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Taiwan and China now on a collision course

March 21, 2000
Web posted at: 1:24 AM HKT (1724 GMT)

By Tony Karon

The consensual hallucination of "One China" is fading fast, and while armed conflict across the Taiwan Straits remains unlikely in the immediate future, it may have become inevitable in the long term. Taiwan's president-elect Chen Shui-bian began softening his rhetoric on independence from China even before his victory in Saturday's poll, and on Monday he called for peace talks with Beijing to cool tensions that had flared up during Taiwan's election campaign. But the investors who bolted Taiwanese equities Monday, shrinking the value of the Taipei stock market index by 2.5 percent, may have had a more savvy read of the situation: Chen's victory defies Beijing's insistence on bringing the "rebel province" back under mainland rule in the near future -- a Chinese policy document released in February set a deadline of 2007 -- and that puts the onus on the Communist party leadership to up the ante.

Stability in relations between Beijing and Taipei has long been maintained by the "One China" policy, a sort of don't-ask-don't-tell illusion which holds that they're part of the same sovereign entity -- a policy with which Taiwan's anticommunist leaders for years deluded themselves that they had sovereign power over the mainland. China, for its part, has convinced itself that Taiwan will be reincorporated under mainland rule along the same lines as Hong Kong, which has been allowed to keep its economy and many of its political traditions intact under Beijing's "One Country, Two Systems" policy. But whereas Hong Kong's fate was decided ultimately by its British colonial rulers, Taiwan's may be in the hands of its increasingly assertive electorate.

While Chen may be a more strident independence advocate than his predecessor, even President Lee Teng-hui had infuriated Beijing last year by insisting that relations between the two entities be conducted on a state-to-state basis. Although China has threatened military action if reunification can't be achieved peacefully on its terms, it currently lacks the military capability to mount a successful invasion of Taiwan -- and such a course might jeopardize its crucial economic relations with the West. Nonetheless, no government in Beijing can tolerate any formalization of Taiwan's de facto independence, which is why the Chinese military has been steadily expanding its naval and air power. While full-blown hostilities may be some way off, the Cold War across the Taiwan Strait is right back on the front burner.

Copyright © 2000 Time Inc.