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1、War and Peace Between America and ChinaAn Economic and Political Analysis of the Taiwan Problem Terence Kwai*Chan Hon-Wing*_*We are indebted to the Center for Economic Development of the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology for supporting the research for this book.ContentsPrefacei vIntroduc
2、tion1 19Chapter 1:The Worst-Case Scenario20 392:From High-Tech Warfare to Nuclear Winter40 673:The Next Economic Earthquake68 854:If Yes to German Reunification, Why Not Chinese Reunification?86 995:Ancient Chinese Wisdom: Winning Without Fighting100 1296:Chinas Long March Toward Democracy130 1597:B
3、lessed Are the Peacemakers160 1868:Realizing the China Dream187 2289:Chinese Reunification and Chinas Third Way229 26910:Toward A Pacific Century270 295Epilogue 296 298Bibliography299 304About the Authors305Notes306 308PrefaceThe Taiwan Strait is probably the most dangerous place on Earth. Some info
4、rmed people may disagree. They may point to the continued trouble in the Middle East and the persistent threat of terrorists. However, nowhere in the world is as dangerous and potentially devastating as the Taiwan Strait.Most Chinese, irrespective of the differences in their political beliefs, want
5、to see Chinese reunification within their lifetimes. Chinese reunification may be postponed for one decade or another but it is seen by many as the ultimate conclusion to the century of humiliation that China suffered at the hands of European and Japanese imperialism and colonialism. Presently, many
6、 Americans are becoming aware of the rise of China. Their media are beginning to have more substantial and objective reports on China. The image of China carried over by the June 4, 1989 incident at Tiananmen Square is gradually replaced by an image of a modern open economy which is developing at a
7、sustained annual rate of 9 percent for more than 25 years. Americans want to benefit from this sustained economic growth, but they also wish to see peace and stability in the Pacific region. Furthermore, they wish to see human rights respected and upheld in China.At the same time, Americans are unsu
8、re how they should deal with the thorny issues of Chinese reunification. Through consistent and persistent public relations campaigns, Taiwan has instilled among American politicians and the American public the image that Taiwan is good and the Peoples Republic of China is bad. Human rights activist
9、s and religious leaders also depict the PRC as ugly as well. So we do have the good, the bad and the ugly.The American government is fully aware of the problems arising from the demand of a sizeable group of Taiwanese people to have a permanent separate entity from mainland China. Americans hope tha
10、t the problems can be resolved with time. Hence, they hope that both sides of the Taiwan Straits would not seek unilateral change of the status quo. This amounts to the very ambiguous situation which translates simply and directly into: no war, no peace, no unification and no independence. During no
11、rmal times, such ambiguity may be the wisest choice for the American government. However, we are living in an uncertain world. In this uncertain world, anything can happen and can overwhelm us by surprise. No matter what contingency plans are made, Americans and Chinese may be caught by surprise. We
12、 can travel back in time to the events leading to the outbreak of the First World War, when the two opposite alliances did not believe that a war could happen. Still the war came about because of the assassination of a nobleman in Austria. Millions of lives were lost during this war. Furthermore, th
13、e sheer tragedies of this war led directly to another even more devastating war, the Second World War.In an uncertain world, enlightened leadership is called for to reduce all possible uncertainties. One way is to achieve Chinese reunification at an earlier date before a separate cultural consciousn
14、ess develops in Taiwan and among a new generation of Taiwanese people. Such development would make Chinese reunification all the more difficult. In this respect, we can draw a few lessons from the case of Hong Kong. During the British colonial rule of Hong Kong, Hong Kong has developed a distinct cu
15、ltural consciousness from that in the mainland. This is not just due to differences in the political and economic systems. Hong Kong citizens were encouraged to think of themselves as Hong Kong people rather than as Chinese. After 1997, the Hong Kong government and Beijing have to exert much effort
16、to correct this attitude. In other words, there is a limit to Beijings patience in dealing with a recalcitrant Taiwan. Eventually, the status quo cannot be preserved. Chinese reunification will be achieved even at high costs.Many Chinese people in mainland China believe that the Taiwan problem was c
17、reated by the United States. President Kennedy once said: “Problems are created by men. Therefore, they can be solved by men.” Americans can play a leadership role in facilitating the process of Chinese reunification, thereby winning the hearts and minds of the Chinese people and their leaders. In r
18、eciprocity, the Chinese will try to win the hearts and minds of the American people and their leaders. Reciprocity is at the heart of Chinese culture and civilization. This is far superior to building a missile defense system that can cost far more than $100 billion and yet may prove technologically
19、 inadequate and ineffective because of increasing sophistication in Chinas missile delivery systems.To those who are firm in their political beliefs and dogmas, we can retreat to science and religion. As pointed out by Huston Smith in his book, Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in A
20、n Age of Disbelief, neither communism in the East nor progress in the West filled the spiritual hollow in the human makeup. As for the belief that the Age of Reason would make people sane, that reads today like a cruel joke. In the Nazi myth of a super-race (which produced the Holocaust) and the Mar
21、xist myth of a classless utopia (which produced the Stalinist Terror and Maos Cultural Revolution), the twentieth century fell for the most superstitions the human mind has ever embraced. Modernitys coming to see the gods it worshiped for what they were idols that failed was the most important relig
22、ious event of the twentieth century. Physics teaches us that human beings are not and cannot be perfect. When I was an undergraduate at California Institute of Technology, we all read the three volumes of The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Professor Feynman is, of course, one of the greatest theoretic
23、al physicists in the twentieth century. He was a recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics.In Volume I, Professor Feynman raised the question: why natural laws are nearly symmetrical but not perfectly symmetrical? This applies to a whole range of important, strong phenomena nuclear forces, electrical
24、phenomena, and even weak ones like gravitation. How is that nature can be almost symmetrical, but not perfectly symmetrical. We might think that the true explanation of the near symmetry of nature is this: that God made the laws only nearly symmetrical so that we should not be jealous of His perfect
25、ion. Thereby, we, human beings, are not perfect and cannot be perfect.If nature is not quite symmetrical, how much symmetry can we expect in human affairs? There can be asymmetrical warfare between America and China even when America possesses far greater firepower than China. Only the Soviet Union
26、would attempt to seek symmetry with the United States by building equal nuclear firepower in a MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) confrontation. It is enough for China to possess sufficient nuclear warheads and their delivery systems to penetrate Americas shield and blow up major population centers. T
27、hen there is asymmetric information and ignoring it may lead to the end of a free-market capitalism because of possible turbulence in the unruly and under-regulated financial markets. Then there is the vertical, asymmetric God-person relationship. In religion, both liberals and conservatives have th
28、eir values. The virtue of liberalism is tolerance and the virtue of conservatism is the energy it can infuse into life through the feeling of certainty that the universe is on ones side. In a way, liberals do not recognize how much an absolute can contribute to life, and in assuming that absolutes c
29、an be held only dogmatically, which is not the case.Both the strength and dangers of liberalism pertain to lifes horizontal dimension, which encompasses human relationships (i.e. relationships between equals), whereas those of conservatives pertain to the vertical, asymmetric god-person relationship
30、. The sobering fact for religious liberals the one that is causing them to lose ground to conservatives is that, of the two dimensions, the vertical relation is more important. It argues nothing against justice and compassion to say that those virtues are less important than God, for the sufficient
31、reason that God anchors them in the nature of things. Is compassion rooted in ultimate reality, or is it only an admirable human virtue? That is a vertical question pertaining to worldviews. Liberals inherited their exemplary passion for social justice from parents and grandparents who (for all of t
32、heir social concern) nailed the horizontal arm of the Christian cross to its vertical arm which (in standard rendition) is longer to symbolize its priority. In their declining concern for theology and worldviews, liberal Christians have in effect turned the cross on its side and made its horizontal
33、arm the longer of the two.Thanks to the marvels of microphotography, we can now see single nerve cells, and what catches the eye is their dendrites, waving in the air like the tendrils of sea anemones in the hope so it appears of touching the dendrites of another cell. When two dendrites do touch, t
34、hey lock arms and, as result, their cells stand a better chance of braving lifes perils. It is religion in embryo, for religio in Latin means “to rebind,” and bonding and rebinding are what religion is all about. Because human beings have derived from bonding, it becomes incumbent on them to bond wi
35、th others. “Be ye members one of another,” St. Paul counseled. Confuciuss version reads, “Within the four seas all men are brothers.” Maybe, we can all work toward a bond between Americans and Chinese! Not who we are, which points toward differences, but what we are, which points to similarities. Wh
36、at is our basic essence? Our basic essence is relationship between human beings, a bond so to speak. Within the four seas, all men are brothers.Science and religion transcend nationalism, materialism, groupism, multiculturalism, capitalism, socialism and communism. We value our hopes, dreams, intuit
37、ions, glimpses of transcendence, intimations of immortality, mystical experiences, the elegance of natural laws and our sheer joyfulness at the grandeur of the Universe revealed to us by modern science and technology. From science, we learn that nature is not symmetrical. From religion, we learn tha
38、t the God-person relationship is asymmetrical. Applying these lessons to the concerns of the West and Japan with the rise of China, we can say that the relationship between the Peoples Republic of China and the Republic of China is asymmetrical. To deny that as some Taiwanese do is a futile effort.
39、Americans should realize and fully grasp this asymmetry. In doing so, they can help restore peace and prosperity in East Asia. Politics is the art of the possible. Presently, Chen Shui-bian, president of the Republic of China, and his staunch supporters are pushing Taiwan into a permanent separate e
40、ntity from mainland China. They are, by all means, heroic and admirable. However, it should be recognized that those people who seek independence for Taiwan mostly grew up in an island colonized by Japan and later ruled harshly by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang followers. That is w
41、hy they wanted self-determination and democracy in the first place. Many of their objectives, such as democracy, personal freedom, market capitalism, human rights, have been achieved. They should realize that an independent Taiwan is politically impossible. Only certain hawks in American Congress wo
42、uld clamor for recognition of an independent Taiwan. All the countries that have diplomatic relationships with the PRC would not give recognition to an independent Taiwan nor would they vote for the admission of an independent Taiwan into the United Nations.For over fifty years, the United States ha
43、s been the guarantor of peace in East Asia. It can continue to play this role if it recognizes the danger inherent in an ambiguous policy toward Chinese reunification. Both Beijing and Taipei seek the support of Washington to further their interests. In a way, Washington has been “cool” to both Beij
44、ing and Taipei. However, the time has come for a more positive role to be played by United States. Just as the United States has helped solve the German problem in Europe, the United States can help solve the Taiwan problem in Asia. By solving the Taiwan problem in due course, Americans can write a
45、new chapter in world history. In Asia, we may witness the formation of a “Holy Alliance” for political stability, economic growth and technological innovation. The twenty-first century may even go down in history as a Pacific Century. How events may develop and how history may unfold depend critical
46、ly on the mission of the United States to bring about long-lasting peace and sustained economic growth in this part of the world. As Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God.” God Bless America!Terence KwaiPresidentChina SpecialistsHong Kong Special Administrativ
47、e RegionPeoples Republic of ChinaJuly 2006IntroductionMy parents came from a place near Hangzhou in East China that boasts many famous figures in contemporary Chinese history, such as the late Premier Zhou Enlai and novelist Lu Xun. My father claims to be descended from the ruling family of Zhou Dyn
48、asty in ancient China (1046 B.C. 256 B.C.) My father went to Shanghai to start a business. After World War II, he went to Hong Kong and then to Cambodia, where he built a fortune. However, because of the Indochina War which eventually swept into Cambodia, my father lost most of his assets. He came back to Hong Kong with few resources. Having to support an extended family in Hong Kong and in
