Splitism

Much of this issue is devoted to observations about China as well as the complex and often rocky U.S.-Chinese relationship 50 years after Mao's victory.

China has made extraordinary gains since it decided in 1978 to abandon its commitment to a hardline communist economic system. There is now a large middle class, for whom achieving a Western standard of living is no longer a fantastical dream. Nevertheless, China is still a police state, although a relatively benign one compared to, say, the China of the Cultural Revolution.

Economic freedom is greater today, but political freedom–at least by Western standards–is virtually nonexistent. One can go to a disco or a cyber cafe. But one is not free to criticize the government in any serious way. Witness the July crackdown on the Falun Gong, a large faith-healing sect with no political aspirations that Westerners can discern.

Mass arrests. Gang of Four-style denunciations. Re-education in Marxist principles. What decade is this? In the 1990s, China's government redoubled its efforts to join the Western world. Now it seems so fearful of an organization it can't control that it is willing to jeopardize everything.

Speaking of jeopardy, the president of Taiwan, Lee Tenghui, did his bit to poison cross-strait relations in July. In an interview with a German radio station, Lee characterized dealings with the mainland as a “special state-to-state relationship.” The noodles hit the fan. “Dangerous splitism,” cried Beijing.

Since 1972, when President Richard Nixon opened the door to establishing a normal relationship with Communist China, Taiwan and the United States have lived with certain diplomatic fictions, the chief of which says there is “one China but two systems.” The one-China policy has been a marvel. It has allowed China and Taiwan to go their own way with a minimum of friction for a very long time.

The only fly in the ointment was that Taiwan could not declare itself independent. That might lead to war. Lee didn't go that far in his July remarks. But he edged Taiwan a little closer to the independence side of the spectrum.

Last fall, I visited Shanghai and talked with professors, students, journalists, arms control experts, and even a few members of the People's Liberation Army. The Taiwan issue was endlessly touchy. Why does the United States continue to sell advanced weapons to Taiwan? Why does it encourage Taiwan's independence movement by selling arms? Why did the U.S. Congress pass the Taiwan Relations Act in 1979, which seems to say that the United States might go to war against China on Taiwan's behalf?

In turn, I spoke of Henry Luce, once one of the most powerful men in America, and of his devotion to Chiang Kaishek. I talked about the old China lobby and how it evolved into a Taiwan lobby so politically potent as to make Miami's anti-Castro politicos look like pikers. And I described how tricky and unpredictable domestic politics could be. Although my interlocutors remained confused by the schitzy relationship the United States has with Taiwan, they somehow seemed to have an abiding faith that the United States would come to its senses and take the lead in sorting out cross-strait tensions within the one-China framework. I agreed that would be a good thing.

But things change. The Chinese government has now outlawed an apparently harmless religious group and arrested thousands of its key members. That does not help the United States persuade Taiwan that eventual reunification with the mainland is a desirable and relatively painless outcome. Splitism cuts both ways.