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China waiting for
Taiwan to ¡¥fall¡¦ into its arms: report
By William Lowther / Staff reporter in WASHINGTON
Like a ripe melon, Taiwan may eventually fall from the tree and into China¡¦s
open arms, a new political analysis from the Washington-based East-West Center
said.
¡§China can be expected to exercise strategic patience buttressed by internal
political confidence,¡¨ read the report, written by Asia Studies Visiting Fellow
Sung Wen-ti (§º¤å³ö).
Cross-strait relations will remain stable in the foreseeable future, but the
continuation of Taiwan¡¦s strategic autonomy may gradually come into question,
Sung said.
¡§There is an old Chinese saying: ¡¥Melons prematurely harvested from the trees
don¡¦t taste sweet.¡¦ With favorable internal and external factors in place,
Beijing can patiently await the melon to fall down from the tree on its own,¡¨ he
added.
A doctoral candidate at the Australian National University of Taiwanese origin,
Sung said that the intensifying dynamics of the Beijing-Taipei-Washington
triangle are contributing to the ¡§melon¡¨ scenario: the Chinese leadership is
consolidating, there is growing cross-strait ¡§enmeshment¡¨ and the US is
suffering from attention deficit.
¡§In Beijing, a favorable combination of institutional integration, political
consolidation and leadership expertise is enabling China¡¦s leaders to manage
cross-strait relations with confidence and patience,¡¨ he wrote in the report.
The newly installed Chinese State Security Committee should make it easier to
present a cross-strait policy that is more coordinated, pragmatic and oriented
toward ¡§winning hearts and minds,¡¨ the study said.
¡§The new policy environment will be more insulated from inter-agency bickering,
coordination challenges and individual actors¡¦ political urge to play the
assertive nationalist card regarding Taiwan,¡¨ Sung wrote.
Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (²ßªñ¥), the leadership in Beijing is
well-positioned to exercise ¡§strategic patience¡¨ over the Taiwan issue, he
added.
¡§Beijing¡¦s patience is predicated on the belief that time is on Beijing¡¦s side,
for reasons of economics, military, and the perceived attention deficit of the
US,¡¨ the academic wrote. ¡§As more sectors of the Taiwanese society become
reliant on cross-strait commerce, this economic dependency has the potential to
spill-over into politics and nurture more Beijing-friendly voices.¡¨
Sung said there are also signs the US may be losing its ability to appreciate
the nuances of Chinese policy.
¡§For Beijing, there is little incentive to pursue unification with Taiwan in the
foreseeable future,¡¨ he wrote. ¡§Pursuing unification through coercion runs the
risk of a costly conflict with the US.¡¨
¡§The pursuit, however, of unification through peaceful negotiation, presumably
under an augmented version of the ¡¥one country, two systems¡¦ formula, is also
not necessarily desirable,¡¨ for that could oblige Beijing to sustain Taiwan¡¦s
economic prosperity, Sung said.
In addition, Beijing may fear that Taiwan¡¦s democracy could increase pressure
from China¡¦s middle class for China to democratize, he added.
Given these considerations, China can be expected to wait for the ¡§melon¡¨ to
fall of its own accord, the report said.
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