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H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-US-Japan (February 2001)

Ralph N. Clough, _Cooperation or Conflict in the Taiwan Strait?_. Samuel S. Kim ed., _Asia in World Politics_. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1999. xi + 155 pp. Bibliographical References, Annex and Index. Price not available: ISBN 0-8476-9326-0 (alk. paper), ISBN 0-8476-9325-2 (pbk.: alk. paper).

Reviewed for H-US-Japan by Jing Zhao (jzhao@mail.h-net.msu.edu), US-Japan-China Comparative Policy Research Institute, San Jose, USA.

"They tried to compensate for their lack of access to top executive branch officials by cultivating members of Congress and their staff, governors and members of state legislatures, officials of important U.S. cities, and key media decision makers. They invited large numbers of national and local political figures to visit Taiwan (Bill Clinton made four visits while governor of Arkansas). They strengthened Taiwan's links with American universities and think-tanks, sponsored a large number of academic conferences at which Taiwan's problems were sympathetically discussed, and hired public relations firms to spread favorable publicity about Taiwan and to lobby members of Congress." (p.23)

This is the general background regarding the Taiwan issue appeared in the U.S. publicity. It is natural to see that in the U.S., the study of the Taiwan issue, including this book under review, also unnaturally favors one side of the strait. Thus, among so many propaganda-propelled publications repeating almost the same tone, is this book worth to read, worth to review?

This book does not list the 1972 Sino-American Shanghai Communique in which the U.S. acknowledges "that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain that there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of China" and declares that "the U.S. government does not challenge that position." Nor the book introduces the contents of the 1982 Sino-American Joint Communique in which the U.S. agrees to reduce and, ultimately, stop arms sales to Taiwan. The author may have reasons to ignore these two documents and emphasize the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), adopted by the Congress in 1979. However, focusing on the Taiwan issue, these two documents are always regarded by the Chinese government, as well as the Chinese people, as the political base for Sino-American relations. This fact is vital for Americans to understand China's determination to unify Taiwan regardless any possible catastrophe from a military conflict with the U.S. Only "accepting the reality that PRC leaders have a legitimate interest in Taiwan's future" (p.114) is not enough. Regarding the military role of the United States (Chapter 7), the author's biggest assumption is that once the U.S. intervenes, the international world will follow the U.S. This shows that the author lacks knowledge of Japan and other East Asian countries. Since providing military bases for the U.S. forces to fight against China means a war with China, al least, as long as those Japanese who experienced the war live, Japan is far from ready to engage against China for whatever reasons regarding Taiwan.

As for the origin of the Taiwan problem, the book misleads readers claiming that "Chinese military intervention in the Korean War convinced most Americans that the PRC was serving Soviet purposes in furthering the spread of international communism." (p.17) "Participation in wars in Korea and Vietnam convinced most Americans that the leaders of China and the Soviet Union were promoting a global movement that threatened the American way of life." (p.21)

This small book, written by a former director for Chinese affairs in the Department of State, introduces "shifting emphases in the U.S.-PRC-Taiwan relations" (Chapter 2), discusses Taiwan's policy changes under Lee Teng-hui and the rise of the DDP which advocates Taiwan independence (Chapters 3 - 6), and considers for the U.S. how "to prevent the development of a crisis in the Taiwan Strait in which the United States would be compelled to chose between allowing Taiwan to be subjugated by military force or intervening with the U.S. forces to prevent it." (p.115) Actually, the book starts with "Cornell Alumnus Attends School Reunion" (Chapter 1), ends with "Lee Teng-hui's Six Points" (Annex 2) and "Excerpts from Lee Teng-hui's Inaugural Address, May 20, 1996" (Annex 3); and the frequency of the appearances of the word "Lee Teng-hui" is only less than that of "PRC," "ROC/Taiwan" and "United States."

It is reasonable for the author to spend most pages introducing "voices of the 21.3 million people," because he can easily access these voices directly from Lee Teng-hui to Taiwan's businessmen but from the mainland side, he can only hear one voice through a middle-level channel. As a convenient comparison, how many American people have a chance to hear any voice from Chongqing's 30 million people? (While most Americans never know even the name, Chongqing was ROC's capital during the war against Japan's invasion.) This is the point of the Taiwan problem: 98% people are excluded from the issue by Washington, Taipei, and Beijing's regimes. The author highly weighs the moderating influence of investment and trade across the strait to drawing the two sides together. This is a commonly accepted sense, and the book, from the Washington and Taipei sides, clearly demonstrates how the Jiang Zeming regime, which came to power by the Tiananmen Incident in 1989 and serves the interest of the newly formed capitalist class (including that from Taiwan), other than the Chinese people, has lost the battle on Taiwan. Today, the Jiang regime cannot bring the new Taipei regime to the negotiation table based on the "one China" principle even though Wang Daohan, the chairman of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS), said that "one China" stands for neither the PRC nor the ROC (p.98). The only purpose of Lee Kwan Yew's visit to the new ROC "president" was to transmit Jiang Zeming's message: "Please do not let me labeled the next Li Hongzhang. No Chinese leader can count on survival if that happens."

As mentioned above, in the U.S., rather than educational use, this timely book is more suitable for relevant business people who need a brief guide on current Taiwan Strait affairs for the next one or two years. However, I would very likely to recommend my colleagues teaching at China's universities to introduce this book to their graduate students for the following reasons: compared with those propaganda and commercial writings (such as _The Coming Conflict with China_), this book explains the U.S. official policy and new situations in Taiwan briefly, properly (and also hypocritically) without fiction; compared with those strategists who like to talk about China but even cannot read Chinese (such as Brzezinski), the author is a China specialist who served for thirteen years in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and this book uses first-hand Chinese material (mostly from Taiwan, though). In general, this book is more worthy of a reading by Chinese in the mainland than by Americans.

Copyright (c) 2000, H-Net, all rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author and the list. For other permission questions, please contact hbooks@h-net.msu.edu.


Some responses from readers

[1] From: Lester Lee

Thank you for forwarding us this book review. It is no surprise to see this kind of writing on China. After all, what this book preaches is what we call "Politically Correct" in this country.

How to arrive at political correct? This is mostly created by the media who reports a certain rhetoric favoring (or threatening) USA, and get the readers convinced of this viewpoint. Then they would feed more of this politically correct stuff to a now captured audience, and get more people on board till this becomes the correct and generally accepted viewpoint.

For many of us with the Chinese or Asian heritage who believes in the truth and nothing but the truth, it is hard for us to accept this type of reasoning of an issue based only on partial input ( such as this book's total blank on the three US/China communiques).

The reviewer correctly pointed out that

"They tried to compensate for their lack of access to top executive branch officials by cultivating members of Congress and their staff, governors and members of state legislatures, officials of important U.S. cities, and key media decision makers. They invited large numbers of national and local political figures to visit Taiwan (Bill Clinton made four visits while governor of Arkansas). They strengthened Taiwan's links with American universities and think-tanks, sponsored a large number of academic conferences at which Taiwan's problems were sympathetically discussed, and hired public relations firms to spread favorable publicity about Taiwan and to lobby members of Congress." (p.23)

In short, we should realize that PRC today is way behind KMT and DDP in the art of lobbying in USA. This is an area we Chinese-Ameericans is in a position to pitch in.

Lester

[2] From: fuyu ha

Mr.Zhao:

It was a delightful experience to read your review on Kim's book on H-Asia network. I especially appreciate your following comment, which I found both insightful and to the point.

"The author heavily weighs the moderating influence of investment and trade across the strait to drawing the two sides together. This is a commonly accepted sense, and the book, from the Washington and Taipei sides, clearly demonstrates how the Jiang Zeming regime, which came to power by the Tiananmen Incident in 1989 and serves the interest of the newly formed capitalist class (including that from Taiwan), other than the Chinese people, has lost the battle on Taiwan."

As a long-time observer to the Taiwan issue, my perception has moved downward from being hopefully to frustration to the sense of helplessness and coming doom. As Jiang's regime eagerly and shamelessly surrender to the pressure of the West, they have brought China back to the status of half colony country. What worried me even more is that the so-called intellectuals ( or liberals) in China are mindlessly clamoring for the " Globalization" utopia and ready to give up the interests of Chinese people and the respect as an independent nation in order to claim a place for themselves as well-paid servants in the international hierarchy.( I was one of them myself in my greener years ). Some of them may not mean bad but I believe they are leading China in the wrong direction.

There is not much we can do about this degenerate trend in China other than informing the coming new generation about the real nature of the outside world. I strongly agree with you about the idea of introducing these relevant books on China to the Chinese graduate students( even undergraduate students). Let us bear the burden of humiliation with the hope that a better informed generation will have a better idea of the environment we are living in and choose the direction for China accordingly.

With best regards,

Fuyu Ha

[3] From: "Thomas Bartlett"

Dear Mr. Jing Zhao,

Yone Sugita has forwarded to H-ASIA your review of a recent publication on US-China relations concerning Taiwan, which was apparently posted to the H-US-Japan listgroup. Since what is apparently your email address also appears in the posting, I am responding with a couple of observations about this matter.

It is often said that the Taiwan issue is left over from the Chinese civil war in the 1940s. But actually it is more appropriate to say that it is left over from the Korean War. Before that time, the USA did not support the ROC in Taiwan, and if the PRC had attached Taiwan then presumably the USA would not have defended the island. Only after the Korean War began, evidently with Mao's support, did the US take action to defend Taiwan.

The Shanghai Communique and the Normalization Communique, while incorporating China's uncompromising claims to Taiwan, also incorporate expressions of the United States' interest in a peaceful solution to the problem. China, like the USA, has subscribed to both these documents. If the USA has acknowledged China's sovereignty over Taiwan, then it must also be pointed out that China has acknowledged the legitimacy of America's interest in a peaceful solution of Taiwan's status. This is particularly true in the present historical context in which the Korean War has still not reached a permanent settlement.

To say simply, as official and semi-official representatives of the PRC so often do, that the United States is at fault for not having simply abandoned Taiwan to the tender mercies of the PLA, is sheer hypocrisy, intended to generate anti-foreign sentiment among Chinese people, as a way of releasing their frustrations due to overpopulation, economic underdevelopment, and lack of political reform.

Moreover, Taiwan is often misrepresented, in official and semi-official statements to Chinese at home and to foreigners abroad, as a lost territory which has always been a part of China since ancient times. In fact, Taiwan has never at any time in the past been the province of a secure and responsible government based in mainland China. No ruling Chinese dynasty ever established any administrative presence in any part of Taiwan until the Manchu Qing dynasty did so beginning in 1683. And for two hundred years Qing officials were only sent to limited counties in the western plains of the island; the mountainous eastern half of the island was beyond their mandate, and the aboriginals were free to have relations with people of other nations, such as Japan. Within the last generation of the Manchus' rule in China, they desperately tried to elevate Taiwan to the status of a province. But when some Japanese were killed by aboriginals there, and the Japanese demanded reparations from the Qing dynasty, the Manchu court said that they were not responsible for that aspect of Taiwan's affairs.

In the 1970s, Mao hypocritically thanked the Japanese for destabilizing the ROC, as if that had led directly to the Communist victory. But he should also have thanked the Japanese for attacking Pearl Harbor, which they might not have done, since the Japanese were ultimatley defeated by American naval and air power, and not by any force that the Communists could have exerted. If Pearl Harbor had not been attacked, the Japanese might still hold parts of the China mainland. In the 1940s, the ROC was not capable of being responsible for its own survival. The ROC troops which occupied Taiwan after Japan's defeat were sent there on naval vessels supplied by the USA. Roosevelt's hope, that Chiang's ROC could be the strong anti-Soviet force in East Asia that Japan had failed to be, was in vain.

If Taiwan were ever to be directly administered as a province of the PRC, while the PRC remained effectively in power in China, that would be a situation unprecedented in all of history. It would not be "recovery" of a lost past situation; rather it would be a new advance of Chinese political power in Taiwan.

Taiwan has never been a purely Chinese cultural zone. It has always been a frontier region in which Chinese and foreign elements met and mixed. The American interest in a peaceful resolution of China's relations with Taiwan is directly within that long tradition.

China's best hope lies in economic development, to resolve the drastic overpopulation created by Mao's foolish rejection of Ma Yingqiao's recommendation to control population growth. Economic development may not be easy, given the huge environmental problems that China faces, as well as the uncontrollable corruption. So it will surely seem tempting to blame foreigners for China's woes.

But the best way for China to gain the confidence of people in Taiwan is to stop threatening war and start instituting democratic reforms in order to catch up with Taiwan's more advanced political development. If China's generals don't understand these ideas, they may create a great tragedy for the whole nation.

Regards,

Thomas Bartlett

[4] From: Vincent K Pollard pollard@hawaii.edu:

Hello!

Interesting book review! Anyway, I've linked the "Beijing-Taipei Cross-Strait Relations" section of my website to the review.

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~pollard/#apdc is the URL.

Upon completion in July, this section of my website will become part of the Asia Pacific Digital Collections on the server of one of the libraries in the University of Hawai'i System.

Vincent K Pollard
UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI'I AT MANOA
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~pollard/#Asia