Face Off: China, the United States, and Taiwan's Democratization (review)

Abstract

??8 China Review International: Vol. 6, No. ?, Spring 1999 John W. Garver. Face Off: China, the United States, and Taiwan's Democratization. Seattle: University ofWashington Press, 1997. xii, 193 pp. Paperback $18.95, isbn 0-295-97617-9. From March 8 to March 25, 1996, the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched missiles directed toward the vicinity of Kaohsiung and Keelung, the two major seaport cities on Taiwan, and conducted a series of extensive live-fire military exercises in the Taiwan Strait. These PRC military actions occurred as Taiwan was engaged in its first-ever direct, popular presidential election. The United States responded to this PRC military intimidation by deploying two aircraft-carrier battle groups in the waters near Taiwan—the largest concentration ofAmerican naval power in East Asia since the Vietnam War. This was the first Sino-U.S. military confrontation since the one involving Vietnam in the late 1960s; faced with superior U.S. forces, the PRC backed down and an international crisis was averted. What led to this PRC saber-rattling? What objectives was the PRC trying to achieve by these threats of force? Why did the United States decide to intervene against these acts of military intimidation? What is the significance of the 1996 crisis and the consequence ofAmerican intervention? How has democratization in Taiwan affected Taiwan-China and Taiwan-U.S. relations? These are among the many issues that John Garver painstakingly examines in Face Off: China, the United States, and Taiwan's Democratization. According to Garver's analysis, two major sets of grievances prompted Beijing to commence large-scale military exercises to intimidate Taiwan (p. 13 ). One was concerned with recent shifts in U.S. policy toward Taiwan: President Bill Clinton's decision in May 1995 to issue a visa permitting Taiwan president Lee Teng-hui to visit his alma mater, Cornell University, was seen by Beijing as a clear and major violation of "explicit commitments" by the United States on the Taiwan question—such as the "One China" policy. The other was concerned with Taiwan's domestic developments and external behavior. The steady process of democratization and the transformation of Taiwan's ruling elite and polity on the one hand and its "pragmatic diplomacy" and growing international status on the other indicated to Beijing that Taiwan was moving closer to independence and further away from unification with the PRC. According to Garber, "The drastic measures of 1996 were, in large part, an© 1999 by University effort to abort this process" (p. 14). ofHawai'i PressRightly or wrongly, PRC leaders at first believed that they could strike a deal with Taiwan's autocratic KMT rulers, Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo, on the matter ofTaiwan's unification with China. Democratic change Reviews 119 in Taiwan thus created a major problem for the PRC—for Beijing could no longer expect to reach a setdement that might totally ignore the wishes of the people ofTaiwan. The death of Chiang Ching-kuo and the political ascendancy of Lee Teng-hui presented new worries for Beijing: although a member of the KMT, Lee is an ethnic Taiwanese and seems to have weaker ties to the mainland than the Chiangs. The PRC leaders were especially incensed by an interview Lee gave in 1994 to a Japanese writer, Ryotaro Shiba, in which Lee (1) stated that Taiwan must belong to the people ofTaiwan, (2) called the KMT regime in Taiwan "an alien regime," and (3) castigated the post-1945 KMT rule in Taiwan as "a period of oppression and darkness for the people ofTaiwan" (p. 24). When Lee used the Old Testament story of Moses leading the Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt to imply his self-conceived mission for Taiwan, PRC analysts equated Egypt with China and concluded that Lee intended to lead the people ofTaiwan out ofChina (p. 24). Under Lee, Taiwan has also endeavored to reverse its diplomatic isolation by taking a series ofinitiatives to seek greater international recognition. Under the term "pragmatic diplomacy," Taiwan established diplomatic ties with several states that had already recognized the PRC, compelling Beijing to sever relations with them. From 1993 on, Taiwan began knocking on the...