1st Edition
The Taiwan Question in Xi Jinping’s Era Beijing’s Evolving Taiwan Policy and Taiwan’s Internal and External Dynamics
Taiwan is one of the flashpoints with the potential to spark a war in East Asia. With the rhetoric of striving for peaceful unification, Xi Jinping has made clear that the Taiwan question is China’s core national interest, making it essentially non-negotiable and important enough to go to war.
How has Beijing’s Taiwan policy evolved? What is the support for armed reunification among the Chinese people? And how have Taiwan's internal dynamics and external relations changed in response to Beijing’s evolving policy toward Taiwan? These are crucially important questions that this edited volume delves into and hopes to answer.
This book will appeal to students and scholars of Chinese foreign policy, Taiwan studies and cross-Strait relations, Political Science, International Relations as well as Asian politics more generally. The chapters in this book were originally published in the Journal of Contemporary China and are accompanied by a new Introduction.
Introduction: China’s Taiwan Policy Adjustments and the Driving Forces
Suisheng Zhao
Part I: Overview
1. Is Beijing’s Long Game on Taiwan About to End? Peaceful Unification, Brinkmanship, and Military Takeover
Suisheng Zhao
Part II: Chinese Support for Armed Unification in Xi Jinping’s New Era
2. Assessing Public Support for (Non-)Peaceful Unification with Taiwan: Evidence from a Nationwide Survey in China
Adam Y. Liu, Xiaojun Li
3. Urban Chinese Support for Armed Unification with Taiwan: Social Status, National Pride and Understanding of Taiwan
Dongtao Qi, Suixin Zhang, Shengqiao Lin
4. Selective Engagement: Mainland China’s Dual-Track Taiwan Policy
Xin Qiang
Part III: Taiwan’s Internal Dynamics and the Relations across the Strait
5. When Independence Meets Reality: Symbolic and Pragmatic Politics in Taiwan
Tse-min Lin, Chun-Ying Wu, Theodore Charm
6. Butter or Guns: Taiwan’s Economic Policy Toward China
John Fuh-sheng Hsieh, Yi-Tzu Lin
7. Changing Attitudes toward China in Taiwan and Hong Kong in the Xi Jinping Era
Chih-Jou Jay Chen, Victor Zheng
Part IV: Taiwan’s Evolving External Relations
8. What Shapes Taiwan-related Legislation in U.S. Congress?
Gang Lin, Wenxing Zhou, Weixu Wu
9. Korea-Taiwan “Unofficial” Relations after 30 Years (1992-2022): Reassessing Seoul’s “One China” Policy
Adam Liff and Chaewon Lee
10. The Vatican and Taiwan: An Anomalous Diplomatic Relationship
Peter Moody
Biography
Suisheng Zhao is Professor and Director of the Center for China-US Cooperation at Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver. He is the Founder and Editor of the Journal of Contemporary China and the author and editor of more than two dozen books and hundreds of academic articles.
