The Taiwan issue, which has been mercifully quiescent since the election of Ma Ying-jeou as Taiwan’s president in 2008, shows increasing signs of returning as a major source of geopolitical tensions. That point was underscored this week when Zhang Zhijun, the head of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, the agency with primary responsibility for dealing with the self-ruled island, warned the Taiwanese that they must not return to “the evil ways of independence.” He added that the Taiwanese people would “soon have to choose” between continuing the development of peaceful economic and political ties with the mainland that have taken place since 2008 or reigniting the animosity that existed during the administration of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) leader Chen Shui-bian from 2000 to 20008.
That warning reflects growing worries in Beijing that the DPP is poised to return to power in next year’s elections. Given the pervasive unpopularity of Ma and the governing Kuomintang Party (KMT) among Taiwanese voters, a DPP victory is indeed probable. That outcome has become even more likely with the entry of James Soong, chairman of the People First Party, into the presidential race. Soong is certain to siphon votes from the already beleaguered KMT.
A DPP triumph does not necessarily mean an immediate crisis. DPP leader Tsai Ing-wen is considerably more circumspect than Chen and less inclined to provoke Beijing. Moreover, the surge of economic links with the mainland over the past seven years has benefited key DPP constituencies and dampened the enthusiasm for aggressively pushing the party’s official independence agenda.
Nevertheless, a DPP electoral victory will make Beijing deeply unhappy and increase cross-strait tensions. China’s strategy toward Taiwan since Ma’s election has been to draw the island into an ever tighter economic embrace, with an underlying assumption that the growth of such ties will gradually erode support for independence and lead to a corresponding receptivity to political reunification with the mainland.
It was always a flawed strategy. Most Taiwanese show no enthusiasm for reunification, even as economic relations with the mainland have surged. Wide majorities prefer the status quo of de facto independence, and many would prefer formal independence, if they did not fear that Beijing would use force to prevent such an outcome. Understandably, few Taiwanese want to merge their democratic capitalist society with a mainland ruled by a one-party dictatorship. Indeed, given the economic and cultural differences between the two societies that have developed over more than a century, many Taiwanese would be reluctant to relinquish control of their own affairs and have their island become merely one small province of a vast country even if the mainland was fully democratic.
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