Taiwan

The history of Taiwan is different to that of other de facto states. After being under Japanese rule, the island became a stronghold for Chinese nationalists in their fight against the People’s Liberation Army of the communists. With the eventual victory of the latter on mainland China, Taiwan remained under nationalist control. The Korean War provided much needed assistance from the US and culminated in the 1954 mutual defence treaty. The Taiwanese govern-ment was considered the legal representative of China and under the name Republic of China it had a seat at the United Nations. Morover, Taiwan was a permanent member of the Security Council.

This political arrangement lasted until the 1970s. At the beginning of the decade, relations between the US and the People’s Republic improved. Several restrictions were eased and American opposition to PRC’s representation in the United Nations began to change. In 1971 American opposition did not prevent the replacement of Taiwan with Communist China in the UN. Relations were at a level where the US president Nixon visited China in 1972. Its ousting from the UN also led to many states swapping recognition from Taiwan to China in the 1970s. This culminated with the United States establishing diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic. It also meant that the US cancelled formal defence agreements with the island and swapped its recognition. However, the U.S.

Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act which preserved economic and cultural ties and gave Taiwanese officials equal status to that of recognised diplomats.

Therefore, the Taiwanese case is a more complex one. In the aftermath of the withdrawal of recognition Taiwan definitely did not see itself as a secessionist entity. It had not declared independence and did not see how it could do so, because the only state it could secede from would be China. But Taiwan considered itself to be China. After the end of martial law in 1987, the Taiwanese independence movement emerged.

As there is no formal declaration of independence, Taiwan cannot be considered fully in the set of secessionist entities, to use the methodological language of this dissertation. We can, however, point to the fact that it is more secessionist than it used to be. There are secessionist tendencies in the country and independence has been a subject of heated debate. There are positions that emphasise democracy and the attributes of statehood and call for the recognition of an independent Taiwan (Otopalik, 2006). There are also views opposed to independence (Yazhou, 2007), mostly from mainland China.

The issue is a divisive one, with proponents and opponents among both politicians and the general public. Surveys show that the idea of Taiwanese independence is popular and, according to some, it has received support from over 50% of respondents (Wang, 2012). This can be interpreted as Taiwan at least thinking about independence from China, about creating a separate state.

How secessionist this makes Taiwan is, of course, quite debateable. Here we consider today’s Taiwan to be non-secessionist.

Taiwan’s relations with China are complicated, but there have been calls for unification. In early 1980, Taiwan rejected calls for negotiations. However, economic relations have blossomed, especially since the 1990s. This has led to questions about whether a union similar to Hong Kong’s could be a possibility and what the reasons are for the two states not uniting. Chao (2003) combines economics, identity and politics and argues that while economic relations bet-ween the two different entities have developed since Taiwan split from the mainland, mostly identity differences are the reasons for political differences.

However, Kennedy (2007) argues that the reason for different politics is not so much identity as the United States. Chinese perceptions of US policies as hostile, or at least opposed to closer cross-strait ties, could lead to coercive action rather than negotiations. Saunders and Kastner (2009) in turn are optimistic about the possibility of an agreement between the two Chinas, although they have their reservations. The reasons for their optimism come from the domestic politics of Taiwan after the change in administration in 2008.

Internally, Taiwan’s development can be divided into two separate eras. The first lasted until the mid-1980s and could be described as an authoritarian regime. The entity had two presidents, Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo. The country was ruled by the Nationalist Party Kuomintang without opposition. Most of the high officials were from mainland China with little participation from local Taiwanese people. Until 1975 Freedom House considered Taiwan to be ‘not free’. After that Taiwan became ‘partly free’, a status held until 1995. The reason for upgrading was reforms that mostly started in the 1980s.

In 1986 an opposition party was formed and a year later martial law was lifted. Local Taiwanese politicians also started achieving higher positions. Lee Teng-hui was the first local to be elected president in 1988. In 1989 the first multiparty elections took place. Since 1996 Taiwan has been considered ‘free’.

Taiwan controls the main island and some small islands off the coast of mainland China and in the South China Sea with the Republic of China claiming a much larger territory including mainland China and even Mongolia.

Apart from the Chinese claims to Taiwanese territories, there is a major territorial dispute concerning the Spartly Islands in the South China Sea.

Taiwan, the People’s Republic, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines occupy some of the islands, with Brunei also claiming some.

The population of Taiwan is above 23 million people, making it by far the most populous of the de facto states. This has also been a rise of over five million since 1980. Most of the population are Chinese and around 2 per cent are indigenous Malayo-Polynesian aborigines. The Chinese population is itself divided into two categories. The first are the early settlers from the mainland and the second those who arrived with the Nationalist Chinese government after the Communist revolution. The latter are usually referred to as being from the mainland and they constitute around 15 per cent of the whole population.

Since the events of the 1970s, Taiwan has been replaced by the People’s Republic in most international organisations and the majority of states have swapped recognition to the mainland. Copper (1981, p. 56) claims that after PRC’s acceptance to the UN, by 1980 Taiwan ‘had already experienced the flight of embassies over the past nine years’ and ‘maintained formal relations with just over twenty countries’. Today Taiwan has 23 recognitions from around the world and over 70 representation offices on its territory.

Additionally, not all international organisations threw Taiwan overboard. In 1977 Taiwan was a member of 10 inter-governmental organisations, a figure that was relatively stable until the end of the 20^th century (Goldstein, 2008).

Therefore, de-recognition did not strip Taiwan of its capacity to enter into international relations.

The question of control does not arise in Taiwan’s case, although American support to Taiwan is large. Even though the economic ties between Taiwan and America are ‘normal’ in the sense that they are similar to those which Taiwan has with other countries, American political and military support are visible. On the political side, the United States has endorsed the special relationship in the Taiwan Relations Act that was passed after the USA changed its recognition from Taiwan to the People’s Republic of China in 1979. The Act states that its purpose is ‘to help maintain peace, security, and stability in the Western Pacific and to promote the foreign policy of the United States by authorizing the continuation of commercial, cultural, and other relations between the people of the United States and the people on Taiwan’ (Taiwan Relations Act, 1979). The Act also states that ‘whenever the laws of the United States refer or relate to foreign countries, nations, states, governments, or similar entities, such terms shall include and such laws shall apply with such respect to Taiwan,’ which gives Taiwan equal standing with other nations.

To achieve these goals, the US created the American Institute in Taiwan, which is a non-profit organisation carrying out functions usually associated with diplomatic representations. The respective organisation representing Taiwan in the USA, as in any other country that has official diplomatic relations with PRC but maintains a Taiwanese representation, is the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office. But as one can observe, these relations are between equals and do not show American intervention in Taiwan’s internal affairs.

On the military front, the Act has several provisions. In Section Two of the act the United States aims ‘to provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character’ and ‘to maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan’. Section Three of the Act adds that ‘the United States will make available to Taiwan such defence articles and defence services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defence capability’.