Is Beijing’s Long Game on Taiwan About to End? Peaceful Unification, Brinkmanship, and Military Takeover

Abstract

ABSTRACT Beijing has played a long game on Taiwan for more than seventy years. Starting with Mao Zedong’s aborted aspiration of military liberation in 1949, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao focused on peaceful unification although they never renounced the use of force. With the rhetoric of striving for peaceful unification, Xi Jinping has relied more on brinkmanship to press Taiwan to accept his hardened terms of unification. Xi has made clear that the Taiwan question is China’s core national interest and essentially non-negotiable, important enough to go to war if pushed. China as a ‘divided nation’ cannot sit well with Xi’s China Dream, the catch-all term for Xi’s ambition for great-power status. Riding on the nationalist currents he whipped up, Xi will end the long game according to his timetable, or sooner if the brinkmanship fails and the red lines crossed, whether China is ready or not.