PRC, ROC, and U.S. Interests: Can They Be Harmonized?

Abstract

Will the authorities on Taiwan and the Chinese mainland find a more stable way to relate to each other in the future? This question may be asked as a matter of forecasting. It stirs various patriotic passions and state interests in those two places and also in another, the United States, which has been an extrinsic but crucial actor in the Taiwan Strait for almost six decades. The first step in an attempt at analysis might be to summarize the interests, including the passions, in each of these three places. The next step would be to find whether there is any way to meld these interests. Then it should be possible to find whether political forces in Beijing, Taipei, and Washington would allow the melding of these interests.