Wall Street Journal: “Taiwan Voters Snub Beijing for a Third Time, Leaving China With Few Good Options” (January 14, 2024).
Leaving Taiwan alone and discontinuing the obnoxious threats is an option. An excellent one. That the CCP won’t choose to do it is no evidence to the contrary.
For eight years, China has raged against Taiwan’s ruling party, accusing it of pursuing a separatist agenda that must be confronted with economic muscle and shows of military might.
On Saturday, Taiwanese voters handed the Democratic Progressive Party another ringing victory, all but ensuring that those tensions will persist—or even intensify—over the next four years, and cementing the island’s status as a flashpoint between Washington and Beijing.
And what is the nature of the alternative scenario that might have been, exactly? China wants to absorb Taiwan. This would mean subjecting the inhabitants of Taiwan to the despotism that governs the mainland. A non-DPP administration either would or would not have cooperated with this ambition for the sake of appeasing China.
Wall Street Journal reporter Chun Han Wong suggests that “the result confirms that closer ties—or even a political union—with China remains unpalatable for the Taiwanese public writ large.” If this is so, it means that the Taiwanese weren’t just kidding around the last seventy years.
From Beijing’s perspective, “letting Taiwan go is not really an option,” said [Dominic] Yang, the historian. “It has to do with historical memory, it has to do with the party’s legitimacy.”
Beijing therefore will maintain pressure on Taipei, despite the risk of backlash, for the alternative may be much worse. China believes that, Yang said, if it doesn’t threaten the use of force, “that’s it—Taiwan independence the next day.”
The horror. Taiwan’s already existing independence would continue the next day. This is the kind of thing that China has to put up with.
