Taiwan and the Necessity of Imagining Peace

Introduction

Wars, unlike earthquakes, typhoons, or tsunamis are not natural disasters, they are sociological phenomena—the product of complex action-reaction processes among at least two social factions that culminate in institutionalized mass-slaughter. Proxy-wars are even more complex as they include a higher number of intertwined actors and bind together sometimes un-related conflicts.¹ While classic Cold War proxy-wars tended to be fought out by two proxy-forces against each other—as was the case between South and North Korea and South and North Vietnam–backed by their respective guarantor states, there are also instances in which proxy-wars are fought through a single proxy-state, as was the case when the USA armed the Taliban against the Soviet Invasion, or how currently NATO arms Ukraine in the war with Russia.² What remains the same is that proxy-wars combine conflicts on different levels into one single violent conflagration.³ The argument of this paper is that if another proxy-war in East Asia over Taiwan is to be averted (in this case between China and the USA over Taiwan), it is essential to not only address the security situation itself but to also seriously imagine de-escalation of the conflict to avert creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Imagining de-escalation

The situation in and around Taiwan is becoming more dangerous not only because of the concrete military actions of one or the other party—like US military personnel now stationed on Taiwan’s Kinmen islands,⁴ only miles from China’s Xiamen province, or China’s military exercises around Taiwan⁵—but because on all sides opinions are hardening that a war cannot be averted.⁶ This is highly dangerous as it creates what in international relations is called a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’—the situation where the belief in a social outcome will lead people and institutions to prepare for it, which, in turn, transforms belief into possibility and, eventually, reality.

This is particularly dangerous in moments and places where power is distributed over various actors. There are moments when individual elements can push entire nations into armed conflict by creating facts on the ground though so-called trigger events. Triggering a conflict would not be possible if the underlying structures to accommodate them were not created first.⁷ World War I is a famous example where the assassination of an Archduke and his wife triggered a domino effect that was only possible because of the dangerous alliance systems that had been put in place earlier, leading Europe to ‘sleepwalk’ into catastrophe, as Christopher Clark put it.⁸ But take an example closer to home, like Japan’s precarious militarism in central Asia in the 1930s. The Mukden Incident of 1931 was a minor explosion, planned and executed by a rogue regiment of the Japanese army (a false flag incident), which empowered the local military elites to march into Manchuria and, in turn, pushed the Japanese Cabinet to support the actions because anything else would have meant losing face and running the risk of political assassination by rogue militarist elements (which happened several times). Although Mukden was not planned in Tokyo, the entire situation unfolded because the structures for an invasion and a war with China had been created previously.⁹ Structures create facts.

Luckily, that holds true also the other way around. Consider the European Union. Despite many flaws and shortcomings, it is probably the largest peace project in the history of the continent with remarkable success in pacifying and uniting two of the continent’s oldest enemies, France and Germany. Here again, it was the structure of the Union that enabled the de-escalation of relations from something as horrible as two world wars. The European Union has not become a ‘United States of Europe’ as Churchill had imagined it. It is not a proper state, but it is much more than just a customs union. Still, the EU’s interconnectedness has created enough structure to keep its members at peace. Even those that do not consent to it anymore. Despite the hurtful nature of the UK’s exit from the Union, not even once either side mentioned the possibility of using military means to achieve a favorable outcome of the great divorce—not an unimportant success for a continent that usually settles border disputes on the battlefield. The structure of the EU, the way it is set up, allowed for a peaceful separation, unlike other territories like Ireland in the early twentieth century (departing from the UK), or today the Kosovo, the Donbas, or even places like Catalonia and the Bask Country that are tightly looked into their constitutional arrangements, and where violence was or still is used to achieve certain goals of autonomy or independence.

Although the conflict between Taipei and Beijing is unique in its historical development, especially when considering the complex economic interconnection between Taiwan and mainland China, the premise is the same, if a peaceful solution to the conflict is to emerge, it needs to be imagined first to allow the building of a de-escalatory structure. Even if the scenarios we imagine are never implemented perfectly, it is important to create a de-escalating conflict trajectory.

A good fiction makes for a working arrangement

The current trajectory between Taiwan and the mainland is predicated on a working arrangement that emerged at the end of the Cold War, the so-called ‘1992 Consensus,’ which is one of the most instructive examples of peacebuilding by disagreement. It functions as a compromise between the two governments—the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in Beijing and the Republic of China (PRC) in Taipei. It holds that there is only one China, which includes Taiwan, but that the two parties disagree on who actually is ‘China’. The arrangement was never more than an abstract gentlemen’s agreement, neither formalized nor publicly approved by any ratification process. Successive ROC governments have either been supportive of the consensus idea, like President Ma Ying-jeou or rejected parts of it, like President Tsai Ing-wen, with some arguing that there never was an agreement at all.¹⁰

The history of the consensus and the question if it took place are interesting but not very important. What matters is that the idea of the consensus persisted for 30 years, serving as a political talking and anchor point on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.¹¹ The idea of a minimal agreement allowed both sides to establish communication channels and dialogue about the common political future, including even a summit meeting between the sitting presidents of the PRC (Xi Jinping) and the ROC (Ma Ying-jeou) in 2015. It was the most both sides could muster in terms of a face-saving political approach to create some form of working arrangement between them to allow for real-world relaxation of bilateral relations,¹² including economic cooperation, investments, tourism, and people-to-people exchange.

Even more importantly, the consensus idea serves a minimal common understanding of the past, namely the belief of the two rivaling political parties, the Kuomintang (KMT) in Taiwan and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the mainland, that the conflict between them was still based on China’s Civil War: two Chinese parties that are battling for dominance over the homeland. For all their differences, neither the KMT nor the CCP disputed this common reality. After all, the Ma-Xi meeting was not the first meeting of party leaders. In 1945 Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong met for a summit in Chongqing where the KMT for the first time acknowledged the CCP as an opposition party in China ( Figure 1).

Figure 1. Mao Zedong (left) meeting Chiang Kai-shek (right) in Chongqing, 1945.

Source: “Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai Shek during the Chongqing Negotiations,” Wikimedia Commons, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1945_Mao_and_Chiang.jpg.

The alternative to the 1992 consensus would have been to recognize the de-facto existence of two separate Chinese states (or at least two Chinese governments) in the same way there was a North and South Vietnam and how there still is a North and South Korea. That was not in the interest of either party. The consensus is also a very close cousin (albeit not equal) to the arrangement created between the US and the PRC in 1979—dubbed the ‘One China Policy’—when Washington resumed official relations with Beijing (abandoning Taipei) with the understanding in a joint communique that ‘the United States of America recognized the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China, and it acknowledged the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China’. In the US, too, the situation is complex¹³, but everything boils down to the question if the US will uphold the policy or officially shift its stance in the near future. China, unsurprisingly, strongly demands that the policy remains in place.¹⁴

The Cross-Strait ‘Consensus’ always was a piece of fiction, even at the time it was created. The ROC had lost its seat in the UN Security Council to the PRC as early as 1971 and nearly all major economies around the world started recognizing the PRC as the ‘real’ China within that decade—including the USA, in 1979.¹⁵ In the early 1990s, it was crystal clear who had won the ‘battle over China’. There was no more appetite in Taipei to contemplate a Reconquista of the mainland as Chiang had wanted it to do in the early days of the Cold War.¹⁶ By 1992, the civil war was over in all but name.

However, the Consensus was possible because both sides could agree to this smallest common denominator, that for historical reasons both governments still wanted to be ‘China’. After all, even the CCP regards Sun Yat-sen—the founder of the ROC who defeated the moribund Qing Empire—as the father of modern China. The difference is that the CCP claims the PRC superseded the ROC when Mao won the civil war. In contrast, Taipei holds the ROC never lost, just ‘temporarily’ withdrew to Taiwan. Fighting between the PRC and the ROC continued for some years after 1949, especially on the islands of Matsu and Kinmen.¹⁷ US naval intervention since the 1950s and the famous Davis line separating the Taiwan Strait has kept the PRC and ROC in an uneasy equilibrium without, however, generating a lasting peace agreement. Had Chiang Kai-shek declared Taiwanese independence back when he (brutally) started the occupation of the island, a ‘Republic of Taiwan’ might exist today and maintain peaceful relations with China the way Mongolia does (Outer Mongolia was the only territory that managed to split off from China with the help of the Soviets. The ROC and PRC both opposed and disputed until well into the 1960s¹⁸). But independence was never something Chiang aspired to, hence even in 2025 the claim of the ROC is not that Taiwan is not Chinese but in its own words that

Hence the dispute over who was the ‘real’ China never disappeared until it morphed into a political and diplomatic modus vivendi that (luckily) worked for 30 years. Compared to the sad histories of North and South Vietnam or North and South Korea the ‘Chinese Consensus Model’ was by far more fruitful on a political, economic, and humanitarian level. Both governments have achieved fantastic successes and China is today Taiwan’s largest trading partner. Taiwan became an economic tiger already in the 1980s and has even democratized over the past 30 years.²⁰ At the same time, the PRC, too, has built an awesome economy, lifting hundreds of millions of its people out of poverty into the middle class.²¹ Both development models were tremendously successful in creating welfare for their people and the fiction of the Consensus established a working relationship on the economic level despite the fundamental political disagreement. The past 30 years were a textbook model for responsible conflict management between the ROC and PRC.

However, peace and prosperity on both sides of the Taiwan Strait is also a fundamental reason for the nearing end of the arrangement. The economic success allowed Beijing to construct formidable conventional military capabilities beyond its nuclear first- and second-strike capabilities (which are not useful for territorial conquest), while Taiwan has been increasing its asymmetric warfare capabilities with the help of US armaments.²² Today, the issue is not that Taipei and Beijing battle over supremacy in China. It is the question of independence and sovereignty for Taiwan. It is important to recognize how different this conflict is from the original conflict between the PRC and ROC.

A moribund consensus

The situation about Taiwan is highly worrisome because the new political trajectory of the 2020s does not point toward reconciliation anymore. The idea of a consensus used to calm the situation but over the past 30 years, the fundaments of the conflict have shifted. This is not even the fault of either side, but the result of social developments undermining the rationale of the modus vivendi. Today, neither side still has an incentive to emphasize the existence of the ROC. The trend was already visible in the 1990s but accelerated with Taiwan’s democratization. In the year 2000, the first non-Kuomintang government came to power. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) unseated the KMT on a pro-democracy, pro-Taiwanese (nationalistic) platform. Today, the DPP and the CCP both downplay the role of the ROC as a concept. For Beijing’s narrative, it is much more convenient to just forget that de facto, the ROC continued to exist beyond 1949. And for Taipei, deemphasizing the ‘C’ in the ‘ROC’ makes sense because of the lingering identity crisis on the island.²³ However, most national institutions, from the government itself to the island’s currency and the national airline still carry the name ‘China’ in them with all the insignia of Chinese heritage. Even the 100 Taiwanese Yuan note shows the portrait of Sun Yat-sen ( Figure 2).

Figure 2. NT$100 Bill, with the image of ROC founder, Sun Yat-sen.

Note: 100 New Taiwan Dollars Note, issued by the Central Bank of the Republic of China (Taiwan).

Copyright: Central Bank of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Reproduced with permission.

At the same time, opinion polls also indicate that around three quarter of the island’s inhabitants perceive themselves as ‘Taiwanese’ not as ‘Chinese’.²⁴ Hence, there is no incentive, especially for nationalistically minded Taiwanese to continue emphasizing the Chinese heritage of the Taiwanese body politic.

A good example of the ongoing re-framing of Taiwan as a political entity is the new passports the ROC started issuing in 2021 ( Figure 3). The front page of the old design carried the items ‘中華民國’ (Republic of China) and ‘護照’ (passport) in equal fonts and size as the English items ‘Republic of China,’ ‘Taiwan,’ and ‘Passport’. The new design increased the font size of the words ‘Taiwan’ and ‘Passport’ in English, keeps the Chinese characters for ‘中華民國’ and ‘護照’ how they were, and banished the English item ‘Republic of China’ into a tiny space around the national emblem where it repeats three times but is exceedingly hard to read. Also, the words ‘Taiwan’ and ‘Passport’ appear much closer to each other in the new design. It is a small but unmistakable sign of Taiwan’s move away from the Chinese heritage toward a new identity and a new political self-consciousness.

Figure 3. Taiwanese Passports Before and After Design Change of 2021.

Note: New design right, old design left.

Similarly, in July 2020, the ROC parliament passed a resolution to change the name of the national aircraft carrier ‘China Airlines’ to something more distinct,²⁵ but had to abandon the plans after even a small change in the design of the airlines cargo planes resulted in China forbidding the crafts from flying to its airports.²⁶ These changes come on top of the already massive pop-culture support for national Taiwanese identity, different from the Chinese roots of the state. Interestingly enough, it is the KMT (currently in the opposition), the very party that fought out the war with the CCP that is opposed to a further hollowing out of the Chinese heritage of Taiwan. While the ruling DPP sports the most pro-independence voices, the KMT is much more supportive of reunification with the mainland.

Clearly, the smallest common denominator of the consensus idea—that both sides of the strait want to be ‘China’—is coming to an end. It is also clear that would Taipei declare its independence and officially shed its Chinese name for something like ‘Republic of Taiwan,’ the mainland would be forced to live-up to its belligerent rhetoric of recent years and subdue the island militarily. Beijing has made it abundantly clear that a declaration of independence would be a casus belli. At the same time, under the current political circumstances, it is highly unlikely that Taiwan would concede to China’s demands for reunification and give up its independent government structure to become like Hong Kong. Even under the 50-year provisions for the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ framework of Hong Kong, the city developed into a non-sovereign (albeit specially self-administered) Chinese territory with ultimate power and judicial sovereignty in Beijing.²⁷

The major obstacle to enduring peace is that there seem to be no alternatives to settling the conflict than through warfare. While Beijing keeps isolating Taiwan on all diplomatic and some economic fronts and emphasizes with evermore force that it demands reunification—at the latest by 2049 but probably earlier—the cultural, demographic, and political trajectory of Taiwan seems to indicate further moves toward the ‘Taiwanization’ of the body politic and moves toward independence. Naturally, the role of the United States with its military capabilities and its interests in the Pacific is another major factor that since the 1950s influenced the entire political development between the Taipei and Beijing, but Washington has long stopped playing an equilibrating role and has in recent years escalated tensions more than calmed nerves on both sides of the Taiwan Strait as, for instance, by the visit of then Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi to the Island in August 2022.²⁸ Furthermore, many leading US foreign policymakers are expecting a war with China and will be willing to fight it over the future of Taiwan—at least in the form of a proxy-war, similar to multi-layered proxy-war in Ukraine. Ideas in the US to scrap the ‘One China Policy’ are gaining traction and would be a major escalation that would create further outside pressure on this already fragile situation.²⁹

Avoiding war mentality

There is real danger in external factors pushing Taiwan to a war of independence with China. A peaceful solution can only immerge from an inner-Chinese understanding, even if it is one as fragile as the 1992 consensus. Anything is better than a war on an island smaller than Switzerland but with 23 million inhabitants. If de-escalation of the conflict does not come from within the dynamic of the two Chinese governments, it might never happen at all. However, there are major obstacles in the way of a new working arrangement, not least of which has to do with the sheer ‘willingness’ to achieve an agreement in the first place. (Mass-)Psychology plays a particularly important role in this question. If the threshold of ‘war mentality’ is breached on one or several sides, it might already be too late. War mentality is always at play when we find collectively held believes why ‘this time’ it is ok—or even morally imperative—to start killing others because they are doing something horrific that must be stopped. That is the moment when ‘opponents’ transform into ‘enemies’ and when war turns in the public mind from being a ‘calamity’ to offering a ‘solution’—often portrayed as the ‘only solution’. This needs to be emphasized: war often is a solution to national and international conflicts. They are just not particularly happy solutions. However, in every international contest, there are those who believe it is better to use lethal force to achieve goals rather than other means of conflict resolution. Paradoxically, the dynamic of violent conflict can be such that the hawks of both sides end up collaborating to escalate the situation, just as the doves will collaborate to deescalate.³⁰ Doves can even face threats from their own Hawks, from political smear campaigns to outright assassinations, as happened to ‘dovish’ Japanese politicians in the 1930s.³¹ Doves trying to find alternatives to war are often dismissed as appeasing an enemy that will only take advantage of their weakness. War mentality paints non-violent proposals as ‘weak’ or indecisive, and military solutions as ‘strong,’ praiseworthy, and decisive. War mentality and the spiral toward ever more hawkish policy approaches need to be avoided on each side of the conflict, otherwise, the spiral will escalate further. A new working arrangement between Taipei and Beijing is needed to deescalate this tendency. The following section considers the prerequisites for a new consensus needed to shift the conflict trajectory enough to avert war.

Prerequisites of de-escalation

First, alternatives to war need to be based on realistic assessments of political beliefs and political power. Realism, in this sense, means that we need to accurately understand and consider the political beliefs of all parties involved. Those are the decision-making forces inside Taiwan, China, and the United States. It cannot be stressed enough how important it is to understand the world not only from the vantage point of one or two of these actors but from the internal narratives that all of them perpetuate—often different narratives within one state, especially in democracies. Strategic Empathy is needed to comprehend why different stokeholds can or cannot say ‘yes’ to certain proposals,³² or why they will be compelled to act in one way or another.

A realistic political assessment—the backbone of sound political decision making—implies the art of understanding how actors will behave not based upon how one side wants them to behave but what their real motivating factors are internally. It implies understanding the world from the other side’s point of view—be that a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way of seeing things, be it reality or fiction, it doesn’t matter. If a belief or a structural necessity motivates an actor, it needs to be taken into consideration and planned for when creating policy. Realism demands that we understand not only our friends, it demands that we understand our enemies even better. In this sense, the alternatives need to consider the centrality of narratives inside the different social communities to be clear about the red lines of each side and the spaces for compromise.

On a side note: ‘understanding’ must not be mistaken for ‘condoning’. Just because we accurately comprehend the narratives and motivating factors of a state or a political entity, that does not mean we need to morally agree with their reasoning. Understanding why a psychopath acts in a certain way—what his motivating beliefs are—does not condone that person’s actions. Or, as the psychologist Philip Zimbardo once said: psychology is not ‘excusology.’³³ The same is the approach of realism in international relations. It tries to explain motivating factors, not excuse them.

Second, the alternatives need to consider the path-dependent nature of the Cross-Strait conflict. The historical roots and where they leave the political process in Taiwan and China are essential. Hence, while appreciating that no one really wants to talk about North and South China, it needs to be keep in mind that, de facto, this is the current political setup. Because it mitigates misunderstandings and false narratives which only add to the estrangement of China and Taiwan rather than toward a political solution.

Especially in the West, the perception has been fueled over the past decades that ‘Taiwan’ refers to something like the ‘Republic of Taiwan,’ a historically independent country, which ‘evil China’ wants to swallow because it is a power-hungry, expansionist, revisionist power striving for world domination. Under this mental framework, the only solution to expansionism is force which some hawks in the West would prefer over any form of accommodation. The narrative is wrong, of course. Politically, Taiwan is the ROC and that needs to be remembered—especially in the West—when contemplating workable political scenarios out of the current trajectory.

Third, the alternative to war is not necessarily perfect peace but non-violent conflict. International relations are not usually perfectly harmonious. Conflicts on one level or another are part and parcel of international life, just as they are part and parcel of national life. For the latter, we have found instruments to mitigate political disagreements, most importantly through democratic mechanisms to let opinions compete and resolve disputes by votes and not by the sword. States, too, have constant disagreements that they negotiate in various ways, they do not always cooperate, sometimes they compete, sometimes they quarrel, and—in the worst case—they fight. The point is that international life is not a binary affair—either war or peace. States have relations with each other on a brought spectrum. From very friendly relations, where the interests of one state are intricately intertwined with those of the other, as is the case between, for instance, the US and Canada or Switzerland and Lichtenstein, there are relationships that are distanced, like Japan and the Republic of Korea, and there are those that are in open hostility as US–Iran relations, US–Cuba relations, or North and South Korea. However, all of these are stages of relationships. Even when war breaks out, as happened between Russia and Ukraine, states still talk to each other. There are various forms of conflicts raging in the international world. Most of them happen on the political level. Only a few are being conducted militarily. This is important for Taiwan because we must not make the mistake of thinking that we need a ‘clear cut’ solution that will solve all future problems once and for all. Whatever happens, problems, disagreements, competition, and conflict will probably remain anyhow, even if war was the method of solving the Taiwan question, it would probably not succeed in resolving all conflicts. On the contrary, decisions fought out on the battlefield usually lay the seeds of future conflict. Suffice it to remember that when Germany was defeated in WWI, it was forced to accept the peace arrangement in Versailles that blamed Germany alone for the breakout of the war and heavily punished it on a political level. The indignation that this caused among the German population made it possible for Adolf Hitler to raise to the chancellorship and ultimately lead the country in to the disastrous Second World War. However, even World War II, did not end competition and conflict, neither in Europe nor in Asia. It just shifted the problems around.

In short, there is no way of completely mitigating conflict. But there are ways to keep them under the level of open inter-state violence. This must be the goal for Taiwan, to maintain the conflict with the mainland below the threshold of warfare. A ‘solution’ to the cross-strait conflict, in this sense, is a new modus vivendi for the next 30 or 50 years until new generations will have to renegotiate the terms again.

A new conceptual space for the status quo

What is needed is the conceptual space for a nonviolent continuation of the ongoing conflict. That is, one does not need to ‘solve’ the Taiwan question, the status quo just needs to be maintained. Interestingly, this is something very much in line with the preference of the Taiwanese populace. Despite the strong feeling of a Taiwanese identity, 85% of Taiwanese still prefer maintaining the status quo with China over any political risk like a declaration of independence or reunification.³⁴

One must not forget that the status quo is working, it is producing welfare and prosperous societies on both sides of the strait. Bombs are not falling on Taipei, houses are not burning, and soldiers are not dying on the front. The status quo is peaceful. ROC citizens can even travel visa-free to more countries than PRC citizens. The status quo is a working arrangement. In the light of the previous discussion, the only question is how to preserve it? What that is needed is a new dress for the same old conflict to make sure it does not escalate into war.

The old consensus was a workable political tool for two reasons. On the one hand, its ambiguity made sure both sides were able to read different meanings into it. On the other hand, its focus on the smallest common denominator (being China) allowed both sides to accept a point of narrative convergence. The question today is what else could function as a point of convergence that both sides might be willing to say ‘yes’ to, even if it is for different reasons?

A new point of convergence

A potential way forward might be trying to explore several new concepts to replace the consensus on different levels. First on the level of Inter-ROC-PRC politics and second on the military/geostrategic level. If the concepts complement what is already a political reality (the de facto status quo) while still providing the perspective to all sides that desired changes could be channeled through them (even if those desires are opposing viewpoints) then they might find acceptance on all sides. This is important. A new ‘compromise by disagreement’ must take into account the opposing goals of both sides.³⁵ The old consensus respected the opposing goals of the old conflict—that the ROC and the PRC both claimed to be ‘China’—and unified them under the idea that there is only one ‘China’. In the same sense a new compromise can only emerge through concepts that respect the new opposing goals—in this case, the independence VS reunification dichotomy—and create a space for both to exist under the same framework despite being opposites. The new concepts must open the perspective of reunification for the PRC to want to agree to them while, simultaneously, they must maintain the status quo with the de facto independence in order for the Taiwanese populace to say ‘yes’ to them. It would mean finding new smallest common denominators and then agreeing to disagree on the details—creating an intentional misunderstanding, so to speak. The following is a highly speculative discussion about two potential concepts to achieve the above.

Concerning a new smallest common denominator Lu Hsiu-lien, the former Vice-President of the ROC (200–2008), has proposed replacing the ‘China’ part of the consensus with a more abstract ‘Chineseness’ concept like ‘Chung-hwa’ (中華), which refers to ‘Chinese’, not on a national or even ethnic level, but a much larger cultural level. Naturally, identity is a diverse and complicated affair that cannot be discussed appropriately here.³⁶ However, that culturally a large majority of people living in Taiwan are part of the Chung-Hwa world is a little disputed issue. It is such a basic element that it borders triviality to even point it out. Just as Chinese Singaporeans, Chinese Malaysians, Chinese Filipinos, and the many million people around the world with Chinese roots can identify on a cultural level as connected to the Chung-Hwa community, so can and does a major part of the Taiwanese populace. The concept of Chung-Hwa does not belong to one single state but is a point of a common culture, shared through language(s), religion, values, ancestry, and even food. Therefore, while the idea of ‘being’ China or ‘belonging to’ China might not work anymore for most people in Taiwan, the idea of belonging to the Chung-Hwa community is not an issue. Hence the idea of people like Lu and several scholars to propose some form of ‘Chung-hwa Commonwealth,’ a ‘Chung-hwa Federation,’ or other kinds of the larger entity of which Taiwan could be politically part of, that would allow for a common Chinese framework not with the ROC dissolved or subjugated to the PRC but side by side with the ROC and PRC in cohabitation of a larger voluntary Union.³⁷

This route should be explored further, even if it will never come true the way any politician or group imagines it. For the sake of working toward a new consensus, refocusing the discussion away from ‘China’ toward ‘Chung-hwa’ might at least provide for a starting point. It might also be a possibility to increase Taiwanese agency in the brewing conflict. One problem Taiwan consistently faces is that the ROC cannot take international initiatives in multilateral fora—those are usually vetoed or otherwise blocked by the PRC—and it has only limited ways of diplomatically interacting with the PRC, as Beijing will simply not agree to ROC initiatives it sees as empowering Taipei or recognizing it as a sovereign equal. Politicizing the Chung-Hwa concept outrightly in public speeches, official documents, and through diplomatic channels would be a way for the ROC to signal a new idea in Cross-Strait relations without the needing to wait for Chinese acceptance or US support.

The Chung-Hwa concept could be strategically politicized if it was connected with the idea of a political status. For instance, if the ROC leadership declared that Taiwan was a ‘Multi-ethnic Island, belonging to the Chung-Hwa world,’ the PRC could hardly reject that statement. It might not be enough for Beijing, but it is difficult to imagine it would say ‘no, you are not’. The answer would more likely be either silence or ‘yes you are, and Taiwan is part of China’. Although that might look like a rejection, it would be one small step forward in terms of conflict de-escalation: achieving a yes from Beijing—or avoiding a ‘no’— while simultaneously not creating a domestic backlash in terms of the Taiwanese people’s self-conceptualization. Even if both sides would not think that the ‘Chung-hwa’ focus is worth much attention, its unspectacular nature might serve as a common point of integration for now.

The other arm of a proposal to the PRC could be neutrality—another concept Lu has been proposing for Taiwan. While the Chung-Hwa concept covers mainly the Cross-Strait aspect of Taiwan’s quagmire, neutrality might serve as a conceptual vessel to reframe the security discourse about the island and channel its foreign policy in a direction that deescalates the conflict between China and the US rather than fueling it. A potential Taiwanese neutrality has been explored in another publication.³⁸ Here only the central pillars of such an arrangement shall be described here.

Neutrality for Taiwan would mainly mean creating a foreign policy based on the pillars of neutrality law as enshrined in the Hague Conventions and the generally accepted practices of neutral states in international law. Neutrality does not mean Taiwan would have to disarm. Neutrality is not Pacifism. Neutral states always have maintained relatively large armies for the purpose of self-defense. The ROC would keep maintaining its own armed forces and would import weapon systems in any quantity from wherever it wanted. It would be a so-called armed neutrality. At the same time, neutrality would not mean Taiwan declared itself independent. Neutrality is not sovereignty. There are many examples in history when through international agreements non-sovereign islands, waterways, or even infrastructure were neutralized. The most important example are the Åland islands, which are legally a part of Finland but with a Swedish-speaking population, autonomy, and neutrality.³⁹ The islands were neutralized in the 1920s as a compromise between Finland and Sweden, meaning that even the Finnish army has no right to go there or sail its military ships in the vicinity of the islands. Although the islands were also demilitarized, that is not a prerequisite for a neutral status. The arrangement makes sure that this geostrategically important point between Sweden and Finland is not used by either side (or by Russia) to project power toward any other party. Thereby it solves the dilemma that whoever ‘owns’ the islands, becomes a military threat to the other parties. This arrangement has worked so well over the last 100 years that no one is aware the Åland island were ever a problem to international relations.

For Taiwan, a neutrality principle in its foreign policy would mean that the ROC makes clear it will continue buying weapons from the US, but it will never become an ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ for the US military. Taipei would rule out any direct security agreements, or other military escalatory acts with third states, including Japan, South Korea, or other potential partners. At the same time, it would also rule out any military cooperation with the PRC (which is anyhow unlikely). In this regard, Taiwanese foreign policy would have to strive for serving as a buffer between the US and the PRC, trying to take its own territory off the map of geostrategic planning. It would certainly be a step away from the United States as such an action would make US intervention for Taiwan in case of a PRC invasion less likely. For that reason, it is not impossible that the PRC might perceive a neutrality declaration from Taiwan as something in its interest—especially if the declaration cited the Åland Islands as a model (not Switzerland or Austria), since that would make sure the PRC did not understand the declaration as moving on independence. On the contrary, neutrality according to the Åland model could again be in the interest of China as it would suggest an implicit (not explicit) move toward the PRC—all while preserving the economic ties to the United States. In other words,’Taiwanese neutrality’ would be a way to reframe the current status quo relationship under a new name and give that a distinctly Taiwanese interpretation. Neutrality is also an ambiguous enough concept for several parties to understand it in different ways and therefore use it as a basis for negotiation. The goal of this approach would be to re-channel the conflict between the ROC and the PRC from debating about reunification vs independence to debating what is and is not compatible with Taiwanese neutrality. While the ROC would naturally strive for as loose an interpretation as possible, the PRC would try to make it restrictive concerning collaboration with the US. If such was the development, it might be possible to change the current conflict trajectory from one that points toward war to one that points toward ongoing conflict—albeit below the threshold of open violence. In any case, a deescalatory approach along the above lines would take many years and necessitate the involvement of all stakeholders in the region. In Lu’s own words: ‘It is a road map forward looking for the betterment of future Pacific to balance the struggle or competition of China and America’.⁴⁰

Conclusion

It is important to imagine alternatives to war to build structures that can manage the ongoing conflict between Taipei and Beijing below the level of warfare. The 1992 Consensus was a fantastic compromise, built on a useful fiction, but its days are numbered as the root of the conflict has shifted from being about the question ‘who is China’ to ‘can Taiwan be independent’? A new compromise is needed on a rhetorical level to serve as a point of integration and allow for the political management of the conflict. While we cannot expect that a new consensus can solve the conflict, a workable solution would have to be able to simply maintain the peaceful status quo. If the two proposals in the previous section are combined, what we get is the idea of a ‘Neutral Chung-hwa Island Taiwan’. The hope would be that this new concept was ambiguous enough to allow for various interpretations while also strong enough to refocus the conflict away from a direct military confrontation.