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Professor Kerry Brown on the rise of Xi Jinping: Power and politics in modern China

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Interview with Professor Kerry Brown conducted by Lauren Dickey

18th_National_Congress_of_the_Communist_Party_of_China
18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. Source: Wikimedia

Lauren Dickey: What made you write `CEO China: The Rise of Xi Jinping’?

Kerry Brown: This is the second in a trilogy of books on power and politics in contemporary China.  The first book, `The New Emperors: Power and the Princelings in China’, which came out in 2014, was simply about the leadership succession between Hu Jintao who was leader of the Chinese Communist Party from 2002 to 2012, and his replacement, Xi Jinping, and then the group of leaders around Xi who had risen to power at the same time. In that book I was trying to map out the dynamic way in which networking occurs in elite politics in China and, in a sense, trying to get as far from possible away from the notion of factionalism and the sort of neat boundaries that sometimes gives to analysis of Chinese elite politics. This second book looks very closely at Xi himself. During the past four years of his presidential tenure, which constitutes a third of his time in office, we have now had time to see the kind of leader he has become and are approaching something of a record in power. So we should now start to have a good idea of what he wants from power, how he is exercising it, and what sort of China he is trying to bring about. The third book, to be published next year, deals with China’s role in the world under Xi.

Does anything about Xi and what he has done since 2012 surprise you?

I guess the ways in which he has been able to accrue power and be so visible and dominant have been a surprise. Most analysts would agree that Xi sounds and looks like he is in charge in ways that his two immediate predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, never really did. Xi speaks and acts like he knows what he is doing, he has a grand vision and he is willing to push people to achieve that. The real signature feature of his period in office, the anti-corruption struggle, has also been deeper and more extensive than previous similar inner party purges. It was a real surprise for instance, that he did allow for former Politburo Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang to be formally indicted, expelled from the Party and then imprisoned in 2014. This had never happened before at this level.  Though what we also have to remember are the first words he said when he emerged as Party Secretary after the Congress in November 2012. He gave a list of issues he wanted to address including the distance between the Party and the people, the level of greed and larceny in society etc.. So in a sense, we shouldn’t be surprised; he has done what he said he would do. It shows politics in China is the same as everywhere else. The most unsettling and shocking thing politicians can do is to actually carry out what they promised when they were lobbying for power! We usually expect the opposite.

Is Xi `the new Mao Zedong’?

It is popular at the moment to say that Xi is a Maoist. Yu Jie, the U.S.-based dissident journalist, wrote a book in 2014 simply calling Xi `China’s godfather’ and arguing that given their experience of the 1966 Cultural Revolution, Xi and other leaders of his generation only understand the politics pertaining to class struggle and Maoist-style worship of contradictions. It is understandable that a Chinese leader would seek to draw at least some legitimacy from being linked to the founding father of the regime, who remains an admired figure in China. However, the Mao Zedong of contemporary China is the same as it has always been – the Mao that died in 1976. There is no point of anyone trying to emulate or replace him. I think what Xi has done, is to try and affirm that there is a definite link between China before and after 1978 when ‘Reform and Opening-Up’ is usually said to have started.  Were Xi to try to deny this linkage and say there was a complete difference between China before and after 1978, that would really create ideological and political issues, because it would imply that everything from 1949 to 1978 was a mistake, including the unification of 1949 and the industrial modernization facilitated by the USSR in the 1950s. Xi has therefore gone out of his way to stress that they are two periods of the same project, the same set of aspirations, both focused in different ways on trying to achieve China’s modernization. Xi himself has said that without Mao, there would be no modern China. So don’t expect this group of leaders to turn their backs on Chairman Mao, nor to stop dropping him into their speeches and activities when they get the chance.

Do you think that Xi is an autocrat?

Xi looks and sounds powerful, and as I explain in the book, there are ways in which he certainly does have significant influence. But power is a dispersed thing, even in the People’s Republic, where so much seems to come down to the aspirations and ambitions of the Communist Party. The Party itself is a complex entity now, its membership much more diverse than in the period of Mao or even of Deng. It is like a state within a state, and we underestimate its internal potential divisions and fragmentation at our peril. I would argue that it is the Party, not Xi, who is the autocrat as, in some ways, it is Xi’s key mandate to make China’s one party rule sustainable; he is the servant of that mission, not the architect of it. Additionally, a lot of the policies his government is pursuing were already clear before Xi’s rise to power in 2012. The internal cleansing of cadres and the rectification of their behaviour through the anti-corruption struggle, for instance, was already prefigured in the appointment of Wang Qishan as head of the graft-busting body in early 2012. Even in the era of Hu Jintao and the years of massive, double digit growth when everything the Party touched seemed to turn to gold, there was a sense that the larceny, greed and unruliness of party officials was becoming a serious threat to the Party’s long term stability. I think that under Xi we are seeing an attempt to make it more efficient as a political force, and restore at least some of its moral mandate. I do not believe that Xi could exercise the kind of all-embracing rule that Mao did. That was for another age, and another time. Xi has tactically chosen certain areas, and seeks dominance in them. Only in that sense is he Maoist – a master of guerilla warfare by stealth and concealment!

What are the most important challenges for Xi’s China?

This is a treacherous period for China’s development. I think this was known some time ago. The transition to middle income status for any country is a tricky one, and almost always is attended by thorny political reform issues, not just economic ones. So since 2012 the main issue has been moving away from investment and manufacturing more towards a consumption, service sector led model. The issue with China is that this needs to be done at a scale and speed, which is unprecedented. Many things could go wrong. Unlocking what Premier Li Keqiang calls the `inner sources of growth’ within, rather than outside China is a major part of what the country is now trying to do. But the idea introduced in 2013 at the annual Plenum meeting that China now embraced full marketisation has, so far, been only partially achieved. Xi’s China is trying to create this unique partly socialist, partly capitalist model, unlike any we have seen before. The current consensus is that to really develop further, it will need to introduce stronger rule of law, greater accountability by the government, and political competition – i.e. multi-party entities, public participation in decision-making, and having the Party relinquish some of its privileged status in society. These are precisely the things that Xi and the leadership around him have said they will not countenance. Perhaps they will in the event of a crisis where the choice will be between the Party falling or it maintaining some form of negotiated power. This is the question no one really knows the answer to at the moment – just how pragmatic the Party will be when some kind of crunch comes. Historically, taking the hard line and never compromising, for instance during the Tiananmen Massacre of 1989, fulfilled its objectives and meant that the Party never had to cede space to organized political competition. However, that tactic won’t work forever. In the next few years, therefore, we will see the Communist Party of China rewrite the laws of modernity, and either be a one Party developed state with the world’s largest economy, or suffer the sort of challenges that the USSR and others did. We will just have to wait and see.

 

 

Lauren is a first year PhD researcher in War Studies at King’s College London and the National University of Singapore. Her research explores Chinese President Xi Jinping’s strategy toward Taiwan with an update of classical deterrence theory. Beyond cross-strait relations, she is also interested in Chinese foreign and defense policy and East Asian security issues. She is a fluent Mandarin speaker and a member of the Pacific Forum Young Leaders program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Prior to King’s, she was a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC. You can follow her on Twitter @lfdickey.

Kerry Brown is Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College, London. Previously, he was the Professor of Chinese Politics and Director of the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. He led the Europe China Research and Advice Network (ECRAN) funded by the European Union from 2011 to 2014. Professor Brown is also presently an Associate Fellow on the Asia Programme at Chatham House in London. His main interests are in the politics and society of modern China, in its international relations and its political economy.

Despite a Historic Summit, Cross-Strait Relations Faces the ‘Certainty of Uncertainty’

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By: Jeroen Gelsing

Ma Xi Grin2
Ma’s grin belies a fraught reality. Source: AFP/Roslan Rahman

On November 7, the world’s press thronged into the Island Ballroom of Singapore’s Shangri-La Hotel. The occasion marked a historic meeting between the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Kuomintang (KMT) – erstwhile foes in the Chinese Civil War, which reached its present stalemate with the KMT retreat to the island fortress of Taiwan.

Today, sixty-six years on, a mutual cordiality prevails that, until the inauguration of Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou in 2008, had been unthinkable. Nonetheless, such cross-strait congeniality may prove evanescent. Rising from Ma’s China engagement policy, he has become increasingly unpopular at home. Indeed, in defiance of Ma’s broad, toothy grin throughout his lengthy 80-second handshake with Chinese president Xi Jinping, the future of cross-strait relations is fraught with uncertainty.

As is often written, Beijing regards Taiwan as a renegade province; a breakaway territory listed for recovery as China fulfills the manifest destiny of rounding out its Qing Dynasty borders. The biggest threat to the CCP’s undertaking, Beijing warns, are the ‘splittist’ forces across the Taiwan Strait – a pejorative phrase rather effective at delegitimising Taiwanese aspirations to arbitrate their island’s own future, be it as a part of China, an independent country, or in some form of compromise solution.

Playing Beijing’s cherished ethnicity card, Xi proclaimed in his summit speech that ‘blood is thicker than water’, referring to the common Han Chinese bond of people on either side of the Taiwan Strait. This asserts the naturalness of subsuming Taiwan into a pan-Chinese nation, a view strongly supported by his domestic audience. Indeed, a fiercely nationalistic education system emphasises historic grievances, yielding a younger Chinese population that overwhelmingly supports their government’s position on China’s various territorial disputes.

Things are a little different across the Taiwan Strait. Unlike Xi, Ma travelled to Singapore as the beleaguered leader of 23 million Taiwanese – unpopular, ironically, partially because of his accommodating cross-strait policy that helped to engineer the historic summit in the first place. Under this approach, Ma has negotiated economic integration with China that has nonetheless not revivified Taiwan’s economy, as Ma originally claimed it would. Far from experiencing an economic boom, fragile growth and a loss of regional competitiveness are putting downwards pressure on the island’s economic prospects.[1]

In tandem, Taiwanese fret over the geopolitical consequences of the Ma administration’s cross-strait economic integration strategy. Increasingly, this approach is felt to be jeopardising the island’s de facto sovereignty – some 85-90% of Taiwanese indicate determination to preserve this status quo. As such, the confluence of economic disillusionment and sovereignty concerns after seven years of cross-strait rapprochement have left Ma impressively unpopular, even if under his guiding hand an unparalleled tranquillity has descended over the Taiwan Strait.

The November 7 Ma-Xi meeting came with little warning, announced only on November 3. Whatever the precise motivations behind this short notice, it conveniently denied Taiwan’s domestic opposition, both political-institutional and, as will be discussed below, within civil society, the opportunity to raise concerns regarding the meeting’s timing, which comes just several months ahead of Taiwan’s January 2016 national elections.

That such considerations may have prevailed in the KMT camp underlines the extent of public discontent with Ma’s vision for Taiwan’s future as it has unfolded over the past seven years. Yet, a broad cross-strait cooperation and integration strategy initially enjoyed at least tacit approval of the electoral majority. In 2008, Ma was first elected on a platform aimed at reviving Taiwan’s flagging economy, oriented particularly at developing closer economic relations with China. First and foremost, the Ma campaign claimed the elimination of cross-strait trade barriers would directly aid GDP growth. Secondly, it anticipated that a Taiwanese demonstration of goodwill would gain Beijing’s reciprocation and lift  crippling restrictions against the island’s international space that serve to hamstring Taiwan’s export-oriented economy.

However, fast-forward seven years, and only part of this platform has been realised. The 2010 Taiwan-China Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) cut tariffs and commercial barriers on cross-strait trade, which climbed to nearly 200 billion USD in 2014. Yet this trade volume increase did not herald the expected prosperity for Taiwan. To the contrary, while benefitting the operations of large corporations, ECFA has squeezed medium and small businesses, and given rise to the widespread perception that ECFA has made life harder for farmers, fishermen, blue-collar workers, and even white-collar workers, rather than easier. Indeed, over 85% of Taiwanese voice pessimism over their country’s economic trajectory.

Further, Taiwan’s anticipated greater international space has not materialised. Beijing still blocks Taiwan’s ascension to regional political forums, such as ASEAN, and prevents its participation in trade blocs rising up throughout Asia, such as the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), which Taiwan is eager to join, and similarly, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Equally, Beijing’s political clout makes impossible the conclusion of bilateral FTA’s – token ones with Singapore and New Zealand excepted, which comprise but a small portion of Taiwan’s foreign trade. Because of this diplo-economic isolation, the island is losing valuable competitive ground to direct competitor South Korea, which has forged trade agreements with the European Union and ASEAN, among others. Thus, Taiwan’s gamble to brave closer integration with China has not reduced sovereignty risk, but rather furthered it, while also not resulting in commensurate economic compensation to warrant this danger. For this, too, the Ma administration is held accountable.

Such grievances are exacerbated by disillusionment over the Ma administration’s lack of transparency in conducting cross-strait negotiations. Indeed, the unsupervised backdoor character of KMT-CCP talks has further fuelled fears that Ma is not adequately protecting Taiwan’s de facto sovereignty. Such concerns, rightful or not, reached a boiling point in March 2014, when the student-led Sunflower Movement prevented the ratification of ECFA’s follow-up service trade agreement. Taken in sum, the aforementioned factors have halted further cross-strait integration along the Ma administration’s blueprint.

Mistrust of Ma’s charted course for the island’s future is mirrored in Taiwanese identity trends. Presently, KMT-CCP cooperation is premised on the so-called ‘One China Principle’, which, despite critical interpretative differences, holds that both Taiwan and the mainland are part of a single ‘China’.[2] However, given the expanding contingent of islanders who consider their nationality to be Taiwanese – to say nothing about ethnicity – this is fast becoming a precariously narrow basis for conduct of political negotiations with China. Instead, a clear majority of the Taiwanese population prefers – if the circumstances permit – a cross-strait framework that explicitly recognises Taiwanese sovereignty, or at least acknowledges the existence of a self-governing entity on either side of the Taiwan Strait. Thus, Ma’s direction of and foundation for cross-strait cooperation are increasingly at odds with Taiwan’s identity trends.

Underpinning this sense of distinctness from China is over a century of geographical separation and independent development. Time and distance have made Taiwan and China very different places. Having experienced its ‘economic miracle’ in the second half of the twentieth century, Taiwan is a developed nation with living standards rivalling those of Japan and South Korea. While China, as a developing country, struggles with the extension of social security under its troubled hukou-system, Taiwan’s national healthcare, for instance, is high-performing and often lauded.  And critically, Taiwan’s democratic political system contrasts sharply with China’s authoritarianism – a distinction that resonates strongly in Taiwan. Altogether, Taiwanese are keenly aware that the products of their own politico-economic history are, in fact, accomplishments to protect, and that closeness with China is likely to jeopardise rather than preserve these achievements. Thus, to invert Xi’s November 7 comment: for many Taiwanese water trumps blood – a sentiment not easily overruled by Chinese statements of ethnic unity.

These deep-societal identity trends, backed by a profound sense of alternate development and independent accomplishments, are merging with the aforementioned diplo-economic frustrations in the run-up to the presidential and legislative elections scheduled for January 2016. KMT candidate Eric Chu trails opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Tsai Ying-wen by as many as 20 percentage points. Tsai is widely considered a shoo-in for the presidential office. In fact, KMT weakness is such that the opposition may also gain a legislative majority – unprecedented in Taiwanese history.

This would certainly make China nervous, as it would grant the DPP the power to make constitutional changes to the status quo. It is, however, not expected to do so. Nonetheless, the likelihood of cross-strait instability remains even in the absence of a legislative majority, if only for the fact that the DPP’s explicit objective to, at a minimum, preserve Taiwan’s de facto independence clashes with China’s long-term vision of the island’s recovery (or annexation, depending on your viewpoint). Indeed, the DPP rejects the One China Principle as a valid basis for cross-strait relations.

The KMT has frequently criticised Tsai for failing to develop an alternate framework for cross-strait conduct, sounding her out on offering few specifics beyond a basic commitment to preserve the status quo. Regardless, Taiwanese now appear sufficiently disenchanted with the Ma administration that they are prepared, unlike in 2012 presidential elections where Tsai ran unsuccessfully, to embrace the ‘certainty of uncertainty’. Indeed, in recognition of this possibility, China has already warned of a ‘tidal wave’ if the One China Principle is not upheld. Whatever the case, Tsai’s election will necessitate both sides to establish a new cross-strait modus operandi, and the present cordiality in Taiwan-China could thereby well be ruptured.

For Ma personally, the November 7 Shangri-La summit crowned seven years of careful cross-strait politicking, securing a tête-à-tête that had been unthinkable in 2008. However, unlike Xi, Ma attended the Shangri-La meeting as a head of state strongly criticised at home. The broad grin that paired his historic handshake with Xi, then, felt somewhat pyrrhic – the road to this smile coming at the expense of a divorce from the Taiwanese body politic. Through the Singapore summit, the CCP has tried to lock the DPP into the One-China framework, and convince the world that its approach to cross-strait relations is paying dividends. However, the summit may prove a transient high-water mark, with both the CCP and KMT recognising that under a DPP president more attuned to Taiwanese societal trends, waves – tidal or not – are to be expected.

Jeroen Gelsing is a doctoral student in War Studies at King’s College London. His research interests converge on the Asia Pacific and include the region’s international security dynamics, geopolitics, and modern history. His work has appeared in Asian Affairs, International Affairs Forum, and the Daily Telegraph, among others.

Notes:

[1] While the domestic structural problems of stagnating wages, labour market rigidity, and rising real estate prices command much discontent of their own, these problems are exacerbated by the feedback loop that exists between cross-strait policy and Taiwan’s overall economic position.

[2] Specifically, the KMT utilises the tenuous construct of the 1992 Consensus as its foundation for cross-strait negotiations with China. Under the 1992 Consensus both KMT and CCP agree that there exists only one China, while both sides disagree on the party – KMT or CCP – that is the sole legitimate representative of this one China. Taiwan’s main opposition party rejects this 1992 Consensus. Note also that China’s 2005 ‘Anti-Secession Law’ directed at Taiwan does not permit any political party on Taiwan to declare de jure independence, else it provoke ‘non-peaceful means’ of intervention by Beijing.

 

 

 

 

Ma’s legacy and Xi’s strategy: the way ahead for cross-strait relations

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By: Lauren Dickey

Mainland China and Taiwan, divided by a small strait and historical debates of sovereignty and statehood. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_map_of_China_%26_Taiwan.png
Mainland China and Taiwan, divided by a small strait and historical debates of sovereignty and statehood. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_map_of_China_%26_Taiwan.png

A meeting that was sixty-six years in the making began with a minute-long handshake and the cacophony of cameras on rapid-fire as Chinese President Xi Jinping and Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou greeted the press from the rostrum at the Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore. The November 7th tête-à-tête was the first time the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Kuomintang (KMT) have met since civil war forced the KMT to flee to Taiwan in 1945. After greeting the press, the presidents delivered their opening comments before having a closed-door dialogue and one final press briefing. All in all, the leaders spent no more than a few hours with one another. However, their remarks and the historic meeting will set the tone and pace for the trajectory of ties between Beijing and Taipei for the months and years ahead, particularly under new Taiwanese leadership.

The Xi-Ma meeting could not have come at a more controversial time. It was a meeting shrouded in secrecy at the outset. Campaigns are well underway for the 2016 presidential elections in Taiwan. Current polls suggest that the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Tsai Ying-wen will oust the ruling KMT to claim the presidency. The last time the DPP led the island, between 2000 and 2008 under Chen Shui-bian, calls for Taiwanese independence caused quite the political headache for Beijing, forcing overtly coercive responses aimed at deterring Taipei from any formal declarations of statehood.

The history-making moment of Xi meeting Ma was rooted in a series of prior lower-level conversations all aimed at ensuring stability in cross-strait relations. In 1992, the mainland China-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) and the Taiwan-based Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) meeting in British Hong Kong yielded the so-called ‘1992 Consensus,’ the notion that both sides of the Taiwan Strait recognize there is only one China, with both mainland China and Taiwan belonging to the same China, but allowing both sides to interpret the meaning of ‘one China’ to their own definition. With this vague foundation in place, one year later, ARATS chairman Wang Daohan and SEF chairman Koo Chen-fu met in Singapore, side-stepping debates of ‘one China’ in favor of promoting trade and people-to-people exchanges, and setting in motion an unofficial medium for cross-strait dialogue. It was only when former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui proposed ‘state-to-state’ relations in 1999 that the Wang-Koo conversations were suspended, a move reflecting concerns that Taiwan was inching towards independence from mainland China. There have since been a steady stream of official exchanges and delegation visits between the two sides, fostering mutual understanding and deepening awareness of perspectives from each side of the Strait.

Some cross-strait experts have been eager to dismiss the Xi-Ma meeting as purely symbolic in nature; others have argued that Xi and Ma did not meet on truly equal footing; and still others have criticized the meeting for failing to represent the Taiwanese population, since the DPP was not present at the discussion table. These assessments miss the point. Mainland China knows that it cannot easily sway the votes of the Taiwanese electorate. The Xi-Ma meeting was a wisely timed political move by Beijing to set the tone for engagement with the likely DPP president beginning in early 2016. Ma and Tsai agree that the Taiwan public has a say on cross-strait policy; but the two disagree on the importance of the 1992 Consensus. With Xi and Ma having agreed to continue to respect the 1992 Consensus, what emerges is a tenuous political calculation for a future DPP administration. The Xi-Ma meeting has created a framework in which the next president must calibrate policy vis-à-vis mainland China, a smart political strategy from both sides to ensure the maintenance of the status quo while preventing Taiwanese independence.

In their respective comments with the press, Xi and Ma reiterated points echoing the familiar status quo in cross-strait relations: no war, no unification, no independence. Xi opened with an emphasis on inseparability and peaceful development; he emphasized a need to ‘show the world that the Chinese people across the Straits have the ability to handle our own issues’ on the premise of the 1992 Consensus. Ma kicked off the dialogue with higher hopes, pitching a five-point proposal for peaceful development: consolidate the 1992 Consensus; decrease enmity, increase peaceful resolutions; expand cross-strait exchanges; create a cross-strait hotline; and cooperate in pursuit of rejuvenating the Chinese nation. Ma’s proposal ensures he retains an influence over the island’s continued rapprochement with mainland China, even beyond his presidency, as well as a place in Taiwanese history textbooks.

From the final press briefings conducted separately by each side, it appears that Xi took the time in private to air his own list of priorities for cross-strait ties. Xi made clear the Chinese commitment to the 1992 Consensus as well as continued, and firm, opposition to Taiwanese independence. Like Ma, he argued for enhanced cooperation across the Strait, particularly in the economic realm. Xi also noted that both sides must be ‘united’ for the purpose of keeping peaceful relations and maintaining Chinese sovereignty. But one must not be quick to conclude that ‘united,’ represents reunification, as it could conceptually represent cross-strait consensus on areas of mutual interest. Ma addressed the long-standing concerns of Chinese missiles pointed at various strategic outposts on the island, but was brushed off somewhat surprisingly by Xi with the reassurance that the missiles are not aimed at Taiwan.

While the Xi-Ma summit may, overall, seem to have upheld the tried and true course of discussing easier economic and cultural issues without touching upon the sensitive subject of sovereignty, this is not to suggest that the summit does not signal a new era of progress. Mutual preference for the status quo is clear; but, so, too is the implicit demand for the next Taiwanese president to continue striking an appropriate balance in developing Taipei’s ties with Beijing.

As adamant as Tsai Ying-wen was in her opposition to the Xi-Ma summit, the new chapter of history will force the DPP under Tsai’s leadership to innovatively strategize and mold cross-strait policies. The Xi-Ma meeting is an opportunity for Tsai et al to work within the Taiwanese democratic system in thinking creatively along the boundaries of the 1992 Consensus. Ma’s meeting with Xi does not preclude the Taiwanese population’s right to choose their own future. Presidents Ma and Xi did not commit the island to an unreasonable trajectory in upholding the 1992 Consensus. Rather, the outcome of the Xi-Ma meeting gives Taiwan the continued ability to interpret its sovereign status as the Taiwanese population deems appropriate; similarly, China, too, can maintain its own notions of ‘one China.’

The Xi-Ma meeting is one of many steps in the long, winding history of cross-strait relations, hardly a moment of ‘much ado about nothing.’ It is a step that reminds onlookers to think of the status quo in Beijing-Taipei ties as fluid rather than as a moment stuck in the history of relations across the Strait. Xi and Ma have collectively set a foundation for the cross-strait relationship; it is now up to the next administration to ensure that the symbolic handshake in Singapore becomes a foundation for reality, nurturing the mutually beneficial trajectory of ties in a way deemed suitable to constituents on both sides.

Lauren Dickey is a PhD researcher in War Studies at King’s College London and the National University of Singapore, where she focuses on relations between mainland China and Taiwan. She is a senior editor at Strife and also a member of the Pacific Forum Young Leaders program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC.