With a tip of the keyboard to the good folks over at China Digital News I want to point you to a thorough and balanced analysis of where the Cross-Straits issues stand at the moment in Beijing, Taipei and Washington, and where they are likely to go in the near, and not-so-near, future, authored by two eminent scholars on the subject: Professor Zhu Feng, the director of the International Security Program at the School of International Relations at Peking University, currently the visiting fellow at the Freeman Chair in China Studies, Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC.; and Drew Thompson, a researcher at the Freeman Chair in China Studies, Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC.
The article appears in China Brief: A Journal of Information and Analysis, a publication of the Jamestown Foundation. If you have any interest in one of the most complex and potentially dangerous conflicts confronting our world, you will want to read this article, of which I have only reproduced the lede graph below:
The on-going transfer of power in Beijing is contributing to the "politicization" (zhengzhihua) of China's foreign policy, causing commentators and policymakers in Beijing to emphasize a hard-line ideology on Taiwan.
Beijing's current, ideologically-charged atmosphere has had an impact on the Mainland's Taiwan policy, effectively preventing a pragmatic approach or an "innovative" policy response. Likewise, the concurrent election seasons in the U.S. and Taiwan prompts leaders to focus on the domestic ramifications of all decisions (and sometimes ignore the impacts of "domestic" decisions on foreign policy). With political seasons dominating policy in Beijing, Washington and Taipei, policymakers in each capital are constrained in their abilities to propose or implement policies that would contribute towards peaceful resolution of the cross-straits crisis.
