will
move immediately to implement the "three links" - direct
cross-Strait trade, transportation and postal service.
Nevertheless, cross-Strait interactions by the private
sector continue to increase in areas that do not require
government approval.
Beijing has long maintained
that if Taiwan accepts the premise of being part of
China, then, as the 2000 second PRC White Paper on
Taiwan puts it, "any matter can be negotiated".
Conversely, in Beijing's view, if Taiwan rejects this
prerequisite premise, there is nothing to discuss.
Hence, China again suspended quasi-official cross-Strait
negotiations over Lee Teng-hui's 1999 remark that Taiwan
and China have a "special state-to-state relationship"
that Beijing asserted was tantamount to a rejection of
the one-China principle. After the election of Chen
Shui-bian as president in 2000, Beijing demanded that he
reaffirm the one-China principle as a precondition for
resuming cross-Strait talks. Chen's government refused,
saying this would fatally compromise Taiwan's
sovereignty and security.
Taiwan small in
size but strong economically
Taiwan has a land
area of only 36,260 square kilometers as compared with
9.6 million square kilometers on the mainland, which
amounts to one-fifteenth of the world's land mass.
Taiwan has a population of just 22 million, compared
with 1.3 billion on the mainland. Despite its small land
area, high population density and lack of natural
resources, Taiwan has created an economic miracle with
$220 billion a year in trade, an annual per capita
income of more than $12,000, and one of the world's
highest foreign-exchange reserves.
This
accomplishment owes much to its stable political
environment, leading to steady progress in local
democratization. Over the past four decades, Taiwan has
seldom faced riots. Large-scale group activities were
rare before the Emergency Decree was lifted.
Well-maintained public order, a stable government and
political climate all combined to make Taiwan a
low-political-risk area for investment, thereby
encouraging international investors to go to Taiwan.
Similarly, economic prosperity created public confidence
and enthusiasm for participation in public affairs.
People began to express their political stance and
opinions directly (through participation in elections)
and indirectly (through party affiliation), thereby
leading to continuous political progress in tandem with
economic growth.
Taiwan has exploited the rise
of US moral imperialism to cement the US commitment to
help defend a democratic and capitalistic Taiwan in the
event that its political offensive toward perpetual de
facto separation, or worse, formal independence, should
provoke military conflict with the mainland. Officially,
there is no such US commitment, but Taipei banks on
post-Cold War US hegemony to carry out Taiwan's own
pursuit of separatist objectives that the US may not
officially endorse, but that tacitly also does not
disapprove as long as it serves US geopolitical
interests.
The Taiwan Relations Act (TRA),
Public Law 96-8 of April 10, 1979, which passes as a
counterweight to normalization with the PRC, is a US
domestic law designed to appease right-wing
intransigence toward China in US domestic politics. As a
US law, it carries a legal authority exceeding the three
diplomatic communiques, which are diplomatic expressions
of understanding between states with no legal authority
- only diplomatic obligations. Successive US
administrations have recognized that US policies on
China and Taiwan are based on the three communiques -
the Shanghai Communique of 1972, the Normalization
Communique of 1978 and the August 17, 1982, Communique.
The TRA, with a legal guarantee of future arms
sales to Taiwan, was passed by a veto-proof margin by
both houses of Congress. The language on the defense of
Taiwan contradicts US positions declared in the three
communiques. The TRA mandates in a legal framework a
much closer security relationship with Taiwan than is
contemplated by the three communiques. The TRA
establishes a continuing relationship between the United
States and Taiwan on an unofficial basis in order to
"preserve and promote extensive close and friendly
commercial, cultural and other relations" - short of
official recognition.
US Taiwan Act
challenges China's sovereignty
It also states
that the US considers that "any effort to determine the
future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means including
boycotts and embargoes is a threat to the peace and
security of the Western Pacific area and of grave
concern to the United States". However, domestic laws
are not applicable beyond US jurisdiction. To China, the
TRA is a US law that illegally imposes
extra-territoriality on Chinese territory and a direct
challenge to Chinese sovereignty. It is as unreasonable
as the National People's Congress passing a Chinese
domestic law that "views with grave concern" president
Dwight D Eisenhower sending federal troops to Little
Rock, Arkansas, to enforce school segregation.
The Taiwan Enhanced Security Act (TESA), passed
on February 1, 2000, by a bipartisan veto-proof vote of
341-70 in the House of Representatives, which
legitimized increased US military assistance and sales
to Taiwan, threatened to rupture US-China relations. The
Senate subsequently narrowly defeated the measure. But
the arms-sales contents of the legislation have been
largely fulfilled, unofficially by administrative fiat.
China can rationally calculate that the United
States will not actually intervene directly in the
Taiwan Strait or come to Taiwan's defense with US troops
in the event of armed conflict, if such intervention
involves risks of heavy losses of American lives.
Despite the TRA, and the defeated TESA, the US is still
prevented by its own laws and by international law from
legally intervening in Chinese internal affairs. Only
extremists in the US will dispute that Taiwan is a
Chinese internal-affairs matter.
But the US has
historically shown a pattern of undeclared wars that
managed to skirt both legality and constitutionality.
The US performance in the first Iraq war and in
conflicts in Bosnia, Somalia and Kosovo demonstrated a
lack of ultimate resolve to risk American lives in
distant conflicts. The post-September 11, 2001,
invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq with overwhelming
force have, to some extent, changed this, albeit with
problematic consequences in domestic politics. The
invasions were declared operational successes by the
executive branch. It was the peace that was supposed to
follow the invasions that has been an undeniable
failure.
In the US presidential campaign of
2000, both candidates in the first debate asserted that
each would only send US troops into combat if a
determination of a quick victory by overwhelming force
were assured. That precondition, which has come to be
known as the (US Secretary of State Colin) Powell
Doctrine, does not exist in the Taiwan Strait.
China will sacrifice lives for Taiwan - US
won't
While Taiwan is a vital interest of China
and China has explicitly stated it will bear any
sacrifice, including millions of lives and even entire
cities to regain it, Taiwan is not a comparable vital
interest for the United States. That is especially so if
normal US-China relations hang in the balance at a time
when the US geopolitical need for Chinese cooperation in
the fight against terrorism is on the rise. Nor is the
US prepared to make sacrifices comparable to China's
over the Taiwan issue.
Chinese strategy thus may
well aim at deterring US intervention on Taiwan by
making clear that such intervention would entail
exceedingly high costs in terms of American lives and in
terms of diplomatic friction. Indeed, the conflict may
not be confinable to only the Taiwan Strait. China will
not initiate any preemptive strike against US forces, as
history has shown that a Pearl Harbor-type attack would
serve only to consolidate US resolve for total war. But
to avoid any miscalculation on the part of the United
States, China will have to leave no doubt about the
prospect of high US casualties if the US chooses to
intervene unprovoked in a limited armed conflict over
Taiwan.
Strategically, the US has yet to
understand that lack of progress in the Taiwan issue is
preventing further normalization in US-China relations,
a sine quo non for world peace. The lingering
Taiwan problem also prevents domestic Chinese politics
from focusing fully on China's development needs, by
distorting China's national priorities and in its
allocation of scarce resources toward military
expenditure. A runaway escalation of the Taiwan issue
will radicalize Chinese politics and that could have
long-term spillover effects on the stability of the
whole region. It complicates or may even derail
developing Sino-Japanese relations.
Moreover,
the US position on Taiwan will further isolate the
United States from its residual Cold War allies with
whom it has been having difficulties, over Iraq
specifically and and over hegemonic US unilateralism
generally. Most Asian governments are beginning to tilt
toward China economically and diplomatically. The
Europeans are not at all sympathetic to US interference
in the Taiwan issue, as indicated by the success of the
just-concluded visit to France by Chinese President Hu
Jintao. French President Jacques Chirac on January 26
discussed bilateral relations and major international
issues of common concern with the visiting Chinese
president, reaching broad consensus.
Chirac, in
a strong show of support for his visiting counterpart,
warned Taiwan that it would be committing a "grave
error" that could destabilize that region by holding a
referendum in March. At a state dinner to honor the
Chinese president, Chirac added his weight to China's
opposition to the referendum plans of Taiwanese
"President" Chen Shui-bian. "Breaking the status quo
with a unilateral destabilizing initiative, whatever it
is, including a referendum, would favor division over
unity," Chirac said. "It would be a grave error. It
would carry a heavy responsibility." Speaking later, Hu
thanked Chirac for his "clear position of principle ...
against the moves by the Taiwanese authorities that tend
toward the independence of Taiwan through a referendum
... We firmly oppose the independence of Taiwan and will
not let anyone separate Taiwan from the rest of China in
one way or another."
Next: Averting war US and Taiwan can't win
Henry C K Liu is chairman of the New
York-based Liu Investment Group.
(Copyright
2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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