Since the mid-nineteenth century, Japan has largely increased its military and technological strength through its âMeiji Restorationâ, transforming itself from an undeveloped feudal country into a member of the then-imperialist powers. This growing power and the fact that it lacked resources stirred up a strong ambition of invasion, which finally led to the Sino-Japanese War of 1894â1895.1 The defeated Qing government was forced to sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki with the Japanese invaders in 1895, cede Taiwan and the Penghu Islands to Japan, and pay an indemnity of 200 million tael of silver. Since then, Taiwan became a Japanese colony until the end of World War II. Half a centuryâs colonial rule made several foreign countries believe that the issue of whether Taiwan should be regarded as a part of Chinaâs territory was undetermined, which constituted a potential obstacle to Taiwanâs reunification with China.
The 50 yearsâ separation from Chinaâs sovereignty has created huge negative impact on Taiwanâs return to Chinaâs sovereignty, but the real beginning of the Taiwan Issue discussed in this study occurred in the end of the Chinese Civil War, when the Kuomintang (KMT) retreated to Taiwan and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was actively preparing a military attack for achieving nationwide liberation. However, the outbreak of the Korean War interrupted the reunification process. The US abandoned its previous policy of âwaiting for the dust falling downâ and started to take tough measures, such as sending the Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait, to block Beijingâs pursuit of cross-strait unification.2 Since then, Taiwan is ruled by the authorities in Taipei while the Chinese mainland is controlled by the CCP, and the two sides have maintained military confrontation for decades. This separation of Chinese sovereignty and territory, which remains unsolved even today, is the essence of the so-called Taiwan Issue.
The Research Question and Its Significance
Because of the âOne-Chinaâ principle (which means there is only one China in the world, and both the mainland and Taiwan are parts of China3), the Taiwan Issue has involved Chinaâs national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and thus Beijing is bound to take various necessary actions to achieve national unification. This will pose significant influence on Taiwan in the political, economic, cultural, and especially security fields, while the responses from Taiwan, which are reflected in its mainland policy, will also influence Beijingâs policymaking process. This kind of interaction between Beijing and Taipei constitutes the core of the Taiwan Issue and has obtained much attention from politicians and scholars across both sides of the strait. However, it is noteworthy that the Taiwan Issue also involves other actors. Since sending its Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait, the US has maintained its intervention in the cross-strait situation to prevent the realization of Chinese reunification, ensuring Taiwanâs de facto political independence. This is why it is necessary to incorporate the US into the framework of this analysis. In contrast, the role played by Japan in the Taiwan Issue usually received less attention because of its ambiguous stance. However, as the colonist that has ruled Taiwan for nearly 50 years, Japan did leave its mark in Taiwanâs society and culture, which are difficult to completely eliminate. Meanwhile, the long-term colonization also caused the Japanese people to have a strong and complicated emotion of Taiwan. This historical link between Japan and Taiwan has offered Japan not only the ability to intervene in the Taiwan Issue, but also the willingness to realize such intervention, although this willingness and ability do not seem very obvious in the shadow of the US policies and behaviors.
For the position of each actor involved in the Taiwan Issue, mainland China clearly pursues its reunification with Taiwan, and the US prefers to pay more attention to keeping peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits, while Japanâs own aspirations are hidden behind the US strategy. Compared to these three actors, Taiwanâs own position has been dramatically changed in past decades by shifting from admitting One China principle and pursuing unification to publicly declaring that the mainland and Taiwan are one country on each side. Consequently, these different positions between mainland China and the other three actors made the Taiwan Issue very difficult to resolve. Precisely, from Beijingâs perspective, all the three other actors can be regarded more or less as opponents in its pursuit of reunification. The first is Taiwan. As the target of national unification, it is able to directly impact on the development of the Taiwan Issue. The second is the US. As the only superpower with the strength that the mainland cannot match, its intervention in the Taiwan Strait may decide whether Beijing can achieve unification. Last but not least is Japan. Considering its ambiguous attitude toward the One China principle, the uncertainty of Japanese behavior in the potential cross-strait conflict is supposed to be taken into account by the Chinese leadership. In such a case, the interaction between mainland China and these three actors has increased the complexity of the Taiwan Issue, and through analyzing such complexity, the purpose of this study is to find out the conditions under which mainland China may be able to realize its national unification with Taiwan peacefully.
Two Taiwan Strait crises that happened in the 1950s have proven that if the Taiwan Issue is not properly resolved, peace and stability across the straits will be seriously damaged by actorsâ confrontational interactions. After the Korean War, the CCP reconsidered its previous plan of liberating Taiwan by force. In 1954, Mao Zedong declared it was inappropriate that China did not finish its task of liberating Taiwan after the Korean War, requiring that the country should start to make necessary preparations.4 Within this context, the PLA deployed in Fujian province bombarded the KMT military bases in Kinmen in September of the same year, causing heavy loss of the KMT and even killing two American military advisers.5 Although the scale of shelling was not large, it shocked Taiwan, the US, and the whole international community, and then was described as the âTaiwan Strait Crisisâ by the west. The initial cause of this crisis was that mainland China wished to show its ability and determination to safeguard national unity and liberate Taiwan by force, which can be regarded as a retaliation against the KMTâs previous military harassment on the mainlandâs coastal areas during the period of the Korean War. In essence, what Beijing pursued at that time was to make its own position clear rather than obtaining a military victory, and that was why there was no large-scale landing operation with the shelling. However, the interaction among different actors can lead the situation to deviate from the initial target anticipated by any actor who makes the first move. The shelling soon sparked a strong reaction from both Taiwan and the US and led to a rapid escalation of this crisis. The KMT Air Force took immediately retaliatory actions, striking the mainlandâs coastal areas, such as the Fujian Province, which then triggered fierce counterattack from the PLA. Meanwhile, the Eisenhower administration insisted that Taiwanâs political independence should not be threatened, discussing whether the US should send its troops to defend Taiwan.6 Washingtonâs final decision was to seek a cease-fire through the intervention from the United Nations, requesting the KMT to withdraw its army from islands near the mainland and to abandon the Kinmen and Matsu. This could eventually isolate Taiwan from the mainland and ultimately create âTwo Chinasâ in the international community.7 In a word, Beijingâs retaliation against the KMT aggravated military conflict across the strait, and its response to the US intervention finally prompted the US to create Two Chinas, which indicated that the mainlandâs policy raised resistance for its own pursuit of national unification because it failed to predict its opponentsâ reaction.
After the First Taiwan Strait Crisis, the US stepped up its efforts to intervene in the situation across the strait. The Chinese leaders were unsure as to whether the US was prepared to attack the mainland, so they decided to test the real target of the US through limited military actions against the KMT. In August 1958, there was another round of massive bombardment in Kinmen, causing the outbreak of the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis.8 The mainlandâs behavior was perceived by Taipei as a signal of occupying Taiwan and getting rid of the US forces in the area and made the KMT authorities believe that Taiwan and the US should work together to curb such a threat. Meanwhile, the US reaction to Chinaâs attack was also very strong. Then Secretary of State Dulles believed if the mainland captured the Kinmen and Matsu, Taipei would suffer a severe blow and there might be a change in Taiwanâs public opinion regarding cross-strait relations, which could generate a new government that accepted unification, and therefore damage the entire US strategy of weakening the power and influence of the Soviet ...