632 { China’s Quest
to Lee Teng-hui, giving him a solid majority of 54 percent of the vote. The
percentage of the vote won by the DPP held more or less steady at 30 percent
of the vote; PLA intimidation did not cause voters to flee either Lee Teng-hui
or the DPP. More broadly, Beijing’s decision for military coercion of Taiwan
at a crucial juncture in its evolution toward democracy reinforced Taiwanese
reluctance to come under the rule of the CCP. The PLA threats of 1996 joined
the Beijing Massacre as prominent reasons why Taiwanese did not favor
Beijing’s one country, two systems rubric.
China’s military intimidation of Taiwan also scared China’s neighbors,
causing them to take a new interest in the peaceful resolution of the Taiwan
issue and in the continued presence of the United States as a major military
power in the Western Pacific. Japan especially began to make presentations to
Chinese diplomats about its interest in the peaceful resolution of the Taiwan
issue—much to Beijing’s chagrin. In Europe, too, democratic governments
and publics began to think, perhaps for the first time, about their interest in
the intimidation of small but democratic Taiwan by a powerful, authoritarian,
one-party dictatorship. These trends were not favorable to China’s interests.^34
China’s annual diplomatic almanac for 1996 concluded that China’s “reso-
lute struggle via serious negotiations” with the United States over Taiwan had
“deepened the US understanding of the sensitivity and importance of the
Taiwan issue.”^35 This conclusion is accurate. But the political costs to China of
that lesson were extremely high.
The military confrontation of 1996 enhanced the influence of the more
cautious MFA in decision making. The policy debate of 1992–1995 did not
boil down to a MFA-PLA dispute, with the MFA ultimately outmaneuvering
the PLA. That would have been unlikely. In any case, above both the MFA
and the PLA high command was the PBSC. The real question at issue was
whether the PBSC would endorse the MFA’s or the PLA’s point of view. But as
a result of the unexpected and powerful US intervention, the PLA may have
become more inclined to listen to MFA warnings about the costs and risks of
confrontational approaches. The PLA, after all, had as great an interest as any
Chinese institution in avoiding war with the United States, and when PLA
leaders realized they had miscalculated the willingness of the United States
to intervene in a cross-Strait conflict, they may have become less dismissive of
MFA arguments against military intimidation or coercion. At the same time,
the PLA had new and persuasive arguments for accelerated military modern-
ization efforts to close the gap between Chinese and US military capabilities.
The Sino-US confrontation of 1996 came barely eighteen months after
the struggle over MFN linkage, which had in turn followed the confronta-
tion over 6-4. The question was becoming increasingly starkly framed: was
chronic confrontation the new pattern for PRC-US relations? The 1995–1996
confrontation over Taiwan shocked leaders in both Beijing and Washington,
compelling them to recognize just how bad relations might become. This