616 { China’s Quest
the Mao era. Deng was an old military man, a political commissar with one of
the PLA’s key armies during the post-1945 civil war, with deep personal con-
nections with PLA leaders. Jiang had none of this. He was a military novice.
Jiang had great political need to prove his toughness to the PLA and win
continued PLA support. Jiang had taken a risk and failed with the issue of
his moderate-sounding eight-point proposal. Now he needed to compensate
for that earlier moderation. While Deng was politically active, Jiang could
borrow Deng’s authority to bring the PLA into line. But by 1995, Deng was
very ill and politically inactive. (Deng would die in February 1997.) Without
the full support of Deng, Jiang was in no position to veto PLA demands for
aggressive military exercises directed against Taiwan. Jiang thus embraced
the PLA’s call for a hard response, and delivered a self-criticism before an
expanded meeting of the Politburo of his earlier soft approach. This was an
astute move that allowed Jiang to pivot to a tougher line toward Taiwan more
in accord with PLA views. Qian Qichen also made a self-criticism.^12 It was
decided to stage military exercises aimed at Taiwan as proposed by the PLA.
The US issue of a visa for Lee was part of a plot to encircle and split China, the
Taiwan Affairs Leading Small Group (TALSG) determined, and China would
respond firmly to its treacherous move.
Throughout the summer and fall of 1995, Beijing pressed Washington to
give “firm commitments,” ideally in the form of a “fourth communiqué,” that
Taiwan leaders would not again be allowed to visit the United States. Since US
actions had created the problem, Beijing argued, it was up to the United States
to take “concrete actions” to repair the damage. Ideally US firm guarantees
would be finalized at a summit of Jiang and Clinton. Beijing indicated that
if the United States accepted this Chinese proposal, there would be a rapid
restoration of ties and cooperation on a whole range of issues, from non-
proliferation to intellectual property rights protection, would be enhanced.
Washington rejected the idea of a fourth communiqué and was only willing
to offer that the United States had no plans to issue further visas to Taiwan
leaders in the near future.Taiwan’s Democratic Transformation and Emergence
of “Taiwan Independence”The changes in Taiwan’s long-standing policies toward unification of Taiwan
and the Mainland that so deeply troubled Beijing in the early 1990s were
rooted in the democratization of that island’s political system. Between 1949,
when the defeated remnants of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang,
or KMT) regime fled to Taiwan and the mid-1980s, Taiwan had been ruled
by an authoritarian one-party dictatorship. That KMT dictatorship became
less brutal over time, especially after Chiang Kai-shek died in April 1975 and