Media coverage of crisis lacked historical context

Global media coverage of Taiwan Strait crisis lacked historical context

Jerome Keating

This past October, Xi Jinping set out to claim an unprecedented third term as president of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Then, in November, the United States held its midterm elections, and Taiwan held its nine-inone elections. In Taiwan, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) came away with the lion’s share of the mayoral seats, and an expected American “red wave” failed to materialize.

As journalistic discussion shifted focus to these and other news events, the news cycle turned—as news cycles do—and commentators ceased their breathless coverage of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s August visit to Taiwan, and of the Chinese missile exercises that were held in a fit of Beijing pique in reaction to it (see Figure 1 on page 51). At the time, pundits had dubbed it the Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis, which raises the question: How does one define a Taiwan Strait crisis?

According to the record, there have been four Taiwan Strait crises. Most people living in Taiwan today are of an age to remember perhaps the last two, namely the one in 1995–1996 when the country was electing its first president by popular vote, and most recently the August 2-3, 2022, Pelosi visit.

Was either a true crisis? The feeling among the citizenry was not one of fear. True, the PRC used both occasions to flex its military muscle, posture, and shoot missiles over or around the island, but was either a crisis? This needs a closer look.

Since Pelosi’s visit, Xi Jinping got his third term, and the aforementioned elections in Taiwan and the United States began to dominate the headlines. In short, enough water had passed under the bridge in such a short time that one might legitimately ask why Speaker Pelosi’s visit commanded so much attention. At the time, there was certainly no shortage of ink spilled by pundits, with a majority panning the timing and the advisedness of her visit, as well as criticizing the speaker herself.

Media coverage

Here are a few samples. On August 3, Stephen McDonell, BBC’s China correspondent (still based in Beijing), aptly stated that Pelosi had put the ball firmly in Xi Jinping’s court, pointing out that war “would be disastrous and smart minds in the Chinese capital know it.”

On August 16, Craig Singleton, a senior China fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, lambasted the speaker, calling her visit an “ill-timed gambit” that had backfired. Writing in Foreign Policy, Singleton opined that the visit’s “destabilizing effect was entirely predictable and completely preventable.”

On August 22, Christopher Twomey, writing in War on the Rocks, predicted that “The Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis is Just Starting.” Twomey concluded that this latest crisis will come to be seen as another step in the corrosion of US-China relations, in large part by supporting the perspective, on both sides, that their competition is primarily a military one.

And of course, the editor of Xinhua News could not pass up the opportunity to promulgate Beijing propaganda. On August 24, the outlet offered “Some Facts about Pelosi’s Visit to Taiwan.” Eleven such “facts,” were listed but “Fact Number 1” set the tone and said it all by averring that “The one-China principle is the political foundation of China-US relations.”

A Chinese communist propaganda poster depicts China and Taiwan as loving sisters enjoying an emotional reunion.

One can only presume that the Xinhua editor felt it unnecessary to consult with the US State Department on this assertion, or else he is blissfully unaware of the vast difference in meaning and implication between the PRC’s “One China” principle and Washington’s “One China” policy. In brief: the former is the delusion that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, while the latter is the diplomatic acknowledgement of China’s position that there is only one government of all of China. These two admittedly homophonic terms denote very different concepts, and deliberately conflating them like this is nothing short of propagandistic sleight of hand.

Return therefore to Pelosi’s visit and examine what defines a crisis. In essence, all four crises have come about at the instigation of the PRC, and how its leaders have felt offended. This begs an examination of China’s motivation in each crisis.

The first two Taiwan Strait crises, the 1954-55 shelling of Kinmen and Matsu Islands and the 1958 shelling, again, of the same, could be explained as mere posturing, venting, and perhaps even taunting.

Given the fact that Chairman Mao Zedong’s October 1949 “invasion” of Guningtou proved to be a definite disaster; a shelling without a follow-up invasion hardly constitutes a crisis. Certainly, people died and life on the islands was disrupted, but little else developed. No direct attack on Taiwan proper ever materialized. Mao did not have the navy for it.

The crisis in 1995-96, on the other hand, prompted some Taiwanese people to take their money out of banks, with others fleeing the island, but pundits again failed to make a simple comparative analysis as regards invading Taiwan proper. When the Allies planned Operation Overlord in June 1944, the Germans knew it was coming; they were aware of the buildup; they just did not know where it would be.

Since the Taiwan Strait is much wider than the English Channel, and since nations, including Taiwan, possess much better technology and satellite awareness, there was no evidence of any buildup of an invasion force on China’s west coast.

What then might constitute a real crisis between super powers? The April 1, 2001, Hainan Incident might fit the bill. An American EP-3 was operating about 70 miles from Hainan island when it was intercepted by two PLA J-8 fighters. One fighter got too close and collided with the surveillance plane, causing it to make an emergency landing on the island. The American crew members were held prisoner and interrogated for ten days, and released only after Washington penned a letter of apology to the PRC. Surely, this incident had the potential for escalation had it not been resolved so quickly.

A different face-off—with the potential to escalate to a crisis—takes place daily along the long stretch of the Himalayan border between India and China.

A Japanese triptych that depicts ministers of the two nations signing the Treaty of Shimonoseki, dated circa 1895.

A painting depicting the Battle of Guningtou, in which the Chinese Nationalists fought a last-ditch effort to defend Kinmen.

Sporadic fighting has been taking place along this frontier; a war was fought here in the past, and in a more recent clash, some 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese were killed. While both sides patrol the area, they are not issued military weapons, in the hopes of preventing a conflagration. As a result, soldiers have taken to brawling with stones, fists and clubs in these clashes. The area remains an ongoing source of contention.

What many pundits seem to miss on the cross-strait crisis is the reality of China’s fabricated claims. While China has no realistic claim to Taiwan, it still nonetheless chooses to be offended whenever it wants to be offended, and it will ignore matters that it wants to ignore. China hopes to acquire through intimidation and innuendo what it cannot achieve without resorting to war.

Seeking offense

For example, no sooner had talk on the Pelosi visit died down than China again found a new reason to be offended. On December 6, Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly announced that Ottawa would dispatch more warships to the Taiwan Strait to ensure that it “remains an international strait.” Beijing predictably responded with the usual protestations and reiterations of its claims to Taiwan.

“The status quo in the Taiwan Strait is constantly being changed unilaterally by China, not Taiwan.”

China will continue to draw such lines and determine what it feels is worth precipitating another crisis. Yet, if ships can sail through the Taiwan Strait, a visit by a high-level US official like Pelosi is never going to be what tips the scale. Beijing will continue to use its salami slicing efforts to narrow the field of what ostensibly offends the PRC leadership, and why they should be placated.

It has been over 70 years since the 1949 establishment of the PRC, and Beijing still makes claims to Taiwan. However, time is working against China on this issue. If one looks at the figures of the National Chengchi University Election Study Center’s annual survey on Taiwan identity, fewer and fewer ROC citizens see themselves as Chinese only; the majority now identify as Taiwanese only. This means that there are fewer and fewer people keen to see some sort of political union with China, which in turn implies that Beijing is going to have to use military force to annex the island, since persuasion has clearly failed.

Changing the status quo

Pundits who write about Taiwan need to recognize this. The status quo in the Taiwan Strait is constantly being changed unilaterally by China, not Taiwan. It is Chinese military assets that regularly make incursions into Taiwan’s airspace, not the other way around. Yet pundits constantly offer the same nonsensical advice: Taipei should seek peace and stop raising cross-strait tensions. It would be far more helpful if such commentators—if they truly desired a peaceful Asia Pacific—did China’s leaders the honor of granting them agency, and demanding that they start to behave peacefully and responsibly.

“The people of Taiwan have freely elected their legislators since 1992, and their president since 1996. ”

The following are two areas where pundits could more profitably research the Taiwan question. First, in the 1952 Treaty of San Francisco, Japan surrendered its sovereignty over Taiwan, but never named a recipient. Japan had been granted sovereignty over Taiwan and Penghu from the Manchus in the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki. While the PRC has no legitimate claim to Taiwan, it could make a claim to Kinmen and Matsu, since those islands were never part of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, meaning that they remained part of the Qing Empire, whose territories were later taken over by the ROC, and then the Communists. PRC strategists have avoided exploiting this difference for some reason.

Sailors from the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68) man the rails. Nimitz and her battle group passed through the strait during the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis.

Units of the 3rd Field Army of the PLA rehearse amphibious landings prior to the invasion of Kinmen in the First Taiwan Strait Crisis (colorized).

Second, as regards Taiwan and its future place in the United Nations; while UN Resolution 2758 gave the UN China seat to the People’s Republic, and expelled the followers of Chiang Kai-shek, it made no mention of Taiwan or of the millions of Taiwanese people who had been colonized by the Japanese, and whose sovereignty was being surrendered. That resolution never settled the issue of which government would represent the interests of the Taiwan people in the international body. The fact that the PRC claims this right, and the United Nations allows them to do it, is a cruel joke.

US custodianship

Meanwhile, some legal analysts interpret Taiwan as still being under the custodianship of the US military, as the chief victor in the Pacific War. This may be why former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently shared his view that China has no claim to Taiwan. The people of Taiwan have freely elected their legislators since 1992, and their president since 1996. Does this not, in effect, constitute throwing off the one-party ROC state-in-exile, and exercising their “right of self-determination” as set forth in the UN Charter? An honest answer to this question and a fair accounting of the efforts of the Taiwanese people to nursemaid their country’s democratization would go a long way toward settling the question of who holds sovereignty over Taiwan—and it seems certain that isn’t China. Until the world stops paying lip service to China’s falsehoods and taking Beijing’s calculated outrage at face value, we can expect the Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis to eventually be followed up by a Fifth, and a Sixth. In the words of Albert Einstein, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

About the author

Dr. Jerome Keating, an associate professor at National Taipei University (retired), has written several books and commentaries on Taiwan. His works can be found on his website: https://www.jeromekeating.com/