The economic and political sources of hostility: Taiwanese and Chinese relations, 1975 to 2004

This dissertation provides a new perspective in dealing with international relations research questions. Using the concept of hostility to represent the interstate power relationship, my research intended to create a broader understanding of foreign policy making formation.; Although international relations scholars have been engaging in various studies based upon insights offered by both international relations and comparative politics, most research on the relations between China and Taiwan focuses primarily on international factors rather than on domestic ones. In this research, I argue that this kind of approach may hinder our further understanding of China-Taiwan relations and their future development.; Based on the Samuelson-Stolper theorem, I argue that the opening of cross-Strait commerce since 1989 has resulted in economic restructure and wealth redistribution within Taiwan. Different economic factors, such as land, labor and capital, allied with anti- and pro-China political coalitions respectively. Since then, the persistent and bitter competition between these two domestic coalitions has significantly shaped Taiwan's China policy. When anti-China coalition got into power, Taiwan adopted more hostile attitude toward China.; In the first part of the empirical testing, I statistically examine the correlation between US' support to Taiwan and Taiwanese hostility toward China. The result shows a striking implication that Taiwan does not act in accordance with US strategic preferences in the region. The second part of test explores the correlation between domestic politics and Taiwan's China policy making. I adopted event dataset (Cross Strait Hostility Event Dataset) to present the dependent variable and thirty-nine political events from 1991 to 2004 such as national elections, legislature battles or factional competitions as the primary independent variable. The result shows that, even when highly salient security issues are at stake, the fluctuation of domestic politics within Taiwan is significantly correlated with the level of its hostility toward China. In other words, I argue that domestic politics, rather than international factors, plays the key role in shaping cross-Strait relations.