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Cross-Strait Policy In Choppy Waters

A CNP Policywire By Maureen S. Steinbruner

October 29, 2004

Secretary Powell’s strong affirmation of the U.S. “One China Policy,” and the fact that he felt the need to make it, are evidence of the increasing complexity of the cross-strait issue as a matter of U.S. policy.  It only confirms the growing difficulty of being even-handed between two sides who see themselves as having fundamentally conflicting political interests.   

The U.S. absolutely does not want to be dragged into a military conflict, does not want to irritate China, and yet also does not want to see Taiwan vulnerable.  The Secretary of State was correct in presenting this as a bipartisan consensus view. But it is getting harder to steer a neutral course on the issue because the two sides are diverging on their ultimate goals.

The Beijing government is determined not to permit Taiwan to exercise de facto much less de jure independence, even with some distant prospect of "reunification" as part of the package, and the Chinese people increasingly appear to be committed on this symbolic national issue as well.

The Taipei government and increasingly Taiwan’s people see the right of self-determination potentially on the line, and their resistance to a "one China" concept is hardening.  They increasingly see "reunification" as something to be negotiated between two parties with equivalent sovereignty if not equal size or importance.

The up-coming legislative elections in Taiwan will determine only whether the present Taipei government goes farther or stays its present course.  It is hard to see Taiwan going backward in the matter of national identity.

Whoever the next U.S. Secretary of State is, he or she should be seeking out creative new thinking on how to handle the cross-strait issue.  The "status quo" is likely to be ever more difficult to maintain, without a change of some kind in the fundamental perceptions of the two sides about the value of compromise. 

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