Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The paper examines the relation between the Chinese private sector and the government by looking into the variation of CCP?s cooptation strategy and how the size of private enterprises significantly influences their relationship with the government.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In April 2005, the Kuomintang (KMT) leader, Mr. Lian Zhan, made his initial visit to the Mainland China and met with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Secretary General, Mr. Hu Jin-Tao, at the Cross-Strait Party Summit, which had been the first historical meeting between KMT and CCP leaders after 60 years since 1945. In 2006, the KMT and CCP jointly held “The Cross-Strait Economic Forum,” “The Cross-Strait Agriculture Forum, and “The Cross-Strait Youth Forum,” during which extensive cross-strait measures beneficial to Taiwan’s agriculture, fishery, medicine, education, and culture were reached to draw Taiwanese people’s feelings. This paper examines and analyzes the dynamic interactions between the KMT and the CCP since KMT’s ice-breaking visit to Beijing in 2005. It concludes that, with the formally established contact and exchange between the two parties, the KMT’s push for the KMT-CCP forums was aimed to show that the party was more capable and competent than the incumbent Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in dealing with cross-strait relations, while the CCP intended to deter the Taiwan-independence forces through the KMT-CCP cooperation. Unfortunately, such exchange mechanism has been unable to affect the incumbent DPP power structure, thus making it difficult to receive DPP government’s support for achieving any concrete implementation outcomes. On the other hand, once CCP’s “playing softer-and-softer” beneficial strategy fails to draw Taiwanese people’s feelings or to facilitate the Pan-blue’s victory in the 2008 presidential election in Taiwan, the cross-strait relations would very possibly evolve into a more insecure and dangerous situation.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This essay, still being worked into presentable form, examines China's attitudes toward Taiwan in the light of the Chinese elite's ("China's") changing perceptions of their country and its place in the world. The study attempts to measure the relative force of Realist and constructivist interpretations. China has consistently taken the assertion of sovereignty over Taiwan as a core element of its national interest since 1949. Yet the actual experience of the past 110 years and more suggests that an autonomous Taiwan or, indeed, a Taiwan controlled by or allied with a power actively hostile to China does not objectively constitute a fatal threat to China's security. A working hypothesis, then, is that Chinese policy should be understood in the context of a modified constructivism: sovereignty over Taiwan has become a perennial part of the Chinese elite's definition of what constitutes China, this attitude reinforced by the domestic political process. The extent to which this interest is acted on depends in part upon the international context. The policy implications of this insight, if it is one, are ambiguous: if the interest in sovereignty over Taiwan is in the end a matter of choice, there is the potential for some future different choice; but on the other hand, if it is a matter of choice, that choice does not seem to rest upon a narrow calculation of material interests. The study analyzes Chinese policy in the Maoist and reform eras, identifying continuities despite radical changes in China's general foreign policy position, the relationship between PRC-ROC elites, and in the Taiwan official elites' perception of their own realm.