U.s.-china crisis result of errors on both sides
How did the world’s two most powerful nations find themselves in a hairraising crisis that could spill into a military conflict? The strangest aspect of the current conflict over Taiwan is how predictable it was.
Taiwan is known to be the most sensitive issue for the United States and China, one carefully managed for five decades. And the recent visit to the island by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-calif. — which triggered the current conflict — was something she signaled she intended to do months ago.
On the American side, several errors — many tactical and driven by domestic politics — have resulted in a dangerous reality: There is no serious working relationship between the 21st century’s two most powerful actors.
President Joe Biden’s administration adopted a policy toward China of open hostility and criticism. At the first face-to-face meeting between senior officials in 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered a harangue, to which his Chinese counterpart defiantly responded. (That Blinken’s remarks were designed for a domestic audience can be seen in the fact that they were delivered in public, in front of TV cameras — a format that would only harden Beijing’s position, not change it.)
As Jeffrey Bader, President Barack Obama’s top adviser on Asia, has noted of the Biden team: Despite having criticized President Donald Trump’s foreign policy bitterly, “when it comes to the greatest foreign policy challenge facing the United States — how to deal with the rise of China — (Biden officials) have continued and mimicked Trump’s destructive approach.”
But although the Biden administration’s approach has been tactically flawed and can be adjusted, Beijing’s errors are much more serious and strategic. Over the past decade, under President Xi Jinping, China has changed its Taiwan policy, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Modern China’s leader, Deng Xiaoping, outlined an innovative solution to the Taiwan problem when he offered the island, in 1979, a solution known as “one country, two systems.” Taiwan could eventually become a part of China formally, but it could maintain its own political system, administrative laws, even its own armed forces.
Taiwan rejected the offer, but Deng urged patience. He decided to demonstrate the vitality of this policy by applying it to Hong Kong, once the British handed it over to Beijing in 1997.
For several years, Beijing observed “one country, two systems” in Hong Kong and held out the prospect of the same for Taiwan. Trade and travel between China and Taiwan increased. In 2015, Xi met with Taiwan’s then-president, Ma Ying-jeou, and they spoke of enhancing ties, something inconceivable today.
Deng’s basic strategy toward Taiwan was that as long as China remained open, dynamic and accommodating, time was on its side. Taiwan would come to realize there were many benefits and few costs to being formally attached to China.
But over the past several years, Xi’s policies have been to make China more closed, less dynamic and significantly less accommodating. Nowhere has the latter policy been more clear than in Hong Kong, where Beijing has reneged on virtually every important guarantee it made regarding the city-state’s freedom and autonomy.
The results are plain to see in Taiwan. In the 1990s, few Taiwanese advocated for independence, and many believed reunification with China was inevitable. Today, according to National Chengchi University’s Election Study Center, support for independence has nearly doubled since 1997, the year of the Hong Kong handover.
People’s sense of Taiwanese identity is also stronger, and is now closely wrapped up with Taiwan being a democracy. As Xi bullies Taiwan militarily and economically, these trends, especially among younger people, grow.
China claims its goal is peaceful reunification with Taiwan. If that is the case, then Beijing should reverse course and return to Deng’s policies — announce Hong Kong will be allowed all the freedoms it was guaranteed, promise Taiwan the same, end economic sanctions on Taiwan and stop threatening the island with military maneuvers. It is Xi’s policies that are making the Taiwanese people reject cooperation, let alone eventual reunification.
But that is not going to happen, and it leads to the central dilemma. Beijing recognizes that with Taiwan, time is not on its side. Every year, the island becomes more likely to break free. And this has created a strategic challenge for Beijing, one that could turn into a catastrophe for the world.
U.S. could tone it down; China could return to “one country, two systems”