China Briefing, 1991
In the Asia Society's annual review Richard Baum argues that the trauma of Tiananmen continues to cast a dark shadow over the Chinese political scene. The Chinese Communist Party has suffered a dramatic loss of prestige and popularity; there is swelling religious and ethnic unrest in China's remote western provinces; and there is a rising tide of provincial economic assertiveness that borders on defiance of the center. Ed Winckler's informative survey of Taiwan reports that by the end of this decade Taiwan, with only 20 million people, could become the world's tenth-largest trader, the world's largest supplier of information products and the trade, financial and commercial center of the western Pacific.
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China's saber-rattling over its "renegade province" ignores Taiwan's decades of democracy. If Beijing wants one China, it should conciliate, not intimidate.
The simmering dispute over the status of Taiwan may soon explode in violence. The Chinese regime sees Taiwan's recent democratization as an implicit challenge to its own authority and legitimacy and thus continues to threaten and intimidate the island. Meanwhile, Taiwan has procured advanced defensive weapons from the United States. Growing tensions across the Taiwan Strait, along with the lack of military and diplomatic communication, make conflict -- possibly involving the United States -- increasingly likely. To avoid such an outcome, Washington should actively facilitate cross-strait dialogue and deter provocations by either side. But it must do so soon, for both China and Taiwan are growing impatient.
Can Mao or the inheritors of Mao's authority entertain the possibility of some "separateness" for any Chinese within his egalitarian One China world? The answer to this question will influence Peking's attitudes toward peaceful coexistence with Taipei, intellectual and cultural diversities at home, and possibilities for future organization of China's economic system.
