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Conflict between China and the United States just got a little more likely.
On Saturday, Taiwanese voters handed the Democratic Progressive Party (D.P.P.), which asserts that Taiwan is already independent from China and should stay that way, an unprecedented third consecutive presidential victory. In doing so, the island’s people shrugged off ominous warnings by China that a win by President-elect Lai Ching-te — considered by Beijing to be a dangerous Taiwan independence advocate — could trigger a war.
The result should lay to rest any doubt about the direction in which Taiwan is going. Determined to maintain their autonomy, the people of Taiwan are drifting further from China and won’t come back voluntarily, elevating military action as one of the only options left for China to effect the unification with Taiwan that it has long sought.
This hardening in Taiwanese attitudes has been a long time coming. In 1949, China’s former Kuomintang (K.M.T.) government lost a civil war against Communist Chinese forces and fled to Taiwan, dividing the two sides. For decades, the K.M.T. clung to an official policy of eventual unification with the mainland, and the question of whether Taiwan is part of China or its own distinct and self-ruled polity has dominated island politics ever since.
In 1994, more Taiwanese considered themselves exclusively Chinese than Taiwanese, and more favored moving toward unification with China than toward independence. Beijing courted such sentiments by forging close economic links with Taiwan. But attitudes have inexorably shifted as Taiwan blossomed into a democratic and economic success. Now, with China’s economy stagnating, it has fewer carrots to offer, and repressive Chinese actions like its crackdown on Hong Kong’s freedoms have further alienated Taiwan. As a result, President Xi Jinping of China has increasingly turned to wielding the stick — economic coercion, military threats and an online disinformation campaign in Taiwan — to pressure the island’s people into unification.
It is now clear that this strategy has failed spectacularly. Today, nearly two-thirds of Taiwan’s people consider themselves exclusively Taiwanese, versus only 2.5 percent who identify as exclusively Chinese. Almost 50 percent of the island’s 24 million residents prefer future Taiwanese independence over maintaining the current ambiguous status quo (27 percent) or unification with China (12 percent).
There are reasons Mr. Xi might take modest comfort from the election result. The D.P.P.’s margin of victory in the presidential race was smaller than four years ago and it lost its legislative majority. But the weaker D.P.P. showing does not reflect a softening of independence sentiment in Taiwan. Rather, it is probably due more to bread-and-butter issues like stagnant wage growth and soaring housing prices, which loomed large in campaigning and public opinion surveys, as well as with public fatigue with the party after eight years in power.
Moving forward, Mr. Xi no longer has a reliable partner in Taiwan to negotiate unification with. Even the K.M.T., now in the opposition and more Beijing-friendly, knows that it must cater to an independence-leaning electorate. On the campaign trail, its presidential candidate, Hou Yu-ih, explicitly ruled out unification talks with China or a return to the engagement policies previously favored by the party, pledging instead to bolster Taiwan’s military in partnership with the United States, Japan and other democracies.
In this climate, the United States will need, more than ever, to strike a careful balance between deterring China from invading Taiwan and reassuring Beijing that Washington does not support the island’s independence. But that will be complicated by the divisive election campaign that America is now entering, in which candidates are likely to engage in tough talk on China that could provoke Beijing. Despite the posturing, election-year politicking may actually undermine U.S. readiness for a conflict: Partisanship last year held up military spending bills and hundreds of military leadership appointments, constraining the Pentagon’s ability to build bases, buy weapons or expand the U.S. industrial base at anything close to China’s clip.
President Biden has said the United States would help defend Taiwan in the event of an unprovoked attack, but with U.S. military supplies already constrained by the support provided to Ukraine, American forces could run out of missiles after a few weeks of high-intensity combat with China. Washington may also struggle to forge an effective coalition to deter or defeat a Chinese invasion of Taiwan if allies, put off by U.S. political dysfunction and a possible return to the “America First” foreign policy of Donald Trump, hesitate to join in U.S. military preparations or economic sanctions.
There is a belief that the United States can head off the possibility of Chinese aggression by voicing its opposition to Taiwan independence. The idea is that this will ease concerns in Beijing, which, beset by an ailing economy, will want to avoid the massive economic, social and diplomatic disruptions of starting a war. But Taiwan provokes China simply by being what it is: A prosperous and free society. Taiwan’s blooming national identity threatens China with the prospect of permanent territorial dismemberment; and Taiwan’s elections, rule of law and free press make a mockery of Beijing’s claim that Chinese culture is incompatible with democracy. America’s words can’t change any of that.
Chinese law explicitly states that Beijing may use force if possibilities for peaceful unification are “completely exhausted.” Because of politics in Taiwan and the United States, those possibilities are dwindling.
Taiwanese and American political leaders need to recognize this stark reality, do far more to improve military deterrence, start national conversations about the growing threat of war and work toward public unity about how to confront that threat, all while avoiding rhetoric or actions that needlessly throw fuel on the fire.
If they fail to seize this opportunity, they may not get another chance.
Michael Beckley is a political scientist at Tufts University, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the director of the Asia program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
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