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There were, however, two interconnected surprises on the last day of the 20^th Party Congress. First, Xi’s predecessor as general secretary, Hu Jintao, who was seated to Xi’s right, was seen fumbling with a red folder. Outgoing Politburo Standing Committee member Li Zhanshan, who was seated to Hu’s right, leaned over, and appeared to gently tell Hu to leave the folder alone, that it was not time to open it. Hu persisted. Li then reached over and slid the folder away from Hu, who then tried to retrieve it. At that point Xi signaled to an aid standing in the wings who approached Hu and took his arm in what seemed to be an effort to help Hu stand up. Hu resisted and seemed disoriented but eventually, he stood up. As he was being escorted across the dais, Hu touched Xi on the shoulder and said something to him. He then touched Li Keqiang, who was sitting to Xi’s left. Hu looked confused and unsteady on his feet. But he quickly found his balance and walked off under his own power, and exited stage left. After Hu left, the congress resumed its deliberations, which included electing the Politburo.

Hu’s exit was an oddly unscripted moment in what is normally a tightly stage-managed political performance. According to the official Chinese media, Hu had not been feeling well before the congress but had nevertheless insisted on attending. Once the closing session began, the Chinese media reported, he felt unwell and was led off stage to receive medical care. In other words, “Just an old man feeling a bit queasy. Nothing to see. Let’s move along with the business at hand, comrades.”

But Hu’s exit was not the only surprise. First, when the new 20^th Politburo was elected, it had one fewer member than the outgoing 19^th Politburo. Because the Politburo does not have a fixed size, the reduction in numbers was not, in and of itself, a shock. The new lineup, however, did not include any of what were considered to be Hu Jintao’s protégés. The new lineup was made up entirely of Xi protégés or individuals who were very likely Xi’s personal picks. The new lineup also omitted Hu Chunhua, who was thought of as a Hu Jintao protégé and who many believed was slated to replace Li Keqing, also a Hu Jintao protégé, as premier. In short, Xi made a clean sweep of Hu Jintao protégés and packed the leadership with his allies.

Although the reasons Hu Jintao exited the proceedings cannot be known for sure, it seems possible that while sitting next to Xi, Hu peeked at the list in the red folder and discovered that none of his protégés would be members of the new Politburo. It is possible, that Hu had been led to believe that even though Xi was going to pack the Politburo with his lieutenants, he would include Hu Junhua as number two and hence the candidate to succeed Li Keqing when the new 14^th National People’s Congress it convened in March 2023.

Regardless of whether Hu Jintao’s exit was prompted by a bout of ill health or confusion brought on by what Hu might have seen as a double-cross by Xi, the outcome of the 20^th Party Congress was clear. Xi will not only serve at least another five years as the supreme leader of China, but he will do so with a Politburo made up entirely of “Xi men” (no women were elected to the Politburo). 

Ostensibly, that “changed everything.” Theretofore, “Sinologists” believed that the party’s leadership politics were structured by struggles between rival “factions.” These were not factions split over policy but rather they were split by their loyalties to various members of the leadership who had been their patrons while they were climbing the ladders of power. Over the years, we are told, Jiang Zemin’s “Shanghai Gang” struggled to wrest power from Premier Li Peng and his conservative allies. When Hu Jintao came to power, his “Communist Youth League Faction” vied with members of the Jiang’s Shanghai Gang. By the time Xi came to power, the Politburo was said to be split between Jiang and Hu allies, with some believing that Xi was aligned with the Jiang camp. At the 19^th Party Congress, the number of Jiang protégés fell and were replaced by Xi protégés. Hu protégés, however, retained a respectable share of the seats. The evolution of the “factional balance” was in part simply a function of time. Over the years, as Jiang’s allies grew older and reached retirement age, younger cadres who had entered the senior ranks while Hu was general secretary replaced them. The same natural turnover process took its toll on Hu’s lieutenants after Xi took over. Nevertheless, Xi’s clean sweep of Hu’s protégés and apparent denial of even a “fig leaf” of respect for Hu by including Hu Chunhua as an ordinary member of the Politburo seemed a rather blunt nullification of Hu a distinguished party elder.

But does the clean sweep mean things have really changed? The change is likely an incremental or perhaps even merely a symbolic one. Over his first 10 years as General Secretary, Xi made sweeping personnel changes, not only at the paramount leadership level, but also at the much wider level of the second rank leadership – the ministers, provincial party secretaries, and governors who command the governing apparatus of China’s party-state. Xi has also remade the senior ranks of the People’s Liberation Army. In part, he did this through the mechanism of his ongoing crackdown on corruption which has “bagged” more than 300 “tigers” – officials holding ranks at the vice-ministerial, deputy provincial party secretary, and vice gubernatorial level, as well as the heads of major state-owned companies and the presidents of elite universities – since 2013. Xi’s long tenure in office, however, also afforded him ample opportunities to replace senior officials with his allies through regular channels as those promoted by Jiang and Hu reached retirement age and exited public life. Xi’s grip on power was thus presumably tight even before the 20^th Party Congress. Although there have been rumors about opposition and unhappiness with Xi’s high-handed leadership style, there were few tangible signs of splits within the leadership. Nor was there credible evidence of tensions between team Hu and team Xi. It is also well worth remembering that in 2007, Xi had to have been selected as heir apparent through some sort of agreement between Hu and Jiang. It thus seems rather implausible that Xi was some sort of an anti-Hu or anti-Jiang “rebel.” It is quite possible – or perhaps even likely – that both Jiang and Hu underestimated Xi’s determination to take a total grip on power and shunt their protégés (and the protégés of those protégés) off to the political wilderness. Xi did not, therefore, cease to be an insecure leader and become a secure leader at the 20^th Party Congress. Rather he moved from a position of strength to a position of greater strength. In doing so, he clearly signaled the days of collective leadership were over, and that henceforth he alone would be in charge. Even that change seem slight because well before the 20^th Party Congress, Xi had made himself the “secretary of everything” and there was little evidence that he shared power with Li Keqiang or any the other members of the Politburo.

So, what does the outcome of the 20^th Party Congress signal? Predicting the future of Chinese politics is, frankly, at best a guessing game. When Xi came to power in 2012, many thought he was going to be a soft-liner who would further relax daily life and allow individuals greater personal freedom, deepen market reforms, continue the trend toward political moderation, and seek to make China a “responsible stakeholder” in the international system. He proved otherwise. 

In the days immediately after the Congress, it seemed that we could expect “more of the same.” At that time, the key questions seemed to be whether Xi would continue the crackdown on corruption, hold the line on COVID Zero and its draconian system of lockdowns, continue to respond harshly to what he and Chinese nationalists see as provocations by the United States and Taiwan that would gut the One China Policy and move the island toward independence, continue to enforce the political crackdown in Hong Kong and among China’s dissident circles, continue the harsh assimilationist policies in Xinjiang and Tibet, and continue to press China’s claims in the East China Sea and the South China Sea. 

Whatever he may have gained at the 20^th Party Congress, Xi nevertheless faced headwinds. The economy was slowing, in part because of the trade war and the downturn in global economic activity resulting from the pandemic. The Chinese economy, however, also has been badly disrupted by the Xi’s anti-pandemic “People’s War” with its COVID Zero policy and system of rolling lockdowns of major cities including Shanghai, Wuhan, Zhengzhou, Xian, and Guangdong, as well as many other second- and third-tier cities, for prolonged periods and hence a near-constant disruption of manufacturing and the supply chain. 

The near-term outlook was, however, soon thrown into confusion. Popular discontent over the lockdowns and the often heavy-handed enforcement by local cadres unexpectedly boiled over in late November 2022 as protests broke out in multiple cities. Although mostly small, these protests – dubbed the “blank page protests” because demonstrators have held up blank paper as a symbol of protest against censorship and the regime’s lack of transparency – were noteworthy. That’s because in a number of cases, protesters — many of whom appeared to be members of the middle and professional classes, as well as university students — chanted “down with the Communist Party” and “down with Xi Jinping,” slogans that are rarely heard in China today. 

The protests quickly fizzled, and a number of protesters were reportedly “invited to drink tea” by police. But then, the regime suddenly began relaxing core features of the COVID Zero policy. However, the abrupt – and thus far confused and chaotic – relaxation generated a quick backlash. Although some welcome the change in policy, others fear that the relaxation will trigger a new wave of infections. Some are going further to predict it could lead to more than half-a-million deaths because the population is not fully immunized and COVID Zero has blocked the development of some level of “herd immunity” similar to that which has developed in societies that dropped the most draconian lockdown policies in 2021. As a result, Xi now finds himself confronting conflicting demands. On the one hand, he is under pressure to continue backing off from his signature COVID Zero policy and reopen the economy. At the same time, he also faces the possibility that if he does so, a surge in cases will trigger panic and force him to beat a hasty – and potentially politically humiliating – retreat to some sort of COVID Zero 2.0 policy and a wave of new lockdowns. 

The short-term challenges generated by uncertainty about the public health outlook come, moreover, on top of the broader challenges of high youth unemployment, deepening pessimism about the future, the high cost of housing, concerns about environmental quality and food and drug safety, and fears of a potential bursting of a property bubble. These combine to put Xi in a less than enviable position, one that is certainly not as rosy as that of his two predecessors as general secretary. Xi cannot, at this juncture, turn to the Chinese people, ask the “Ronald Reagan Question:” “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” and expect to get a heartfelt “yes.” Moreover, given the complicated results of the 2022 midterm elections in the United States and the announcement that Donald Trump will seek election again as president in 2024, Xi faces a potentially weak and embattled Biden Administration, one that would likely not be positioned to make any decisive moves to reconfigure Sino-American relations, particularly if House Republicans are hammering his son Hunter Biden with allegations of potentially shady dealings with Chinese interests. Movement toward some sort of “ceasefire” in the Sino-American trade war, a move that would presumably help reinvigorate the Chinese economy, thus seems unlikely.

On balance, therefore, Xi has clearly emerged from the 20^th Party Congress with a firm grip on power. It is not clear, however, that having such a strong grip will enable him to weather storms at home and abroad. 

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The first pillar is the missionary impulse to change an atheist China into a Christian nation. The second is that China is such a huge market it will be central to consume all the commodities grown or manufactured by the most productive country in the world. When the missionaries and merchants ran into resistance, they called on the diplomats and military to reduce the stubborn Chinese resistance. If one examines China’s relationship with the U.S., a similar pattern could also be detected. And this pattern revolves around a central question of the role of the U.S. in China’s quest for modernization. 

When Chinese elites believe the U.S. obstructs China’s quest, the policy response is hostile. But once elites are convinced the U.S. is central in facilitating China’s quest for national respect and strength, decision-makers can make swift changes to accommodate American arrogance and condescension. 

Currently, it seems the U.S. is devoured by fear of a rising China and disgust that an ungrateful nation has taken advantage of generous and unsuspecting Americans. Washington is not in the mood to forge a special relationship with China. It does not believe it can easily or ever change China. It has also dawned on American decision-makers that doing business with China has only contributed to making China stronger and more powerful. Therefore, it is better to contain China, even if the cost is not having a robust commercial relationship with China. The thinking on the China side is quite different from the American mentality. Chinese leaders, elites and ordinary people are understandably upset, frustrated, and angry since the U.S. began to apply maximum pressure to stop China’s economic growth in the name of making America great and safe again, but they have not made up their minds on giving up on the U.S. as a facilitator for its modernization. Beijing seems to be giving Washington another chance to reconsider disengaging with China. At the same time, it is also doing everything to convince the U.S. that China can make America pay a price if it does not change its ugly policy of making China lose in an epic U.S.-China rivalry.

Leaning to one side

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) celebrated its centennial last year. In merely 100 years, it has grown from an illegal political organization with about 50 members in 1921 to the largest political party in the world with close to 100 million dues-paying members. Looking back at its founding, it was, in fact, a strong reaction by the aspiring Chinese nationalists to President Wilson’s unfortunate betrayal of the Chinese cause at the Paris Peace Conference at the end of World War I. Their deep disillusionment with Western liberalism led to a pivot to Moscow and a growing adoption of the revolutionary doctrines of Marxism to bail China out of miserable humiliation at the hands of Western powers and their domestic collaborators. 

The Japanese invasion of China temporarily restored the relationship between the CCP and the U.S. Members of the Dixie Mission found Mao Zedong and his CCP comrades leading a movement that was more admirable than that of the Nationalist Party. However, this brief period of mutual fascination was dashed by the new hostility between Moscow and Washington. Again Mao and his party were forced to choose sides in building his country up. CCP decided to lean to the side of the Soviets. The outbreak of the Korean War settled the dust in terms of U.S. policy toward Asia — all efforts had to be made to contain the spread of Communist agitation and to prevent a domino effect. This new policy led to the U.S. involvement in Vietnam after the Viet Minh drove the French forces out with support from China.

A year after President Richard Nixon made his historic trip to China, the U.S. finally ceased combat operations in Vietnam. The Shanghai Communique was not implemented because of domestic difficulties in both the U.S. and China. The Chinese government had not decided what it would take to make China a modern country. Future leaders in both countries were waiting to seize the decision-making power to seal the normalization deal. 

Engagement

A new breed of leaders with moral authority and political courage finally came to power in Beijing and Washington. It was Jimmy Carter in the U.S. and Deng Xiaoping in China. To modernize and become a member of the global community, Deng made the decision to shelve crucial differences with the U.S. on the Taiwan issue. Deng famously commented that countries that chose to follow the lead of the U.S. had all become rich. In other words, China desired to be rich and would follow suit. 

Deng made a triumphant visit to the U.S. during the lunar new year period in 1979 and a new page in U.S.-China relations was forged. China needed everything at the time, from military support to protect itself from any possible invasion from the USSR to capital to relaunch China’s economic growth, from good education and research opportunities for its students and scholars to markets for Chinese products. The U.S. had all of that and began to offer it with the hope Nixon best expressed in his 1967 article in Foreign Affairs: an engaged China would be a more peaceful China.     

It was the U.S. turn to become deeply disillusioned and upset in the wake of the June 4 crackdown on student protest. For almost three years, the bilateral relationship was in a precarious situation. The U.S. imposed sanctions, and the new Chinese leadership turned sharply left in both political and economic terms. To salvage the reform and opening up policy, Deng launched his Southern Tour in early 1992 and with support from the military forced Jiang Zemin to change course. U.S. attempts to link China’s human rights record with its most favored nation trade status eventually was blunted by the business community and its supporters in Congress and the administration. Deng’s determination in pursuit of China’s modernization and Americans’ reluctant suppression of their frustration with the CCP paved way for China’s eventual ascension to WTO at the beginning of the 21^st century. By 2010, China soared to become the second-largest economy in the world. Both countries benefited enormously from two decades of intimate economic engagement. There were constant frictions over many bilateral and multilateral issues, but Americans leaders were still embracing the hope a modernized China would be a friendly China.

The Pivot

The American policy community began to rethink its conventional engagement approach to China in 2012. It coincided with Xi Jinping taking over the CCP helmsmanship. When the Council on Foreign Relations and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace jointly published a report entitled “Revising the Grand Strategy Toward China” in 2015, the Obama administration had already put the “Rebalance to Asia” policy in place. But China was still feeling good after it hosted President Obama at the APEC summit in 2014 and the G20 in 2015. It also began to prepare for the post-Obama years.

China was surprised by the election of Donald Trump and shocked when he took a call from Taiwan President Tsai Ying-wen. However, Chinese leaders seemed to believe President Trump, as the arch dealmaker, could be handled with sweet “deals.” The first deal was the visit by Xi Jinping to Mar-A-Lago in April 2017. Later in the year, the Chinese deal became even sweeter — a royal welcome of visiting Trump at the Forbidden City and signing of purchase agreements worth more than $240 billion. But President Trump and his lieutenants felt the Chinese government had failed to honor its pledges and launched the unprecedented trade war. COVID-19 had worsened the bilateral relationship, with the U.S. government embarking upon a whole of society and whole of government offensive against China. Under the U.S. assault, Beijing appeared to be reactive and tit-for-tat in nature. It even signed the first phase of the trade agreement, agreeing to buy $250 billion in American goods over two years. CCP leaders ate the bullets from Washington largely because of two convictions: first, that China’s economic growth could not be sustained if the two nations decoupled; and second, that it could afford to wait for a more sensible president to move into the White House.

That wait seemed to have paid off in 2020 when Joe Biden was elected president. President Biden has more knowledge about China than any previous American leader and even declared during his presidential campaign that he did not believe China was capable of having America for lunch. The Chinese hope that President Biden would de-escalate bilateral tensions and stabilize the relationship was quickly dashed shortly after President Biden took over the reins of American leadership and announced he would not allow China to realize its strategy of edging out the U.S. and become the world’s most powerful nation. Out of frustration, China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi launched a fierce attack on the U.S. policy toward China in Alaska in March 2021. 

Re-engagement, the Chinese way

President Biden and his China policy team has only made the life of Chinese leaders more miserable since coming to office. It has not only adopted Trump’s China policy wholesale but also made it more effective through domestic investment, alliance-building, and consistency in applying maximum pressure in the technological sector. China is more isolated than ever from the community of developed nations. Many began to fear if China, out of anger and frustration, was going to give up its effort to engage the U.S. and form a new coalition of the willing. The joint Russo-Chinese statement in February 2022 appeared to confirm this worst scenario. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s China policy speech in May 2022, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in early August, the U.S. National Security Strategy released on October 12, the U.S. National Defense Strategy that came out two weeks later, a series of China-related laws enacted by Congress, and executive orders from the Biden administration designed to accelerate high-tech decoupling have all made it clear to the top leadership in Beijing that the U.S. sees China as the only power in the world that has the intention and capability to threaten and displace the U.S.

In this climate, with the U.S. bent on containing China for more than five years and ignoring almost completely the Chinese demand to stabilize and repair the relationship, it would be no surprise if the CCP and its paramount leader Xi Jinping identify the U.S. as China’s No. 1 enemy and adopt a policy of disengagement before and during their historic 20^th Party Congress. What is surprising is that China seems to have decided to give the U.S. another chance to stay in the framework of engagement initially advocated by Mao Zedong and Richard Nixon and implemented by Deng Xiaoping and Jimmy Carter. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi came to America in late September and told the American audience, “China’s course of modernization and journey to common prosperity for more than 1.4 billion people will provide more market and development opportunities for the United States and other countries in the world.” He went on to say, “China’s resolve to further advance reform and opening-up is certain.” Wang declared that China sees “three certainties” in the bilateral relationship: China’s engagement with the U.S. is certain if the U.S. does not seek to change China or use Taiwan to thwart China’s quest for modernization; China’s effort to strengthen economic cooperation with the U.S. is certain; and China’s readiness to cooperate with the U.S. to confront global challenges is certain. 

This iteration of Chinese policy toward the U.S. was confirmed by Xi Jinping’s political report at CCP’s 20^th National Congress. In Xi’s scheme, CCP’s central mission is to build “a great modern socialist country in all respects and to advance the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on all fronts through a Chinese path to modernization.” In the foreign policy section of the report, Xi described China’s goal as adhering “to the right course of economic globalization” and playing “an active part in the reform and development of the global governance system.” He called upon all countries “to hold dear humanity’s shared values of peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy, and freedom.” It is clear, at least for now, that the CCP does not want to say good-bye to the bilateral engagement policy because China’s pursuit of modernization and its plan to make it happen by mid-century will be significantly disrupted if the U.S. decides to change its status from a friendly fellow traveler to a hostile interrupter or even a lethal sniper. 

This may reflect a tactical decision rather than a strong conviction. Many Chinese decision-makers inside the CCP are probably convinced of the U.S. desire to contain China at all costs but believe that there are no other good alternatives for China. The CCP’s decisions to follow the Leninist flag at its founding in 1921 and to rely on Moscow in 1949 brought about catastrophes for China and its people. The decision to board the globalization train driven and maintained by the U.S. has resulted in transforming China into a wealthy and powerful country whose voice is now heard and respected in many parts of the world.

The road to becoming responsible stakeholders

In September 2005, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick delivered an important speech urging China to become a responsible stakeholder. He said, “China has been more open than many developing countries, but there are increasing signs of mercantilism, with policies that seek to direct markets rather than opening them. The United States will not be able to sustain an open international economic system – or domestic U.S. support for such a system – without greater cooperation from China, as a stakeholder that shares responsibility on international economic issues.” 

America’s current complaints about China run far deeper than what was listed by Zoellick, but the central issue remains the same: the U.S. can play an indispensable role in shaping China’s future. It has played a crucial role in changing China beyond recognition in the past 50 years. China has not changed in ways desired or preferred by the American leaders and the people who elected them. But they need to be aware that giving up on engaging China is not just a dereliction of a noble duty but also risks making China turn to stifling isolationism, ugly xenophobia, and decapitating totalitarianism. In addition, handling this relationship irresponsibly may even drive the two countries into a conflict that would put China and many other nations’ quests for modernization on hold and drag the U.S. into yet another quagmire.

China obviously wants to be a responsible stakeholder in the global community. However, CCP will not get the pass if it refuses to change some of its beliefs and behavior. First, Xi Jinping and his lieutenants must be keenly aware of the fact that Americans are sincere in their concerns about what China is doing to its own people and to other countries, that they are upset by China’s economic statecraft that is defying international rules and norms, and that Americans may be bewildered by their own arrogance and strong clinging to racial superiority but harbor no evil plan to make China disintegrate and become a vassal state of the U.S. Second, Chinese leaders can believe as much as they want that their system of governance is far more superior and efficient in lifting people out of abject poverty and growing the economy, but every government needs to defend and guarantee certain universal values for its citizens, or it will eventually lose popular support. Last, ignoring the element of choice and accountability in exercising authority will only lead to unchecked and unbalanced power abuse that make a repeat of China’s long embrace of a feudal political system easy to envision.

For Washington and Beijing to peacefully coexist and become responsible stakeholders, the first step is for American elites to stop perceiving China as an evil power doing everything possible to undermine America as an idea, system of government, and economic superpower. The first step for Chinese decision-makers is to give up the idea that the U.S. is in irreversible decline and the notion that China is destined to represent the future. Both sides should be humbled by their seemingly intractable domestic problems and daunting global challenges. Only by becoming responsible stakeholders can the governments of the U.S. and China fulfill the mission of making the world peaceful and prosperous and allowing their people to pursue happiness freely and lawfully. 

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On November 26 in Taiwan, the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) received a thrashing in local elections, winning  only five out of 21 magisterial or mayoral seats and none outside of their traditional base in Taiwan’s south. The current president of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, announced she would resign as the party’s chairwoman. Four days later, Jiang Zemin, China’s leader during an era of growth and optimism (and the subject of semi-adoring memes) died. The news came in the middle of protests that spread rapidly across China, sparked by COVID measures many saw as draconian, and resulting in what appears to be the rolling back those restrictions. While these events only hint at possible changes to the basic logic of cross-strait relations, they appear to confirm a seemingly contradictory trend: the more tension across the strait mounts, the more firmly the status quo of Taiwan as a de facto separate self-governing entity (neither part of nor apart from the mainland) becomes entrenched. 

Taiwan’s View Across the Strait

The success of the Kuomintang (KMT), which has traditionally favored closer ties with China, over the pro-independence DPP in November’s election would initially seem to defy 20 years of shrinking support for reunification. China expert David Shambaugh wrote these words in 2001: “If Beijing truly wishes to solve the Taiwan problem, it must be prepared to undertake substantial political changes at home. It must shed its ossified positions and develop a truly innovative and flexible formula that actually attracts Taiwan back into the national fold. Forcing unification will never work, and the Hong Kong model will not satisfy the Taiwanese.”¹ Shambaugh acknowledged that such a solution would be difficult, but it was not far-fetched. According to data from the Election Study Center of National Chengchi University in Taiwan, support for unification among Taiwanese that year stood at roughly 20% (combining the smaller group that wanted immediate unification with those inclined to move toward unification in the future). As is evident in Graph 1, this was about twice as many people as supported Taiwan independence (either immediate or in the future), with most supporting maintenance of the status quo.

Graph 1

Yet just a couple of years later, attitudes changed significantly. A statistical analysis of this data shows that a structural break happened from 2002 to 2003, when unification support dropped from about 18% to 13%. Though the cause cannot be proven, this may represent a response to the 16th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, the transition of power from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao.

An identical analysis performed on pro-independence support identifies 2017 to 2018 as another break. In that period, support for independence jumped from 20% to 27%, and support for reunification fell another 5%.  Many factors probably contributed, but the spectacle of Xi Jinping failing to appoint a successor and removing presidential term limits should have been definitive. This marked a rejection of the most important limit on Xi’s power, the regularized transfer of China’s top offices. We might then expect next year’s survey results to show a further increase in support for independence after Xi Jinping’s third term became a reality this fall. Though it is also possible this was expected and already baked into respondents’ attitudes.

Repression in Hong Kong, a city once seen as a model for Taiwan’s reunification, has ramped up dramatically since the passage of a new National Security Law in 2020. In two years, Hong Kong’s score on political rights and civil liberties by Freedom House dropped by 12 points. Ten media outlets closed from June 2021 to June 2022 and are being replaced by mainland-style state-owned media. On November 25, a 90-year-old Catholic Cardinal, a Canto-Pop singer, a cultural studies professor, and former lawmakers where found guilty of failing to properly register a now-defunct humanitarian fund. This authoritarian zeal does little to recommend Beijing to the people of Taiwan.

For any still considering unification, the mainland’s ongoing response to COVID could be decisive. China reports its official COVID death rate per capita is unfathomably low at around one death per 100,000 people. Rates in South Korea or Taiwan are more than 50 times higher. While this success is probably exaggerated, the real accomplishments of the regime in keeping COVID deaths low during a time when it was raging out of control elsewhere bought significant good will, for a time. Yet, a nationalist insistence on rejecting foreign vaccines and a somewhat baffling reluctance to force vaccination — especially among the elderly — has led to the strictest anti-COVID policies in the world. According to the Oxford Coronavirus Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT), as of December 1, 2022, China had the world’s strictest COVID policies, with a score on its Stringency Index of 70.8 out of 100, while Taiwan was just under 40. Indeed, residents of Taiwan enjoyed a much less strict anti-COVID regime throughout most of the pandemic while still achieving relatively low COVID death rates and despite alleged PRC efforts to block Taiwan’s access to U.S.-made vaccines. Even as Beijing relaxes its COVID rules, the repression of and reprisals for protests that sparked this change further reinforce Taiwanese understandings of the relative lack of freedom in the PRC.

Given the declining support for reunification and recent events, the KMT’s gains should not be interpreted as a sudden warming toward China. The result was, in part, a reaction to the party in power. The DPP was punished for a perceived failure to address familiar domestic issues from unaffordable housing to an aging population. More importantly for cross-strait relations, it was a sign that, having moved away from its unification message in the early 2000s, the KMT is now effectively the pro-status-quo party that can still be supported even as impressions of China worsen. This makes the DPP by default the more radical party even with its highly nuanced approach to independence. Voters were also punishing President Tsai’s 2021 refusal to accept much-needed vaccines from China during a severe COVID outbreak as prioritizing political ideology over common sense.

In sum, with only 6.5% of Taiwan residents in favor of reunification and continuing action by Beijing likely to make that number drop further, the KMT’s victory shows that even the pretense of peaceful reunification seems to have reached the dustbin of history. With Taiwan moving for outright independence and China peacefully allowing it highly unlikely, this leaves only two real options for Taiwan: status quo or conflict. 

China’s View Across the Strait

It is unclear what dissatisfaction and protests over the anti-COVID lockdown tell us about Xi Jinping’s grasp on power. While they are the largest in size and scale since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, they simply cannot compare to those expressions of dissatisfaction when perhaps a million people assembled at the height of the protest, as unrest erupted in 400 other cities for 51 days. This scale and longevity was only possible because of a major split among top Chinese leaders. Today, such a division seems impossible. Xi Jinping has achieved a hold on the CCP and China that is unprecedented since Mao. Additionally, the tools of Chinese repression have evolved dramatically. In 1989, the CCP rolled in the tanks, a strategy little different from Stalin’s in Prague, 1968. Today, the Chinese state has the world’s most sophisticated internet censorship: a $200 billion public security budget, a 1.5 million person special police force geared largely toward riot control (the Chinese People’s Armed Police Force), and an unprecedented system of digital and real-world surveillance that allows authorities to track down and identify protestors.

 If protests, COVID-related incidents, a major drop in China’s economy, or anything else were to seriously weaken Xi Jinping, it might make it difficult for him to press the issue of Taiwan. The island may be a useful nationalist rallying point,  but outside of semiconductors (more on this later), it is of little practical, cultural, or historical importance to average Chinese. Xi and his allies might decide that reunification with an island the Kangxi emperor called “a mudball in the sea” is not worth prioritizing over the livelihoods of the 1.4 billion people and maybe even the survival of the CCP and his regime.

Yet, diversionary war theory also shows us that moments of domestic turmoil can prompt leaders to take dramatic action abroad in hopes of taking advantage of Rally Round the Flag Syndrome. If Xi faces serious problems at home he might echo Russia’s Minister of the Interior before the start of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, who said, “What this country needs is a short victorious war to stem the tide of revolution.” This is easily the most dangerous scenario. To date, the basic understanding from all sides of the Taiwan conflict is that as long as Taiwan does not make overt moves toward independence, the People’s Republic will not take dramatic action to reunify it with the mainland, and that it will largely be able to carry out its affairs with only moderate levels of interference from Beijing. Therefore, support for the status quo has consistently been the most popular option for most residents of Taiwan (see Graph 1). Yet, the logic of diversionary war can lead to gambling on resurrection, where a leader takes drastic and risky actions in the hopes of strengthening a failing regime. If Xi Jinping sees problems at home as sufficiently threatening, costly, or insurmountable an invasion of Taiwan or at least a manufactured crises over it would be an obvious and already prepared distraction.

If the above seems unlikely, a less extreme version arises from Xi Jinping’s analysis of his own legacy. For decades, the conventional wisdom about Taiwan was that Chinese leaders were not under any particular pressure to regain Taiwan, but they could not lose it. This was the compelling force for status quo on the Chinese side. Yet it also reflected a system in which power was passed from leader to leader every 10 years. The longer Xi Jinping stays in office, the more he may feel the need to justify his unprecedented extra term(s) with accomplishments that could be viewed as historic. Xi hinted at this when he recently suggested that the Taiwan issue “cannot be passed from generation to generation.”  Much the same is said of the logic of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. 

The U.S. View Across the Pacific

As China’s military capacity improves and it becomes less likely that the U.S. could successfully defend Taiwan, American strategic thinking has recently been emphasizing tactics to make a preemptive attack on Taiwan self-defeating. In a 2021 article in US Army War College Quarterly, Jared Morgan McKinney of Missouri State and Peter Harris of Colorado State argue that “the United States and Taiwan should lay plans for a targeted scorched-earth strategy that would render Taiwan not just unattractive if ever seized by force, but positively costly to maintain.”² Specifically, they recommend threatening to destroy Taiwan’s chip-making facilities which produce “65% of the world’s semiconductors and almost 90% of the advanced chips.” This would create a massive shortage of the chips that power China’s world-beating electronics industry and hope to make an invasion of Taiwan prohibitively costly. The thinking seems to be mirrored by the U.S. defense establishment. At the Richard Nixon Foundation’s recent Grand Strategy Summit , former U.S. National Security Advisor Ambassador Robert O’Brien said something similar: “If China takes Taiwan and takes those factories intact – which I don’t think we would ever allow – they have a monopoly over chips the way OPEC has a monopoly, or even more than the way OPEC has a monopoly over oil.” Unsurprisingly, many officials in Taiwan do not like this sentiment. They argue that it is unnecessary as post-invasion Taiwan’s chip industry could quickly be rendered useless by trade restrictions that would deprive it of tools (for example, lithography equipment from Netherlands-based ASML Holding) and components from the global supply chain.

 Global supply chains also become important when thinking about the impact of China’s strict anti-COVID measures and the associated protests. Many concluded that one of the lessons of the early days of the pandemic was a clear need to reduce dependency on China. The urgency of this need seems only to have increased as “boards in Europe shudder at images of workers kept behind fences by guards” and protests disrupt the production of iPhones. In response, Apple is accelerating already existent plans to move production out of China. Perhaps this pressure for relocation will wane along with COVID lockdowns and protests. If it does not, this could mark the first steps of a move away from the economic integration that helped keep the peace and prevented a new cold war.

Just as recent events in China and Taiwan do not herald any systemic change, a new makeup of the United States Congress is unlikely to mark a major shift. Increasingly, one of the only things Republicans and Democrats agree on is being tough on China. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a trip to Taiwan in August 2022 that was viewed by Beijing as highly provocative. Republican Kevin McCarthy, who is vying to replace Pelosi as speaker of the House, has said he would like to do the same. Yet, there is still a difference between parties. McCarthy has said he will establish a select committee on China “to expose and fight against the Chinese Communist Party’s cyber, trade and military threats against America.” In a recent Pew poll, conservative Republicans were about 15% more likely than moderate Democrats or Republicans to see Chinese military power and Chinese competition with the U.S. as a serious problem, with the gap stretching to 25% with liberal Democrats. On other China-related issues, the difference was not clear. For now, things seem stable from the U.S. side, but a major shift — perhaps to Republicans in 2024, or Democratic efforts to compete with tough-on-China rhetoric — could portend a further heightening of tensions around Taiwan.

Graph 2:

Taiwan’s reality is one of rising tensions, but also of a doubling down on the status quo. Peaceful unification or independence looks impossible. The consequences of conflict appear ever-less attractive, with even Taiwan’s long-standing U.S. ally discussing the destruction of its chip-making infrastructure, a move that would devastate the global economy. This has made the status quo not simply an acceptance of reality but a vital, even dogmatic, ideological, or radical, policy position. As Graph 2 shows when Chengchi University began its survey in 1994, almost 40% of Taiwanese choose the option of “maintain status quo, decide later.” Since then, more respondents have instead chosen “maintain status quo indefinitely,” with that option surpassing “decide later” for the first time in 2022. 

Increasingly, the status quo is the only option for Taiwan or the United States. The more pressure mounts, the harder they will press for it. The only undecided variable at this point is the mind of Xi Jinping.

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