The United States and China in Power Transition - Strategic Studies ...

to overstep on each other’s interests and overreact to
each other’s actions, forcing the two nations to a premature
or unwanted confrontation.
Taiwan: Why China Does Not Let It Go?
This is probably the most frequently-asked and
most baffling question for Americans about the Taiwan
issue. From the American perspective, China is
big enough territory-wise and surely does not need
the addition of Taiwan to become a great power.
Moreover, Taiwan has had its de facto independence
from China for well over half a century; there seems no
compelling reason why it must be part of China. Since
Taiwan has a well-developed economy and enjoys a
higher level of per capita income than that in China,
how much better will unification be for Taiwan? Taiwan
is already a democracy. Why would the Taiwan
people want to live under a repressive authoritarian
rule from the other side of the Taiwan Strait? For
these reasons and more, few Americans can understand
why China is so obsessed with the unification of
Taiwan. However, to many mainland Chinese, these
questions and reasoning are insulting. The issue is not
how Taiwan benefits from the unification, but what
China wants from this undertaking. Chinese have no
hesitation to tell Americans that they are ignorant of
China’s history, China’s need for national unity, the
complicated nature of the cross-Taiwan Strait relations,
and U.S. involvement in this almost intractable
issue.
The Chinese take the Taiwan issue as part of China’s
contemporary history of humiliation from foreign
powers. From the First Opium War of 1840 to the
founding of the PRC in 1949, foreign powers launched
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