US power the best bulwark against China’s assertiveness

From the Korean Peninsula to the South China Sea and on to the Indian subcontinent, Beijing seems intent on riding roughshod over the territorial claims of its maritime and continental neighbours.
 
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi confirmed this suspicion when he said earlier this month: 'There is no room for compromise in territorial and historical issues.' In other words, China will not be content until it has seized vast tracts of land and sea from Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, India and other Asian nations.
 
Despite these worrying signals, Taiwan's experience shows that a US security guarantee can keep Chinese territorial demands in check and underwrite smooth relations with Beijing.
 
Since the nationalist Kuomintang withdrew to Taiwan at the end of the Chinese Civil War, the reunification of what Beijing considers a 'renegade province' with the 'motherland' has been a non-negotiable core plank of Chinese Communist Party policy. Nevertheless, Beijing has come to accept, albeit reluctantly, indefinite de facto Taiwanese independence.
 
The Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) – which has governed US-Taiwanese relations since Washington formally switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979 – establishes a strong US commitment to safeguarding Taiwan's security and resisting any non-peaceful Chinese attempts to reintegrate Taiwan.
 
By authorising arms sales to Taiwan and requiring that the United States maintain the capacity to resist threats to the island nation's security, the TRA has chastened China's appetite for control of Taiwan and provided the backdrop for warming Sino-Taiwanese relations.
 
With President Ma Ying-jeou's election in 2008, Taipei initiated a policy of engagement with Beijing on the basis of the 'three no's' – no unification, no independence, and no use of force.
 
By focusing on mutually beneficial economic ties with China and deferring the push for de jure Taiwanese independence, the Ma administration has presided over a boom in business links, and in February this year, even secured the first official meeting between Taiwan and mainland China since 1949.
 
The Taiwanese test case shows that Chinese threats to wrest control of territory are no barrier to peace and fruitful commercial ties.
 
With the constraining influence of US military might, Beijing's bullish territorial claims may be all bark, no bite.

Dr Benjamin Herscovitch is a Beijing-based Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies and author of Preserving Peace as China Rises I, released on 13 March 2014.