On Thursday October 31st, 2024, CSCC had the pleasure of welcoming Professor Jie Dalei from Peking University to discuss the current state of the One China Policy. In this presentation, Professor Jie outlines the differences in perception on this issue and how the U.S. and China currently see the future of the One China Policy.
This topic is, of course, one of the most highly contentious issues within the U.S.-China relationship. From the CCP’s perspective, this is not an international issue, it is a domestic one, thus, the U.S., and any other country for that matter, should have no say on how it’s resolved. Xi Jinping himself has stated that the Taiwan question is the first red line that must not be crossed in the U.S.-China relationship. The U.S. however sees the Taiwan issue as an international issue which is of great importance to the western world’s strategic and economic goals.
Despite these disagreements, Jie notes that this relationship has historically been managed relatively well. He states, however, that China believes in recent years the U.S. is abandoning the One China Policy and that Taiwan is attempting to move towards incremental independence. U.S. leadership, on the other hand, believes that Chinese leadership is preparing for non-peaceful means of communication.
Jie structures his understanding of this into three different perception issues. The first perception issue is what Jie describes as a thick versus thin perception of the One China Policy. Jie uses a two-by-two diagram to display how there’s a political and security dimension to the operational and declaratory policies deployed in the context of the One China Policy. Jie points out that the U.S. is perceived as using a thin version of the One China Policy. Operationally, the U.S. has military cooperation with Taiwan and continues to sell arms to Taiwan. Jie notes that the U.S.’s thin perception of the One China Policy is one of the major points of difference with China’s thick perception of the policy.
The second perception issue comes within the political changes in Taiwan. Jie mentions that Chinese leadership believes cross-strait relations have deteriorated since Tsai-Ingwen was elected president of Taiwan in 2016. CCP leaders believe that Tsai did not endorse the 1992 consensus. From the U.S. point of view, Tsai was just acting within the political constraints of her own party. Jie notes that the third perception issue can largely be seen in the bilateral reactions to former speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in 2022. Chinese leadership doesn’t see this as an isolated event, rather as part of a series actions by U.S. leadership to challenge the status quo. Jie believes that Chinese leadership does not understand that stopping Pelosi from visiting Taiwan was not something President Biden wanted to spend a lot of energy on.
Professor Jie sees these perceptions as evidence that fundamentally, the U.S. and China have increasingly divergent interests over Taiwan. Jie notes that from 2017/2018 onwards, the U.S. has begun to view more as a strategic asset to use against China. Contrarily, the U.S. sees China as getting impatient. Despite this, Jie believes that China has no timetable for reunification. While Jie’s speech ends on an optimistic note of Chinese leadership wanting peaceful reunification, it’s evident that U.S. leadership sees this as increasingly unlikely. With the transfer of power coming in the coming months, it will be interesting to see what a second Trump presidency will mean for the One China Policy. However, President Trump’s notably adversarial view on China and promise of increased tariffs have the possibility of further complicating this relationship.