Taking Taiwan is hard for China, but running it might be harder

Most analysis of Taiwan focuses on how China might take the island, by military force or through concerted pressure. In a pioneering new paper, Richard McGregor and Jude Blanchette examine the stand-off from a rarely discussed angle — how China might occupy and govern Taiwan if it achieves its long-held goal of annexing the island and its 23 million people.

Drawing on Chinese academic, legal and policy writings, McGregor and Blanchette lay out the almost insurmountable challenges Beijing would face in running an island with a well-established democratic political system and a deep antipathy towards China.

Beijing’s thinking on Taiwan has shifted decisively in recent years from peaceful accommodation to absorptive control. But at the same time, its ambitions have become increasingly incompatible with building the legitimacy it needs to govern the island.

This Lowy Institute Analysis, entitled After annexation: How China plans to run Taiwan, acknowledges that “a military victory in the Taiwan Strait could conceivably shatter resistance and allow Beijing to impose controls”. However, argue McGregor and Blanchette, “it is at least as likely that China would confront a prolonged struggle to govern a society that views China as an occupying power”.

The authors say Chinese scholars now recognise that unification would not resolve questions of legitimacy, identity, or stability.

“Beijing increasingly understands the scale and complexity of the challenge it would face yet remains bound by political and ideological constraints that limit its ability to resolve core tensions. Autonomy is necessary but untrustworthy; control is effective but corrosive; stability is achievable, but legitimacy remains elusive.

“Any success would be costly, contested, and uncertain over the long term. At worst, there could be a total breakdown of civil and political order.

“The hardest problem for Beijing is not in taking Taiwan, but in governing it.”

This report is a co-production between the Lowy Institute and RAND.

KEY FINDINGS

• In response to the entrenchment of democracy in Taiwan, Xi Jinping has toughened Beijing’s terms for unification, demanding a full integration of the island into China’s authoritarian political system.
  
• The implementation of Xi’s plan could see millions of Taiwanese excluded from public life and tens of thousands jailed unless they renounce support for an autonomous Taiwan and pledge loyalty to the CCP as Chinese patriots.
  
• Many Chinese scholars nonetheless quietly display an uneasiness that Xi Jinping’s overarching model for running Taiwan — “One Country, Two Systems” — is no longer fit for purpose.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Richard McGregor is a Senior Fellow for East Asia at the Lowy Institute. He is a former Beijing and Washington bureau chief for the Financial Times and the author of numerous books on East Asia, including Xi Jinping: The Backlash and The Party, on the inner workings of the Chinese Communist Party.

Jude Blanchette is the Distinguished Tang Chair in China Research at RAND, and the inaugural director of the RAND China Research Center. He previously held the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and served as engagement director at the Conference Board’s China Centre for Economics and Business in Beijing.

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