http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/11/06/why-does-china-fear-taiwan/
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Why Does China Fear Taiwan?
John Lee
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John Lee
The answer, in short, is democracy. The U.S. should do more to defend it.
When
Presidents Ma Ying-jeou and Xi Jinping meet on Saturday in Singapore,
it will be the first top-level encounter between Taiwan and the People’s
Republic of China since the end of the Civil War in 1949. With Taiwan’s
economy only about the size of North Carolina’s and barely
one-twentieth the size of China’s, the meeting appears a mismatch of
enormous proportions.
But remember that elephants really are afraid of mice. Beneath Beijing’s bluster, Taiwan terrifies China because the small island represents a magnificent vision of what the mainland could be and what the Communist Party is not. This should be a reason to reaffirm that defending democracy in Taiwan is important to America and the region—and as an example for the PRC to follow. But like Ma’s unpopular government, the Obama Administration’s first instinct in this context is to bend to mainland sensitivities on this issue, weakening the defense of the Taiwanese democratic way of life in the process.
But remember that elephants really are afraid of mice. Beneath Beijing’s bluster, Taiwan terrifies China because the small island represents a magnificent vision of what the mainland could be and what the Communist Party is not. This should be a reason to reaffirm that defending democracy in Taiwan is important to America and the region—and as an example for the PRC to follow. But like Ma’s unpopular government, the Obama Administration’s first instinct in this context is to bend to mainland sensitivities on this issue, weakening the defense of the Taiwanese democratic way of life in the process.
It
has become fashionable for many American Asia hands to decry elevating
political reform as a top level agenda in the region, especially with
respect to China. This makes superficial sense. Asia has the full
spectrum of political systems: from North Korea’s perverse
totalitarianism to the softer authoritarianism and incomplete democratic
systems of countries such as Singapore and Malaysia to genuine liberal
democracies such as Japan and South Korea. Why run the risk of
inadvertently insulting a friend or partner even if one’s intended
target is someone else?
Asia has come a long way from the years
after the Second World War when indigenous autocrats took over from
colonial masters. A number of autocrats still rule. But throughout much
of Asia, there is broad consensus that liberal institutions are a
prerequisite for the creation of stable and prosperous societies:
rule-of-law rather than rule by executive privilege; independent and
competent courts and other bodies for adjudication and arbitration;
protection of property and intellectual property rights from state
appropriation or theft; and limitations on the role of the state in
commercial and social affairs.
To be sure, many Asian states fail
to meet these lofty standards, while some pay only lip service to them.
But the appetite for democracy promotion done well is strong in Asia
because liberal reform has worked miracles over many decades: think
Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and on-again-off-again Thailand. Malaysia
and Singapore will eventually follow, as will Indonesia and perhaps
Burma. Such is the attraction that even the charter of the Association
of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a grouping which includes
Indo-Chinese one-party states such as Vietnam, now upholds democracy as
one of the core principles and objectives for ASEAN.
The PRC is
the outlier in this respect. Its Communist Party insists that Confucian
cultures, with their high regard for social hierarchy and top-down
authority, are inherently unsuited to liberal democracy. Its neighbors
would counter that it is Beijing’s low domestic requirement for
negotiation, compromise, and justification of one’s policies that might
help explain the country’s increasingly assertive and bullying behavior
in East Asia as its power grows. In any event, the self-serving thesis
has been contradicted by the emergence of democratic Japan and South
Korea, both of which have strong Confucian characteristics.
But it
is the bustling Han Chinese nation of Taiwan that decisively disproves
the thesis, and the whole region, including the PRC, knows it. While
this so-called renegade province makes up only 1.5 percent of the
population of greater China, it is the most successful and vibrant
Chinese model on offer. In contrast, the PRC is fighting the future, and
even allocates almost as much to the military-trained People’s Armed
Police as it does the People’s Liberation Army just to control domestic
unrest and ensure the Party’s hold on power.
It
is a shame, then, that President Obama has not done more to extol the
virtues of Taiwanese democracy and contrast it with the PRC’s political
system. A speech on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in Brisbane was the
first and only time the President lauded the emergence of democracy in
Taiwan to a global audience. And even then, this occurred almost six
years into his administration.
Not that Obama stands alone. Some 36 years after passing the Taiwan Relations Act
into law, a growing litany of humiliations to please the PRC has been
heaped on Taiwan despite that country’s political and economic
achievements. This includes prohibitions on Taiwan’s President and
ministers from travelling to Washington for meetings and restrictions on
high-ranking U.S. military officials from visiting the island. Some way
to treat a country the United States is committed to help defend
against invasion.
By removing the centrality of political values
in explaining and justifying U.S. policy in the Taiwan Strait,
Washington has inadvertently ceded the moral high ground. Defending
Taiwan is no longer about underwriting a liberal order in Asia that
leads to democratization. Instead, the cross-strait dispute is becoming
little more than two great powers pursuing their strategic interest.
Which means Beijing’s riposte to the United States is to simply demand
that it stop messing about in China’s backyard.
Ma has indicated
he sees the meeting with Xi as a bridge-building exercise with the
mainland and will seek Beijing’s blessing for more countries to
recognize Taiwan as a separate diplomatic entity within the existing
“One China, Two Systems” framework, something the PRC is unlikely to
acquiesce to.
Fast forward only a little to next year. There will
be new American and Taiwanese leaders elected, and the regional hunger
for democratic governance will only increase. “One Country, Two Systems”
will remain the status quo. But giving better support to Taiwan and
openly propounding its way of life as the legitimate model for the
mainland will help feed that hunger.
John Lee is a senior
fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC, and an adjunct
associate professor at the Australian National University.
