TNAG-1868-FCO40-2656-Relations-between-Hong-Kong-and-Taiwan-1989 — Page 14

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sensitivities have always been heightened not only by the desire to see China united, but because on Taiwan has sat an alternative government. This lies behind the PRC

refusal to renounce the use of force against Taiwan and its campaign against anything which acknowledges the Taiwan claim to the government of China. The importance which the Chinese attach to this dual task of both reuniting China and finally ending the civil war is shown by the creation earlier this year of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council headed by Ding Guangen, an alternate member of the Politburo and a close associate of Deng Xiaoping.

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The Chinese strategy for reunification with Taiwan is basically the same as that with Hong Kong and Macao: concept of "one country, two systems". However, the fact that Taiwan is not a colony with whose metropolitan power the Chinese can negotiate, but the seat of a free-standing government and an alternative claimant to rule all China has necessitated different tactics. For 30 years after 1949 the Chinese government kept up military threats against Taiwan, shelling the Nationalist held islands off the Fujian coast and making periodic threats of military invasion. However, since the early 1980s and the formulation of the "one country, two systems" concept, the Peking authorities have espoused reunification through peaceful means, retaining the threat of military force only in the event of a declaration of Taiwan's independence and one or two other circumstances (eg if Taiwan acquired a nuclear weapons capacity). The tactics by which the Chinese government has sought peaceful reunification have been basically two-fold: the continuation and increase of Taiwan's international isolation, and the promotion at the same time of contacts and exchanges across the Taiwan strait. In pursuing the latter, the Chinese frequently stress the mutual compatibility of the mainland's and Taiwan's economy. The idea underlying these tactics is to increase the commercial, economic and social independence of Taiwan and the mainland until the point when Taiwan's leadership, confronted by continued international isolation and the consequential inability to defend Taiwan's interests on the world stage, will be forced to accept that Taiwan has no choice but to come to some form of agreement with the mainland. It is implicit in most PRC thinking on the subject that this must be a long term task. For instance, Taiwan is expected to learn from and be reassured by the examples of Hong Kong and Macao once these have returned to the mainland. (This connection incidentally offers one of our best grounds for hope that Peking will avoid any too damaging foolishness over Hong Kong before 1997). But there is also one element of relative urgency, over which Peking policy-makers sometimes reveal their unease: ie that each succeeding generation in Taiwan is likely to have a weaker sense of community with the mainland than the last and to be more susceptible to the appeal of total independence.

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