More on the subject from the Pittsburg Post Gazette.
Editorial: Chinese puzzle / Free talk in Taiwan stirs the mainland
Saturday, December 06, 2003
Even though China's approach to Taiwan is basically pragmatic and not pointed toward war, a sharp verbal riposte that mainland military officials delivered to islanders who've been talking independence merits close attention from the United States and neighboring East Asian countries.
The fundamental problem is that, even if mainland Chinese who withdrew to Taiwan when the Communists took over in 1949 might accept the eventual integration of the islands as part of China -- as occurred with Hong Kong in 1997 and Macao in 1999 -- some Taiwanese nurture thoughts of full independence.
Another complicating factor is that Taiwanese politics are vigorously democratic, and internal campaign jousting, even points of view that might jangle the nerves of the mainland Chinese authorities, are freely expressed. Be it ever thus, but it entails risks with a nation that has armed forces numbering 2.5 million and nuclear weapons.
For the United States, the problem lies in a long-standing commitment, which it would prefer never to have to honor, to preserve the autonomy of Taiwan from the clutches of the mainland Chinese if China were to seek to assert its authority by military force.
Even though most of the color has been drained from that commitment by the passage of time, and by the deaths of fierce members of the so-called China lobby, some congressional and other American political commitment to the interests of Taiwan is maintained by the islanders' active and generous lobbyists in Washington. They are everywhere, actively advocating at the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill and at the White House, and contributing generously to political campaigns.
Thus, the risk is that if relations were to sour between China and Taiwan and the Chinese were to threaten military action, the United States might feel obliged to respond, for reasons that have little to do with long-term American interests in the region.
That is a development that must be avoided, even if U.S. forces were not so heavily committed already in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The right move for the United States at this point is to communicate to the mainland Chinese, through high-level but discreet diplomacy -- say that we want to talk to them about trade, a good subject anyway -- that it would be good to calm themselves a bit and to see Taiwanese internal political rhetoric as just that.
It would also be very useful for the administration to make it clear to the Taiwanese that they must restrain themselves on the subject of independence and not encourage their Washington lobbyists to beat the drums for military action that the United States definitely does not need.
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