Tensions are Heating up in the Taiwan Strait

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton, NB] Times & Transcript

In early October, there were four straight days of incursions by Chinese aircraft into Taiwan’s defence zone, with almost 150 aircraft sent in total.

Beijing is becoming increasingly concerned that Taiwan’s government is moving the island towards a formal declaration of independence and wants to deter President Tsai Ing-wen from taking any steps in that direction. Tensions have mounted over a possible Chinese invasion.

Formally, Taiwan is the “Republic of China,” which traces its history back to the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911 and, therefore, a rival government to the one in Beijing.

But most nations recognise the government in Beijing as the sole Chinese government. Just 15 nations, most of them small island states in the Caribbean or Pacific, have diplomatic relations with Taiwan. 

Elsewhere, Taiwan’s de facto embassies generally use the name “Taipei,” its capital, to describe the island, to ensure that host nations do not upset the Communist “People’s Republic of China.”

So at the heart of the divide is that the Chinese government sees Taiwan as a breakaway province that will, eventually, be part of the country again.

“Taiwan independence separatism is the biggest obstacle to achieving the reunification of the motherland, and the most serious hidden danger to national rejuvenation,” Chinese President Xi Jinping stated on Oct. 9.

Many Taiwanese people disagree. They feel they in effect have a separate nation, whether or not independence is ever officially declared.

So he got an angry reaction from Taipei a day later. Addressing a National Day rally, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen reiterated that “nobody can force Taiwan to take the path China has laid out for us.”

Who is right? While Taiwan lies barely 160 kilometres off the Chinese mainland, the first known settlers in Taiwan were Austronesian tribal people.

Even in the 16th century, as European countries such as Portugal and the Netherlands were developing trading links in the region, Chinese mariners and traders gave Taiwan a wide berth.

But after a relatively brief spell as a Dutch colony from 1624 to 1662, Taiwan was administered by China’s Qing dynasty until 1895.

From the 17th century, significant numbers of migrants started arriving from China. Most were from Fujian province or Guangdong. As this increased, so did conflict with the indigenous aboriginal tribes.

In 1895, Japan won the First Sino-Japanese War, and the Qing government had to cede Taiwan to Japan. The new rulers also approached the aboriginal peoples warily. Their districts were closed to outsiders. 

On the mainland, the Qing dynasty collapsed in 1911, to be succeeded by the Republic of China under the rule of the Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party.

After World War Two, Japan surrendered and relinquished control of Taiwan. Under Chiang Kai-shek, Beijing again began ruling the island.

The Taiwanese had been expecting liberation from Japanese rule to lead to self-government, not the imposition of another regime. This culminated in major riots in 1947, in which as many as 20,000 Taiwanese lost their lives. 

When the Communists gained control over the mainland by 1949, some one million mainland Chinese fled to Taiwan and took complete control. In 1949 martial law was imposed, not to be lifted until 1987.

In 1996 the Taiwanese were finally able to choose their own president through direct elections. Since then, democratic governance has taken firm root.

Modern Taiwanese are overwhelmingly ethnically Chinese, but a growing majority consider themselves Taiwanese, not Chinese, and proud of their country’s history and identity. China refuses to accept this

Is a peaceful solution possible? In the book Right-Sizing the State: The Politics of Moving Borders, one of the editors, Brendan O’Leary, notes that states usually resist contraction.

But this is correct “only if states regard all their territories as intrinsic parts of their identity. Plainly the historical record suggests that some territories are more expendable, more suitable for load-shedding than others. States will, it seems, adjust their external borders if the benefits from doing so outweigh the costs.”

Might China not be better off foregoing its claim to Taiwan, with the island nation concurrently ceasing to call itself the rival “Republic of China,” in a grand bargain? It might make sense, but it’s unlikely to happen.