The almost permanent presence of the Chinese air force and navy in Taiwan’s air defence identification zone, regular air and naval force crossings of the median line that separates the Taiwan Strait into two tacit zones of control, large-scale military exercises at short intervals: since 2019, Chinese military pressure against Taiwan has reached proportions unseen since Beijing abandoned its policy of « liberation by force » in 1979 in favour of a policy of « reunification ».
The year 2024 has just begun with the presidential and legislative elections in Taiwan. It will end with the US presidential election in November. A new four-year cycle begins in the Taiwan Strait. Despite Chinese military pressure increasing to unprecedented proportions from 2019 onwards, Beijing has so far preferred to erode the status quo.
However, 2024 will be a year in which China recalibrates its policy towards Taiwan, taking into account the outcome of these two elections.
Political situation in Taiwan
William Lai of the Democratic Progressive Party (PDP) was elected President with 40.05% of the vote on 13 January 2024. However, the party lost its parliamentary majority. This development heralds four years of confrontation between the executive and legislative branches.
The new President, who will remain Vice-President until 20 May 2024, is resolutely in line with the policy pursued by President Tsai Ing-wen, according to which the Republic of China in Taiwan is already a sovereign state, which therefore has no need to formally declare its independence. Although the party defends and promotes a distinct Taiwanese national identity, it has become a party for defending the status quo. He has campaigned on the theme of defending Taiwan’s democratic system and open society against incorporation into the authoritarian regime of the PRC.
Although he now has the reins of power but a lack of a parliamentary majority, President Lai will have to face up to intensifying Chinese pressure on Taiwan. This pressure for unification is a hallmark of Xi Jinping’s Taiwan policy – before him, the focus was on dissuading Taiwan’s independence movement. In Taiwan, this approach is understood as a « new normal » (新常态), gradually eroding the status quo between the two shores. It is still early to say whether the lack of a legislative majority will be an aggravating or limiting factor in the pressure. It seems more likely, however, that the relative weakness of the executive without a legislative majority will be seen in Beijing as an opportunity to be exploited, especially as the pressure is more likely to accentuate internal divisions in Taiwan than to create a sacred union.
Beijing perceives him as a pro-independence ideologue, due to comments he made in 2017, describing himself as a « pragmatic worker in the service of Taiwanese independence ». His insistence, classic for the PDP, on the need to resume dialogue with the PRC in a way that is respectful of Taiwan’s sovereign dignity, is interpreted as a pro-independence tendency, aimed at obtaining tacit recognition of Taiwan’s sovereignty from China.
From Beijing’s point of view, the PDP’s pro-independence stance is not limited to the sovereignty issue – it also includes policies aimed at cutting the link with Chinese society « dichinese » Taiwanese society, which China sees as part of a long-term national construction project. As a condition for resuming dialogue, Beijing demands recognition of the « 1992 consensus ». This relate to a rhetorical formula invented in the 2000s by the Kuomintang, with the aim at the time of circumventing China’s precondition of recognising the « one China principle » in order to build functional channels of communication with Taiwan.
From Beijing’s point of view, this new round could offer the PDP the opportunity to advance its identity agenda, under cover of political declarations to maintain the status quo, increasing the future costs of an attempt to absorb Taiwan into the PRC system. These four years would continue to fuel the suspicion in Beijing that Taiwan is progressing towards definitive separation from China, with the support of the United States and Japan and, in a much more tacit and cautious way, the industrialised democracies, while waiting for the right moment for China to weaken.However, the key determinant of China’s Taiwan policy, in the absence of a declaration of independence in Taipei, will be US policy towards the Strait.
American policy
Under Barack Obama, the previous Democratic administration responded very timidly to Chinese advances in the South and East China Seas between 2008 and 2016. In the eyes of the countries in the region, the lack of American firmness facilitated China’s seizure of Scarborough Reef in the Philippines.
That time is now past. Since 2020, the Biden administration has multiplied the signals aimed at giving credibility to the US posture of deterrence – President Biden himself has declared three times that the United States would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack. This was followed by a cycle of intense mutual mistrust over Taiwan with the Trump administration. This peaked in October 2020 and January 2021, in the context of the US presidential campaign and Donald Trump’s subsequent challenge to the results. Unprecedentedly, China then activated its military hotline with the Chief of Staff of the US armed forces, General Mark Milley, to ensure that the US military posture around Taiwan did not herald the provocation of an incident with China, the aim of which would have been to facilitate the re-election of the incumbent president.
The tactical pause from September 2023 onwards in Chinese diplomacy towards the United States, which led to the Xi-Biden meeting in San Francisco in November 2023, appears to be an attempt to stabilise Sino-American relations in the context of the Taiwanese elections and the Chinese economic slowdown, in order to gain time before the American elections at the end of the year.
At the same time, Taiwanese mistrust of US intentions is real – and inevitable. The fear of a strategic surprise that would see a Sino-American agreement seal Taiwan’s fate without consulting the island’s population resurfaces in Taiwan with each American presidential election. Since the political crisis of the occupation of the Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters in January 2021, it has been compounded by the fear of destabilising American democracy, which would offer China a window of opportunity to attempt a coup de force. This fear dates back to the Kissinger/Nixon/Carter episode which, between 1971 and 1979, led to the severing of diplomatic relations with Taipei and the end of the Mutual Defence Treaty between the United States and the Republic of China, in favour of recognition of the People’s Republic.
In conclusion, Sino-American relations and Washington’s Taiwan policy are the key factors that will determine the level of Chinese coercion vis-à-vis Taiwan. It is not just a question of the now well-known fact that China responds to any concrete progress in US-Taiwan political and defence cooperation with coercive action. A weakening of the US deterrent posture would also be seen in Beijing as an invitation to increase pressure on the Taiwanese government, and thus seek to fan the flames of division between the executive and legislative branches.
China is likely to intensify its coercive practices towards Taiwan over the next few years. China’s Taiwan policy, since the opening up of the two shores to the movement of people and to investment and trade links at the end of the 1980s, has always been based on a balance between coercion and seduction through the prism of opportunities for enrichment. China’s loss of economic attractiveness under Xi Jinping, and the diversification policies of many states and companies throughout Asia, have led almost naturally to China’s Taiwan policy being based more on coercion than attraction.