Beijing’s Taiwan ‘Reunification’ Dreams Are Fanciful

China Taipei may become friendlier to Beijing, but the Taiwanese cherish their sovereignty. (ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP via Getty Images) Both President Donald Trump and China’s leader Xi Jinping have taken steps to prevent the Taiwan issue from becoming a major source of tension in bilateral relations. Their joint goal was especially evident during the two summit meetings between Trump and Xi this year. Despite Beijing’s recent conciliatory approach, however, there is no indication that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has relinquished its long-term goal of absorbing Taiwan and ending its status as a democratic, de facto independent state. Xi’s regime appears to be pursuing a two-pronged strategy to achieve that objective: Beijing sustains an uncompromising, sometimes even militarily menacing, policy toward the current Taiwanese government, which is controlled by the officially pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP); at the same time, PRC officials drop abundant hints that Beijing would be willing to adopt a less confrontational posture toward the DPP’s more moderate rival, the Kuomintang Party (KMT) that last governed Taiwan from 2008 to 2016. Beijing has already extended political olive branches to the KMT leader Cheng Li-wun, especially during her visit to the mainland in April 2026. In an October 6 article in Foreign Policy, Michael Poznansky, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Ian Easton, a senior nonresident fellow at the Institute for Indo-Pacific Security, contend that U.S. leaders need to examine the possibility of a bloodless annexation, whereby an elected government in Taipei concludes a treaty effectively ceding Taiwan’s territory to the People’s Republic of China. Such a strategy, known by euphemisms like “winning without fighting” or “peaceful reunification,” is Beijing’s preferred outcome. And Washington is unprepared for it. Xi and other PRC leaders undoubtedly would prefer to achieve Taiwan’s reunification with the mainland through political and economic means. Using military force to do so would be highly dangerous and unpredictable. Indeed, such a course would probably lead to war with the United States and Japan, the island’s principal military protectors. PRC leaders have long proposed the formula of “one country, two systems” as a model for reunification. Taiwan would become part of a reunited China, but it would not be controlled from Beijing. In essence, the promised one country, two systems arrangement is similar to the agreement that Chinese leaders signed in 1997 when possession of Hong Kong was transferred from Britain to the PRC. The provision for Hong Kong’s political autonomy was even written into its Basic Law and guaranteed for 50 years. The one country, two systems model for Taiwan would include even greater promised autonomy, including on military affairs. Moreover, unlike the agreement regarding Hong Kong, current PRC policy does not specify an end date for Taiwan’s autonomous status. Nevertheless, Beijing is unlikely to succeed in ending Taiwan’s de facto independence solely through greater political and economic influence. Extensive damage to Beijing’s credibility with the Taiwanese occurred when the PRC executed a security crackdown on Hong Kong in June 2020. The territory’s promised autonomy was so drastically narrowed as to become virtually meaningless. The media mogul Jimmy Lai and other vocal democracy activists subsequently received long prison sentences, and a suffocating atmosphere of coerced political conformity settled over the once ideologically vibrant city. Taiwan’s population was watching, and most Taiwanese did not like what they saw. Indeed, the Hong Kong lesson was a major factor in the DPP’s subsequent surge in political power. Granted, current President Lai Ching-te of the DPP has dissipated much of that gain because of corruption within his administration, as well as his own authoritarian abuses. Many Taiwanese also worry about Lai’s extremely hardline, confrontational rhetoric and policies toward Beijing. Yet there is a crucial difference between a growing desire by Taiwanese voters to rein in DPP excesses and a willingness to abandon Taiwan’s status as a de facto independent country. Numerous opinion polls have confirmed that no more than a tiny percentage of Taiwanese favor reunification with the totalitarian, one-party state across the strait. The hostile reaction to the PRC’s crackdown on Hong Kong indicated that the Taiwanese are determined not to let their island suffer a similar fate. Even most KMT supporters do not want to see Taiwan become Beijing’s puppet or their party to become subsumed into the PRC. If Xi and other PRC leaders are content with seeing a more conciliatory, less confrontational government emerge in Taipei, they have a very good chance of achieving their objective. That benign outcome is especially likely if they are simultaneously willing to reduce the PRC’s military presence in and around the Taiwan Strait. But if they continue to press for reunification (even solely by peaceful means) they are likely to be disappointed. Indeed, even if Beijing pursued a more limited goal of transforming Taiwan into an obedient, albeit still nominally self-governing, client under the KMT, such an effort would likely fail. In her March 3 Foreign Affairs article, Cheng Li-wun, the KMT leader, conveyed her party’s orientation rather pointedly: Subscribe Today Get daily emails in your inbox As Beijing and Washington compete for influence in the Pacific, how Taiwan manages cross-strait relations affects whether the region remains peaceful and stable. Many observers assume that Taiwan must choose to align itself with one side or the other. But this binary framing is misleading. Taiwan is strongest when it preserves space to pursue its own needs, not when it becomes a frontline outpost for one country or a subordinate partner to the other. There is not a yawning gap between the views of most KMT leaders and those of the more sensible elements of the DPP regarding policy toward Beijing. Lai, though president, is among the more extreme (and sometimes recklessly assertive) pro-independence party activists. Voters may well reject that faction in the next national election in favor of the KMT, but such an outcome would not signal a popular mandate for Taipei to embrace an appeasement policy toward the PRC. It is appropriate for U.S. policymakers to carefully monitor developments, but there is no need to panic nor to conjure improbable worst-case scenarios involving a clever PRC ploy to conquer Taiwan via a political offensive.