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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 12-Dec-04
Taiwan dodges a bullet for now by repudiating President Chen

Web Log - December, 2004

Taiwan dodges a bullet for now by repudiating President Chen

Rather than further antagonize Beijing and risk an early war, the people of Taiwan gave President Chen Shui-bian an unexpected defeat in a Saturday election by voting to give the opposing party a majority in the legislature.

President Chen had been moving in the direction of independence of Taiwan from China. Chen has announced he will amend the Constitution by 2008 to move towards independence, and China has announced that such a move would amount to a declaration of war. Several weeks ago, on Taiwan's National Day, Chen roiled the waters still further with the "the Republic of China is Taiwan, and Taiwan is the Republic of China," hinting at a plan to change the name of the island officially to Taiwan, which would be a further move toward independence.

That statement prompted a poll that found that indicate that 71% of Taiwanese citizens already consider Taiwan to be "sovereign and independent," leading many to believe that Chen would win the Parliamentary election.

However, both Beijing and Washington have been rebuking Chen's moves toward independence, and Saturday's election indicated that the people were going to be more cautious.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, China and Taiwan are in a late "generational unraveling" period turning into a "generational crisis" period. During an unraveling period, a society is risk-averse, and seeks compromise and containment of problems. In a crisis period, a society becomes risk-seeking, and is much more willing to use confrontation in its policies. So it's not surprising that during the transition period from unraveling to crisis, there is flipping back and forth between risk-aversion and risk-seeking. That's why the Taiwanese can say that Taiwan is already "sovereign and independent" one day, and then repudiate plans to become more sovereign and independent a few weeks later.

In fact, the phrase "unraveling period" comes from the observation that during the period leading up to a new crisis war, all the old painful rules and compromises that ended the previous crisis war become increasingly unraveled as time goes on.

Washington and Beijing are both breathing a sigh of relief over these election results, since Chen's plans are clearly going to be slowed down.

But they'll be delayed, not stopped. China's last crisis war was the civil war between armies led by Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek that ended in 1949. The war concluded with Chiang's flight to Taiwan. People with a personal memory of that war would be 60 years old or older today. These risk-averse people will slow down the move toward independence, rather than risk another war with China. However, these people are increasingly disappearing (retiring or dying), all at once, and they're being replaced by the risk-seeking younger generation of people born after the war and with no personal memory of it.

Generational Dynamics predicts that China will refight the civil war of the 1940s. There are three possible triggers for this renewed civil war:

A massive new rebellion, possibly triggered by the Falun Gong movement;
A collapse of the Chinese economic bubble, such as happened in Japan in 1990 and in America with the 2000 Nasdaq crash; or
Moves by Taiwan leaders toward independence, which would force China to declare war.

Any one of these triggers could occur at any time -- next week, next month, or two or three years from now.

Generational Dynamics predicts that all three of these will occur in the next decade or so. (12-Dec-04) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 12-Dec-04 Taiwan dodges a bullet for now by repudiating President Chen

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 12-Dec-04
Taiwan dodges a bullet for now by repudiating President Chen