Playing for Taiwan

Summary of Kjell Nordström's article in RSAWSPJ no 2 2001.

When in 1971 the People’s Republic of China replaced the Republic of China (on Taiwan) in the United Nations, the relations between the United States and China softened up. But even after diplomatic relations between US and China had been established in 1979, US continued to support Taiwan. The Republic on Taiwan has grown into a technically and economically prospering democracy - and remains a source of tension between US and China.

The greatest external threat against China comes, according to President Jiang Zemin’s analyzers, from US. The superpower strives for world hegemony. The latest instance of American dictatorialness is the National Missile Defense System (NMD), in reality - denied by the US, the Chinese analyzers point out - directed against China and Russia. A hightech­variant, among other places based on Taiwan, would make it possible for US to get to grips with China. Principally the Taiwan issue, China says, has forced China to substantially increase the defence expenditure.

President George W. Bush had not managed to accomplish a China policy when the Hainan aircraft incident occurred. Bush took two drastic measures already during the preliminary Sino-American deliberations. He decided to export defensive weapons to Taiwan and decreed that US "will help Taiwan defend herself" in case of a Chinese assault.

China attacks Taiwan? In any case not in the foreseeable future. Certainly, 300 missiles with nuclear weapon carrying capacity are deployed at the Taiwan Strait, still China lacks sufficient resources for invasion. China will behave in a cool correct way towards US for three reasons: to not disturb the trade and technical exchange with US, to not jeopardize the WTO-membership, and to make it possible for Beijing to get the 2008 Olympics. US will continue to export (advanced) defensive weapons to Taiwan as well as the surveillance flights over the South China Sea (in a while using unmanned aircraft), further develop the NMD project, possibly including Taiwan. US will as to the rest show a similar cool correct attitude to­wards China. Taiwan will follow in the wake of US.

An occurrence to pay particular attention to in the relations between China and Taiwan is the activities of the Taiwanese trade and industry. Since 1990 roughly 50.000 Taiwanese enterprises have invested around 44 billions US-dollar in China. The investments have been profitable. But the Taiwanese businessmen are subjected to rough Chinese pressure: to work for reunion. Or perhaps for some kind of economic federation between China and Taiwan.

What will come about in the long term? May a dramatic development be that China and Russia widen their partnership to a political-military alliance, feuddesiriously directed against US - with consequences for Taiwan?