Chinese President Jiang Zemin's recent visit to the United States focused attention on our relations with China, and a critical  aspect of our China policy always has been and still is Taiwan.  The Taiwan straits flared up to near-crisis proportions in 1996 with missile firings and aircraft carrier movements. Some future explosion could be worse and could spark a global crisis if opportunists (in the Mid East, if not elsewhere) thought we would be stretched too thin to deter actions we otherwise would not tolerate.

For almost fifty years, the Taiwan issue has been managed with an approach which seems illogical but which fitted the peculiar history of China and Taiwan. Taiwan was part of China, but Japan seized the island as a colony from 1895 to 1945, so Taiwan was cut off from China. In 1949 the Nationalist party (with army) retreated to Taiwan after it lost the civil war to the communists and resumed Taiwan's political autonomy from the mainland. The Nationalists declared martial law and set up a dictatorship in which mainlanders dominated the Taiwanese population.  Since Taiwan's return to China at the end of World War II, there always has been one China including Taiwan) at the formal level (ambassadors, U.N. delegates). The United Nations and the United States recognized the government in Taiwan as the government of all of China until the 1970s, when most of the world shifted recognition to the government in Beijing as the formal government of China. In practice of course, neither government actually ruled all of China, and Taiwan functioned autonomously. As long as Taiwan did not formally seek recognition as a separate country, Beijing let it be a country in everything but name, symbols, and formal diplomatic practice.

Starting about ten years ago, Taiwan started to democratize. Martial law was lifted, political parties were legalized, and elections were been carried out. The constitution was been amended so that the government of Taiwan no longer claims to represent or rule the mainland. The Taiwanese majority has been able to vote for a new political parties, including the Democratic
Progressive Party (DPP), which historically was pro-Taiwanese and pro-Taiwan ndependence.

This party is now very strong and certainly is a potential winner in future presidential elections. Its slogan "Taiwan Independence" used to be a symbolic attack on the legitimacy of the Nationalist Party rule and continues to have emotional appeal. However, Taiwanese voters are sensitive to the risks of converting this slogan into a serious political program.  So far, the Taiwanese voters have given the DPP a majority of local offices and a strong position but not a majority in the legislature.  Democracy has led to a complex competition between the DPP and the Nationalist Party to see who can be both nationalistic and simultaneously cautious and responsible. The Nationalist Party fielded popular native born Taiwanese Lee Teng-hui and has kept the presidency so far.  He has been pushing hard, within the international constraints, to look and become more of a country.  Taiwan's leader Li Teng-hui could have made a quiet trip to attend a college reunion in the United States, but his trip was converted by Taiwanese press and by U.S. politicians into a political trip befitting a president. Beijing views this and other presidential-looking actions as provocative attempts to establish official statehood.

On the mainland side, in the absence of a popular ideology or elections, the legitimacy of the communist leadership is fragile. It rests on carrots and sticks, translated into economic success and political repression. The economic growth has been very impressive for the past fifteen years, but is still unevenly spread, eludes a large portion of the population, and can be affected by monetary collapses in other parts of East Asia, which provide capital and markets to China.
To further shore up legitimacy, patriotism and nationalism have always been used by weak governments. The recovery of Hong Kong and the enhanced strategic power of China are linked to this, as is the eventual recovery of Taiwan. While the communist government does not seem urgent in re-integrating Taiwan, it is determined to prevent consolidation of its independence. The missile firings certainly sent a warning to Taiwan that movements towards statehood were treacherous. They also had the effect, and possibly the intent, of strengthening the position of the Nationalist Party vis-a-vis the DPP. Despite the rivalry and conflict between the Nationalist Party and the Communist Party, these parties cooperated in the past, and the Beijing communists certainly presume that cooperation with the Nationalist Party again is more likely than with the DPP.

If it is correct that the conflict now is intensified because of internal political pressures on both sides of the straits and that symbols are extremely important, then the short term solution lies
in developing a symbolic environment in which both sides can claim some victory. These steps, in a sense, elaborate and strengthen the status quo, which for all its anomalies, has produced an
environment of relative peace and has permitted both sides to develop vigorously.

• The re-unification of Taiwan and the mainland should be the stated long term objective of both sides. Given the cultural, economic, and political differences of Taiwan fromhe mainland, it is not possible to predict when re-unification can be feasible. It probably will take a lengthy historical processes.
• It must be acknowledged that the government of Taiwan presently exercises full de-facto authority in Taiwan. Giving the high degree of integration of Taiwan into the global system and the inter-dependency of the global system, it is important for both Taiwan and the world that the government in Taiwan represent Taiwan internationally, but in a manner that does not detract form the long-term objective of re-unification with the mainland. Both sides should encourage international agencies to create a category of membership for full participation of administrations with de-facto control over areas that are not official governments of countries. (Such a category might be relevant to managing disputes in other parts of the world involving de-facto administrations.) Two Germanies and Two Koreas were or are members of the United Nations, and this did not or will not affect re-unification.
• Both sides should commit themselves to not using force in the management of their relationship. Threat or use of force delays and complicates re-unification. Taiwan is well defended for a few decades at least, given trends in military development. So force can disrupt economies and further deepen anger and distrust, but it can not (for decades at least) resolve the status of Taiwan.
• Direct economic relations and expanded personal contact should take place. The mutual benefits are readily apparent. After decades of no contact between mainland and Taiwan, there has been very extensive exchanges and economic relations have grown. Taiwan now exports to the mainland and Taiwanese businessmen have invested in factories in China. These economic relationships have developed remarkably well despite the ambiguity of Taiwan's legal status.
• In this transition period, both sides should exercise normal state functions and explore modes of deeper coordination. While the circumstances are different, Taiwan's relations with the mainland could be something like the relations between Canada and the United States, Sweden and Norway, or France and Germany. This would be wonderfully beneficial to both China and Taiwan, and would contribute greatly to a relaxation of international tensions. Perhaps in China and Taiwan, as in Europe, economic integration might precede (by decades if not centuries) political integration.
• Care and creativity should be used in in vocabulary and symbolic acts to minimize potential conflicts stemming from the contradictory realities that Taiwan is simultaneously a provincial level unit from the Chinese perspective and a de-facto sovereign state in its domestic and international relations. Taiwan should not be called a "Republic" of either China or Taiwan; a "government" (with level unspecified) is reasonably accurate. Likewise, Taiwan's leader could be called a "leader," and not a "president."

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