How Beijing can make reunification more appealing for Taiwanese

As of June last year, according to a long-running poll by Taiwan’s National Chengchi University, only about 6 per cent of Taiwanese surveyed supported either unification or independence as soon as possible, while nearly 88 per cent wanted to maintain the status quo.

In the book US-Taiwan Relations: Will China’s Challenge Lead to a Crisis, authors Ryan Hass, Bonnie Glaser and Richard Bush expound on the official US position on Taiwan. America’s one-China policy is guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, three joint communiques and “six assurances”.

The authors stress that America’s policy is designed to preserve Taiwan’s democratic success story and the credibility of America’s security commitments without triggering conflict, while providing the time and space for an eventual peaceful solution that is acceptable to Taiwan’s people.

Accordingly, Taiwan is to be accorded all the elbow room it needs as a flourishing democracy, where independent nationhood is not a prerequisite.

Perhaps more importantly, as Columbia University professor Howard French points out in Foreign Policy, if Beijing were to take over the island, its navy and other military forces would have free rein in the Western Pacific, eclipsing US influence and power in that important theatre, with all that it implies.

In Beijing’s eyes, with Taiwan being helped to play a more prominent role as an entity independent in all but name from mainland China, America’s one-China policy is in danger of being hollowed out.

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Why Taiwan is a ‘life-or-death question’ for China: Cui Tiankai on US-China tension

In particular, the 130km-wide Taiwan Strait is almost four times the width of the English Channel, and Taiwan has very few sites suitable for coastal amphibious landings.

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