What happens when a closed authoritarian regime whose ideology is based on foundations of “historical inevitability” sees history move in an unexpected direction? That is a question that officials in Beijing must be asking themselves as Taiwanese society — and by default its political scene — continues to reject any possibility of unification with China.
After nearly eight years of rapprochement between Taipei and Beijing, nearly two dozen cross-strait agreements and booming tourism, China is no closer to achieving “peaceful” unification today than it was a decade ago, when Beijing’s nemesis, president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), was in office.
My article, published today on Thinking Taiwan, continues here (photo by the author).
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