Både Kina og Taiwan har satt grenser som hvis de blir overskredet av motparten vil utløse krig. Problemet er at de er åpne for fortolkning. Det kan utløse en krig, uten at partene ville det.

Problemet for Kina er at Taiwan har en president som tester Kinas tålegrense. Ingen våget å stille spørsmål om Kina kan ha stått bak attentatet på presidenten og visepresidenten. Taiwaneserne svarte nei på spørsmålet om landet skulle øke forsvarsbevilgningene, men vil heller ikke bli innlemmet i et Kina som er autoritært. Sporene fra Hongkong skremmer.

He (Chen Shui-bian) lost a referendum asking for approval of increased military spending to counter the growing number of Chinese missiles aimed at Taiwan, which he controversially organised for the same day as the presidential vote. The referendum was a classic example of subtext over substance. Nobody thought it a real question about technical military matters. Chen seems to have offered it as meaning: «Shall we put the bully on the spot?» The Chinese insisted it meant: «Shall we go for independence?» However, according to Steve Tsang, the director of the Taiwan Studies Programme at St Antony’s College, Oxford, the average Taiwanese interpreted it as meaning: «Do I have your agreement to poke China in the eye?» – and rejected it.

That rejection should give Chen pause, but he is nevertheless committed to pursuing constitutional change in his second term, and constitutional change is a red rag to the Chinese bull.

The problem of Taiwan’s future arises above all because China is trapped in a dilemma that it has created for itself. A China that could at least hint that the Taiwanese had the right to choose independence would be a China that a majority of Taiwanese might eventually choose to join, because such a position would imply a non-coercive style and a readiness to contemplate real autonomy and devolution. But a China that flies into a rage at the use of phrases even hinting at such a possibility is exactly the China that even those Taiwanese who believe in unification do not wish to join, because this is the China that interferes and meddles in the affairs of those to whom it has supposedly given autonomy or special status.

The crisis China helped to create in Hong Kong by choosing a chief executive whose only real qualification was that he would be responsive to Beijing’s wishes worsened in the months leading up to the Taiwan presidential poll, with pro-Beijing parties doing badly in the autumn elections in the territory. Oblivious of any effect on Taiwanese attitudes, the Chinese reaction was a bullying campaign, distinguishing between those who are and those who are not «patriotic» in Hong Kong, aimed at frightening critics and protesters into silence and at heading off demands that commitments to greater democracy be honoured.

The election victory that makes China so nervous

The possibility of war still casts a shadow over the Taiwan Strait Martin Woollacott