The Impact of State Development in Taiwan on Cross-Straits Relations

Abstract

Abstract: This paper analyzes how Taiwan’s democratization in recent years has changed its state structure and how the formation of Taiwan’s new state policy thus resulted has affected the Taiwan-mainland relations. Under democratization, Taiwan has established a libertarian-civic state driven by indigenous popular support, which is radically different from the past one under the KMT authoritarianism. The former emphasizes Taiwan’s autonomy and independence, believing that Taiwan is no longer representative of the whole of China, and unification should hinge upon the evolution of the cross-straits ties. The latter upholds the “one China” principle and sees unification as a necessity. Due to this radical change in state position, Taipei pushes forwards its new state policy to pursue equal recognition in cross-straits relations and pragmatic diplomacy in the international community. However, Beijing suspects that Taipei is attempting to eternalize the cross-straits split, and this suspicion eventually developed into the 1995 cross-straits confrontation in which Beijing resorted to military threats in reaction to Taipei’s changed state policy. Despite this unprecedented cross-straits confrontation, there are several structural factors, including Beijing’s threat of force, Taiwan’s short electoral cycles, Taiwan’s pluralized and localized social and political interests, Taiwan’s heavy economic dependency upon the mainland, the return of Hong Kong to mainland China, and the rising influence of Beijing in the international community, that serves to constrain Taipei from taking an even more radical state position and policy. These structural factors, however, can at most define the structural limits for Taiwan’s state policy-making at the macro-level; they cannot actually resolve the crossstraits conflicts. To resolve the conflicts, both sides across the Taiwan Straits should work together to form a mutually binding agreement that will give Taiwan an objective political status in return for its concrete commitment to unification.