China and Taiwan: The Slowing of Cross-Strait Relations

The United States and China had a long list of issues prepared for President Xi Jinping’s first state visit. Cyber issues and the South China Sea topped the agenda, as expected, while climate change provided the subject of the summit’s major deliverable. The two sides also spoke of cooperation on the Korean nuclear issue, reconstruction in Afghanistan, and counterterrorism.

Yet one Chinese official recently insisted that another problem entirely, one largely absent from the recent summit, remains the biggest threat to U.S.-China relations. “The Taiwan issue is the most important and most sensitive issue in China-U.S. relations,” Ma Xiaoguang, the spokesperson for the State Council’s Taiwan Affairs Office, told reporters at a press conference just before Xi’s visit.

When the United States and China took the first tentative steps toward normalizing their relationship, no one would have doubted Ma’s assertion. According to accounts of Henry Kissinger’s ground-breaking trip to China in 1971, the U.S. national security advisor had to give assurances that Washington supported the “one China policy” before negotiations could progress. The issue also featured prominently in the 1972 Shanghai Communiqué, issued after President Richard Nixon’s trip to China: “The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China.”

Today, however, the Taiwan issue has faded in prominence in U.S.-China relations, largely because there have been no “flashpoints” in cross-strait relations since Obama was elected in 2008. Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou was elected the same year, on March 22, after promising more economic cooperation with China. He delivered, and a series of agreements (particularly the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement of 2010) led to unprecedented economic and people-to-people ties across the Taiwan Strait.  

This cross-strait progress kept Taiwan largely out of the headlines, but it did not address the fundamental political or security issues that make cross-strait relations so combustible. Instead, the fact that Taipei and Beijing had already picked the “low-hanging fruit” of economic cooperation set cross-strait relations up for a drastic slowdown and possible blowback, as Richard Bush argued in his 2013 book Uncharted Strait. Bush was proven right in 2014, when thousands of Taiwanese pushed back vocally against government steps to further open Taiwan’s services market to China.

The protests and occupation of Taiwan’s legislature, which became known as the Sunflower Movement, seemed to spark a turning point in Taiwanese politics, and thus cross-strait relations. Today, Ma Ying-jeou’s Kuomintang (KMT) or Nationalist Party is fighting low approval ratings for both its lame-duck president and its presidential candidate, Hung Hsiu-chu. Pundits believe it’s almost a foregone conclusion that Hung and the KMT will lose to the opposition Democratic Progressive Party’s candidate, Tsai Ing-wen. And that has Beijing very nervous.

The last time the DPP was in power, Beijing believed President Chen Shui-bian was angling toward de jure independence, rather than settling for the status quo of de facto self-governance. As a whole, the DPP’s supporters have a stronger sense of Taiwanese identity than the KMT’s and are less likely to feel kinship with mainland China – meaning less support for Beijing’s eventual goal of reunification and more support for the dreaded “Taiwanese independence.”

But it’s not just the DPP – public opinion polls in Taiwan show that more than 60 percent of Taiwanese oppose unification, while a whopping 80 percent said they would opt for official independence if it came without the steep military and economic costs Beijing has promised to inflict.

Still, Beijing’s nervousness with the DPP in particular is obvious. Chinese Communist Party officials from Xi himself to Ma Xiaoguang and other TAO officials have warned against the dangers of “Taiwanese independence” and urged Taiwan to uphold the “1992 Consensus.” (That agreement, wherein both Taiwan and mainland China express support for “one China,” originated from the KMT and does not have much support in the DPP.) Meanwhile, Beijing further embraced the KMT, warmly welcoming new party chair Eric Chu to China in May. The mainland has done everything but openly proclaim its support for the KMT in the upcoming presidential and legislative elections, but if the polls are any indication, it’s efforts to date are doing more harm than good.

Election

Meanwhile, U.S. analysts are also paying close attention to Taiwan’s election and Beijing’s potential response, as both will have serious implications for the U.S.-Taiwan and U.S.-China relationships. In 2012, Washington was apparently so worried about a potential DPP president causing a crisis that administration officials leaked their reservations about Tsai to the media. That led to headlines like the following from the Financial Times in September 2011: “US concerned about Taiwan candidate.”

This time around, Tsai has taken special care to reassure both Taiwanese voters and the U.S. that she will responsibly handle the cross-strait relationship. Throughout her campaign, she has said her administration would seek to uphold the status quo and would not try to roll back existing advances in cross-strait relations. She visited the U.S. in June 2015 to deliver the same message, stopping by the White House and State Department for talks with U.S. officials.

In a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., Tsai said she was “committed to a consistent, predictable, and sustainable relationship with China.” But she also spoke of the need to take a long-term view of cross-strait relations, while emphasizing Taiwan’s “deeply ingrained” values of “freedom and democracy.”

“While I advocate for constructive exchanges and dialogues with China, I will ensure the process is democratic and transparent,” Tsai said, promising to create an oversight mechanism for cross-strait deals and negotiations (a key demand of the Sunflower Movement).

What this points to is not “Taiwanese independence,” but a slowing down of cross-strait relations as Taiwan as a whole rethinks its approach. But even while putting the brakes on developing ties with the mainland, Tsai has explicitly promised a deepening relationship with Washington. In addition to continued defense ties and U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, Tsai hopes to expand economic relations with the United States as a way to boost Taiwan’s own economy while lessening dependence on China. Tsai even called it “urgent” for Taiwan to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) championed by the Obama administration.

Yet every step the United States takes to come closer to Taiwan will likely be read in Beijing as a violation of previous commitments to the “one China” policy – particularly if Taiwan is simultaneously keeping the mainland at arm’s length. And that, in turn, could spell major trouble for cross-strait relations and the U.S.-China relationship should Beijing overreact to the DPP’s new approach to cross-strait ties.

Under Ma, Chinese leaders could point to steady progress on cross-strait ties, if not on political issues. If that progress dries up, or begins to be undone, how will Xi Jinping and company react? Beijing has given itself permission to use “non-peaceful means” against Taiwan if “possibilities for a peaceful reunification should be completely exhausted.” When, precisely, that point it reached is entirely up to the CCP’s interpretation.

What this all means is that Taiwan and cross-strait issues are poised to once again become a hot spot in U.S.-China relations, retaking a prominent place alongside new challenges. While direct military and even economic coercion against Taiwan is unlikely, Beijing will use indirect means (and vocal criticism) to express its displeasure with both Taiwan and the United States should their relationship blossom while the cross-strait relationship stalls out. By this time next year, we may have cause to agree with Ma Xiaoguang’s statement that the Taiwan issue is still, after 40 years, the “most important and most sensitive” aspect of U.S.-China relations.