Sagar Khandelwal
Department of East Asian Studies, University of Delhi
Only 100 miles of proximity from China, a small island called Taiwan or the Republic of China (ROC) with nearly 20 million people. Still, they are becoming a bone of contention between the two superpowers of the 21st century since the end of World War II. In recent times, tension increased in the region as China prepared its military for invasion, sending warplanes, and conducted daily missile tests. We will focus on this serious issue as to why China is reluctant to take over, and the US response in maintaining peace and finally, the impact of these superpowers over Taiwan.
Defeated, Japan was forced to give up control of Taiwan in the climax of World War II. Taiwan was handed over to China. An intense civil war in China led to the victory of the communist red army of Mao and forced the ROC of Chiang Kai-shek to retreat to Taiwan. Should the island be given to the Republic of China (Taiwan) or Mainland PRC was not clarified by Japan in the treaty.
Mao declared the island a renegade province that should be reunited, hence tried to invade the island and end the hostility. But, the Korean war broke out, which pushed America to ally with the ROC of the Chiang Kai-shek regime as it was impossible for the US to unite with communists, and forced Mao to give up his takeover ambitions.
With America help, Chiang declared himself as the leader of China and voiced to take back Mainland China. There could only be one China with only one government, either right-wing ROC or communist PRC, and only one can exist while both KMT and CCP claimed to be the legitimate government of China.
Taiwan still preserved its seat in United Nations for three decades and was recognised by many until the tides were turned. During the US-Soviet cold war (a war of ideology), Mainland China was more of strategic importance to the US than the ROC; hence his influence diminished.
Diplomatic Relations of Taiwan with the US and China
However, two events changed everything, first was the UN shifting its recognition from Chiang’s ROC on Taiwan to the Mainland PRC in 1971. The second event took place in 1979 when the US moved its diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing; this means shifting embassy, recognising PRC as real China, better economic, cultural, and technological exchanges, etc. Washington gained a strategic ally to counter the Soviet Union this way.
Political reforms in Taiwan led to a new party called the DPP, which supported independent Taiwan (no more the idea of one China and one government). Lee Teng-hui, or the ‘man of democracy’, became the first Taiwanese-born leader. In 1991, a parliamentary election was held for the first time, and within a decade, Taiwan became a full-fledged democracy, and the citizens are incredibly proud of it.
Lee managed to amend the constitution in multiple ways giving it a democratic makeover and an essence of Taiwan. The rising democratic beliefs led to the growing desire for a separate national identity; now, they call themselves Taiwanese rather than Chinese. In 1996 China was wary of the changing political situation and conducted multiple missile tests across the Taiwan strait, leading to the third Taiwan strait crisis. This action provoked the people of Taiwan not to vote for Lee, who is Pro- Taiwanese and against unification. America came to help with the most prominent display of military might since the Vietnam war, and China found itself in a tough spot to stop the US.
Recently in April 2019, Taiwan and the US celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Taiwan Relations Act. It is the US’s most potent promise of defence to Taiwan to date, but still, it is not a full-fledged defence treaty. The China- Taiwan stability is intact for now, thanks to this policy of ‘strategic ambiguity. This policy did not confirm whether the US would intervene in the events of aggression from China or not, but the US did reserve the right to do so. It was an ambiguous strategy in which Beijing will never be sure of the US response, and neither sure if an attack on the island would mean a direct war with the US, but on the other hand, the Taiwanese are also unsure how far the US aid is would go. Therefore, they secure their own defence alongside maintaining economic relations with China, both countries keeping in mind that no one knows how strong the US stance would be.
An essential key event in this chain of complexity was the 2005 Anti- session law passed by China that authorises and legalises the use of force over Taiwan if they declared independence. It makes the idea of unification more fearful and useless. It is not easy for the United States to repeal the Taiwan Relations Act. It is equally difficult for China to promise it won’t use force to reunify.
China found another way to woo Taiwan’s resistance to unification through economic influence. Therefore, Taiwan had no option but rather to shift its focus towards economic growth to sustain itself. Continuous economic boom along both sides of the Taiwan strait made them less belligerent, eased out economic relations and led down their barriers in trade. Taiwan started setting up production factories in the Mainland to reduce costs, but soon the Chinese factories caught up. It’s an ample opportunity to make their economy so dependable that it would be suicidal for any government in Taiwan to go against China or try to confront the Mainland; this will require Taiwan to have some form of unification to survive.
However, citizens of Taiwan are already aware and fearful of the over-dependence of their economy over China. The best example of expressing their anxiety can be seen in the ‘Sunflower Movement’ in which people (students and activists) occupied the parliament in opposition to a forced trade deal (Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement) with China in 2014. The protesters indicated that we would not accept exchanges and integration with China, no matter the economic benefits. This event happened under the KMT administration, and the repercussion was that It helped Tsai Ing-wen from a democratic party (DPP) win two consecutive elections, first in 2016 and then in 2020. First female president to win twice with a landslide majority.
Trade dependency has shifted drastically from the US to China since 2001. To counter this, the current president of Taiwan resorted to ‘Southbound Policy’, an attempt to divert the island’s exports away from China and into South and Southeast Asia. Even though Tsai Ing-wen’s current Southbound policy intends to reduce dependency on China, seeing the current trade situation, the policy is not bearing fruits. Chinese-led AIIB is more accessible to Asian countries than the US-led World Bank, especially for enormous loans for heavy development projects. Its feasibility attracts the countries towards China, pushing away the US influence in Asia. Beijing’s carrot-and-stick approach towards Taiwan remains, and the carrot is growing sweeter. The US is slowly losing Taiwan to China both strategically and economically.
The crackdown of Hong Kong in 2019, in which hundreds and thousands fought with Chinese police, gave a stark warning that China is not even ready to tolerate a semi-democracy in Hong Kong. The promise by China about autonomy does not make any sense, as they made a promise to Hong Kong about a corroding “One Country Two Systems” policy which was formulated originally for Taiwan. If they could not keep their promise to HK, then uncertainty and insecurity persist in the minds of the Taiwanese people.
If China can take back Taiwan by successfully deterring the US, Japan will no longer believe and trust the US with the protection of Japan’s security which was ensured, and the entire American Indo-pacific strategy would collapse. As Hong Kong becomes more dangerous for pro-democracy protesters, Taiwan changes the rules to allow high school students to move alone for studies, and school officials can become legal guardians. Earlier, only university students could come alone.
Since the Trump administration was tilting towards Taiwan, we have observed on multiple occasions, billions of dollars on defence equipment have been sold to Taiwan for its security. US efforts for Taiwan to secure observer status in WHO in 73rd World Health Assembly and initiate a trade war with China, which had adverse effects on Taiwan and other South East Asian Countries.
During the COVID 19 pandemic, as China is an authoritarian government, forced its people, and the US also lost lakhs of its people while on the other hand, Taiwan as a democracy handled it successfully with only 78 deaths reported, this creates a positive image of the island on the global community.
To conclude, Taiwan has now and then proved itself worthy of global recognition either through robust economic development, advanced tech industry, handling of COVID cases or the practice/adaptation of democracy with utmost civil liberty and freedom of speech. Even with such tremendous transformation, progress in the island is still stuck between the diplomacy of two superpowers. Taiwan is still striving for recognition, economic inclusiveness with the world, membership and participation in international organisations, and most importantly, treated as a country.
