There is much ambiguity and considerable menace in the war of words building up over recent weeks between China and Taiwan. On March 23rd Taiwan is to have its first presidential elections on a universal franchise. As they approach, Chinese leaders have been warning against any move towards independence, backed up by the threat of military exercises after the result is announced. It is all in keeping with a more pronounced nationalist tone in China, focused on a much shorter time span for Chinese unification than has been hitherto expressed.
It is important to put the increased tension in context. Both China and Taiwan are in the middle of crucial transitions of political leaderships and economic development, which exacerbate relations that would in any case be fraught or uncertain. The long transition beyond Deng Xiaoping's rule in China has been extended by his own longevity, with the economic changes he inaugurated 15 years ago now coming to maturity. Their very success has alarmed the Communist Party leadership into the evident belief that central political and ideological controls need to be reasserted. Next year's handover of authority over Hong Kong from Britain to China is a particularly symbolic expression of Chinese sovereignty, highlighting the unification agenda that has been increasingly aimed at Taiwan.
The economic and political transition there has also reached a critical stage. Taiwan is now the 12th largest exporting state in the world and holds the second largest foreign reserves. Its 21 million people have seen their standards of living and levels of development grow by leaps and bounds in the last two decades. Investment in Asia, especially in China itself has become a central part of the region's new economic realities. It is not at all surprising that such development should occasion a political response, just as it has done in the other Asian tiger economies. It can be seen in the creation of political parties, the emergence of free parliamentary politics and now in these presidential elections.
But Taiwan is in a limbo of political identity that quite distinguishes it from otherwise similar states. For many years after the revolution in 1949 it laid claim to be the government of China as a whole. Since US recognition of the People's Republic of China in 1979, Taiwan's status has been reduced, to the point where it is now quite incommensurate with its economic successes. These presidential elections symbolise a political maturing, which requires a new international status.