Maintaining the status quo on Taiwan is a win-win for the US and China, so why are they continuing to fight over it?
US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping discuss Taiwan during a virtual summit held on Nov. 15. (EPA/Yonhap News)
Posted on : Nov.28,2021
Despite being a hotspot in today’s rivalry between the US and China, Taiwan was the last territory to be incorporated into China. The island officially came under the rule of the Qing Dynasty in 1683, after the complete suppression of Koxinga, who ruled one of the last remnants of Ming China. Koxinga — the better-known moniker of Zheng Chenggong — launched his resistance against Qing invaders on China’s southeastern coast. He eventually moved to Taiwan and established a fiefdom that was later subjugated by armies sent by the Qing.
Until that time, Taiwan had never even been given a formal name in China. The island’s incorporation into China at the hands of Koxinga and its subsequent arrival on the stage of world history is tied to the Western powers’ encroachment upon Asia that began in the 15th century. Early on, the Ming Dynasty launched treasure voyages under Adm. Zheng He that had gone as far as the eastern coast of Africa, but China abruptly halted those journeys and instituted a “sea ban” on maritime activities
A refuge for defeated forces
That effectively left the seas of East Asia without an owner. When the Portuguese opened a sea route to Asia around the Cape of Good Hope, therefore, they managed to travel as far as Japan within 50 years and began to gain maritime supremacy. When the Portuguese stumbled upon Taiwan en route to Japan, they named it Formosa — a name that stuck in the West until World War II. Later, the Dutch East India Company established and administered a colony on the coast of Taiwan until they were pushed out by Koxinga.
Koxinga’s forces were among the various non-state powers to operate in the waters of East Asia after the Ming Dynasty surrendered supremacy with its ban on maritime activities. A substantial portion of the wealth of the southeastern coast of China — which had been the center of the Chinese economy since the Song Dynasty — had been based in sea trade. These non-state maritime powers collaborated with the Wokou pirates from Japan to dominate smuggling and other kinds of informal maritime trade.
The Japanese invasions of Korea in the late 16th century, during the fading days of the Ming Dynasty, showcased how Japan had been strengthened by its trade with the European powers. The Wokou emerged as a byproduct of that. While these pirates were the epitome of a non-state maritime power, Koxinga was their apotheosis. The nature of those forces was illustrated by the fact that Koxinga himself was born to a Japanese woman and grew up in Japan.
Now China faced another geopolitical challenge in addition to unifying and stabilizing the Central Plains, inhabited by the Han people, and creating a buffer region in the areas to the west and north — Xinjiang, Mongolia, Manchuria and Tibet — that were home to peoples who had threatened the security of the Central Plains since long ago. The latest challenge was cordoning off the southeastern coast. Over time, that became China’s most critical geopolitical challenge, with Taiwan at its heart.
After Japan completed its partial colonization of China with its victory in the First Sino-Japanese War, it made a point of forcing China to cede Taiwan to it.
The leadership of the US navy — including Adm. Chester Nimitz, who led the US to victory in the Battle of Midway and tipped the scales toward US victory in the Pacific War — called for advancing as far as Okinawa after the adoption of the “island-hopping” strategy that aimed to circumvent Japanese forces stationed throughout the Pacific Ocean. They selected Taiwan as the staging ground for the assault on the Japanese home islands that would be launched from Okinawa.
In contrast, the US army under Gen. Douglas MacArthur was determined to push north against the Japanese military and retake the Philippines. That was a matter of personal honor for MacArthur since the Japanese had pushed the US Army Forces in the Far East out of the Philippines and all the way to Australia. MacArthur gained control of the American war machine toward the end of the war, meaning the US military didn’t station troops in Taiwan.
In an echo of history, the Chinese Nationalists, also known as the Kuomintang, retreated to Taiwan, just as Koxinga had done long before, following their defeat on the mainland by the Communists in the Chinese Civil War. If American troops had been stationed in Taiwan at the time, it would likely have added a disturbing wrinkle to subsequent conflict in East Asia. Consider that when MacArthur’s troops were being pushed back by the Chinese in the Korean War, he advocated not only bombing Manchuria but also mobilizing Taiwanese forces to invade southeastern China.
After the US and Taiwan signed a mutual defense treaty in 1954, following the Korean War, mainland China continued to incite crises in the Taiwan Strait that have occasionally flared up until the present. In the First Taiwan Strait Crisis, China drove ROC troops from the Tachen Islands, off the coast of China, and repeatedly bombarded the Kinmen and Matsu islands.
China provoked the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1958 by again bombarding the Kinmen Islands. That crisis could have led to all-out war: the US threatened to drop the A-bomb on China and deployed the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet to the region.
China regularly shelled Kinmen until establishing diplomatic relations with the US in 1979, with the action becoming a kind of military ritual. When Lee Teng-hui, an advocate for Taiwanese independence, was elected president of Taiwan in 1996 — at a time when the US and China were on good terms — China brought about the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis by test-launching missiles in the strait.
Through that military ritual, China reasserted its sovereignty over Taiwan and indicated its willingness to wage all-out war. China’s military ritual has recently evolved into incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone. Chinese jet fighters have made nearly 200 such incursions this year alone.
If the shelling of Kinmen symbolized China’s ground forces, the incursions into Taiwan’s air defense zone showcase China’s air and sea power and its maritime supremacy.
Taiwan was a key point of contention when the US and China were establishing diplomatic relations. One reason the process took so long was because of China’s claims about the status of Taiwan. When Richard Nixon abruptly visited China in 1972, Mao Zedong dodged questions about Taiwan, saying the issue could be discussed “in a hundred years.”
That’s how the US and China were able to agree to the “status quo” approach of maintaining Taiwan’s current status while the US also agreed to the principle of “One China,” which defines Taiwan as being part of China.
Maintaining status quo on Taiwan means different things to US, China
Taiwan currently plays a key role in the supply chain for China, which is the workshop of the world.
Foxconn, which manufactures iPhones, and TSMC, the world’s largest chipmaker, are Taiwanese companies that largely operate in the Chinese market. The major distribution companies operating in China are based in Taiwan, too.
Maintaining the status quo in Taiwan is essential for the international community — including China, Taiwan and the US.
While Biden and Xi did not mince words regarding their positions on Taiwan during their first virtual summit on Nov. 15, they basically emphasized maintaining the status quo in Taiwan. Biden said the US holds to the principle of “One China” and firmly opposes unilateral action that would change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.
Xi responded that China will patiently strive for “peaceful reunification” but will be forced to take “resolute measures” if Taiwanese independence forces provoke China or “cross the red line.”
The US and China were warning each other not to upset the status quo on Taiwan. “We need to establish some commonsense guardrails,” Biden said.
The White House explained that a guardrail would be set up to preserve responsible competition. The guardrail between the US and China means maintaining Taiwan’s de facto independence under the “One China” principle.
Considering that maintaining the status quo on Taiwan is a win-win game for everyone, conflict over Taiwan would seem irrational. But history shows that countries often disobey the dictates of reason.
While confrontation between the US and China may be inevitable, the two countries need to maintain the guardrail and avoid crossing each other’s red lines. The reason they’re wrangling over Taiwan even while both talk about maintaining the status quo there is because of Taiwan’s great geopolitical value.
By Jung E-gil, senior staff writer
Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]
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