Taiwan and the Future of Asian Security

By Robert A. Manning

Summer 2000

Politique Internationale The recent Taiwan Presidential election and ascendance to power of Chen Shui-bian and his pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) amid new threats from China highlights the danger of major conflict in East Asia over the unresolved Taiwan question that could alter the Asian political landscape. The nightmare specter of military confrontation involving China and the United States, two nuclear weapons states, also underscores that, while a decade after the Cold War, major wars in Europe may be unimaginable, Asia has become the focus of prospective conflict in the first decades of the 21st century. Indeed, there are at least three flashpoints of potential conflict that could escalate into nuclear exchanges: Indo-Pakistani conflict in South Asia; the Korean Peninsula; and China-Taiwan. Some would add territorial disputes in the South China Sea to the list of flashpoints, but in the taxonomy of potential conflict in Asia that is of a secondary, and, while not inconceivable, far less likely—and less lethal—contingency. [1]

Rising tensions over the past year have made Taiwan the focal point of concern as East Asia’s competing flashpoint, Korea, has been at least temporarily defused -- as evidenced most recently in the promise of inter-Korean summitry. Diplomacy (along with more than $1 billion in food and fuel aid and other assistance since 1995) has helped tamp down tensions, preventing either a flare up or collapse of North. Nonetheless, both situations could erupt into conflict involving the major powers and the use of weapons of mass destruction in East Asia. Precipitous events that may loom just over the horizon in Korea – either collapse of the North or war – or conflict in the Taiwan strait each holds the potential to redefine the role of the major powers (U.S., China, Japan) in Asia and to polarize the region. Having to choose between the United States or China is the worst fear of virtually every player in the region.

Taiwan as Metaphor

Yet it is tempting to view the Taiwan issue as merely an old problem of civil war frozen by the Cold War; as ultimately a question of a divided nation. But Taiwan is also a metaphor for contemporary dilemmas on several levels. Taiwan’s massive trade with, and investment in mainland China crystallizes the tension between globalization and nationalism, in the form of a burgeoning sense of Taiwan identity. In this sense, it raises the question of whether it is geopolitics or geoeconomics that most shapes international behavior in a new and uncertain historical period. On yet another level, the Taiwan question symbolizes the emergence of China as a great power for the first time in the modern era, one demonstrating irredentist passion to right the historic injustice of Western and Japanese imperialism that left China weak and divided. Here the Taiwan issue renders still more complex the judgment of whether emerging China is an irredentist, but essentially a status quo power or a revisionist state. But at the same time, Taiwan represents an elegant symbol of the first Chinese democracy and peaceful transfer of power in five thousand years.

Perhaps most ominously, Taiwan may be the ultimate symbol of clashing US-China interests and values, epitomizing the perception gap on both sides of the Pacific. Since the opening of Sino-US relations three decades ago, Taiwan has been "the crucial question obstructing the normalization of relations between the US and China," according the 1972 Joint Communiqué which initiated relations. It took masterful diplomatic obfuscation to navigate around it, in that Communiqué, "The US acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of China." The United States does not challenge that position" Not necessarily accept nor agree, but merely acknowledged the Chinese position. Whether the communiqué language is still operatively true is a question on which war or peace may turn.

Casual observers may wonder why sovereignty over Taiwan is such a sensitive issue for China, given that it has been governed as a separate political entity for most of the past century. Indeed, in 1972, May Zedong told Richard Nixon China could wait a hundred years for reunification (but added Beijing would have to fight the US to achieve it). [2] Taiwan is central to the pathology of Chinese nationalism. Gaining sovereignty over Taiwan would eliminate the ultimate—and last remaining—symbol of 150 years of humiliation. Taiwan is also a psychological symbol of American dominance in the Pacific and of Chinese weakness and vulnerability. It is one of the few -- if not the only – issues that could trigger a direct Sino-U.S. military conflict. The Chinese sensibility was perhaps best expressed in a statement by Zhu De, founder of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) often quoted by Chinese leaders, "As long as Taiwan is not liberated, The Chinese people’s historical humiliation is not washed away; as long as the motherland is not reunited, our people's armed forces’ responsibility is not fulfilled." [3] Thus, for Beijing, the Taiwan issue goes to the core of what legitimacy the Communist Party still possesses: the Mandate of Heaven rests on uniting the empire and overcoming the era of humiliation that began with the British Opium Wars in 1842.

Genesis of Crisis

Current fears that the cross-strait situation may be drifting towards conflict stem from the democratization of Taiwan and its impact on the set of diplomatic arrangements – the so-called "three communiqués" and the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA)—that govern U.S.-China and US-Taiwan relations. For both Beijing and Washington the "One China" policy embodied in the 1972 communiqué and reiterated in a second 1979 communiqué at the time of normalization of relations, has been an idee fixe. Together with a third communiqué in 1982 which pledged limits on US arms sales to Taiwan, (based on expectation of a peaceful resolution of the issue) and the 1979 TRA these documents have governed U.S. policy towards Beijing and Taipei. The artful political fiction of "One China" brought stability and prosperity for nearly a generation, while Taiwan was ruled by exiled mainlanders of the Kuomintang (KMT) led by both Chiang Kai-chek and succeeded by his son Chiang Ching-kuo. Both clung to the belief that he would retake the mainland, and reunify on his terms, so the old "One China" notion was an accurate depiction of reality. Discussion of independence risked imprisonment under the authoritarian regime.

But beginning in 1988, Chiang Ching-kuo, flush with Taiwan’s economic success, began a transition to democracy. This led to Lee Teng-hui becoming the first native Taiwanese President in 1992, and the first directly elected president in 1996. Chen shui-bian’s assumption of office marks something rare in Chinese history, a peaceful transition of power. This fact may cause as much discomfort in Beijing as the threat that Taiwan will formally declare independence. What lies at the core of the current China-Taiwan tension -- and what could well lead to a conflict is the now well-established, political reality that Taiwan is a democracy. As democracy developed and deepened on Taiwan, it also began to lengthen the political distance across the Taiwan Straits. As the island democratized, the ruling KMT mainlanders, who came over when Mao Zedong triumphed in 1949, began to yield to local Taiwanese. Democratization has also been accompanied by a sense of a separate Taiwan identity.

This is, however, a fact of life Beijing refuses to formally acknowledge and the Clinton administration would prefer not to complicate its pursuit of a legacy-making "strategic partnership" with China. Instead, both continue to embrace the traditional "One China" policy, the assumptions of which are now called into question. Democracy has fostered fresh demands for greater international standing, recognition of its remarkable economic and now political success. Taiwan’s quest for its own international political space -- to no longer be a ghost in the international system – sparks Chinese fears that the island is drifting, politically, further away; with the threat of force the main barrier preventing Taiwan from formally declaring independence. It is this impulse to which Lee Teng-hui’s provocative behavior during the 1990s sought to give expression.

Remarkably, while this new reality was beginning to unfold in the political realm, a contrary trend began to unfold in the economic realm. Chiang’s opening in 1988 also permitted people-to-people and commercial interchange, mostly through Hong Kong. This slowly opened the floodgates, and by the end of 1999, there had been more than twelve million visits to the mainland from Taiwan, some 30,000 Taiwan businesses had invested over $40 billion in the mainland, annual two-way trade reached nearly $25 billion. This amounts to nearly 50% of Taiwan’s total foreign investment and about 20% of Taiwan’s exports, the pace of which actually increased in 1999 as tensions mounted and Taiwan’s stock market plummeted. As Taiwan moved up the ladder of economic sophistication, it began to increasingly depend on cheap labor and cheap real estate on the mainland to remain globally competitive. In the economic realm, China was being reunified, or a "Greater China" was taking shape.

Nonetheless, politics pulled Taiwan in the opposite direction. The democracy factor first intruded in a big way in 1995. It was at the heart of the 1995 Washington-Beijing diplomatic imbroglio involving President Lee Teng-hui’s request for a visa to allow him to address an alumni reunion at his alma mater, Cornell University. Beijing protested that granting Lee a visa would be a violation of its "One China" policy. Initially, the Clinton administration agreed, arguing to the Congress, that the granting of a visa would violate U.S. policy. Indeed, most of the foreign policy bureaucracy, State, Pentagon, NSC weighed in against it. But when the Congress voted—395 to 1—the administration reversed course and granted the visa even after Secretary of State Christopher and other high-level officials repeatedly told their Chinese counterparts the visa would not be granted in accord with US policy.

This created a crisis, as Beijing responded with "missile exercises," firing live missiles, including nuclear capable M-11s, within 25 kilometers of Keelung and Kaoshuing, Taiwan’s two largest ports. Washington reacted with the largest show of force in the Pacific since the Vietnam war: two carrier battle groups were dispatched to the waters near the Taiwan Strait. This dress rehearsal for conflict between the two nuclear powers brought home to a previously inattentive and simplistically moralizing Clinton administration the gravity of the Taiwan issue and the importance of U.S.-China relations. The crisis diplomacy that followed led to the 1997-98 exchange of summits and a new effort to stabilize Sino-American relations that have remained volatile in the decade since the June 1989 Tiananmen tragedy.

Drift Toward Confrontation

Yet the contradictions inherent in the present understandings governing US-China and US-Taiwan relations have led to continued to persisting volatility. The current round of tensions reached a crescendo after Lee Teng-hui gave an interview to German TV in July 1999, as the Taiwan Presidential election campaign was gearing up, and unveiled his "two state theory," that henceforth China and Taiwan should deal with each other as two separate states. Though this was in many respects only a bit more forceful statement of standard Taipei rhetoric – that Taiwan would not deal with Beijing as another province, already had de facto independence, and thus had no need to formally declare independence. But it had a double edge to it, as it occurred against a Presidential campaign in which Chen Shui-bian, whose DPP charter still has the goal of a referendum to decide on formal independence, stood a fair chance at becoming President. To Beijing, the fear that Lee had merely set the stage for the DPP to complete the act of achieving formal independence was palpable.

There remains an element of mystery as to why Lee chose to make a statement Beijing was bound to view as a red flag. One motive may have been a desire to leave a political legacy; another may have been effort to lock in all three Presidential candidates to a popular political position. But one factor was certainly a fear that the Clinton administration was pushing him into a corner in order to force political negotiations with Beijing. Apprehension about Clinton’s rapprochement with China began with the stating goal of forging a "strategic partnership" with China. Where did that leave Taipei?

This sense of unease was compounded during Clinton’s 1998 trip to China, when he stopped in Shanghai and, in response to a planted question, pronounced on the administration’s China-Taiwan policy that the U.S. "didn’t support independence for Taiwan, or two Chinas, or one Taiwan-one China." The President added that, "we don’t believe that Taiwan should be a member in any organization for which statehood is a requirement." These are known as the "Three No’s," and no American President had ever publicly stated them, let alone on Chinese soil. Indeed, both sides reacted strongly: Beijing was jubilant; Taipei, distraught. The U.S. administration dissembled, claiming that their was no change in policy with respect to Taiwan and that the President and the Secretary of State had previously made the same statement in private to China’s top leadership.

Yet, the President’s words, uttered in public in Shanghai, did in fact change policy. The President was signaling a clear tilt toward Beijing. By coupling non-support for independence while denying Taiwan the possibility of entering international organizations for which statehood was a criteria for membership, the President was implicitly accepting Beijing’s position that Taiwan was a province of China. For Taiwan’s democracy, this remains at best, an open question; even China’s White Paper hints at more flexibility than that.

It was after the Shanghai episode that Lee formed a commission to begin reviewing Taiwan’s status, the result of which was the ‘two state’ theory. Well-placed Taipei sources argue that their government felt itself coming under increasing pressure from the Clinton administration to enter into political discussions with Beijing on sensitive issues leading to reunification, as high-level cross-strait talks were planned for last October. From Taipei’s perspective, the recent shifts in U.S. policy had served to constrict Taiwan’s room for diplomatic maneuver vis-à-vis Beijing.. Lee knew his statement would lead to a cancellation of the upcoming talks, thus cleverly remove Taiwan from the box he feared he was being put in.

Once again, domestic political imperatives on both sides pushed China and Taiwan a notch closer to conflict. The price of Lee’s maneuver was a further wratcheting up of pressure from Beijing. This was evidenced in a "White Paper" on Taiwan released by Beijing’s State Council in late February, a few weeks before the Presidential election. Document seemed an effort of compromise between hard-liners and those taking a more moderate, patient approach toward Taiwan. Thus, the White Paper document contained some conciliatory language about negotiating "on the basis of equality" and about "taking Taiwan’s political reality into full account. But, its most distinguishing feature was the addition of a new condition that could lead China to use force to achieve reunification. Previously, Beijing had said that formal separation of Taiwan from China or foreign invasion of Taiwan would force it to adopt drastic measures, including the use of force to safeguard China’s sovereignty. The new White paper added a third condition, "if the Taiwan authorities refuse, sine die, the peaceful settlement of cross-straits reunification through negotiation." [4]

This new condition followed a steady—and continuing—stream of rumors that Beijing would soon impose a timetable for reunification of Taiwan. In one recent report, the Sydney Morning Herald, citing U.S. intelligence forecasts shared with Australia, reported that China was planning a blockade of Kaoahshiung, Taiwan’s major port, in September. [5] In the aftermath of the return of Macao, the island was the last piece of foreign-controlled Chinese territory not under Chinese sovereignty. The language employed in the White Paper implied that absent progress towards reunification, a deadline would be imposed. Well-placed Chinese leaders considered imposing a timetable for Taiwan’s reunification in the aftermath of Lee’s "two state" theory. But that quickly led to consideration of military options, which in the current military balance, are at best, highly problematic and extremely risky for China. This underscores Beijing’s dilemma, what might be called the paradox of time: a growing sense of Taiwan identity leads Beijing to fear prospects for reunification are slipping beyond the point of no return; that politically time is not on its side. Yet the military balance will likely continue to favor Taiwan until the latter part of this decade: militarily, time is on Beijing’s side. This is a high-stakes venture for Beijing. Setting a deadline it can not enforce could discredit the Communist Party and bring down the current regime if it were shown to be a paper tiger. The White Paper reflects a trend of escalating threats by which many U.S. analysts fear Beijing may be inadvertently painting itself into a corner.

Military Balance, Conflict Scenarios

Yet, if current trends are not reversed and progress toward reaching a new cross-strait modus vivendi does not occur in coming months, Beijing may feel compelled to actively consider military options regardless of the certain negative consequences of either success (international reaction to unprovoked military action) or failure. But what is the military balance and what military options does Beijing have? Since the late 1980s, Chinese military planning has shifted from planning large-scale "total" war to planning for "local" wars under high tech conditions, with the focus on contingencies for Taiwan and the South and East China Seas. [6] But despite more than a decade of military modernization, Beijing’s ability to project force much beyond its borders is very limited. It lacks robust enough amphibious landing and airlift capacity to conduct a successful invasion. The display of American prowess in precision-guided conventional weaponry first in the Gulf War a decade ago, and than with still more improvements in the war against Yugoslavia has fostered a sense of urgency in PLA planning. This has produced further increases in defense spending in 1999 and 2000 above the 12% increases evident over the past decade, and an emphasis on "asymmetric warfare" (e.g. electronic warfare, advanced cruise missiles, developing laser weapons). The enormous complexity in calculating China’s true defense spending has perplexed many experts. Officially, Beijing lists it at about $12 billion (FY99). But PLA business activities and the exclusion of a range of defense-related activities vastly understates China’s Defense budget which most independent analysts suggest is more likely in the range of $30-$35 billion annually. [7]

Simply matching side-by-side military hardware of Beijing and Taipei is not a useful measure of the military balance. There are a number of critical factors, not least of which is geography, terrain, the ability to surprise, and real operational capabilities. First, there is the problem of measuring offensive capabilities (e.g. 3-1 ratio for invading ground forces) against defensive capacity. Moreover, quality, particularly in modern air and naval platforms, matters more than quantity, as does operational and organizational capacities (e.g. command and control, intelligence, reconnaissance, "jointness" of air land, sea battle coordination). [8]

In any case, a Taiwan contingency is now a major organizing principle of China’s military modernization. Beijing has begun to acquire some 150 Su27 fighters, along with assembly and under co-production from Russia. In addition, China has taken delivery of the first of two Sovremenny class missile-carrying destroyers purchased from Russia for $400 million each, along with Sunburn anti-ship missiles. These ships were developed in 1980 by the Soviets to counter Aegis class cruisers, and the PLA Navy likely sees such hardware as necessary if they are planning to counter U.S. aircraft carrier task forces in the future. Moreover, Beijing is negotiating to buy 150 Sukhoi Su-30MK multi-role fighters. China has also deployed some 200 M-9 and M-ll missiles in Fujian province, across the strait, and U.S. projections are that Beijing may deploy some 700 missiles there by 2005-6. It will likely be another decade or more before China obtains significant air and amphibious force capability to sustain force projection for a sustained operation such as a Taiwan invasion. At the same time, China is the only nuclear weapons state expanding its arsenal, with the DF-31 mobile missile, capable of reaching the Western United States near deployment and the longer range DF-41 likely to be deployed by 2010. These medium and long-range missiles can carry multiple independent Re-entry vehicles (MIRVs). [9]

The first fruits of China’s military modernization, mostly imports, are beginning to show up. However, much of China’s large numbers – 2.5 million man army, 8300 battle tanks, 5500 armed personnel carriers, 4500 combat aircraft, 53 principal surface combatants, 70 submarines are of marginal utility in an invasion scenario. China’s lack of force projection capability would allow it only to move about one division at a time. By comparison, the D-Day landing at Normandy took 176,000 amphibious troops and three airborne divisions. Moreover, the vast majority of China’s combat airplanes, including over 2,200 obsolete F-6 fighters and 500 B-5 bombers are outmoded and likely to be retired in the near future.

But the key point is that, Taiwanese airspace is only sufficient for about 300 aircraft at a time. [10] David Shambaugh cites Taiwanese military sources as saying that their 600 modern fighter planes would likely be able to do battle for month with 15% losses daily. [11] Moreover, even the top of the line Su-27’s are inferior to Taiwan’s F-16’s and Mirage 2000 fighter jets and despite some F-16 crashes and mishaps, Taiwan’s pilots train on average twice as many hours in the air as their Chinese counterparts. Thus it is unlikely that China would be able to maintain the air superiority required to launch an invasion in the near future.

In the naval realm, it is a similar military equation. China has about 20 destroyers and 40 frigates and about 670 Xia and Han class submarines. The PLA Navy (PLAN) has amphibious lift adequate to transport one infantry division, with smaller landing craft and barges that could supplement its amphibious fleet. Its limited blue water capability would make it difficult to enforce an embargo of either of Taiwan’s two major ports. Moreover, Taiwan could also find alternative shipping routes making it still more difficult for China to disrupt commercial sea traffic. It would take more than a week to transport adequate numbers of divisions to invade the island.

Another advantage that favors Taiwan are geography and the elements. Taiwan’s eastern coastline is mountainous difficult to penetrate, and logistically very difficult. Its western coastline is mud flats stretching out more than two miles in many places. Moreover, the 100 miles that separate the mainland from Taiwan are relatively shallow making it a vulnerable place for submarines. The weather is also a major obstacle. Only the summer months from roughly May-July is free of monsoons, and even then there are generally very rough seas and powerful winds.

Taiwan’s aggressive military procurement over the past decade – averaging over $3 billion in arms purchases from the U.S. alone—have meant that it has accumulated an impressive array of air, naval and defensive systems substantially upgrading its capabilities.. Some of its purchases appear less driven by military strategy than political imperatives. One shortcoming often pointed to is inadequate anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capabilities. Nonetheless, Taiwan has acquired sophisticated frigates, advanced fire- control, anti-ship missiles, over-the-horizon radar, E-2 early warning aircraft, air-to-air missiles for f-16s, anti-ship missiles. It has improved Patriot (Pac-2) missile defenses. Though the Clinton administration excluded PAC-3 missile defense systems and Aegis cruisers from an arms sales package for Taiwan approved in April, it did include Pave Paws, a long-range radar system that can track missiles from as far as 3000 miles away and could eventually be part of a more sophisticated missile defense system.

Missile Defense

Beijing’s "missile diplomacy" of 1995 and 1996 and its growing deployment of missiles across the Strait has highlighted Taiwan’s most glaring vulnerability – to missiles, which is one of China’s few ‘pockets of excellence’. In the case of Taiwan, it is not the technology of missile defense that concerns China, but rather the political implications. There is no missile defense system – nor will there be in the next decade – capable of effectively countering a mass barrage of hundreds of Chinese M-9 and M-11 missiles. The low altitude and short eight minute flying time render defenses problematic. Moreover, Beijing is developing (with help from Russian specialists) cruise missiles which may be deployed by 20005 and against which there are no reliable defenses at present. China could overwhelm a Taiwan missile defense – even it Taipei acquired PAC-3 -- for the foreseeable future with its large volume of missiles and countermeasures.. China’s strident objections to Taiwan acquisition of TMD are in response to the political implications of such security linkages.

If Taiwan were to obtain U.S. high-end U.S. TMD, it would be viewed by Beijing as in effect, a major step toward integrating Taiwan into the entire satellite communications, command and control network. In effect, it would likely foster a quasi-alliance which China fears might embolden Taipei to declare formal independence on the assumption that U.S. policy of strategic ambiguity would no longer obtain, and that Washington would ipso facto intervene in defense of Taiwan in any conflict. This is also why Beijing has so strongly objected to the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act passed by the House of Representatives (but not taken up yet by the US Senate) as well. The cost of TMD has made Taipei reluctant to embrace the technology. Instead, as President Lee Teng-hui suggested, Taiwan prefers to "keep the option," presumably to use as political leverage with Beijing. Ironically, the decision to sell Aegis cruisers and TMD to Taiwan could lead China to impose a timetable for reunification. These systems would not be deployed in Taiwan until 2006-07. If China concludes that the use of force will be necessary, a PLA military planner might view this as creating a window during this time period in which to take action before Taiwan’s military capabilities made a quantum leap forward.

Ironically, American planners conceive Theater Missile Defense principally as a response to the real and growing reality of missile proliferation that could threaten U.S. forward deployed forces –and deter reinforcement in a regional contingencies such as the Korean Peninsula. It is North Korea’s nascent ability to target U.S. bases in Japan such as Sasebo and Yokosuka naval bases, as well as port facilities in Pusan that have spurred U.S. and Japanese determination to develop and deploy missile defenses. U.S. planners have rarely considered the implications for China and US-China relations although over the longer-term deployment of strategically -capable missile defense will have a major impact on Beijing’s strategic calculus.

The question of missile defenses, however, transcends Taiwan and goes to the heart of the strategic equation in East Asia posing the classic security dilemma. For China, it has become a metaphor for the strategic paranoia of a U.S. containment strategy as well as a potential real world threat to its modest nuclear deterrent. A U.S.-centered missile defense network in East Asia, and national missile defense in the U.S. could lead China to either acquiesce to U.S. hegemony or to devise strategies and capabilities to counter it. It could prematurely cast an adversarial shadow across U.S.- China relations, and render ephemeral any hope of harmonious relations between China and the U.S and Japan. [12]

Underlying Beijing’s vociferous objections to the specter of US-Japan missile defense cooperation is the fear that its modest nuclear arsenal may be neutralized and that the reinvigoration of the U.S.-Japan alliance and the adoption of new defense guidelines which expands Japan’s defense cooperation may be applied to a Taiwan contingency. China is the only declared nuclear weapons state expanding its still very modest arsenal. As does the Pentagon, China’s nuclear strategists are engaged in worst-case planning as they plot a course of nuclear modernization. China may alter its Gaullist-like minimal deterrent posture and churn out large numbers of MIRV-ed missiles over the coming decade or two as part of a counter-measures strategy to defeat missile defenses deployed on Japanese or U.S. ships.

The key issue is that missile defenses –still in the development stage –can propel the region into new geopolitical configurations prematurely. The reality is that the technological imperative of commitments to pursue the most cutting-edge capabilities possible is outpacing the ability of policy-makers to fully consider and understand the practical consequences of development of these new systems. The U.S. and Japan are at present not adversaries of China. But it is the case with Korea and Taiwan, missile defenses decisions have the capacity to force choices that may foreclose options amongst the major powers. The danger is that in all such decision nodes -- Korean Reunification, Taiwan’s future, and missile defenses – China is a critical factor. Yet decisions may present themselves before a judgment about the political character of a fully modernized China is possible.

Military Scenarios

What do all these military factors add up to in terms of scenarios for conflict over Taiwan. The short answer is that Beijing could inflict substantial damage on Taiwan, but for most of the next decade would be unable to conquer and occupy Taiwan. This may explain why Jiang Zemin recently warned his generals that they were "overconfident" suggesting total victory over Taiwan in 24 hours. But could China employ means of coercion to force Taiwan to reunify on its terms?

Within the realm of China’s current and emerging military capabilities there is a wide spectrum of possibilities for different conflict scenarios. China’s 1996 live fire missile exercises went up to the line of violating peacetime norms, but did not quite cross it. To be credible, whatever military action China takes next will have to go beyond such missile exercises. The options begin from a minimalist "demonstration" shot, of targeting a small uninhabited isle off Taiwan with a missile. But this would likely make the PLA appear anemic. There are escalating degrees of actions it could take to disrupt Taiwan’s fragile export-dependent economy, one that depends on Middle East to meet its needs of more than 250,000 barrels of oil a day.

Simply declaring an embargo and threatening to seize shipping to and from Taiwan would drive shipping insurance rates through the roof and drive down its stock market, while creating panic across the island. Beijing would just stop a few ships to achieve coercive leverage with Taiwan. If that proved insufficient it could move to the next level and begin seizing a larger portion of commercial traffic. This could then go to another level of a more robust air and naval blockade. In such a scenario the U.S., Navy would almost certainly respond swiftly to any breach of its most sacred principle (indeed, of any maritime power), freedom of navigation. Thus, China would have to be prepared to escalate into a conflict with the United States, and vice-versa. There is a now famous exchange between Chaz Freeman, Assistant Secretary of Defense in the first Clinton administration and a veteran China hand, and General Xiong Guankai, PLA Intelligence Chief in which the latter stressed China’s retaliatory deterrent capability arguing that the U.S., "would not trade Los Angeles for Taipei."

The intriguing scenario that some hard-line analysts have suggested is a disabling strike that could force Taiwan’s surrender without launching an invasion. In the most ominous version of this scenario, China would use nuclear weapons to conduct information warfare. The idea would be to explode a nuclear device at high altitude to create an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) that would disable Taiwan’s communications infrastructure. This would be followed immediately by a massive missile attack aimed at taking out Taiwan’s air defenses, radar , command and control and its key ports and eight major airfields. Beijing would then deploy elite special forces to occupy key facilities and enjoy air dominance. Presumably at that point, before the U.S. could bring its forces to bear, Taiwan might be forced to sue for peace. Such a use of nuclear weapons would create a special dilemma for the U.S. How would a US President respond if nuclear weapons were used in a manner that created no civilian casualties? Another potential Chinese nuclear first use scenario that some have suggested is a short range nuclear tipped missile fired at a U.S. aircraft carrier.

At present China is some distance from achieving all the capabilities to conduct such ‘asymmetrical warfare." But its efforts at developing such technological capabilities accelerated after the Yugoslav war and the accidental US Bombing of its embassy in Belgrade. But we have also seen on a small scale mainland and Taiwanese computer hackers engaged in modest scale Information warfare – invading each others websites. Within the next decade, China is likely to begin leapfrogging into new military technologies as it has done with nuclear weapons.

It is unlikely that any side would win in the event of a military conflict. Even if Beijing reunified Taiwan by force, the price would be steep in terms of destruction on both sides of the strait. Like Tiananmen, it would create an indelible image of China as an aggressive rising power likely to foster counter-balancing (if not containment) approaches in a polarized Asia-Pacific with Japan, India, Indonesia, the Philippines likely to join the U.S. in an effort to balance against China. Taiwan’s stunningly successful economy could be set back two decades For the U.S., a cross-strait military conflict is almost certainly a lose-lose proposition. If the U.S. did not come to Taipei's aid in the event of an invasion, its would raise profound doubts in the minds of allies as to the credibility of the U.S. security umbrella. Yet a U.S. military response would force choices polarizing East Asia, put its alliances at risk by forcing the region to make choices, and harden an enduring enmity with China. This was painfully evident in the responses of East Asians to the March 1996 Taiwan crisis. Only Japan and Australia publicly endorsed the U.S. gunboat diplomacy. But is conflict over Taiwan is increasingly likely or inevitable?

Diplomatic Solutions?

There is little chance that Taipei would accept any offer to reunify with the current Chinese government. But Taiwan is not the Balkans. Opinion polls consistently show that when given the choice of reunification now or later, independence now or later or the status quo, somewhere between 75-80% choose the status quo and either reunification or independence later. If the question is posed as to whether they would prefer formal independence if China would accept it, I suspect a majority would support such an option. But however heavy-handed, China has made its point that such a move would trigger a military response. In effect, China’s credible threat of force takes the formal independence option off the table. In light of this, de facto independence, that is to say, the status quo may appear an attractive option.

However, the cycles of rising tensions during the 1990s suggests that the old policy framework under which all three sides of the triangle have prospered for a generation no longer works so well. It requires adjustment to account for the new factor --Taiwan democracy. It is difficult to envision any mutually agreeable resolution of Taiwan's status in the foreseeable future. Three years after Hong Kong reverted to Chinese sovereignty the "One country, two systems" formula that Beijing seeks to apply to Taiwan has produced at best ambiguous results. Thus, for Taiwan, no offer from Beijing is credible unless and until the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that that Hong Kong is left free to be Hong Kong as promised. Yet neither is the status quo established in the 1970s sustainable.

In terms of both values and interests, United States has large stake in the outcome. The starting point for policy is the recognition that Washington must remove itself from the center of the current controversy. The U.S. must resist the temptation to broker a deal, lest it face manipulation by both sides. The situation is simply not ripe for a complete resolution, only incremental progress. The bedrock principles must be no unilateral change in the status quo, opposition to any use of force, a peaceful resolution of the problem. Any arrangements arrived at without coercion between the two parties should be acceptable to the U.S.

There is no Oslo-type agreement yet on the horizon. But there is ample political space for new approaches by both sides. The way out of the current psychological warfare and political stand-off is to inject new flexibility and political imagination. There is a compelling argument that both sides would benefit by modifying existing arrangements in order to buy time, continue political dialogue, defer any effort at an ultimate resolution for 15-20 years, and let events play out. There is a mutual interdependence economically. For Beijing, the minimal requirement is that some notion of One China be accepted and that some form of reunification is not becoming less likely. Beijing has a full plate of problems domestically, and if Taiwan could be removed as a pressing issue without the regime losing face, that would have political appeal to its leaders. For Taipei, buying time would allow China’s historic transformation (and Hong Kong’s transition) to unfold before it decided whether any form of political association with the mainland was desirable, or whether a future regime in Beijing might adopt a different posture towards Taiwan. The most difficult question is whether Taiwan’s quest for international political space can be accommodated in a "One China" framework.

In this regard, it should be recalled that prior to Lee Teng-hui’s assertive diplomacy in the mid-1990s, a promising Beijing-Taipei dialogue had been evolving since the 1992 meeting between China’s Wang Daohan and Taiwan’s Koo Cheng-fu in Singapore. It was the Wang-Koo talks that reached a mutual understanding that each side could have its own interpretation of what "One China" meant so long as both were committed to a dialogue based on that principle. It is hinted in China’s White Paper that a return to such an understanding might be provide a way forward. In early May, Tang Shubei, a senior official of the quasi-official Association for Relations Across the Straits (ARATS) clearly indicated that China might be interested in resuming political dialogue on the basis of the Wang-Koo understanding. If One China is defined as a more elastic concept, Taipei’s aspirations for international political space could be accommodated by new understandings, under which, for example, Taiwan define its political space by joining the UN system—IMF,. World Bank, WHO, IAEA, perhaps even observer status or full membership. There are legal precedents such as Ukraine and Belorussian UN membership while they were part of the Soviet Union. The PLO had observer status at the UN long before it had any realistic prospect of being a state. In exchange for such political space, Taipei could agree not to pursue bilateral diplomatic relations, as it has done by paying off small states in Central America, Africa and elsewhere, and to continue political discussions to reach agreement on the meaning of One China.

China had so personalized its vitriol against Taiwan independence in its denunciation of Lee Teng-hui, that the onset of a new government provides a window of opportunity to restart cross-strait diplomacy. Chen Shui-bian has been careful not to be provocative and leave that window open. In an inaugural address heavily focused on domestic Taiwanese issues, Chen continued this pattern. Chen discussed "Chineseness," saying that, "The people across the Taiwan Strait share the same ancestral, cultural, and historical background." He stressed the "Four No’s": no formal declaration of independence; no change of national title; no inclusion of "state-to-state" relations in the Constitution, and no referendum (on independence). Chen also moved a step closer to the "One China" principle, saying, "the leaders on both sides possess enough wisdom and creativity to jointly deal with the question of a future "One China." In a mild response, Beijing acknowledged the "Four No’s’ but chided Chen’s "lack of sincerity" for not fully embracing the One China principle. Clearly, both sides are have entered a period of testing each other.

On the second day of his tenure, Chen reiterated his willingness to go forward and establish what are known as the "three links" – sea, air and communication links – which the mainland has been interested in. Moreover, if both China and Taiwan enter the World Trade Organization this year, as is likely, they will have to negotiate a complex series of trade accords. These very practical issues that provide mutual benefits could become the immediate focus of cross-strait diplomacy -- on the basis of a One China understanding – that could reduce tensions, remove a major issue from the already difficult U.S.-China relationship. This is admittedly a best-case scenario, but one not unimaginable, and an outcome that would avoid military scenarios from which no victors would be likely to emerge.

Notes

[1] See Humphrey Hawksley and Simon Holberton, Dragonstrike: A Novel of the Coming War with China, St. Martins Press, New York; 1999 for a South China Sea military scenario based on spun from recent events that escalates into a regional and global conflict. The casus belli, massive oil reserves in the Spratly islands, however, is untrue, one reason why such a scenario is unlikely.

[2] See William Burr (editor), The Kissinger Transcripts, The New Press, New York, 1998.

[3] This was cited, for example by Defense Minister Chi Haotian before the 1996 missile exercises, Wenhui Bao March 5, 1996in FBIS-Chi, March 11, 1996.

[4] Beijing, State Council, "White Paper: The One China Principle and the Taiwan Issue, February 21, 1999.

[5] Sydney Morning Herald, May 17, 2000, p.1

[6] See Department of Defense Report to Congress, "The Security Situation in the Taiwan Strait," March 1999.

[7] For various estimates see the IISS Strategic Balance, Taiwan Defense Ministry, U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Some Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) estimates put PRC defense spending at $100 billion, but in operational terms this is not a useful figure.

[8] For detailed analysis the DOD report, Security Situation in the Taiwan Strait; See also essays by Bates Gill "Chinese Military Hardware Acquisition of Concern to Taiwan, and Harlan Jencks, "Wild Speculation on the Military Balance in the Taiwan Strait," in Lilley and downs (editors), "The Crisis in the Taiwan Strait, National Defense University Press, Washington, DC 1997.

[9] See Robert A. Manning et. al, China, Nuclear weapons and Arms Control, Council on Foreign Relations Press 2000 for a detailed assessment of China’s nuclear weapons program and its likely development.

[10]

See David Shambaugh, "A Matter of Time: Taiwan’s Eroding Military advantage," The Washington Quarterly, Spring 2000 for a full discussion of the military equation..

[11] See Shambaugh, Washington Quarterly ,previously cited.

See Karen Elliot House interview with Lee Teng Hui, Wall St. Journal, June 25, 1999, p.A19.

[12] See Robert A. Manning, "China’s New Nuclear Doctrine," Wall St.. Journal, June 25, 1999 for a discussion of China’s nuclear weapons program as a factor in US-China relations and in shaping the future of the nuclear era.Copyright Politique Internationale Summer 2000