Taiwan Strait Crisis Research Articles

New Scholarship and Directions in the Study of the Diplomatic History of the People's Republic of China

The study of the People's Republic of China's (PRC) diplomatic history has developed significantly in China in the last twenty years. This essay offers a review of the state of the field. After a historical overview, it focuses on introducing new sources, main research topics, and representative works of Chinese scholars. It concludes with a brief observation of prospects and problems. Before the 1980s, there was only one relatively comprehensive text on the diplomatic history of the PRC. With the publication of documents of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the late 1980s, the study of the CCP's foreign relations received greater attention. In October 1986, scholars from both China and the United States met for the first time in Beijing to discuss Sino-American relations from 1945 to 1955. Not only did they discuss U.S. relations with Chinese Nationalists and Communists during the War of Resistance against Japan, they also explored such sensitive topics such as Sino-American relations in the early days of the PRC, the Korean War, and the Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1954. During this period, substantial progress in the study of Sino-American relations could also be found in the works of Zi Zhongyun and Yuan Ming who were among the first group of Chinese scholars to return to China after briefly visiting and training in foreign countries.

Regime Insecurity and International Cooperation: Explaining China's Compromises in Territorial Disputes

Since the 1995-96 Taiwan Strait crisis, scholars and policymakers have become increasingly concerned about China's territorial ambitions. Yet China has also used peaceful means to manage conficts, settling seventeen of its twenty-three territorial disputes, often with substantial compromises. This article develops a counterintuitive argument about the effects of domestic confict on foreign policy to explain China's behavior. Contrary to the diversionary war hypothesis, this argument posits that state leaders are more likely to compromise in territorial disputes when confronting internal threats to regime security, including rebellions and legitimacy crises. Regime insecurity best explains China's pattern of compromise and delay in its territorial disputes. China's leaders have compromised when faced with internal threats to regime security, including the revolt in Tibet, the instability following the Great Leap Forward, the legitimacy crisis after the Tiananmen upheaval, and separatist violence in Xinjiang.

When Governments Collide in the Taiwan Strait

Are authoritarian states better at coercion than democracies? The latter frequently find it difficult to make credible and persuasive threats; orchestrate words and deeds; and signal by deed as well as by word. Authoritarian states are often believed to be less bound by constraints such as divided government and organizational rivalries, but this belief has rarely been tested. This paper examines the 1995-96 Taiwan Strait crisis, in which the People's Republic of China was the coercer and the United States the target. A close examination of what China said and did reveals policy reversals and conflicting signals often associated with the US in the coercion literature.

Strangulation from the Sea? A PRC Submarine Blockade of Taiwan

ple’s Republic of China (PRC) is one of the most important challenges for U.S. foreign policy.1 Although many scholars judge current U.S.-China relations to be at their best in many years, President Chen Shui-bian’s moves toward gradual independence before Taiwan’s March 2004 presidential election, which were met by warnings and threats from the mainland, are a reminder that the Taiwan issue remains a potential source of instability.2 Further moves toward Taiwan’s independence during President Chen’s second term, such as rewriting the constitution, may very well lead to another Taiwan Strait crisis. The military buildup of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which is largely focused on Taiwan, combined with the island’s disputed political status, make a PRC attack on Taiwan one of the most likely short-to-medium-term (next ave to ten years) threats to East Asian stability, and therefore U.S. economic and security interests.3 Could the PRC successfully use military force to settle the Taiwan issue? Scholarly debates about Chinese intentions and overall strategic goals in East Asia rarely address the prospects for a successful Chinese use of force Strangulation from the Sea?

Chinese warfighting: The PLA experience since 1949

1. Introduction: Patterns of PLA Warfighting, Mark A. Ryan, David Finkelstein, and Michael A. McDevitt 2. Change and Continuity in Chinese Military Doctrine: 1949-1999, Paul H.B. Godwin 3. The Beiping-Tianjin Campaign of 1948-49: The Strategic and Operational Thinking of the People's Liberation Army, Larry M. Wortzel 4. The Last Campaign to Unify China: The CCP's Unrealized Plan to Liberate Taiwan, 1949-1950, He Di 5. Command, Control and the PLA's Offensive Campaigns in Korea, 1950-1951, Shu Guang Zhang 6. What China Learned from Its Forgotten in Korea, Bin Yu 7. PLA Attacks and Amphibious Operations during the Taiwan Strait Crises of 1954-55 and 1958, Xiaobing Li 8. PLA Operational Principles and Limited War: The Sino-Indian War of 1962, Cheng Feng and Larry M. Wortzel 9. The Sino-Soviet Border Conflicts of 1969: New Evidence Three Decades Later, Thomas Robinson 10. Vietnamese Perceptions of the 1979 War with China, Henry J. Kenny 11. The PLA Navy at War, 1949-1999: From Coastal Defense to Distant Operations, Alexander C. Huang 12. Air Combat for the People's Republic: The People's Liberation Army Air Force in Action, 1949-1969, Xiaoming Zhang

China in International Society Since 1949: Alienation and Beyond (review)

Reviewed by: China in International Society Since 1949: Alienation and Beyond Yafeng Xia (bio) Yongjin Zhang . China in International Society Since 1949: Alienation and Beyond. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. viii, 345 pp. Hardcover $69.95 , ISBN 0-312-21540-1. Since the early 1980s, scholars have been introducing different approaches to the study of Chinese foreign policy. Utilizing the "international society" model associated with the English school as his theoretical framework, Yongjin Zhang has written a fine book on the international relations of the People's Republic of China (PRC). This is a continuation of his endeavor to interpret China's international behavior in the tumultuous world of twentieth-century politics, begun in his 1991 book China in the International System, 1918-1920: The Middle Kingdom at the Periphery. "The central argument of this study," Zhang declares of the work under review here, "is essentially a simple one. The international relations of the People's Republic of China is a saga of the isolation-alienation-socialisation-integration of China in international society since 1949. This saga is the continuation of a historical search by both China and the wider world for mutual accommodation" (p. 244 ). Zhang challenges the conventional wisdom that China was in isolation from the international system during much of the Cold War. He contends that China did not isolate itself, but rather was alienated from international society. To Zhang, "alienation" means that cordial relations between states "have been broken and friendly feelings toward each other have been turned into bitterness and hostility" (p. 44). "Alienation," therefore, is often accompanied by "violent confrontations and conflicts" (p. 45). Zhang advances a clear thesis that he develops consistently throughout his analysis. He discusses in detail the five stages of China's gradual alienation from international society, starting in 1949, when the PRC, as a revolutionary state, was mistrusted by the United States, which took measures to alienate the emerging new regime in Beijing from the international community. The United States adopted a policy of nonrecognition of "Red China" and urged its Western allies to take the same position. The second phase was dominated by the Korean War, which "created lasting enmity and apprehension between the two nations." The United States instituted a full trade embargo against the PRC and blocked its membership in the United Nations. The PRC was further alienated from an international society dominated by the United States. The third phase was "marked by crises and border wars in and around the PRC" (p. 53). The two Taiwan Strait crises in 1954-1955 and 1958, the Tibetan rebellion in 1959, and the Sino-Indian border war in 1962 only served to alienate the Beijing regime further from international society at a time when many regarded the PRC as an expansionist power. The fourth phase was dominated by the Sino-Soviet [End Page 495] polemics of the 1960s, which ended with the PRC's alienation from the Soviet bloc. This process came to a climax in the late 1960s during the Chinese Cultural Revolution when the PRC "called for and set out to establish an international united front against both superpowers, urging revolutionary changes to the international system" (p. 57). Thus, the author argues, the period from 1949-1970 "was characterized by the exclusion, more than seclusion, of China from the universal international organisations and international institutions" (p. 57). As international society refused to accord the PRC legitimacy as a normal player in the system of states, Beijing constantly posed itself as a challenge to the existing international system. Just as Zhang attributes China's alienation largely to "systemic factors," he claims that the de-alienation of China in international society since the early 1970s has depended "as much on the systemic changes as on the changing orientation of China's international policies" (p. 58). As the international system became more accommodating to the adversarial relationships between ideologically hostile power blocs, China's perception of changes in the international system led China to reconsider its international strategy. Structural change at the United Nations brought China into the world organization, thus beginning the acceptance of China into international society. China's de...

Re-examining the Cold War: U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1954-1973 (review)

Reviewed by: Re-examining the Cold War: U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1954-1973 Andrew J. Nathan (bio) Robert S. Ross and Jiang Changbin, editors. Re-examining the Cold War: U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1954-1973. Cambridge (MA) and London: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001. xv, 504 pp. Hardcover $60.00, ISBN 0-674-00524-4. Paperback $25.00, ISBN 0-674-00526-0. This thirteen-author volume reports the findings of a joint research project of the John King Fairbank Center at Harvard University and the International Strategic Research Center at the Chinese Communist Party Central Party School. The project held conferences in 1996 and 1998 and, besides this book, has published two sets of papers in Chinese. The book's subtitle is more accurate than the title in describing its contents. Except for Michael Schaller's concluding chapter, which deals partly with U.S.-Japan relations, the other chapters all focus on U.S.-China relations. They are arranged in an overlapping chronological pattern, starting with chapters that describe the crystallization of hostility between the two powers in the early 1950 s and ending with chapters that analyze the Nixon-Mao breakthrough of the early 1970s. Each chapter, however, tends to reprise the background to, or later significance of, the developments it discusses, leading to considerable repetition. Thus, several chapters repeat the stories of the 1954-1955 and 1958 Taiwan Strait crises, of CCP official Wang Jiaxiang's 1962 criticism of Mao's foreign policy, of National [End Page 436] Security Council official Alfred Jenkins' mid-1960s views on the potential to improve Washington-Beijing relations, of four Chinese marshals' late-1960s study that advocated an opening to the United States, of Nixon's attempts to signal his willingness to engage with China, and of Mao's decision to allow an American table-tennis team to visit China in 1971, among others. There is also a rough "he says-she says" pattern to the book, as chapters by Chinese authors more or less alternate with those by Western (American, Canadian, and British) authors, with each set of chapters based predominantly on documentation from the contributors' own side. Sometimes the views from one side and the other seem inconsistent. For example, Robert Accinelli thinks the strong American military response to the 1958 Taiwan Strait crisis deterred China from trying to seize Jinmen, while Gong Li in the next chapter believes that the Chinese show of resolve during the crisis deterred the United States from giving stronger support to Chiang Kai-shek. Zhang Baijia and Jia Qingguo believe the on-again-off-again Sino-U.S. ambassadorial talks during the 1950s and 1960s performed some valuable functions, while Steven Goldstein in the next chapter describes them as a "dialogue of the deaf." Both sets of conclusions might possibly be true, but the book places a considerable burden of synthesis on the reader. The Chinese chapters draw on recently published official compendia of work documents produced by Party Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai (memos, talks, speeches, etc.), on a chronology of Zhou's life, and on memoirs of people who worked closely with the two leaders. In addition, there is the occasional document cited from what appear to be archives; coyly, the footnotes cite only the document name and date, but not the location where it can be found. A few of the more interesting revelations in the book are unsourced—for example, the story of informal Taipei-Beijing contacts in 1957 through an intermediary named Song Yishan that appear to have produced an early version of the proposal for "one country two systems" (p. 155). Coeditor Robert S. Ross thus speaks too categorically when he says that "archives on the Maoist era were opened after Mao died" (p. 22). They are open on a very partial basis and only to selected Chinese scholars. Because the sources for the Chinese chapters have passed through Party vetting, selection, and editing processes, they create a record that is somewhat stilted and superficial, that concentrates on iconic incidents and quotations, and that supports a conventionalized interpretation of the actions of leaders rather than providing fertile ground for controversy and reinterpretation. The Chinese documentation...

China: A Challenge or Opportunity for the United States?

Ever since the end of the Cold War, the United States—from the government to the public, from the White House to Congress, from policymakers to pundits, from China specialists to people who know little about China—has engaged itself in the seemingly endless debate on China. Immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, people debated whether China was still important to the United States and whether the Sino-U.S. special relationship was worth preserving. Since the early 1990s, with China's remarkable economic “soft landing” and the consequent robust and sustained economic growth, Americans seemed to have reached a consensus that China still matters to the United States for better or worse. U.S.-China relations were often referred to as one of the most important bilateral relations to the United States. But important in what way? Much debate ensued with a series of frictions between the two countries that climaxed in the dispatch of two U.S. aircraft carriers to the South China Sea during the Taiwan Strait crisis in 1996, the U.S.-led NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, and the midair collision between the two air forces in 2001. The U.S. media tirelessly asked the question: “China: friend or foe?” The pattern for U.S. China policy since the end of the Cold War is that whenever the relationship appeared to be stabilizing and a consensus was shaping, new crises emerged and destroyed the hard-won progress, triggering another round of debate on China as if people never learned anything from the previous debate; the old and familiar discourse started all over again.

Drawing a line in the Taiwan Strait: 'Strategic ambiguity' and its discontents

The Bush administration's continuing emphasis on US military deterrence of the PRC on behalf of Taiwan threatens to undermine the posture of 'strategic ambiguity' that the United States has proclaimed since 1979. This article argues for the retention of 'strategic ambiguity' and traces the origins of revisionist sentiment towards this effective conflict avoidance mechanism to reactions within the US foreign policy community to the 1995-96 Taiwan Strait crisis. Case studies of this crisis and its predecessors in 1954-55 and 1958 demonstrate that US military deterrence was not a decisive factor in their resolution. US and PRC initiatives and responses in the 1950s crises introduced the essential elements of 'strategic ambiguity' into the triangular relationship between themselves and Taiwan. In particular, they established a precedent for the United States and the PRC in circumscribing the issue of Taiwan so as to achieve a political accommodation.

US Taiwan Policy of Strategic Ambiguity: A dilemma of deterrence

A policy of strategic ambiguity is the fundamental policy of the US toward cross-Strait relations. The US takes very ambiguous positions on its commitment to Taiwan's security, arms sales to Taiwan and Taiwan's future status, which are hoped to facilitate peace keeping and stability maintenance in the Taiwan Strait. However, a policy of strategic ambiguity cannot avoid three main troubles in dealing with the Taiwan issue: the dilemma of deterrence; a cross-Strait arms race; and possible military involvement in potential cross-Strait conflict. The 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait crisis has demonstrated the bankruptcy of this ambiguous strategy. US policy regarding the Taiwan question has been forced to a crossroads. It is high time the US abandoned its strategic ambiguity policy. Clarifying Taiwan policy should be the Bush Administration's top, if not the first, priority. But neither clear commitment to Taiwan's defense, either conditional or unconditional, nor letting Taiwan defend itself are correct directions for US policy clarification. Only supporting peaceful reunification of both sides across the Taiwan Strait is the best alternative, which would serve America's national interest in the Asia-Pacific region better.

A Response: How to Pursue a Critical History of Mao's Foreign Policy

Let me begin with the costs argument of Garver's thesis. There is no doubt that the Chinese people paid a high price for Mao's continuous revolution, including foreign policy. In Mao's China and the Cold War and earlier works, I do not shy away from highlighting this fact. For example, in discussing involvement in the Korean War, I referred readers (p. 117) to the discussion in my earlier book, Road to the Korean War, where I argue that China's participation in the Korean War caused the loss of tens of thousands of its soldiers on the battlefield, forced the expenditure of billions of dollars on military purpose at the expense of economic reconstruction, prevented Beijing from recovering Taiwan, made Beijing, at least in the short run, more dependent upon Moscow than before, and excluded Beijing from the UN until the early 1970s.' In evaluating Beijing's strategies in the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1958, I contend that Mao's management of this crisis, together with his constant use of international tensions for the purpose of domestic mobilization in the Great Leap Forward, created a great disaster for China. And I further point out that domestic and foreign policies leading up to the Cultural Revolution

Mao's China and the Cold War (review)

Reviewed by: Mao's China and the Cold War Xiaobing Li (bio) Chen Jian. Mao's China and the Cold War. The New Cold War History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. x, 400 pp. Paperback $19.95, ISBN 0-8078-4932-4. Since the sudden end of the Cold War in the 1990s, there has been in America and in the West generally an increasing interest in the mysterious, untold, "view-from-the-other-side" stories of the Communist experience. This book provides a comprehensive study of Communist China's experience during the Cold War from the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 to President Nixon's visit to Beijing in 1972. Making the first effort of this kind, Chen Jian offers path-breaking insights into the calculations, decisions, and divergent views toward the world in general and the United States in particular by Mao Zedong and other Chinese leaders. Rather than using the traditional America-centered methodologies to follow the Soviet-American rivalry, Chen instead focuses on the Sino American conflicts that made East Asia the main battlefield of the Cold War. He studies the relatively neglected inner dynamics of the Chinese revolution, which defined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) worldview and determined their foreign policy. With its fresh new look at Sino-American relations, this book should be read by both specialists and nonspecialists interested either in China's foreign policy or in Asian international relations. Chen begins by introducing Mao's doctrine of "continuous revolution" and the role played by communist ideology in Chinese foreign-policy making. Then, the book follows a chronological approach, beginning with the examination in the first chapter of China's transition between World War II and the revolutionary [End Page 374] civil war in 1945-1946. Although at this time the CCP attempted to establish "a closer relationship with Washington" and had actually felt "betrayed" by Stalin, the Soviet-American confrontation nevertheless "had a profound effect" on China and eventually brought the Cold War to East Asia (p. 36). The second chapter challenges the commonly held belief that the United States somehow "lost" China, suggesting instead that it was impossible for Washington to establish a normal working relationship with the CCP since Mao was using an anti American discourse to mobilize the masses for his revolution. The discussion of Mao's grand plans continues into the next two chapters, explaining why China entered the Korean War in 1950, why Mao sought a negotiated settlement to end the war, and the growing problems between Beijing and Moscow. Since Mao treated China's foreign policy as an "integral part" of the revolution, his policy and actions also served to maintain and enhance the "inner dynamics" of the CCP revolution. Chapter 5 is devoted to Mao's support of the Vietnamese Communists in their struggle during the First Indochina War of 1950-1954. For example, Mao sent a "Chinese Military Advisory Group" to Vietnam, supported the Dien Bien Phu campaign, and pushed a settlement at the 1954 Geneva Conference, where Premier Zhou Enlai emerged as "the real winner." A deepening rift between Beijing and Moscow in the late 1950s is discussed in chapter ., where it is argued that the Polish and Hungarian crises may have "triggered a series of more general confrontations within the Communist world, eventually leading to the decline of international communism as a twentieth-century phenomenon" (p. 145). Chapter 7 deals with the 1958 Taiwan Strait crisis and shows Mao's desire to use the issue of Taiwan to create new momentum for his Great Leap Forward movement, one of the most important episodes in the development of China's continuous revolution. Chapter 8 explains China's deep involvement and its ultimate policy failure in the Vietnam War in the period 1962-1969. According to Chen, Beijing lost its influence over Vietnam after the collapse of an alliance that "was once claimed to be 'between brotherly comrades'" (p. 205). There was a "huge gap" between Beijing's words and actions: while portraying itself as a model and leader of the communist movement, Beijing failed to satisfy the Vietnamese communists. When the unification of Vietnam made...

The Role of the Military in the PRC Taiwan Policymaking: A case study of the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1995-1996

This article examines the role of the military in the structure and process of PRC policy formulation on Taiwan through a case study of the military's involvement in, and influence on, Beijing's policymaking in the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1995-1996. The military has its own vital interests in Taiwan policy, which are embodied in three aspects: preservation of the military's political privilege, military build-up for modernisation drives, and more budgetary resources for defence. This article proposes that the PRC leadership succession problem together with the military's leverage accounted for the outbreak of the crisis. Under pressure, Jiang Zemin had to accept the plan of physically intimidating Taiwan to gain the military's support in consolidating his position as Deng Xiaoping's successor.

The interaction and volatility asymmetry of unexpected returns in the greater China stock markets

The response of investors to unexpected returns and the information transmission in the stock markets of the Greater China area are investigated in this study. First, we analyze the asymmetric reaction of return volatility to good and bad news by utilizing generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model. We find that the impact of bad news (negative unexpected return) on future volatility is greater than the impact of good news (positive unexpected return) of the same magnitude in Taiwan and Hong Kong, consistent with the previous literature. However, just the opposite is found in the Shanghai and Shenzhen markets, implying good-news-chasing behavior of the investors. This phenomenon also indicates that behaviors of the investors in Mainland China may be inclined to support the trading noise hypothesis. Further, this study examines information transmission of contemporaneous and cross-period by exploring the interaction of unexpected returns among these four markets. The results of a near vector autoregressions (VAR) model reveal that the Hong Kong stock market plays a most influential role (regional force) among the Taiwan, Shanghai, and Shenzhen B-share stock markets. Finally, the stock returns in the Taiwan market, which has been quite independent of the Mainland China stock markets, became negatively correlated with the Shanghai B-share market during the Taiwan Strait Crisis period. The interaction among financial markets seems to be strengthened by political incidents.

Lessons from the taiwan relations act

Twenty years ago the United States severed its diplomatic relations with the Republic of China (ROC). The Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) was then enacted in 1979 to preserve and promote commercial, cultural, and other relations between the United States and Taiwan, and has been instrumental in maintaining peace, security, and stability in the Taiwan Strait. Joseph S. Nye, Jr., former assistant secretary for international security affairs in the U.S. Department of Defense, observed that the rise and fall of great powers has historically been accompanied by severe instability in international state systems. The power structure in East Asia today is marked by just such a rise and fall of great powers. The Soviet Union has collapsed, North Korea is dangerously volatile, Japan’s role is evolving, and China’s power is rapidly rising. Moreover, the Taiwan Strait crises of 1995–96 demonstrate that peace and stability in the region can no longer be taken for granted. According to a Pentagon report, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) now has 150–200 ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan, and the island has a dangerously limited capacity to defend against missile attacks and threats. On July 9, 1999, President Lee Teng-hui told a German radio interviewer that the cross-strait relationship is a “special state-to-state relationship,” in sharp contrast to Beijing’s long-standing position that Taiwan is a renegade province of China and its government merely a local one. Since July 9, the PRC has mounted a publicity barrage against President Lee and used the Hong Kong media to conduct psychological warfare against Taiwan. PRC fighter planes flew more than a hundred sorties over the Taiwan Strait in the month after President Lee’s remarks, on two occasions in July crossing the

Show of Force: Chinese Soldiers, Statesmen, and the 1995–1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis

For much of the 1990s, the world was warned of a looming China threat spearheaded by hawkish soldiers.' More recently, however, experts contend that China's strategic intentions and military capabilities have been overhyped: Beijing does not have ambitious expansionist goals and the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has limited capabilities that are unlikely to improve dramatically anytime soon.2 While this recent scholarly wisdom does provide a more accurate picture of China's capabilities and the scope of its intentions, it risks minimizing the real hazards this vast country presents to the world. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, China does pose a threat to the peace and stability of the Asia-Pacific region. Perhaps at no time was this threat more evident than in the 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait crisis. A visit to the United States by Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui in June 1995 triggered the crisis, which marked a dramatic-escalation in the confrontation between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China on Taiwan. From August 1995 until March 1996 the PLA conducted a series of war games, live fire exercises, and missile tests in the vicinity of Taiwan. Beijing's rhetoric and activities raised the specter of a military conflict over a dispute that had seemed to be at a four-decade low.

Professionalization of the Senior Chinese Officer Corps: Trends and Implications. James C. Mulvenon

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsProfessionalization of the Senior Chinese Officer Corps: Trends and Implications. James C. Mulvenon Jianhai BiJianhai Bi Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The China Journal Volume 41Jan., 1999 Published on behalf of the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2667619 Views: 3Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright The China JournalPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Jianhai Bi The Role of the Military in the PRC Taiwan Policymaking: A case study of the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1995-1996, Journal of Contemporary China 11, no.3232 (Aug 2002): 539–572.https://doi.org/10.1080/10670560220152328

Current Sino‑U.S. Relations in Strategic Perspective

After 1995-96 Taiwan Strait crisis pushed Sino-U.S. relations to their lowest point since Chinese Government's crackdown on demonstrators in and around Tiananmen square in 1989, U.S. President Bill Clinton's visit to in June 1998 carried unusually high hopes and expectations for an improvement in this key bilateral relationship. Many observers therefore exaggerated accomplishments of Clinton's trip, saying that it heralded a major positive geopolitical change. A deeper, longer-term analysis of relationship, however, yields conclusion that while Clinton visit produced more than typical summit meeting, U.S.-China relations have undergone no major shift, and fundamental political and strategic contradictions persist. First, we should establish some interpretive parameters: what constitutes a major change in a bilateral relationship? Simply put, such a relationship may fall into one of three categories: adversarial (the dominant consideration in relationship is possibility of military conflict), neutral (few diplomatic interactions, or a rough balance between co-operative and discordant interactions), or friendly (frequent and mainly co-operative interactions). In this writer's view, a shift in nature of a bilateral relationship from one of these categories to another qualifies as a major change. For example, change in America's relationship with Japan and (West) Germany from World War II to post-World War II (adversarial to friendly) was fundamental. Less profound, but still momentous, was shift in U.S.-Soviet/Russian relations from Cold War to post-Cold War (adversarial to neutral), although dust has not yet completely settled. The ASEAN-era relationship between Indonesia and Malaysia represents a fundamental shift from Konfrontasi period, and relationship of original ASEAN states with Vietnam has similarly undergone a major transformation. By this standard, relationship between and United States has undergone no major change. In terms set out above, relationship is probably best characterized as neutral, both before and after Clinton's visit to China.(1) Perhaps a good analogue is slight improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations (manifested in signing of Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963) that followed 1962 Cuban missile crisis, although both level of tension and stakes involved then were higher than in case of current U.S.-China relations. Background of Summit The break-up of Soviet Union left United States as China's most worrisome potential adversary and, in Foreign Minister Qian Qichen's words, the major obstacle to our foreign relations(2) for short-term and perhaps medium-term (many Chinese strategists believe Japan will eventually succeed U.S. in this role). From PRC's (People's Republic of China's) point of view, not only does Washington remain committed to its goals of weakening, dividing and Westernizing China, but end of Cold War has left America sole superpower, enjoying even greater political freedom of manoeuvre without balancing and restraining effect of Soviet influence. The Chinese therefore perceive that United States has become pushier and more arrogant this decade, as illustrated by a host of unpleasant interactions, including U.S. State Department's annual condemnation of Chinese Government's human rights record, public opposition by U.S. Congress to Beijing's bid to host 2000 Olympic Games, U.S. Navy's fruitless search for chemical weapons precursors on Iran-bound Chinese ship Yinhe, tough conditions put forth by American negotiators for Chinese entry into World Trade Organization, and Chinese complaints that American scholars and journalists have attempted to drive a wedge between Beijing and its neighbours by emphasizing a China threat to Asian security. These developments have contributed to tension between two schools of thought among Chinese elites. …

Southeast Asia and cross‐strait relations: The policy of separation of politics and economics

During the periods of July‐August 1995 and mid‐March 1996, China initiated a series of missile tests and military exercises in the Taiwan Strait, and the mainland for many was considered responsible for the rising tensions across the Taiwan Strait. But, Southeast Asian countries held Taiwan responsible for stimulating the mainland's military actions because of the island's claim for independence. Why? There are three different theoretical arguments on this issue, i.e. those of political primacy, economic determinism, and the separation of politics and economics. This paper contends that the principle of separation of politics and economics is the policy that Southeast Asian countries pursue in developing their relations with the PRC and the ROC, i.e. maintaining official and full‐scale relations with the PRC, but keeping unofficial and economic links with Taiwan. Therefore, for Southeast Asian countries, the PRC's military exercises in the Taiwan Strait were a political and not an economic problem, and one between the mainland and Taiwan. This is the key factor in explaining attitudes in Southeast Asian nations toward the Taiwan Strait crisis.

The Taiwan strait crisis of 1996: Implications for US security policy

The Taiwan Strait crisis of 1996 was the greatest challenge to Sino‐American relations in several decades. This study examines the crisis and its implications for US security policy. It outlines US policy toward the defense of Taiwan, discusses the US response to Beijing's military intimidation of Taiwan and analyzes several of the major lessons gleaned from the crisis. The paper suggests that, while China's aggressive behavior should not lead to a dramatic shift in the American position toward Taiwan's defense, some modest adjustments in policy may be warranted.