Regional Perspectives and Domestic Imperatives

Abstract

The election of Chen Shui‐bian as President of the Republic of China on Taiwan (ROC) is probably the biggest setback for Beijing's policy of ‘peaceful unification’ under ‘one country, two systems’ since it began to be developed in the late 1970s. This impression was fostered by the clumsy way in which the PRC tried to manipulate voting in Taiwan through a propaganda war that started in January, and culminated in the televised scene of Premier Zhu Rongji waving his fist at the world's press as he warned the island's voters, ‘We trust that our Taiwan compatriots will make a sensible choice’, adding that if they did not, they might not ‘get another opportunity’. When the results of the election came in, both sides of the Taiwan Strait seemed to be looking into the abyss. For the PRC, the propaganda war had been a serious miscalculation that almost certainly contributed to Chen's victory by stimulating defiance among the island's voters. It seemed that little had been learned from the mistakes made in 1995–96 when a similar barrage had been launched against Lee Teng‐hui's presidential campaign. Instead of military action, however, a stance of ‘listen to his words, watch his actions’ was announced by the PRC. Well‐placed sources began to indicate that confusion reigned in the Chinese capital, with the leadership feeling it had been badly misled by advice from its Taiwan‐watching community. As the panic subsided, the nature of Beijing's attempts to salvage its policy of ‘peaceful unification’ under ‘one country, two systems’ began to become clear. It is now possible to start to make some preliminary assessments of the likelihood that Beijing will continue with that policy after Chen's victory.