Aurelio Insisa

Abstract:After the 2016 elections, cross-Strait relations have fallen to their lowest point since the Third Strait Crisis. A proliferation of state-driven strategic narratives by both sides has since emerged. Against Beijing's narratives of "national rejuvenation," peaceful reunification, and "1992 Consensus," the Tsai administration has contraposed an image of Taiwan as a "beacon" of freedom and democracy in the Indo-Pacific. By tracing the tenets and the operationalization of Beijing and Taipei's strategic communications from the late 2000s to 2020, this article shows how Chinese and Taiwanese actors' reactions to the systemic pressure of a shifting East Asian regional order have progressively shaped cross-Strait communicative dynamics, severely constraining the range of options that could overcome the current impasse.

The year in review was one of the most tumultuous in the recent history of Taiwan and cross-Strait relations. At the beginning of 2019, President Tsai Ing-wen appeared destined for an ignominious defeat after the Democratic Progressive Party’s rout in the 2018 local elections. By the end of the year, her victory in the presidential election looked certain. On 11 January 2020, Tsai won her second term in office beating the controversial Kuomintang candidate Han Kuo-yu. Cross-Strait, international, and domestic factors converged to realise this improbable electoral comeback. The stagnation of China’s Taiwan policy over the «1992 Consensus» and the «one country, two systems» formula largely opposed in Taiwan, coupled with the increasingly assertive posture of the People’s Republic of China under the leadership of Xi Jinping, worried the Taiwanese public and revitalised Tsai and the pan-Green camp. The resonance in Taiwan of the unexpected eruption of violent protests in Hong Kong against the local and central government then cleared a path for Tsai’s electoral victory, while exposing the inherent contradictions of the Kuomintang’s own China-friendly approach to cross-Strait relations. Tsai’s recovery benefited also from the deepening support provided by the Trump administration, and from the positive spillover effects of the Sino-American trade war, which fostered a convincing economic growth in the period leading up to the election. Within Taiwanese politics, the populist wave raised by Han Kuo-yu swept over the Kuomintang and appeared ready to conquer national politics throughout the first half of 2019. However, it ultimately failed to address the concerns of the domestic electorate over the future status of Taiwan and also dragged the pan-Blue camp to defeat in the legislative election, in which the Democratic Progressive Party obtained a stable parliamentary majority to support Tsai’s second term in office.

Relations between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China remained frozen, as President Tsai Ing-wen continued to refuse Beijing’s diktat to accept the 1992 Consensus as a roadmap for national unification. With no breakthrough in sight, both sides across the Strait remained firmly entrenched in their positions, relying on military signalling to communicate their commitment to their respective agendas. The escalation of the Sino-American strategic competition also contributed to shape the course of cross-Strait relations, as Taipei consolidated its security relations with Washington against Beijing’s threat. The support of the Trump administration partially balanced a string of diplomatic defeats that Taiwan suffered throughout the year, as the government of the People’s Republic of China further shrank Taiwan’s international space, poaching diplomatic allies and excluding the self-governed island from international organisations. Despite stronger ties with Washington, Taipei neither avoided the Trump tariffs, nor recommenced negotiations for a free trade agreement with the United States. Similarly, the maintenance of stable and friendly relations with the Abe administration was not sufficient to obtain Japan’s support for access to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement.
Burdened by the need to implement painful structural reforms to the economy, and unable to guarantee short-term windfalls to an impatient electorate, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) suffered a devastating defeat in the November electoral round, which merged local elections with referenda on themes relevant to the long-term success of the Tsai agenda. The elections saw an impressive performance of the Kuomintang but also raised concerns over China’s capability to infiltrate and affect Taiwan’s democratic processes. The magnitude of the DPP’s defeat appeared to have severely hindered Tsai’s prospects for re-election in 2020.

After a tumultuous 2016, cross-Strait relations between the Republic of China (ROC) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) continued to be tense throughout 2017. The increasing divergence over the issue of national unification between Beijing and Taipei, epitomised by President Tsai Ing-wen’s refusal to acknowledge the 1992 Consensus, shaped Taiwan’s cross-Strait, regional, and domestic politics. Neither Beijing’s intensive pressure campaign, nor Taipei’s repeated proposals to establish a new model of interaction between the two sides produced tangible results. Within the context of a protracted stalemate with China, the Tsai administration responded by pursuing an ambitiously proactive agenda. Abroad, Taipei adapted to the new, disruptive Trump administration, deepened its relations with a sympathetic Abe administration in Japan, and pushed for a more relevant role in the Indo-Asia-Pacific via its New Southbound Policy. At home, it pushed an aggressively localist agenda, and started implementing an expansive industrial policy. These measures were taken with the aim of reducing the weight of the existent historical, cultural, political, and economic ties with the Mainland.
However, Beijing’s growing clutch in the region, widespread uncertainty over the future role of the United States in the region, as well as the structural malaise of the Taiwanese economy, severely constrained the efficacy of the agenda designed by the Tsai administration.

From 2012 to 2016, the relation between Mainland China and Taiwan saw landmark achievements and underwent profound shockwaves. During the second term of President Ma Ying-jeou, China and Taiwan reached the zenith of a process of cross-Strait rapprochement. This process began in 2008, as Ma and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and President of the People’s Republic of China
(PRC) Xi Jinping met in Singapore on 7 November 2015. This was the first meeting between the leaders of the two Chinas since 1949. The process itself was brought to an abrupt end by elections held in the Republic of China (ROC) on 16 January 2016. In this election, the presidential candidate of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP),
Tsai Ing-wen, became president and her party obtained for the first time a majority in the Legislative Yuan (LY). Tsai’s refusal to accept the existing «1992 Consensus» between the CCP and the Kuomintang (KMT), which posits the existence of One China, including both the Mainland and Taiwan, led cross-Strait relations towards a phase of renewed tensions, as the PRC froze relations with Taipei’s new administration. On 2 December 2016, the phone conversation between President Tsai and US President-Elect Donald J. Trump certified the fracture between Beijing and Taipei.
In Taiwan, unsatisfactory economic performances, social discontent and intra-party fighting marred Ma’s second term, facilitating the DPP’s sweeping victory in the 2016 elections. Long-standing structural imbalances and the freezing of the relations with China, however, complicated Tsai’s plans for reinvigorating Taiwan’s economy
during her first months in office.
In regional politics, Taiwan attempted to «punch above its weight» in the international sovereignty disputes occurring in the East China Sea and in the South China Sea, which involve areas claimed by the ROC. Although Ma’s «Peace Initiatives» were effectively ignored by the international community, Taiwan was nevertheless able to sign a successful fishery agreement with Japan, which effectively shelved the dispute in the East China Sea. Nonetheless, tensions remained high in the South China Sea up to 2016, as President Tsai pursued a less accommodating and more assertive policy concerning sovereignty disputes.

Taiwan remained one of the crossroads of international politics in the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Cross-Strait relations with China continued their downward trend, with increasing military tensions in the airspace and waters surrounding the island, leading to speculations of a military takeover. The PLA activism in the Strait was inherently tied, in an action-reaction dynamic, to the further strengthening of relations between Washington and Taipei, with the new Biden administration in the White House operating in broad continuity with the previous Trump administration, albeit with expected differences in style. The Biden administration was instrumental in fostering support among allies to call for «peace and stability» in the Taiwan Strait. In this contest, Taiwan further strengthened relations with Japan, and made inroads in Europe. Partners abroad expanded ties with the island as a result of a broader push back against China's ambitions on the international stage, and the impact of the global supply chain crisis revolving around the shortage of chips. Taiwan's essential role in the supply chain crisis, a result of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's dominance in this strategic industrial sector and of the geographic concentration of chip plants on the island, has presented the Tsai administration with new geo-economic challenges and opportunities. On the domestic front, President Tsai and the DPP obtained an important political victory after the rejection of the referendums on trade, energy, and the electoral law that were supported by the major opposition party, the KMT.

While tracing back to the second half of the 2000s, Chinese research on strategic communications has experienced a notable uptick over the last few years. Recent studies on China's own practice of strategic communications, and, more importantly, Xi Jinping's call to build 'a strategic communications system with distinctive Chinese characteristics' in May 2021, suggest that current Chinese views on the subject are worthy of analysis. This article examines 15 years of scholarship on the subject in Mandarin against the backdrop of institutional developments concerning 'propaganda work' in the Chinese Party-State under the Xi administration. It shows how the Chinese discourse on strategic

The Tsai administration has deftly used Taiwan's success in containing the COVID-19 pandemic to counter international isolation and increasing all-round pressure from Beijing through the strategic communications of a local 'democratic model' to fight the virus. This approach, in fact, is the result of a broader shift toward promoting the island's 'techno-democratic statecraft' to domestic and foreign audiences, aiming at positioning Taiwan as both a new global leader in the fields of cyber defence and digital infrastructure and as an outpost of a futuristic strand of 'digital democracy.' The emergence of this strategy, which is a result of both domestic and cross-Strait drivers, on the one hand, and of the current competitive path of Sino-American relations, on the other, shows how great power competition and technological development are affecting the strategic communications of state actors in the Asia-Pacific.