World Tribune.com


DO YOUR  SHOPPING QUICK AND EASY

Click here for the archive of columns by John Metzler

Seismic or semantic sea change across the Taiwan Straits?

By John J. Metzler
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

August 22, 1999

UNITED NATIONS -- A new war of words between Taipei and Beijing roils the turgid waters of the Taiwan Straits separating the two Chinas. The latest rhetorical flare-up came when the Republic of China's President Lee Tung-hui told an interview that "the relationship between Taiwan and Mainland China is that of a `state-to-state' or at least a special state-to-state category."

Beijing went ballistic, with PRC President Jiang Zemin calling for "sufficiently strong action" to counter Taipei's "pro-independence conspiracy." Washington went numb given President Bill Clinton's assurances last year to the PRC against allowing Taiwan a larger "international space" as well as competing Congressional calls to protect Taiwan's democracy.

Though both sides of the estranged Chinese nation have agreed to disagree since the Nationalists moved to Taiwan in 1949 at the end of the Chinese civil war, the political fiction of "One China" was carefully maintained. Despite the de facto divide into two states, there was only "One China," albeit viewed through the separate political prisms of Taipei or Beijing. Political ambiguity bought time and soothed business fears.

PRC Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan sternly lectured Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at a recent Singapore meeting; "The US should be very careful not to say anything or do anything that may fan the flames of Taiwan indepdence." Tang warned "the US should say little and act with great caution."

The followup to Tang's message was less than cryptic; not long after the PRC announced the successful test firing or a new intercontinental ballisitic missile, the Dong Feng 31 which can deliver nuclear warheds to the mainland USA.

Lee's comments represent either a semantic or seismic change depending on interepation. His interview with the German Radio Deutsche Welle perhaps reflected the semantic need to make a proper analogy for a German audience which has itself experienced national division.

Through many commentators have misinterpreted Lee's comments saying this was a thin veil for the ultimate flashpoint of Taiwan independence, the reality may be less interesting. The Republic of China on Taiwan maintains the legal continuity of a State established in 1912; the PRC, after all, split that State after Mao's conquest of the Mainland in 1949. Neither side has exercised sovereignty over the other for fifty years.

Lee also spoke of "special State-to-State" relations among the Chinese--a perfectly logical sentiment reflecting the common "One China" philosophy shared on both sides of the Straits. Yet even the lightning-rod rhetoric speaking about of state to state relations between Taipei and Beijing does not imply that either of the two de facto Chinese states are not part of the same cultural and historic Chinese nation.

Before Willy Brandt's landmark, if controversial, acknowledgment of the East German communist regime, Bonn's political class regularly calibrated their remarks and wishes based on a single "German Nation" which was divided East/West since 1945. When Brandt's Social Democrats offered recognition of the German Democratic Republic in December 1972, thus breaking the long standing Adenauerian policy of non- recognition of the entity in East Berlin, even Brandt did not claim that Germany's two separate political systems were not part of the same Nation.

While Brandt jibed that in his opinion "the hope of German reunification was the living lie of the Federal Republic," happily history proved him wrong grandly vindicating Konrad Adenauer. Thus, from 1972 until unification in 1990, two de facto German states recognized each other pending a political outcome few ever believed possible.

Both German states separately joined the United Nations in 1973 and pursued a decidedly different diplomatic agenda until the Joshua Trumpet sounded and the Wall in Berlin came crashing down a decade ago.

Is this Lee's tact? There are two de facto Chinese states. There is One Chinese Nation. Yet Lee has nonetheless provoked PRC nationalistic bellicosity. Since the Hong Kong handover in 1997 and Portuguese Macao's transition later this year, the PRC has impatiently looked at the political hourglass regarding Taiwan. The Chinese communists will rachet up psychological warfare against the "renegade province."

While Lee's remarks may not have been as carefully calibrated as one would hope--given the PRC's hair-trigger ideological emotions--he knows that Taiwan's vibrant democracy poses a clear and present danger to the gerentocracy of Beijing's Marxist Mandarins. Moreover as Taiwan's political parties have entered the tumultuous Presidential 2000 election campaign, Lee's remarks are directed to a domestic audience.

Given the tense military standoff across the Taiwan Straits--and poignant memories of the 1996 US Navy deployment in the region during a similar showdown-- one hopes U.S. Congressional friends can prevail on Lee to temper his statements to sweep away any misperceptions, so that this summer storm downgrades to become a tempest in a teapot and not a cause for East Asian instability.

John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues who writes weekly for World Tribune.com. The author of Divided Dynamism--The Diplomacy of Separated Nations Germany, Korea, China, Prof. Metzler teaches East Asian comparative government at St. John's University in New York and is writing a book on the perilous security situation facing Taiwan in the new millennium.

August 22, 1999


Contact World Tribune.com at world@worldtribune.com

Return to World Tribune.com back page