Blowback, Second Edition: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire

Hong Kong is indeed no longer at issue. It began its colonial existence in the nineteenth century as the booty of the English opium cartel after a successful war fought to prevent China from cutting off trade in the substance. On June 30, 1997, it was returned to China by the British government in an elaborate, ceremonial, and nondisruptive manner. Consistent with their penchant for publishing only bad news about China, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Time, and Newsweek all predicted that the reversion of Hong Kong would go badly and questioned whether Beijing could administer the territory successfully as the capitalist financial hub it had long been. And yet nothing out of the ordinary has happened. The government of Hong Kong is today similar to the colonial one under British rule from 1841 to 1989. Only after the Tiananmen repression, with reversion in sight, did Hong Kong’s British rulers introduce elements of democracy to the colony. China has retained some of these late democratic reforms but rescinded others. Much was at stake for the Chinese government in a peaceful and successful reversion. Hong Kong was certainly seen as a model for the future incorporation of Taiwan into the Chinese nation and evidence to the Taiwanese that the process, despite disparities between the two societies, need not be painful or punitive.

Taiwan is, in fact, similar to Hong Kong in one respect: the cultural gap between citizens of the mainland and of either Hong Kong or Taiwan is now far greater than it was fifty years ago, when the Communists came to power in Beijing. Taiwan was settled by immigrants from Fujian province in the seventeenth century and then became a Japanese colony from 1895 to 1945. For China, the “liberation” of Taiwan remains a fundamental goal, a final task left over from the revolution that Mao led in the 1930s and 1940s against Nationalist Party leader Chiang Kai-shek, who retreated to Taiwan with what was left of his defeated forces at the end of a bitter war.

The Nationalist exiles who evacuated to Taiwan in 1949 have slowly died off or been assimilated into the island’s preexisting Chinese population. Today, the Nationalist Party (the Kuomintang) is led by a native Taiwanese, who must compete for power against other Taiwanese not hobbled by old Nationalist affiliations. The hostility that existed after World War II between mainland exiles and long-resident Taiwanese has been slowly ameliorating, not only due to the deaths of first-generation exiles but also to intermarriage, the growing wealth of both groups, and a gradual political democratization that has in its own way been a form of decolonization. The emergence of Taiwanese-led political parties has signaled the end of a mainlander monopoly over politics. One result of this is that today few Taiwanese of any stripe particularly want to “rejoin” the mainland. Yet they do not dare declare their independence, fearing that this would force the hand of the mainland government. Serious political instability on the mainland, however, might prompt a unilateral declaration of independence, which would probably draw China and the United States into a war that neither wants and neither could win.

In the spring of 1995, the U.S. government permitted a visit by the president of the Republic of China on Taiwan, Lee Teng-hui, a native Taiwanese, even though the United States had broken diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1978, when it recognized the People’s Republic. He was ostensibly to attend an alumni gathering at Cornell, his alma mater. Although this was billed as a private visit, the House of Representatives had voted 396-0 and the Senate 97-1 in resolutions calling on President Bill Clinton to admit Lee. To add insult to injury, Chinese officials first heard the news on CNN rather than through diplomatic channels. They were outraged and said so, pointing out that China has a legal claim to Taiwan older than the United States itself and accusing Congress and the president of meddling in their “internal affairs.”

Lurking here, as elsewhere, is a classic American error: the superpower’s mistaken belief that its role is pivotal in any context. Taiwan has been actively complicating the mainland’s decision making in ways far more effective than bluster from Washington. Taiwan is, for example, by far the largest investor in Vietnam and has risked more than $15 billion on Southeast Asian projects. Vietnam, a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), has the longest and best record when it comes to countering Chinese pressures on its southern neighbors. The Taiwanese, in other words, have done their best to ensure that any Chinese attack on the island would involve the region as a whole, including ASEAN, which is slowly emerging as one of three major poles, along with Japan and China, in East Asia’s new balance of power.