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Taiwan: An Internal Affair! How China’s Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy Interact on the Taiwan Issue?

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Abstract

Taiwan may be an internal affair but the domestic public opinion is not invited to participate very much in a debate and a decision-making process that have remained confined to the Chinese Communist Party and the military top leadership and, on purpose, involves a very small number of officials and experts. Conservative and nationalist forces do constrain Beijing’s Taiwan policy. And some leaders are tempted to use the Taiwan issue for unrelated domestic or foreign policy purpose. Nevertheless, what is striking is the potential for flexibility in China’s Taiwan policy. While Chinese local governments and companies’ increasing interests in business-as-usual in the Strait and the unbearable cost of any armed conflict tend to narrow the government’s options, concentration of power and the efficiency of the propaganda machine allow it to rather smoothly manage, in particular vis-à-vis the elites’ conservative opinion group as well as its own public opinion, this flexibility.

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Notes

  1. This point is well presented in Susan Shirk [23], ch. 7, pp. 181ff.

  2. Cf. China’s white papers on Taiwan published in August 1993 and in February 2000.

  3. He was quoted as saying: “If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition into the target zone on China’s territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons” “If the Americans are determined to interfere...we will be determined to respond, and we Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all cities east of Xian”...”Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds of, or two hundreds of, [or] even more cities will be destroyed by the Chinese”, Wall Street Journal, 15 July 2005.

  4. Cited by Shirk [23], p. 193.

  5. Ibid.

  6. For a history of the TALSG, see [6], pp. 109-117; [8], pp. 4-9.

  7. This point is emphasized by Shirk [23], p. 192.

  8. Lianhebao (United Daily News), 29 May 2003. After the missile crisis, in 1996, a Taiwan military working leading group (Zhonggong zhongyang duiTai junshi gongzuo lingdao xiaozu) chaired by Zhang Wannian, then CMC vice-chairman and number two) was identified. But it probably merged with the TALSG after 2000. Cf. Lianhebao, 30 April 1996.

  9. Interview with Wang Zaixi, deputy director of the Taiwan Affairs Office, June 2006.

  10. [9, 20, pp. 44-47. [30], p. 11; [10, 27].

  11. For instance, this formula was not referred to in the 17 May 2004 statement on Taiwan issued by Beijing three days before Chen Shui-bian’s second inauguration.

  12. Hong Kong Feng Huang Wang, 17 May 2004; Ming Pao, 19 May 2004.

  13. Article 8 of the Anti-secession law (14 March 2005) states:

  14. Current Event Report, January 2004 quoted by Kuhn [19].

  15. Xinbao, 7 April 2000, p. 12.

  16. Interview with ARATS official, Xiamen, June 2008.

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Acknowledgements

This is the revised version of a paper prepared for the Conference “Foreign-Domestic Linkages in China’s International Behaviour”, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, 24–25 April 2008.

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  1. Department of Government and International Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong

    Jean-Pierre Cabestan

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Correspondence to Jean-Pierre Cabestan.

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Cabestan, JP. Taiwan: An Internal Affair! How China’s Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy Interact on the Taiwan Issue?. East Asia 26, 1–20 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12140-008-9063-y

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