Sixteen essays by leading scholars look at the practical problems of how to reduce tensions and improve relations across the Taiwan Strait.

Breaking the China-Taiwan Impasse Edited by Donald S. Zagoria with the assistance of Chris Fugarino. Praeger, Westport CT and London, 2003. 272 pages. ISBN: 0-275-98022-7

In 1997, the National Committee on American Foreign Policy (NCAFP) launched a series of discussions that brought together participants from the United States, China, and Taiwan to share their views on the complex relationships among these countries. In 2003, 16 essays, 14 of which were first presented at the NCAFP sessions were released as "Breaking the China-Taiwan Impasse," edited by Donald S. Zagoria, a professor of government at Hunter College in New York.

While the book offers little reason to hope for the breakthrough envisioned in its title, these short essays (they average about 12 pages in length) and the 15 documents reproduced as appendices provide an excellent overview of the state of play in cross-Strait relations just after the December 2001 legislative elections. The essays are refreshingly free of sterile debates about the rights and wrongs of Taiwan history and the arcana of international law. They focus instead on the practical problems of politics as played out in the real world.

The appendices are a strong addition, bringing together important documents that are not easily available elsewhere, including all three of the communiqués issued jointly by the United States and the PRC, the complete text of the Taiwan Relations Act, Ronald Reagan's Six Assurances, Jiang Zemin's Eight Points on Unification, and a number of statements that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Chen Shui-bian have made about cross-Strait issues. Read carefully, these documents alone can correct any number of widely-held misunderstandings.

The appendices are useful, but the essays are the heart of the volume, and worth reading. Each chapter captures the atmosphere in cross-Strait relations that prevailed at the time it was written. This is also their greatest weakness; because the essays were meant to be timely and provocative, it is inevitable that they feel a bit dated a few years later. These essays were not intended as scholarly analyses designed to transcend history. They were crafted as contributions to an on-going debate -- the emphasis was on presenting and interpreting the latest facts. Several of the essays have been updated and revised to address this deficiency, but my favorite essays in the book are the ones that do not try to be up-to-date, but instead offer analysis that casts familiar events in a new light.

One of the best essays in the volume, in my view, is Bonnie Glaser's argument for instituting military Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) between Taipei and Beijing. Glaser explains what CBMs are and how they have been used in other parts of the world to prevent miscalculations leading to military conflict. She then goes into a lengthy discussion of the incentives and disincentives Taiwan and the PRC must consider as they mull over this option. The chapter exposes the ambivalence both sides feel about engaging in this type of negotiation; in the process, it underlines the degree to which Taiwan and China are reluctant to trade away their freedom of action for security. Glaser heads off the most obvious PRC objection by including a discussion of CBMs between states and non-state actors, including the Irish Republican Army and the Palestine Liberation Organization. She also makes numerous concrete suggestions for specific CBMs the two sides could profitably undertake.

Another excellent essay is Xu Shiquan's discussion of the 1992 Consensus. Xu, who heads the Institute of Taiwan Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, gives a detailed account of the negotiations that produced an agreement about "One China" that permitted discussions on practical issues to move forward. The essay itself reveals the difficulty underlying the 1992 Consensus: nowhere in the 20 pages of text and appendices (excerpts from documents exchanged during the negotiations) is there a clear statement of exactly what the 1992 Consensus was. Instead, the "consensus" emerges from a dauntingly complicated series of offers and counter-offers. In essence, the "consensus" was what was left after everything else had been rejected.

Xu shows how close the two sides got to an agreement in 1992. But what emerges most strongly is the astonishing fudge factor both sides accepted in pursuit of pragmatic goals. Xu holds out the  Consensus as the best option for reopening dialogue across the Taiwan Strait, but his own discussion reveals how difficult this will be. In 1992, both sides were eager to find a way to make the negotiations work -- so eager that they were willing to overlook huge contradictions. For me, Xu's chapter was a sobering reminder that the "consensus" was terribly thin to begin with, possible only because the two sides both were desperate for a fig leaf. Today, neither side seems to feel much embarrassment about the failure of dialogue, while the area to be covered by the fig leaf is even larger than before. If it was this hard to find something both sides wanted to wear in 1992, the chances of success in 2004 seem slim indeed.

Ralph Clough strikes a more optimistic -- but nonetheless measured and qualified -- tone in his essays on cross-Strait economic interactions. He avoids the breathlessness that characterizes much of the writing on this subject, cataloguing the huge scale of cross-Strait trade and investment, but also pointing out the limitations and challenges. As always, Clough's pieces are painstakingly researched, providing a wealth of detail. His overview of the Chen Administration's first-term economic policy points to some of the contradictions embedded within that policy that made it hard to carry out.

The essays by Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou and by Alan Romberg are informative and fair-minded assessments of cross-Strait relations in the first two years of Chen Shui-bian's presidency. Both essays were written before the "one country on each side" statement, which is unfortunate, since readers would benefit greatly from these thoughtful analysts' reactions to President Chen's bombshell. Throughout his essay, Ma is highly critical of the Chen Administration's management of cross-Strait relations, but he saves a hefty share of blame for Beijing, which he says missed three critical opportunities to move forward with Chen: Chen's inaugural address, the "mini-links," and Chen's Cross-Century Remarks (in which he mentioned "political integration"). The even-handed tone of the essay is illustrated in its conclusion: "President Chen is a supporter of TI [Taiwan Independence], but is not a fundamentalist. He is a pragmatist, not an ideologue. One should not overestimate his political beliefs nor underestimate his flexibility."

Still, Ma criticizes the DPP-led administration for its reliance on two assumptions -- that as long as Chen upholds his promise not to declare independence, the PRC will not use force, and that any flexibility on "One China" is a concession to the PRC. Ma's analysis goes a long way toward explaining Chen's reticence on direct links and dialogue, but he questions the wisdom of both assumptions. In particular, he argues that Taiwan both can and should address "One China," preferably through the framework of the 1992 consensus. This, he says, is not a concession to the PRC, but "acknowledges an obligation derived from the Constitution" -- a statement that is even more pregnant today, in light of constitutional reform debate, than it was when Ma wrote it. The book's portrayal of the Chen Administration gains additional nuance from chapters by Wilson Tien (a DPP staffer) and Julian Cheng-liang Kuo (a DPP legislator and scholar).

Alan Romberg's summary of Chen's first two years in office is similarly pessimistic about the chances for a breakthough in cross-Strait relations. "Maybe muddling through is the best we can hope for," he writes. "But," he continues, "we need to face up to the fact that the current listen-and-watch approach of Beijing and the apparently self-satisfied approach of Taipei are inadequate to the real stakes. Far more flexible thinking is called for." Romberg's comments -- which are as true today they were three years ago -- underscore not only the gap between Taiwan and the PRC but also the gulf between Taipei and Washington.

The challenges China and Taiwan pose for the US is an important theme in this collection. U.S. policy is explored, dissected, and evaluated by some of the best in the business: Robert Scalapino, Richard Bush, and Yang Jiemian. Yang's contribution is the most skeptical, but all of these essayists agree that the United States has a strong interest in and commitment to maintaining a peaceful, stable Taiwan Strait. Thus, none of them anticipates the chaos that erupted in America's management of the Taiwan issue in 2003. Reflecting on post-September 11 changes in President Bush's foreign policy, Yang Jiemian writes, "By the end of the year, the United States and China seemed to understand that it is in their best interests not to let the Taiwan issue get out of control." These authors' consensus about the importance of the Taiwan issue to the United States makes the rapid deterioration of U.S.-Taiwan relations, which reached their nadir on December 9, 2003, even more disheartening and worrisome.

David M. Lampton's contribution is arguably the most time-sensitive piece in the collection. Most of the short-term historical events he discusses were superseded even before the book was published. But the essay reveals an important truth: despite what look like significant changes in the facts on the ground, the big picture is remarkably static. The roadmap Lampton proposes in this essay, written more than three years ago ("moving from...mini-three links, to discussions of WTO compatibility...to sectoral cooperation, to a common market, to a more explicit political integration") needs little or no revision -- except perhaps to move its completion date even farther into the future. In this sense, Lampton's contribution captures the theme of the collection: If the China-Taiwan impasse is to be broken, it will be through economic interactions producing common interests and a vision of a mutually-beneficial political alliance. Since none of this is happening very fast, the near future will most likely consist of continuing efforts to manage these relationships, defer a "final solution" and avoid conflict. It's not the sexiest conclusion, but it's probably right.