Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=12/02/2003

TYPE=ON THE LINE

NUMBER=1-01428

TITLE=Taiwan and China

INTERNET=Yes

EDITOR=OFFICE OF POLICY 619-0038

CONTENT= This show ran all weekend long

THEME: UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE

Host: China heats up its rhetoric on Taiwan. Next, On the Line.

[music]

Host: In an interview with the Washington Post this month, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao blasted Taiwan officials for what he called "their obstinate clinging to national splitism and their stepped-up efforts at Taiwan independence." The democratically elected president of Taiwan, Chen Shui-bian, has called for changes to his country's constitution, changes that could lead to explicit Taiwanese independence. Wen Jiabao warned that China would "pay any price to safeguard the unity of the motherland." U-S State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said that the use of force to resolve cross-strait differences is unacceptable. How dangerous is the war of words over Taiwan? I'll ask my guests: Chi Wang, professor of international relations at Georgetown University; David Aikman, former Beijing bureau chief for Time magazine and author of "Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity is Transforming China"; and joining us by phone from New York, Gordon Chang, author of "The Coming Collapse of China." Welcome and thanks for joining us today. Chi Wang, why don't we start by talking about Taiwan and what's going on there. What do people in Taiwan want? Is there a strong movement for independence or not?

Wang: Certainly the Taiwanese people, the people I talked to -- let's see, I was in Taipei last September, I talked to a number of people on the street, also some academic people and taxi drivers -- the feeling toward China, the so-called "motherland" was mixed. And it was really difficult to give an answer how many people are for independence and how many people support reunification. But that being said, many people prefer the status quo: Let it stay as it is. Don't rock the boat. The Taiwanese businessman doing business in China is in pretty good shape and why spoil it? But the D-P-P, Democratic Progressive Party President Chen Shui-bian, like you said, democratically elected in 2000, for the past three years he said: "I will continue to build a dialogue with China." For the past three years, he didn't really try to. For example, the "three-links" transportation, this kind of thing, still an object goes to Hong Kong, goes through a third country in order to get into China. So I think there are some problems [in] communication between Beijing and Taipei.

Host: David Aikman, do you think people are most interested in maintaining the status quo?

Aikman: Yes, I agree with Chi Wang completely. I think most people in Taiwan would not like to see a dramatic change. They certainly wouldn't like to see the mainland come in and start telling them what to do. But I think they would be terribly alarmed if Chen Shui-bian or anybody else in the democratically elected government there made a sort of public proposition that Taiwan were now no longer connected with China, was in fact independent. It's very, very difficult because on the one hand the United States supports democratic governments all over the world, including in a place like Taiwan. And it's wonderful that a major part of China has its own democratically elected government as the result of due political process. But the danger is, when you elect people who may well in fact call for policies that are very, very harmful in the medium and long term to those who elect them, it's a difficult proposition.

Host: Gordon Chang, are you there by phone?

Chang: Yes I am.

Host: Do you think that the people in Taiwan are interested in the status quo or in some sort of change, and do you agree with David Aikman that the democratically elected government may not be always acting in the interests of the people they represent?

Chang: I think that it's fair to say that most people would want the status quo, but nonetheless there is a very substantial minority that would like to see things changed. And we know that because of the poll numbers for Chen Shui-bian. They've been climbing recently and clearly he has momentum on his side. Now, he's energizing his base by talking about changing the government. By unofficially or quietly talking about independence, so we know that about forty percent of the population would like to see a substantial change in the status quo. Having said that, of course, no one wants to see war. What is long-term in the best interest for Taiwan is very difficult to say. Being part of an authoritarian government that is having its own troubles is really not the best interest of the twenty-three million people in Taiwan. In the best of all possible worlds, they'd have their own country. But at this point clearly no one wants to see a conflict and certainly, it's a very dangerous situation as both sides of the Taiwan strait stumble towards perhaps a new relationship.

Host: Chi Wang, why is this so important to China? You have a country of one-point-three billion people. Why does this little island of twenty-three million matter so much that the premier of China says it's the most important issue in the relationship between China and the U-S?

Wang: That question is very difficult to give a very short brief answer to, but I think it's that to the Chinese people -- I travel to China a lot and I also again, talk to different groups of people: Chinese leaders and academic people and think tank people. And everything [else] China is willing to negotiate. For some reason, the Taiwan issue, they are not willing to -- like you said, [there are] one-point-three billion [1.3 billion] Chinese. Taiwan is a small island, I don't know how many percent of China's total territory. Why tension? It is a matter of sovereignty to the Chinese in mainland China. And so it is with the Taiwanese in Taiwan. They have their own sovereignty too. So this is a stalemate situation. And particularly during this juncture, Wen Jiabao has been the new prime minister since March of this year. And Hu Jintao has been the new President and new party secretary general since last November. So they have to build up their credibility that we [the Chinese leadership] are very serious about wanting to reunify with our Taiwan people.

Host: David Aikman?

Aikman: I think there's another reason for that, Eric, and that is that historically China's loss of control over its territory -- whether we talk about Hong Kong or Taiwan -- was the product, directly or indirectly, of foreign aggression. And in the case of Taiwan, of course, Taiwan was initially handed over to Japan in 1895. So, for China, the recovery of Taiwan to full sovereignty of the People's Republic, is in some ways redressing the last of the really grievous injuries to the Chinese people that were imposed upon China by aggressive foreigners. Now in the case of Hong Kong, it was resolved peacefully. But it's worth noting that when the negotiations [over Hong Kong] initially started back in the early 1980s, Margaret Thatcher said to her Chinese counterparts -- Deng Xiaoping, for example -- can't we just paper this over, and we [the British] will run Hong Kong and we'll allow you guys [the People's Republic of China] to hoist your flag. And Deng Xiaoping said: No way -- this is the final redress that we deserve as people for what your ancestors, the British government of the 30's and 40's, did to us. And I think that sentiment propels China in a very aggressive direction toward Taiwan today.

Host: Gordon Chang, there have been a number territorial disputes that China has been resolving recently with countries of the former Soviet Union where China has actually shown a great willingness to give up marginal territory to settle these border disputes. Why the willingness to make those compromises but not any compromise on Taiwan?

Chang: Taiwan is a very emotional issue, for the reasons everyone has said. Also the government lacks legitimacy and it knows it.

Host: Which government lacks legitimacy?

Chang: The government in Beijing lacks legitimacy, largely because it is there by authoritarian rule. Clearly it's very sensitive about that. So it has to find other bases for legitimacy, and one of them is nationalism. And for the reasons that David [Aikman] said, Taiwan becomes an emotional issue. But there's a historical gloss, though, in the sense that Taiwan is not only a question of unrecovered territory, but it's also an unresolved civil war. The People's Republic has never exercised sovereignty over Taiwan. So it's a much more complicated issue. We have a people who see a future which is very different from the future the people in the mainland see. People in Taiwan have their own language, their own culture, and they are forging their own identity. So it is not just a question of lost territory, it's a question of popular sovereignty.

Host: Chi Wang, to what extent is Taiwan a threat because of its very democratic nature at this point being in some way an example?

Wang: I think Mr. Aikman, earlier he said that historically in 1895 Japan took over Taiwan. For fifty years, Japan was the colonial ruler of Taiwan -- from 1895 to 1945. Until the Cairo conference of 1943, and that said that after World War Two, Taiwan would be returned to China, as it was during the Ching Dynasty. At that time I remember it as a kid, and nobody really took Taiwan as seriously as today. China is a big country and coming back to the motherland -- that's why later on the Chiang Kai-shek nationalist regime did not really manage the Taiwan island properly, and added a February 28th incident which caused conflict between the native Taiwanese and the Chinese mainlanders who took over Taiwan from the Japanese. And that was another issue that Taiwan's people now always mention, that was a time when many massacres took place in Taiwan. So the emotion can run high because of the issues. But on the other hand, the people in the P-R-C.

Host: That's the People's Republic of China, the mainland government.

Wang: The people there have been told Taiwan is a part of China. This is acknowledged during the "three communiques" -- [including] the 1972 Shanghai Communique -- and then the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979. So this is an issue that keeps coming up, and no one can find a, I wouldn't say "perfect" solution, a solution acceptable to both sides. Only say, there's only one China -- the U-S recognizes the one-China principle. But Taiwan didn't want that, see.

Host: David Aikman, do you see the example of Taiwan being a democratic country, is that a threat to China?

Aikman: I think it is a threat, yes. I think the election of Chen Shui-bian in a clearly free, democratic political process, was a slap in the face to the regime in Beijing which has never had anything like that since 1949. But on the other hand, as we know from our own experience in the United States, and in many democratic countries -- and this goes back to what I said earlier -- freely elected democratic governments don't always do the best things for their citizens. Perhaps they overlook problems that they think they can solve by dramatic action. I think the United States -- which after all has for all of Taiwan's experience since 1949, been the guarantor of its freedom and independence -- I think the United States has a responsibility in some ways to try and find a way out of this dilemma. Some people have suggested one solution would be a no-declaration-of-independence guarantee from the government of Taiwan, and a no-invasion guarantee, or no-attack guarantee by the regime in Beijing. Whether you could get them to do that except privately, I don't know.

Host: Well, let's ask Gordon Chang. Do you think you could get the parties to arrive at that kind of solution?

Chang: I think it would be extremely difficult. Beijing, as you pointed out, is insistent on recovering Taiwan. And it must preserve the right of force if it believes that it has the right to Taiwan. On the other hand, the people of Taiwan have a large say in this, and there's a growing percentage of them who do want to have an independent Taiwan nation. They already have one, but it's not recognized as such. And so what we're talking about is not so much a declaration of independence, but really a change of name, so that people will [officially] recognize it as a country called Taiwan, and not just a part of a country called China. That's going to be very difficult as we see new generations of Taiwanese who were brought up on new textbooks, who really do believe that they have their own country and that they are separate and apart from the mainland. So I think that political compromise here is going to be very very difficult for anyone to broker, even the United States.

Host: Chi Wang, if political compromise is hard to broker, the Vice Minister of China's Taiwan Affairs Office said that by talking about independence Taiwan "risks war." How real is the threat that China would invade Taiwan?

Wang: China has been using the threat of war a number of times. This is not the first time. Back in 1996, China indeed used [the test firing of] some missiles in military exercises, and then [in response] the U-S sent two aircraft carriers, which told the Chinese that we really mean business -- don't play games. I think that this time, when Premier Wen Jiabao was interviewed by Washington Post correspondents, when he said that he's willing to pay any price [to prevent Taiwanese independence]. This is, insofar as I can remember, coming from a prime minister -- coming from a vice minister of the Taiwan Affairs office, that's something else -- from the prime minister it is more serious. So what I would like to see, before Wen Jiabao comes to Washington, D-C, here, someone in the Bush administration, preferably very high level, very credible person -- maybe possibly President Bush himself -- to make a brief statement or remark saying that our policy toward Taiwan has not changed. Because, during the past couple of months, the signals from our side, from Taiwan's side, from P-R-C's side, are very, very confusing. I can't even keep track of who says what -- no wonder Wen Jiabao is getting more and more nervous. Like Mr. Chang and Mr. Aikman say, it is very difficult to find a solution. Somebody from the Bush administration should give a more clear signal that we have no intention to change [our China policy] or support a Taiwan independence movement. I don't think the Chinese leaders really want to reunify China right away. This is a long process. They know probably that it's not going to happen for many, many years. And this is also an issue that has to be resolved by the Chinese themselves.

Host: David Aikman, how seriously do you take the language of the Chinese premier saying that China will pay any price to reunify the "motherland."

Aikman: I take it very seriously. For one thing, I've visited China -- the People's Republic -- many times, and of course for my book "Jesus in Beijing" And what I find is, even amongst people who don't like the Communists in power -- who would like to see political democracy and a multi-party system, etc. -- even those people support the government on the issue of Taiwan reunification with the mainland. And so, if you had, heaven forbid, hostilities across the Taiwan Strait -- and it wouldn't have to be a straight-out invasion, it could be a missile attack on certain selected targets; it could be a submarine blockade. In fact, I was flying across the South China Sea, across the Taiwan Strait, in a plane with the former president of the Republic of China, Chiang Ching-kuo, in 1976, and he said to me, "It would only take eleven submarines from the East China Sea fleet to lock Taiwan out of international commerce." So there are a number of military operations that the mainland could undertake that would very seriously endanger Taiwan and cause it to basically plead for terms of surrender. You don't actually have to send hundreds of thousands of troops on ships across the Strait. But the possibility of a military action of some kind or other I take very seriously.

Host: Gordon Chang, do you think that, as Chi Wang said, that it would be up to the Bush administration to calm the situation down by making the U-S position more explicit at this point?

Chang: I think that in the short term that would at least set the boundaries for both of the parties. But clearly we have two separate peoples who have two very different ideas about the future. So, this is not just a question of what the United States wants, this is a question, in large measure, of what twenty-three million people in Taiwan want. And although the situation may be calm for a year or two, we're going to see continued pressure from the people of Taiwan for recognition of their independent republic. This is something that's going to be very difficult for us to deal with, because if President Bush's recent speeches on democracy mean anything, it's important that we respect the twenty-three million people [of Taiwan]. I think that it's going to be very hard for the United States to broker compromises to keep the peace, at least on a long-term basis, because we do have to recognize the aspirations of this population in Taiwan.

Host: David Aikman, we have a little less than a minute left. Are people in Taiwan watching what's been going on in Hong Kong? And what do they think?

Aikman: I think the people in Taiwan watching Hong Kong are saying, sort of, "We told you so." Actually, a lot of fundamental freedoms have survived in Hong Kong. I was much more of a pessimist, I think, than events warranted. But Taiwan is different. Hong Kong never pretended to be an independent country. Taiwan may not pretend that, but as our fellow guests have said, Taiwan seems to experience being separate from the mainland, and that is going to be a very hard obstacle to overcome.

Host: I'm afraid that's going to have to be the last word for today. I'd like to thank my guests, Chi Wang of Georgetown University, author and journalist David Aikman, and by phone from New York, author Gordon Chang. Before we go, I'd like to invite you to send us your questions or comments. You can email them to Ontheline@ibb.gov. For On the Line, I'm Eric Felten.