ABSTRACT
Whether or not China uses force against Taiwan will be decided neither by the degree of economic integration across the Taiwan Strait, nor by a blatantly “provocative” act of declaring independence by Taiwan’s President Chen Shui-bian or his successor. Important as economic considerations are, they are not more significant than considerations of the “moral” strength of the case, or of the “honor” of the Chinese nation to right “a historic wrong” bequeathed by the history of “Western imperialist encroachment on sacred Chinese territories.” As Maochun Yu argues in Chapter 2, even though the Chinese have been remarkably unrestrained in re-interpreting history, it does play a critical role in conditioning the mindset of policy makers in Beijing over the issue of Taiwan.
