Taiwan and Chinese security

For a long time, Taiwan has been at the pinnacle of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s security concerns and objectives. Today, the Beijing authorities still claim that Taiwan is a “sacred part of the PRC” and should in the future be reunified with the rest of the motherland. However, since 1979, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership has privileged “peaceful reunification” over “armed liberation.” And, while refusing to formally renounce to the use of force, since the mid-2000s, it has quietly agreed to respect the status quo in the Strait, as long as Taiwan endorses the “one China” fiction and does not declare formal independence. The Kuomintang (KMT)’s return to power in Taiwan in 2008 has convinced the CCP to consolidate this strategy. As a result, while in the PRC’s eyes reunification with Taiwan remains an important hard and soft security objective, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has modified its order of priorities, putting more emphasis on such targets as the United States, Taiwan’s unique security guarantor, particularly its forward military deployment in the Western Pacific and bases in Japan, and concentrating its attention on new objectives in the East and the South China Seas and beyond. The PRC is still aiming at imposing on Taiwan a military balance in the Strait that will gradually make the island more vulnerable. It also continues to put pressure on the US to stop or at least reduce its arms sales to Taiwan. But today Beijing thinks that its long-term security objective regarding Taiwan—moving the island step by step towards eventual unification by narrowing its options—can be achieved with the help of a much wider range of tools, not only military but also political, diplomatic, economic and cultural.