The Polarization of Cross-Strait Relations since 2016: the Status Quo at Stake

• In Event: Reunderstanding Cross-Strait Relations: The Status Quo? The One-China Policy?

Abstract

Cross-strait relations have undergone crucial transformations since 2016, largely due to important changes from China, Taiwan, and the U.S. at the same time. While for many observers the changes seem to mark nothing more than business as usual—Taiwan’s another regime turnover typical of all democracies, China’s traditional tactic of both carrots and sticks toward Taiwan, and both competition and cooperation defining the nature of U.S.-China relations—they actually exhibit new character and heightened magnitude not found before. As such, they have interacted with one another in a way that brings about gradual “polarization”—drift toward actors’ increasingly rigid, assertive, and extreme standpoints—of cross-strait relations since 2016.
This paper argues that the polarization has been characterized by Beijing’s mounting coercive pressures on Taiwan, either as a result of its own policy evolution or of the need for responding to Taipei’s shifting stance. Because of the exacerbated aggressiveness and sharply rising intensity of the coercive moves, as well as the structural dynamics from the factors that propel the coercions, it is now more relevant than any time in the past to ponder to what degree cross-strait status quo will remain viable in the future. In particular, in the wake of Xi Jinping's compulsion in January 2019 for reunification and the predictably continuing U.S. attempt to forestall China's rise, cross-strait peace and stability is facing vast uncertainties down the road. This paper will dissect the key factors now impinging on the status quo, and lay out main scenarios as a result of various combinations of such factors.

Author

• S. Philip Hsu, National Taiwan University