War and Peace-- Recent Military and Diplomatic Developments in the Taiwan Strait

(Eric Lin)

After a three-year interruption in negotiations, this October, Koo Chen-fu, head of the ROC's Straits Exchange Foundation, and Wang Daohan, head of the PRC's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, will have their second meeting, this time in Shanghai. This is undoubtedly a new opportunity for high-level discussions between the two sides. But even amidst the sounds of negotiations, in diplomatic and military affairs the PRC is singing quite another tune.

On the diplomatic front, despite repeated US assurances that its policy toward Taiwan has not changed, when Bill Clinton visited China in the June, under PRC pressure, for the first time he publicly enunciated the US policy of "three noes" toward Taiwan: no support for Taiwan independence, no support for "one China and one Taiwan" or "two Chinas," and no support for Taiwan entry into international organizations based on statehood.

In military affairs, after the PRC unilaterally broke off negotiations in 1995, they initiated a series of missile tests in the Taiwan Strait. According to the ROC Ministry of Defense, in recent years the PRC has continually seen Taiwan's new generation of military capabilities as its primary hypothetical enemy and undertaken numerous military exercises based on this premise. In addition, the national defense report just issued by the PRC emphasized repeatedly that the possibility of using armed force against Taiwan could not be excluded.

Caught between peace and conflict, what precisely is the situation Taiwan finds itself in? On the eve of the resumption of negotiations between the two sides, Sinorama has prepared an in-depth report on new developments in political and military affairs.