The United States, China, and Taiwan: A Future With Hope

James Lilley^*

You have clearly worked over the complicated relationship between Taiwan and China. I can only try to build on what Dr. Lin Chong-pin and Mr. Rostow have already described so lucidly.

I would like to point out first that China chooses, for both tactical and emotional reasons, to place a special heavy emphasis on its relationship with Taiwan and to its point that Taiwan is part of China. Emotional, because this stirs up nationalism among a skeptical Chinese elite who have lost ideology. Tactical, because driving home the unity and sovereignty themes forces the U.S. on the defensive, i.e., the U.S. interferes in China's internal affairs, a cardinal sin in China's own lexicon. In reality, however, China has been practical. For almost fifty years Chinese propaganda has focused on Taiwan as a pure target, but objective circumstances have changed and so has China's strategy. China took over the Ta Chen Islands peacefully in 1954, its last significant territorial acquisition in the Taiwan Strait. Its later more militaristic approach against a well-defended Quemoy (Chin men) failed in 1958, and China retreated with much bluster and firing of cannons, many of them empty.

The Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), passed in 1979 after the U.S. and China normalized relations, provided much needed continuity to U.S. assurances concerning Taiwan's security after the Mutual Defense Treaty had been terminated. The assurances were given teeth for the first time since Quemoy, when, in March 1996, the U.S. sent two carrier battle groups off the east coast of Taiwan in response to Chinese missile shots and its threatening military live fire exercises. This action was consistent with Admiral Arleigh Burke's admonition that the best preventive of war is a credible deterrence. But as often seems to be the case, the dramatic actions by the U.S. and China were obscured by caricature and demagoguery as well as with simplistic judgments. "The Chinese had backed down" was one cry, or that the U.S., by its actions, had provoked a Chinese military build-up was another. And further, that the U.S. was afraid to send its carriers into the actual Strait out of fear of Chinese missiles, or that the Chinese military got a black eye because of its ineffective adventurism. In the end, Lee Teng-hui won a landslide election victory in spite of angry Chinese threats against him. But this was the tenor of much of the commentary.

Getting back to Chinese shifting strategy, Chinese statements have slowly evolved over the years. "We must liberate Taiwan" was the belligerent war cry of the 1950s and 1960s, even in the face of a growing Soviet threat to China in the north. This particular war cry began to sound emptier and emptier as the Soviet build-up grew on China's northern border and the horrible Great Leap Forward campaign, the worst of Mao's lunatic social engineering, almost destroyed the livelihood of the provinces facing Taiwan in the southeast. The population, as a result, rather than wanting to liberate Taiwan was probably more anxious for its material help.

Later, Chinese rhetoric started to use the term "unification" or "reunification" in Marshall Yeh Chienying's nine points in 1979. Now we hear "one country, two systems" often repeated and applied to Hong Kong. The transition so far has been somewhat successful but perhaps is less appropriately applied to Taiwan, which is of course a very different case. We are also hearing the mantra repeated of "sacred sovereignty" and "inviolable unity," which are repeated largely for a Chinese domestic audience but are also aimed at the overseas Chinese. Internationally, this rings of nineteenth century gunboat imperialism, so it is less effective in international circles. The Chinese have also succeeded in inserting into the American media's lexicon such terms as Taiwan, the "renegade province," or Taiwan referred to as the Taiwan Question, the Taiwan Problem, or the Taiwan Mine Field. This is a slick pejorative touch which has largely worked. Finally, Americans supportive of China, egged on by the Chinese themselves, now repeat these words: any Chinese leader who shows any give on Taiwan is out of a job. Historically, this does not hold up as Chinese leaders have consistently shown "give" on Taiwan and survived intact. They have survived Quemoy, the Taiwan Relations Act, and the sale of frigates, S-70 helicopters, and F-16s to Taiwan. As the Chinese say, firm in principle (Taiwan is ours), flexible in tactics (accept the F-16 sales).

Finally, China and its American supporters are now trying to put the blame squarely on Taiwan for the major downturn in U.S.-Chinese relations in 1995. In that way Taiwan then becomes responsible for U.S. policy failures--a convenient scapegoat. Taiwan is not necessarily blameless, but the real reasons for the downturn were U.S. vacillation and provocative bungling and China's frustrated over-reaction. "The fault, Dear Brutus . . . ."

Chinese leaders no doubt posture and manipulate among themselves on Taiwan, as Qiao Shi did in 1995-96 in order to outflank his rival for leadership. The military in China consistently plays the heavy, probably in a Chinese-orchestrated campaign to give more prominent civilians a nice guy image. The U.S., true to form, often reacts with cliches and other readily available substitutes for thought. "Would American boys die for Taiwan?" "What business of ours is this civil war in Asia?" "Los Angeles could go up in smoke."

The Coming Conflict with China school of thought has it that the Chinese are ten feet tall and that the Chinese are coming. America's intellectuals on China are branded as apologists (sounds familiar?). And then the other reaction, the defenders of China, are equally as flawed and probably more dangerous in the long run. They say, do not mention the Chinese threat because this could become "a self-fulfilling prophecy." In a word, shut up. They report that China has never been expansionist and is too far behind militarily for us to bother about. Furthermore, the Chinese military budget is the smallest per capita and is only four percent of ours. China, therefore, cannot project power the way we can. These are specious arguments originating largely from analysts who have never worn a uniform or fired a gun.

Since 1985, China has in fact developed a Positive Defense strategy (Jiji Fangyu). This involves establishing a security belt around China's most vulnerable coastal areas--to secure an inner island chain which stretches from the Spratly Islands and Paracels in the South China Sea which protect China's southern flank centered around Hong Kong and Guangdong, to Taiwan in the east which would protect China's southeastern and eastern booming coastal areas up to Shanghai, and then to the Diao Yu Dao (Senkaku) Islands protecting the East China Sea, and finally anchoring in the Korean Peninsula where China seeks to share power with the U.S. by increasing its own influence in this historically strategic peninsula.

China's dominant military concept now is to be prepared to fight high-tech limited wars on its periphery against weaker opponents. To accomplish this, China conveys the perception to the outside world that it is backward--as Sunzi said: "When capable, feign incapacity"--but at the same time stakes out its territorial claims in domestic National Peoples' Congress (NPC) legislation. The NPC law of 1992, claiming the Spratly, Diao Yu Dao Islands, and Taiwan and reserving the right to use force, backs up these claims. Is this contrast between modernizing its military, insisting it is obsolete, and then claiming the seas around China a seeming contradiction? Yes, it is, but if you are not prepared to deal with contradictions, then you do not belong in the China business.

China has a track record of frequently using violence to sort out sovereignty issues on its periphery, so the island chain concept is not entirely new. As Jonathan Wilkenfeld, head of the University of Maryland's ICONS project has pointed out, China has used force more frequently than any other nation since 1949, citing Vietnam, Burma, India, Soviet Union, Korea, and Taiwan Strait--all instances where force was used. Justifications for the use of force can be debated; the fact that force was used cannot be.

Historically, and history certainly counts in current Chinese calculations (certainly more than with the U.S.), John K. Fairbank, who paid a lot of attention to the trends of dynastic history, carefully and wisely came up with three Chinese principles governing its strategy:

(1) stop the primary threat from the land--the Great Wall was built at enormous cost to stop the northern barbarians. It was not always successful, given the Mongol and Manchu victories;

(2) downgrade sea power--with some notably brief exceptions in the southern Song and early Ming dynasties;

(3) establish moral superiority--ultimately it is not force of arms but the superiority of your civilization which expands your influence and protects the motherland.

As with all principles, at times they were followed, and at times they did not work. Certainly, the eunuch Admiral Zheng He's seven maritime expeditions in the early Ming dynasty, when China ruled the waves, was abruptly stopped to turn inward and to build China's strength and protect it against any resurgent Mongols in the north. In the Qing dynasty, a major miscalculation was made when Li Hong-zhang, who wanted to build up China's sea power after the disastrous Opium War, was overruled by the emperor in favor of Zuo Zong-tang, who wanted to emphasize land forces against the Russians and Mongols in the north. The result was a disaster for China as the major threat continued to come from the sea--Japan in 1895 and 1931. China also experienced humiliation at the hands of eight foreign powers during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, and these forces came from the sea as well.

Recently, China has been torn. Certainly in the 1950s, during the heyday of Sino-Soviet cooperation, China's military industrial strength moved inland, led by Chinese revolutionaries from inland provinces such as Hunan, Sichuan, and Shanxi. The coastal areas dominated by foreign colonialists were decimated--Shanghai was a main target. However, the Soviet break with China in 1960 altered this, but China still turned inward to the "third line" to protect against the Soviet threat. In an orgy of paranoia and defensiveness, China built huge useless mounds, bristling with guns, surrounded by moats, filled with underground storage chambers, all along the traditional invasion routes of China. Mao's lunacy reigned: dig deep tunnels, and they were dug deep at a huge cost--China's new Great Wall.

But China was not completely engulfed by this foolishness. This was the era when they concentrated efforts on engineers and scientists, many trained in the U.S. and USSR, to build ICBMs, nuclear bombs, and nuclear powered submarines. There were two Chinas (no allusion meant to present political hang-ups): one backward, poverty-stricken, mired in mass programs such as People's War, and one scientific, modern, forward-looking, and capable.

The Chinese argued with themselves about whether China should modernize, adapt western ways, look outward to the east to the blue waters of the ocean, or whether they should remain inward-looking, bogged down in the chauvinistic and isolated Yellow River culture. He Shang (the Yellow River elegy) captured this in 1988 in a popular television series which supported the look outward and ridiculed China's past preoccupation with itself. It was initially backed by Zhao Zhiyang, the deposed party leader, but was later emphatically banned in 1988.

Today, China sees its land borders with the Central Asia republics and Russia as largely non-threatening and seeks to stabilize them. Boris Yeltsin's visit to China in May 1996 put the cap on this in a glittering, but slightly ridiculous, grand meeting in Shanghai where a border agreement was signed with much fanfare by Yeltsin, Jiang Zemin, and leaders of the Central Asian republics. Chinese strategists were quick to point out, a year later during a visit of our National Defense University, that now China would look eastward--to Taiwan. Its land borders were now secure, and so to solidify its security it would turn eastward toward Taiwan, the island chains, and to Greater China.

The leadership in Beijing today is not from Sichuan or Hunan, but is largely from the coast--namely Shanghai, which has risen phoenix-like from the ashes. Economics and money are the preferred engines of influence, but there must be a major miliary component which can feed on economic growth and also exploit the once-in-a-lifetime opportunities by drawing on a broken down but militarily useful Russia. The lessons of history are that China now should turn outward, extend its sovereignty, strengthen its security, and neutralize its opposition on its periphery.

Taiwan is a principal target of this strategy, to be used economically, to be circumscribed diplomatically, to be isolated politically, and to be neutralized militarily. The spiritual pollution of democracy must be negated in Taiwan and in Hong Kong because the current Chinese leadership believes that China must remain under the political control of a single communist party backed by a strong and modernized military. Taiwan must be pulled into the Chinese orbit--the way this is done, given past shifts, probably can be worked out over time through cross-strait dialogue. In the short-term, the Chinese are banking on this tactic.

But China also needs to have the U.S. and China-watching establishment arguing and bickering among itself over China's future course, particularly its military. This is happening, and in a way it reminds me of the global warming debate. Both China watchers and environmentalists share a body of data which is common to both sides of the debate and is based partly on scientific or technical data collection. This data is analyzed by so-called experts who come to widely different interpretations. The two sides then fight and the arguments become emotional and fixed, often ending in ad hominem attacks which are used against the opposition. The debate becomes mired in disagreement, and policy can become stultified and at times even paralyzed. It could be tragic, because, as in global warming, the stakes are very high for all mankind.

President Clinton's first term China policy was bogged down in groping experimentation, little understanding of the forces at work, and a distorted view of how to manage policy with both China and Taiwan. The result was the crisis in March of 1996. Perhaps the Administration has now learned to act more wisely after that scare.

But the problem of understanding and evaluating the Chinese military remains. Cassandras are popping up all over, warning that Taiwan could be the catalyst for military confrontation. The necessity remains for us to be clear-headed when we look at the meaning of Chinese military acquisitions from Russia. Unfortunately, our data is only the tip of the iceberg. What is then the Chinese revolution in military affairs? Its research and development appears targeted on dealing with advanced U.S. weapons systems which they observed being used in the Gulf War and which could eventually be used against a hostile China. Chinese research is aimed at using Russian torpedo technology against our aircraft carriers; other programs counter-act our stealth bombers, and they seek with laser weapons to put out the eyes of our satellites on which so much of our warfare depends. All of these programs are being pursued by China. Where they stand is a matter for our intelligence agencies.

In any case, getting back to the Chinese security belt and its inner island chain strategy, in each of its selected areas it runs into U.S. military commitments or into U.S. forward deployed forces. In the Spratlys, we demonstrated, in May 1995, that the sea lanes passing through that area are critical to the U.S., our friends, and allies. The Chinese belatedly acknowledged our position. In Taiwan, we have the TRA and have shown as recently as March 1996 our resolve to back it up. The Senkakus issue is not clear, and the U.S. insists it takes no position on the issue of sovereignty, but the Japanese have insisted, mostly privately, that our security treaty covers these islands and they have the back-up data to make their case. We are still the major player on the Korean Peninsula, and we are essential in deterring war and bringing about peaceful economic change in the north. China also is. Can these two giant countries agree to share influence while the Koreans themselves are left to work out their own destiny peacefully? China and the U.S. both know well the bitter cost of warfare on that peninsula. Striking progress has been made when we have cooperated, but the dangerous dilemma remains of an obnoxious over-militarized and failed regime in the North clinging to power and resisting real change for fear it will end its rule. The oversized military is its only card--the threat of force--this is an immediate problem calling for Chinese-American cooperation.

The U.S., on the Korean Peninsula and elsewhere in East Asia, must steadfastly stand behind only peaceful means to resolve disputes. Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) supports this in the South China Sea as reflected in the Manila Declaration of 1992. Taiwan ceased hostilities in the Taiwan Strait seven years ago, and China has also belatedly done the same, as was stated in Jiang's eight points in early 1995. Taiwan-China high level talks should be resumed as soon as possible with each side supporting one China but having its own individual interpretation of what this means, as was the case in the Singapore meeting of 1993.

Japan-U.S.-China trilateral talks, starting with the two track talks, could defuse some of China's acute concerns about the new guidelines for U.S.-Japan security cooperation. The Diao Yu Dao "Senkaku" Islands controversy should not merit a concentration of resources. Nationalist jingoism needs to be curtailed in China and Japan.

China has recently demonstrated pragmatism in its more realistic approach to proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) to Iran--this could augur well for other areas if it plays out.

International organizations should play an increasingly constructive role, particularly in trade. Both China and Taiwan are in Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), in the Asian Development Bank, and should soon be in World Trade Organization (WTO). Free and open trade and investment by 2010 for developed countries and 2020 for developing countries are laudable APEC goals which involve both Taiwan and China. A Regional Operations Center in Taiwan would probably make cooperation between the ASEAN countries, China, and Taiwan more effective and expansive. China's restraint so far in Hong Kong could mean Hong Kong will maintain its role as a financial and service center for East Asia and its continuing prosperity is essential to China's economic reforms as is Taiwan's stability and prosperity. China must be practical if it is to keep this important asset for its much needed reforms spelled out at the Fifteenth Party Congress.

Hence, I remain somewhat guardedly optimistic. A key to Asian stability and prosperity remains the successful future of Taiwan in the context of a peaceful and prosperous China. We must all work to make this happen.

*Former American Ambassador to China and South Korea, and former Director of the American Institute in Taiwan.