How Much Land Does a Man Need? The Prospects of a Hegemonic War between the People’s Republic of China and the United States of America over Taiwan

Abstract

Current cross-strait relations between the People’s Republic of China (China) and the Republic of China (Taiwan) present a worrying dynamic due to uncertainties about Taiwan’s political status. This raises the risk that China may seek to impose its reunification preferences through military force, and in so doing, trigger a hegemonic war between the ascendent China, and the current global hegemon, the United States of America (U.S.), due to Washington’s defence commitments to Taiwan. Thus, this paper explores the following research question: what are the prospects that Taiwan could be a flashpoint for a Sino-U.S. hegemonic war? This paper explores this question in three sections. Section I examines China’s, Taiwan’s, and the U.S.’ domestic and international level considerations, win-sets, and ranks their preferred decisions. It argues that the prospect of a conflict is conditional upon Taiwan’s decision. Section II uses a multinomial logistic regression to examine the Taiwanese public’s preference regarding their country’s political status, and suggests that a growing Taiwanese identity and pan-Green partisan affinity in younger generations is reducing the feasibility of the status quo and reunification win-sets. Section III assesses the prospect that a hegemonic war may occur over Taiwan, and argues that the existing framework, ceteris paribus, could culminate in the outbreak of a hegemonic war. This paper argues that new options are required in regard to Taiwan’s political status to reduce the risk of war, but that this requires China to broaden its One China principle to enable outcomes such as a commonwealth, confederation, or brotherhood framework. Furthermore, the U.S. can help defuse this situation by revising the U.S.’ defence commitments to Taiwan. Keywords: China, Taiwan, U.S., Taiwan Strait, hegemonic war