(Mainland) China and Taiwan

In this week's news post on my main blog, I included - amongst other items - a couple of news items on relations between (mainland) China and Taiwan:

Taiwan has condemned an incursion into its airspace by the military of China – which still is hell bent on reunification, whatever it takes;

When Taiwan was predominantly the repose of the Kuomintang who had lost the Chinese Civil War (which had a death toll of between 8 and 12 million) to the Communists, I had relatively little interest in it - apart from being fairly young and focused on other areas of life at the time, it was just one more undemocratic nation facing off against another - even  worse - undemocratic nation on the mainland, to me. I felt some concern about the change of status when mainland China was recognised (see here, here, here, and here), but I started to really care about Taiwan when, galvanised by these terrible events, it gradually became democratic - which is a bit backward, as I should really have cared about ways to support Taiwan becoming democratic when it wasn't.

I have become even more interested as Taiwan has grown beyond the externally imposed  identity of "part of China" (Formosa, it is referred to by mainland China - one of the "interesting" aspects of my first work trip to [mainland] China in the mid-90s [post Taiwan's "economic miracle"] was hearing local engineers say things like "ah, I see your motors come from our province of Formosa" [the other "interesting" part was having "secret" police try to catch us out about knowledge of dissidents . . . ] ) to consider a genuine self-identity and independence as Taiwan (incidentally, around 2% of Taiwan's current population are the original indigenous inhabitants), not the repose of despots who lost a war, let alone a former outpost of an-empire-and-then-a-Republic that has changed hands - to mainland China's horror.

Taiwan's move towards a new and genuine self identity is consistent with principles of self recognition:

• from https://www.britannica.com/topic/self-determination:
  

  The UN Charter clarifies two meanings of the term self-determination. First, a state is said to have the right of self-determination in the sense of having the right to choose freely its political, economic, social, and cultural systems. Second, the right to self-determination is defined as the right of a people to constitute itself in a state or otherwise freely determine the form of its association with an existing state. Both meanings have their basis in the charter (Article 1, paragraph 2; and Article 55, paragraph 1). With respect to dependent territories, the charter asserts that administering authorities should undertake to ensure political advancement and the development of self-government (Article 73, paragraphs a and b; and Article 76, paragraph b). 

• Article 1, paragraph 2 of the UN Charter reads:
  

  To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace

• Article 55, paragraph 1 of the UN Charter reads:
  

  With a view to the creation of conditions of stability and well-being which are necessary for peaceful and friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, the United Nations shall promote (3 actions) 

• The Wikipedia article on this topic states that this right has ius cogens ("compelling law" or peremptory norm, or that this "is a fundamental principle of international law that is accepted by the international community of states as a norm from which no derogation is permitted") status.

The problem is that of status - specifically, Taiwan's status as a recognised nation. Some nations do still recognise Taiwan as the "Republic of China", but I doubt any of that takes the difference between "Taiwan" and the "Republic of China" into consideration - the independence movement is still a developing movement. Some of the key arguments on this are:

• the People's Republic of China (PRC, or "mainland China") argues that it is the successor to the former Republic of China; 
• the Republic of China (RoC) argues that it continued to exist, so has not been replaced; 
• "successor state" refers to sovereignty over a territory and a populace, which suggests to me that that the de facto result is that the Chinese Civil War created two separate states - the PRC, which established successor state over mainland and other parts of the RoC, and the RoC, which continued its status over a portion of the former China;
  (perhaps this is a little similar to the way the US Revolutionary War established a new State over a portion of the British Empire, but the British Empire continued to exist . . . or the Irish Independence War established a new state over most of Ireland, but the former state continued to exist in Northern Ireland . . . or the Austro-Hungarian nation became several nations after World War One . . . or various wars led to Yugoslavia becoming several sovereign nations [the barbarity of that series of wars is apt, given what happened in and after the Chinese Civil War] . . . or the process of decolonisation led to many new, sovereign nations, including the USA . . . )
• the PRC vs. RoC arguments are outlined here, and the arguments for an independent Taiwan (which predate the Chinese Civil War, as do the claims over the South China Sea) are outline here.

My opinion is that the continued existence of the RoC means it is now a de facto separate, sovereign nation, and, as such, it has the power to exercise its right to self-determination - including becoming Taiwan. 

(I also consider that, in some ways, the League of Nations handled the issue of self-determination  better than the United Nations does . . . and in other ways the League was devastatingly bad on this issue [see here and here, here and here].) 

That's all very nice, but how does it stand up to reality?

Well, that's where we run into problems.

As my initial link  states, the PRC is determined to reunify Taiwan with the mainland portion of China, just as it was determined to reunify with Hong Kong. Despite the claims of "One Nation, Two Systems", that process has had too many problems to be considered successful - and that is considerable discouragement to the RoC on the subject, and probably a motivating factor for the Taiwan independence movement.

The PRC has long held that an move towards a formal renaming as Taiwan would trigger immediate military action, making the already fraught situation with regard to terminology even more dangerous. Despite some optimism, I consider the risk of an invasion to still be a real and significant risk.

The USA's current President and his actions - in particular, the trade war - are unlikely to be helping. If the trade war leads to an economic downturn in China, the motivation to have an outside war as a distraction from internal problems could become a consideration.

It should be kept in mind that (mainland) China has a repressive totalitarian government * : the inherent constraints around re-election that exist in a democracy don't apply, and China has a history of violence against its own people, and against  other  nations.

Furthermore, China has embarked on an ambitious reorganisation and expansion of its military, which has cyber and nuclear capability.

China is also exercising its well-developed (possibly through exercise such techniques against its own people for decades?) "soft" power, including intimidation of foreign media in China, foreign media, critics, people of Chinese  ethnicity in in other nations, and intimidation, manipulation and pressure  against other nations.

Then there's China's "Belt and Road Initiative" (BRI), which is feared  could be a "Trojan horse for China-led regional development, military expansion, and Beijing-controlled institutions", but may have some economic and other benefits.

Could it also be significant in terms of China's intention to reincorporate (I think that is actually more accurate than reunification) Taiwan by any means necessary?

Well, consider this possible scenario:

• China's developing anti-area access /area denial techniques force the US navy to stay further away from Taiwan; 
• China uses the BRI to having military presence in several locations; 
• a pretext is then created to start one or more conflicts in several spread out locations, leading to mobilisation of forces inside China; 
• while the USA and the rest of the world is intervening or attending to these other conflicts (would Russia take advantage of this to move against the Baltic states?), and thus stretched as well as diverted, China uses its massive military resources to launch a lightning invasion of Taiwan - even if it means sacrificing those units involved in the diversion ** . . .

Scary, but any mobilisation of forces towards Taiwan - especially if conflict is occurring elsewhere - would activate US commitments to ensure any reincorporation is only peaceful, which would make it it a race between the US Navy and China's mobilisation (in which case I would bet on the US Navy) . . . unless whoever is the US President at that time decides they don't particularly care about Taiwan . . .

The current US President did take action over the use of chemical weapons in Syria, and has taken a hardline against China over some issues, but would be hold to commitments that would require, in effect, a commitment close to World War levels? He has been erratic at times, and is distracted by other issues such as the various investigations into his Presidency and his desire to be re-elected next year, so it would probably depend on what he sees as best for him - and the high casualties and other military losses of such a campaign would not be good, even if they were to be offset by successfully defending Taiwan.

And that isn't good for the free, democratic people of Taiwan.


 * Something I have gained from reading Masha Gessen's magnificent "The Future is History" (pub. Riverhead Books, New York, 2017, ISBN 978-1-59463-3), about "how totalitarianism reclaimed Russia, is that moments of liberalisation or easing of restraints can have the effect of easing internal disatisfaction, as well as identifying potential and actual dissidents, and thus allows the totalitarian repression to continue or be reimposed. That makes me less confident about the possible influence of a rising middle class in China - particularly against the severity of current measures.
 ** China has, as mentioned above, a history of ruthlessness - this was, to some extent, shown in the Korean War, but others have also made military sacrifices for political gains. I'm currently reading Abraham  Rabinovich's book "The Yom  Kippur War" (pub. Shocken Books, New York, 2017 [1st Ed. pub. 2004], ISBN 978-0-805-1124-5), as Egypt under Sadat in 1973 certainly made some military sacrifices to get political gains - including the Camp David Accords.