For the past five years Beijing has pursued a stick and carrot policy toward Taiwan, which it regards as a renegade province, alternately issuing threats and then toning the volume down. Only last month, Beijing appeared in militant mood with a new law authorizing the use of force against the island if it sought formal independence. Yet at the same time it allowed the first direct flights between Taiwan and the mainland since the civil war that split the two sides more than half a century ago.
This week’s visit to Beijing by Lien Chan, leader of Taiwan’s opposition Kuomintang, and his very cordial talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao could be seen as another slice of carrot. But that underestimates the profound change that this visit signifies.
It is mold breaking. Ever since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, there has been an unbridged and seemingly unbridgeable divide across the Taiwan Straits that has been as much ideological as physical. Having won the mainland, the Communists insisted they were the real China while the Nationalist Kuomintang Party, holding Taiwan alone, insisted that theirs was the real one. This existential argument allowed for no compromise. The last six decades have seen the two continuously asserting their counter claims to the one identity. It was a battle that Taiwan slowly lost and yet, while losing, managed to become rich and prosperous — for its size, one of the richest states on earth.
Inevitably, the only logical way out of this paradigm of the absurd for many Taiwanese was the policy of independence promoted by President Chen Shui-bian’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, which is why it has become so popular. But that was too much for Beijing and the Kuomintang; whatever their political differences, both still firmly believe in one China. Indeed, the great mystery is why it has taken the two so long to embrace each other, given Beijing’s conversion to the free market.
But now it seems to be happening. No wonder the government in Taipei is so angry; the visit offers an alternative to both the potentially dangerous path of independence it advocates and the present status of non-status. It holds out the possibility of the hitherto unthinkable — the return of Taiwan to China. Both Beijing and the Kuomintang want it in the long term. Already Taiwan is the largest investor in China. The addition of its business genius and financial power to China’s market and labor force would assure Chinese economic dominance of the 21 century.
But nothing is going to change immediately. Lien Chan is not president of Taiwan; he has no power. Indeed, in Beijing he called, somewhat diplomatically, for the continuation of the status quo. But the vision of a Taiwan and China working together is bound to strengthen his popularity at home. For its part, China will do its best to develop a momentum. Beijing is sufficiently practical to re-tailor its “one country, two systems” to make it more attractive to the Taiwanese. The stick will remain with the battery of Chinese missiles pointing at Taiwan as a warning of what might be if things go wrong, but there is going to be a lot more carrot.
