China's Foreign Strategy Change On The Taiwan Issue

The Taiwan issue, in nature, is China's internal affair left over from China's civil war. However, it becomes very complicated because of the U.S. interference. To solve the Taiwan problem, a variety of international factors have to be taken into consideration. And the changes of China's international strategy exert profound impacts on the evolution of the Taiwan issue.In the early period of the People's Republic of China, the Chinese government adopted a foreign strategy of "leaning to one side" to side with the socialist camp headed by the Soviet Union in order to ensure its national security. The Korean War made China face a difficult choice between safeguarding national security and accomplishing national reunification. However, it's hard to satisfy in both respects, so China decided to resist the U.S. aggression and aid the Koreans. Consequently, under the background of Cold War, the United States intensified its military interference in Taiwan, thus making the Taiwan issue a long-standing problem. After the Korean War, China's national security was basically achieved. Then it began to officially advocate the five principles of peaceful coexistence to open up a new prospect of diplomacy. In 1958, China bombarded the Islands of Quemoe attempting to reunify Taiwan through military forces; later, its Taiwan policy gradually turned to prevent secession conspiracies of "two Chinas" or "one China, one Taiwan", In this process, China started trying to solve the Taiwan problem through peaceful negotiations between the Taiwan Straits. In the 1970's, great changes took place in China's foreign strategy. China and the United States strategically got close one to another and carried out strategic cooperation to tackle the threat of the Soviet Union. To materialize the China-US strategic cooperation, both two countries made compromises on the Taiwan issue: the United States did "sever its diplomatic relations with Taiwan, abrogate the Mutual Defence Treaty with Taiwan and withdraw its troops and military personnel fromTaiwan"; and under the one-China principle, China actually gave tacit consent to the substantive "non-diplomatic" relations between the United States and the Taiwan authorities, In the 1980's, China took advantage of its relative favorable strategic position and successfully forced the United States to made compromises on its arms sales to Taiwan, but failed to compel the U.S. to exert influence on the Taiwan authorities to conduct peaceful negotiations across the Straits. After the Cold War, China for a time was in an unfavorable strategic position, the Taiwanese secessionist force was developing, and the relations between the U.S. and Taiwan authorities become more substantial. However, China further developed its policy to make foreign strategy serve the domestic economic construction and broke the blockade enforced by the western countries. At the same time, China showed to the whole world its determination to safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity on the Taiwan issue. The September 11 terrorist attack once again offered an opportunity for the U.S. and China to have strategic cooperation and a cooperation mechanism between the two sides has gradually taken shape to contain the Taiwanese secessionist force and maintain peace in the Taiwan Straits.