Driving Forces Behind Taiwan’s Mainland Policy

Abstract

Taiwan’s Mainland policy has gone through several stages since 2 November 1987 when some Taiwan residents (mostly veterans of the Chinese Civil War) were allowed to visit their relatives on the Mainland. Confusion, experimentation, and improvisation characterized this initial stage of Taipei’s policy. After nearly forty years of separation and confrontation, only a small number of people in Taiwan had any experience in dealing with the Mainland. Fewer knew how to interact peacefully. A ministry responsible for coordinating and making policy for this matter, the Mainland Affairs Council, was not established for another three years, until January 1991. And its precursor, the Working Group on Mainland Affairs (August 1988–January 1991), was only beginning to draft regulations with the hope of injecting some order into the chaos. However, the direction of the policy was unmistakably toward more opening and more contact with the Mainland. Recent disclosures pointed to the onset of a direct, secret channel between then President Lee Teng-hui of the Republic of China and the Beijing leadership in 1990 — a channel that preceded and later co-existed with the ‘officially unofficial, and unofficially official’ channel between Taiwan’s Strait Exchange Foundation (SEF) and the Mainland’s Association of Relations across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS).¹