Domestic Politics of Underreaction: Explaining KMT’s 92 Consensus Vacillation

• In Event: Legislative Behavior and Intraparty Dynamics in Taiwan

Abstract

In spite of the increasing threats coming from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) towards Taiwan and the heightened competitions between Washington and Beijing, why is Taiwan’s primary opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), continuing to dither on its cross-strait policy approach? While suffering consecutively from two national electoral losses in 2016 and 2020 to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the KMT has not been able to settle on a strategically sound posture to cope with the PRC’s unabated coercive campaigns to pressure and threaten the security of the self-governed democracy, instead opting to grapple with a near-moribund formula known as the “1992 consensus” to maintain ties with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The KMT’s huge electoral win in the 2022 local (mayoral) race boosted the party’s confidence somewhat, but, as the 2018 contests demonstrated, municipal elections are less about national security/cross-strait issues than domestic affairs hence the KMT’s prospect to recover Taiwan’s presidency in 2024 is far from ensured. Yet, if the KMT returns to power in 2024, its inability to effectively address Taiwan’s public anxieties/identity preferences for a free and democratic Taiwan and the deepening U.S.-PRC struggles may become a strategic liability for Washington, the island’s strongest security backer. Since 2016, though the KMT has strived to reassess and redefine its framing of the “1992 consensus,” it has failed to escape its “one-China” precept that has become so sensitive and, even tricky, given China’s leader Xi Jinping has unequivocally equated in 2019 the term with the PRC (as well as the “one country, two systems”), leaving no room for the Republic of China (ROC) as justified by the KMT. Over the past seven years, the KMT has been led by four chairpersons: Hung Hsiu-chu (2016-17); Wu Dun-yih (2017-20), Johnny Chiang (2020-21), and Eric Chu (2021-present), and each had formulated and articulated their stances and interpretations regarding the “1992 consensus.” None, however, has been truly satisfying to Taiwan’s voters, Washington, and Beijing. This paper sets out to analyze their stances on the “1992 consensus” and attempts to illustrate how a domestic security imaginary (to use Jutta Weldes’ concept from 1999) that is deeply rooted in the history, culture, and identity of the KMT has prevented the party from adopting a rational balance of power mechanism in dealing with an imminent national security challenge. In line with Randall Schweller’s Unanswered Threats (2004), this work traces and explains how domestic unit-level determinants can undermine the realist’s balance of power logic and generate an unpredictable U.S.-Taiwan alliance in confronting a clear and present external adversary. The KMT’s significant position as Taiwan’s major opposition party (and even potentially the ruling party come 2024) makes this analysis worthy to be explored.

Author

• Dean Chen, Ramapo College of New Jersey