3. Historical Background: The Development of Cross-Strait Relations, 1949-2000. .30
3.5 Conclusion
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seems to be leading to Taiwan's increasingly well-established and irreversible de facto separation from that China, as the island's politics become more and more responsive to the preferences of the majority. (NATHAN / HO 1993: 55)
By making descriptive statements in narrations about Taiwan (or the ROCT or Nationalist China etc.), scholarly authors actively took part in the process of elaborating a unique meaning for Taiwan and ultimately became complicit in producing the “Taiwanese national idea” (HARRISON 2006: 43) which was of course a proclaimed goal of government agents in Taipei after the 2000 election.
3.5 Conclusion
The purpose of this chapter was to give an overview of how agents in Taipei, Beijing and Washington as well as in the academic community have constructed the institution of Cross-Strait relations over the period from 1949 until early 2000. The
“one China” rule has been identified as the most vital and consistent regulator of this institution as agents on all sides have created and sustained this rule by performing respective speech acts, which have been exemplarily analyzed mostly in their more formalized forms. Although the rule was created by the three of them, there were of course significant differences in approaches. Figure 2 is the attempt at a simplified graphic approximation of the construction process of the Cross-Strait relationship during that the time period 1950 until 1990. During that time period, agents in both Beijing and Taipei held on to the idea that they were the sole legal government and representatives of China respectively, although they differed in their interpretation regarding the nation's name (ROC vs. PRC) and threatened each other over (re)taking or annexing the opposite side's territory which they claimed to be part of their own.
However, they were restrained by agents in Washington who followed their own “one China” policy and supported only a peaceful solution to the impasse. This rather inflexible standoff was was characteristic throughout the 1970s and 1980s, despite the fact that the international community (including the US) tended more and more to support the PRC as the only official and legal government of China. This was mainly due to continued commitments on the part of Washington to both governments. To Beijing it promised to honor the contents of the three joint communiqués that were signed between 1971 and 1982, while making promises to Taipei by following the TRA and keeping the “six assurances” through which it would continue to provide the
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island with means to defend itself militarily.
Although insistence by agents in Beijing and Taipei in front of domestic and international audiences that they held on to a unified political unit called “China” and the fact that the US' purposefully internationalization of their relationship had led to an impasse or freeze of the relationship between the two, the picture began to change slowly but steadily during the 1980s. Firstly, their contradictory portrayals of each other as respective “out-group” stood in contrast to assertions that they were all “one big family” or “compatriots” connected by a common history and culture and necessarily led to tensions in the long-run. Secondly, Taiwan's political democratization during the 1980s gave room to those voices in the island's society that emphasized a more Taiwan-centric focus of the island's political (or national) future. By the mid-1980s the newly established Democratic Progressive Party attempted to further shift the focus of Taiwan's political identity away from the idea of a unification with China. Although, the official position of Taiwan's KMT government was to hold on to the idea of “one China,” thus still giving credence to this rule, these ideas eventually found their way into government circles which led to repercussions
Figure 2: Construction of the Cross-Strait Relationship, 1950-1990.
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of how agents interacted with the “one China” rule.
Early in the period when the third-generation leaderships took over in Taiwan and China, the previous Cold War impasse was overcome. PRC and ROC used their resources as governments to create new agents, that is, by creating the TAO and ARATS on the Chinese side, and the MAC and SEF on the Taiwanese side, both enabled more people to act as agents on their behalf. Although the exact circumstances that surrounded the “1992 Consensus” remain obscure and controversial in Taiwan's political sphere, what can not be denied is that during the early years of Lee Teng-hui's first term, an apparent relaxation in Cross-Strait relations has led to the first direct (albeit semi-official) negotiations between both sides since the Cold War impasse. These new agents then opened up new possibilities for rule-making between Taiwan and China despite the lack of a diplomatic relationship (YUAN 1995). However, with the beginning of the 1990s, there were significant adjustments with regard to the construction process, especially by agents in Taipei (Figure 3). After the constitutional amendments in which Taipei recognized the PRC's jurisdiction over the mainland territories, the previous exchange of directive
Figure 3: Construction of the Cross-Strait Relationship, 1991-1999
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and assertive speech acts between the two became much more one-sided. While Beijing, in line with its view of Cross-Strait relations as an “internal matter,”
continued to define Taiwan as one of its “provinces” or at least “parts” and did not abandon its threats of using military force against the island, Taipei became increasingly self-occupied. When the political liberalization in Taiwan continued throughout the 1990s, leading to island-wide elections for the office of president in 1996 and giving Taiwanese more and more opportunities to emphasize their own political identity, politicians in governing as well as opposition circles started to emphasize the role of Taiwan's population in determining the (political) future of the island vis-a-vis the People's Republic of China. The discourse in Taiwan's society had shifted from one of military confrontation or security to one of democracy. But this was not the only way in which the previously “top-down” designated “one China”
rule was challenged during that time. At first, Taiwan's government under Lee Teng-hui attempted to redefine its understanding of “China” by introducing new formulas reflecting a divided country with equally shared sovereignty, such as “one country, two governments” or “one country, two entities.” Afterwards it called the political character of “one China” into a question, not only by redefining China foremost as a historical or cultural entity but especially when Lee made his “special state-to-state relationship” statement in 1999. Although he denied pursuing policies that aimed at creating “two Chinas,” “one China, one Taiwan” or “Taiwan independence,” and did not push through with constitutional amendments that changed the ROC's boundaries of the mid-1940s, Lee nevertheless became more Taiwan-centric in his words and actions and drew increasingly smaller circles when it came to make statements about his country's sovereignty, shifting the discourse away from “who represented China,”
to “who represented Taiwan.” This resulted in the prevalence of the “Republic of China on Taiwan” terminology, descriptions of Taiwan as the “homeland” for all people living on the island, as well as in the references to Taiwan's 21 million people as opposed to China's 1.2 billion (a population that he still addressed when he took office in the late 1980s). This stance was increasingly at odds with what Beijing was willing to give, that is, at maximum, granting Taipei some sort of intra-Chinese equality on a party-to-party level, while insisting on representing Chinese sovereignty to the outside world alone. However, speech acts by Beijing were adjusted insofar as
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they now aimed at preventing a (formal) independence of Taiwan, a clear violation of the “one China” rule.
The US continued its policies of keeping both sides at bay and emphasizing the need to find a peaceful solution. While President Clinton's “three noes” were the most emphatic commitment favorable to Beijing, Washington continued to abide by the TRA which provided Taiwan with arms sales during the 1990s.85 Although the US continued to emphasize the responsibility of both sides to find a solution by themselves, the TRA, as a US domestic law that effectively regulates relations with a foreign state, continued to function like a wedge that prevented Beijing from closing the door on what it said should be a domestic affair. Using its powerful military and standing as the world's lone remaining super power, it created real restrictions to both sides of the Taiwan Strait: by blocking Taiwan's new ambitions to find international recognition in the UN (and other organizations) separate from China, but also by showing its readiness to react if Beijing became overly aggressive as it did in 1995-1996.
Beijing's interest in maintaining the “one China” rule is obvious for it benefits it greatly. In 1969, 67 countries recognized the ROC while only 49 recognized the PRC. Since 1971 more countries recognized the PRC's legitimacy over China than did support the ROC. By the end of Lee's final term, the number of diplomatic allies had shrunk to 27 for the ROC,86 while that of the PRC had grown to 160 (CHAO / HSU 2006: 57). Furthermore, as DITTMER (2006) has pointed out, Taiwan has played a vital role for identity formation in China since the proclamation of the PRC and become an important pillar for the legitimacy of CCP rule over the mainland (see also FRIEDMAN
2006; DELISLE 2008: 393).
Facing the above-mentioned internal and external changes in Taiwan, it becomes obvious why the “one China” rule became increasingly unfavorable for Taiwan which caused the reaction in its people and leaders to challenge it. Since the government in Taiwan has increasingly become identified with the island alone, a new environment that would recognize them as an independent sovereignty would be more
85 One might also make the case that by calling it the “Taiwan Relations Act” and referring to the
“people of Taiwan” throughout the document as well as in other statements, agents in the US (unintentionally) took part in creating the changes of Cross-Strait construction.
86 Although his “pragmatic foreign policy” did yield some positive results in terms of unofficial and economic relations with major countries. (CHAO / HSU 2006)
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beneficial. Hence, by amending the constitution and redefining the ROC(T)'s sovereignty, by downplaying historical and cultural links with China, and finally by only half-heartedly agreeing to even a “different interpretation” approach that would still subsume Taiwan under “one China,” agents in the Lee administration have effectively weakened the “one China” rule over time and laid down the foundations for the agents that were to follow and who happened to be even less interested in maintaining this rule.
At the end of the historical period that was under discussion in this chapter, a new trend for rule making in the Cross-Strait relationship appeared. During the democratization of Taiwan, the ROC has become taiwanized, that is, its territory has become increasingly identified with the main island and some off-shore islands. Also agents in Beijing have gradually adjusted their position from actively taking Taiwan by force to preventing it to declare independence. In many ways, the change of Taiwan's political system from authoritarianism to democracy has set new real limitations or restrictions for leaders on all sides. Taipei is bound to find a middle-way between “unification” and “independence” if it wants to appeal to the mainstream of
“pro-status quo” voters. Washington has taken a much more silent stance on matters related to Cross-Strait relations, obviously aware of the fact that it has to respect the will of the majority on the island. Finally, even Beijing's leaders have started to recognize the importance of appealing to the Taiwanese (electorate) directly, although they did so clumsily and with unintended consequences. These adjustments and changes have led to a weakening of the “one China” rule and laid the groundworks for a new rule that we might adequately term the “status quo” rule. Early in the new millennium and at the end of Lee Teng-hui's tenure as ROC president, these were the foundations from which a new, much different Taiwanese leadership was to continue the construction process.
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