The Taiwan Strait has been one of East Asia's most potentially volatile flashpoints since the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan in 1949. In its present form, the dispute centers on whether Taiwan is, or should be, a part of China. Since the late 1970s, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has pursued a policy of peaceful unification premised on the use of expanded economic and cultural linkages to draw Taiwan closer to the mainland. But Beijing has also invested heavily in military capabilities designed for a Taiwan Strait confrontation, and China's leaders have, in recent years, warned that they are willing to pay “any price” to prevent Taiwan's formal independence. Given the stakes involved, it is imperative to have a good understanding of PRC motivations relating to Taiwan. This is the subject of Alan M. Wachman's excellent book.

As Wachman notes, it is simply not obvious why the PRC should be willing to threaten war to prevent the formal independence of an island that has enjoyed de facto independence for decades. The standard answer focuses on issues of nationalism, legitimacy, and historical legacies. Seized by Japan in 1895, Taiwan figures prominently in China's “century of humiliation.” That the United States intervened in the Taiwan Strait in 1950—helping to prevent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from finishing off Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist regime—adds to a sense of historical injustice among many Chinese, a sense that is encouraged by the way the Taiwan issue is taught in PRC schools. In this environment, many assume that a “loss” of Taiwan could provoke a nationalist backlash against the Chinese Communist Party, imperiling its hold on power. Apparent weakness on the Taiwan issue, moreover, might embolden separatist movements elsewhere in China, such as in Tibet or Xinjiang.

Wachman writes that these sorts of arguments, while not necessarily off the mark, are not fully satisfying either. As he emphasizes on several occasions, nationalism and concerns over national unity have not prevented the PRC from peacefully resolving, often after making significant concessions, several other territorial disputes. He suggests that it is hard to pinpoint why Taiwan should take on so much greater symbolic value than other disputed territories:

To fully understand Taiwan's salience, and the PRC's relatively uncompromising position on the island, Wachman argues that it is necessary to direct our attention away from arguments that emphasize intangible factors driving PRC interest in Taiwan, and to focus more closely on the island's geostrategic significance for China.

Wachman's historical narrative begins in Chapter 3 with the Qing dynasty's seventeenth-century decision to incorporate Taiwan into its empire, which he attributes to geostrategic considerations. Though the Kangxi emperor was reluctant to seize the island once Ming loyalists on it had surrendered, the naval strategist (and leader of the expedition sent to defeat the Ming loyalists) Shi Lang convinced him of Taiwan's strategic importance as a “buffer and a bridgehead.” Conversely, failure to take the island would open the door to pirate activity and possible future annexation by foreign powers (p. 56). Subsequent chapters explore the island's growing importance in the minds of Nationalist Party (Chap. 4) and Communist Party (Chap. 5) leaders after both parties had initially viewed Taiwan with indifference. Chapter 6 considers Taiwan's importance to the PRC during the Cold War, and Chapter 7 shows that geostrategic concerns have loomed large in contemporary discussions in the PRC concerning Taiwan's significance. For instance, Wachman notes that many PRC strategists and commentators view Taiwan as part of a chain of U.S.-dominated islands that effectively contains China; should Taiwan fall into PRC hands, it would serve as a “gateway to the sea” and enable China to “break through this chain” (p. 138).

The key shortcoming of the book, in my opinion, is that it does not make a concerted effort to assess the relative importance of geostrategic rationales versus other factors in driving the PRC's interest in Taiwan. While Wachman does an outstanding job of weaving together a narrative showing that strategic concerns have often factored into debates and decisions concerning Taiwan, the reader is left with no metric through which to assess the relative weight of these concerns. To his credit, he is sensitive to this issue (see pp. 158–59) and is up front that factors other than geostrategic concerns, such as abstract concerns over territorial integrity and nationalism, are undoubtedly important (p. 153). Moreover, providing such a metric is undoubtedly a tall order—particularly given the opaqueness of decision making at the elite levels of Chinese politics. This shortcoming is thus outweighed by the many strengths of this book, including its detailed narrative of an important, though sometimes overlooked, factor driving PRC interest in Taiwan; its comprehensive documentation; and its refreshingly lucid style. In short, the book makes a very important contribution to the study of China-Taiwan relations. It is certainly a must-read for anyone interested in this subject.

While the Wachman book explores the roots of the current standoff between China and Taiwan, the essays in the Gilley and Diamond edited volume consider, broadly, the extent to which Taiwan's recent experience with democratization offers useful insights into the prospects for significant political change in China. The chapters typically investigate an important factor related to Taiwan's democratization (business–government relations, the international environment, etc.), and then draw comparisons with the PRC. The authors also discuss what implications any similarities and/or differences between the two states may have for China's political future. Like Wachman's study, this is an excellent book. Without exception the essays are well crafted and insightful, and the volume holds together very nicely as a research project. I believe that scholars working on the politics of China and Taiwan—and, indeed, scholars interested in democratization more broadly—will find this book to be both informative and thought provoking.

The introductory chapter by Bruce Gilley is quite good and does a nice job of placing the findings from the chapters that follow into a broader comparative context. Next come four chapters that compare civil society in Taiwan as it democratized to civil society in China today. Several of the authors point to some important differences here. For instance, Dorothy Solinger (Chap. 5) shows that Taiwanese businesses (especially small and medium-size businesses) were less beholden to the state for their success than is the case for businesses operating in China today. As such, whereas owners of Taiwan's small and medium-size firms were a force for democratization on the island, it is far from clear that the PRC's entrepreneurs would act as a similar force in today's China. On the other hand, some interesting similarities also emerge. For example, Yun-han Chu (Chap. 2) uses survey data from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China to show a strong correlation between levels of economic development and democratic values orientation across the three polities. In China, though still generally lagging behind Taiwan and Hong Kong, support for democratic values increased substantially between 1993 and 2002 as the country modernized. While Chu finds evidence that traditional values in these Confucian societies “do stand in the way of acquiring a democratic value-orientation,” he concludes that there is nevertheless “little ground to be pessimistic about the future of democracy in China because further socioeconomic modernization will weaken traditional values” (p. 46).

The second part of the book includes four chapters that consider and compare how the two governments have responded to internal and external pressure. One theme that emerges here is that the two regimes have faced substantially different international pressures and constraints. For instance, in their study of elections in Taiwan and China, Tun-jen Cheng and Gang Lin (Chap. 8) argue that “China's great power status, immense market potential, and strong nationalist sentiment make the CCP leaders less susceptible to external pressure for democratization” than was the case for Taiwan (p. 181). Jacques deLisle makes a similar observation in his excellent chapter (9) on the international context and how it has influenced prospects for democracy in the two states.

The book's third part consists of chapters written by each of the editors that consider further whether future political change in China is likely to mirror Taiwan's democratizing experience. Both authors expect that China's path to democracy will differ significantly from Taiwan's. Larry Diamond, for instance, emphasizes that “China today differs dramatically from the historical example of Taiwan” (p. 249), and these differences (much larger size, delayed introduction of competitive elections at the local level, greater income inequality) will likely lead it down a different road to political reform.

My primary criticism of this interesting and incisive volume concerns its premise: I wish that a stronger case had been made up front that a comparison between the PRC and Taiwan is a useful one. There are some obvious similarities between the two states—such as shared culture, language, and rule by Leninist parties—that facilitate comparison, and Gilley, in his introductory chapter, also notes that the growth trajectories of Taiwan and the PRC are strikingly similar (with the PRC about 26 years behind). Still, I felt that Gilley was perhaps a bit cavalier in dismissing the relevance of some of the obvious differences that could complicate efforts to draw inference about China based on Taiwan's experience. Writes Gilley:

The pertinent issue, however, is not whether China and Taiwan can be compared (of course they can), but rather whether the comparison is useful—whether, in this case, comparing China to Taiwan facilitates meaningful inference about China's political future. Establishing the utility of such a comparative endeavor is obviously difficult, but I think it deserves some more treatment than it was given. Nevertheless, this criticism aside, the volume represents an outstanding collection of essays, and Gilley and Diamond have done an excellent job incorporating them into a coherent whole.