This work has attempted to understand the development of the Taiwan problem in terms of people thinking and acting to resolve a variety of problems in a changing historical situation. From this perspective, the Taiwan problem can be understood as part of an ongoing political debate which takes place on a variety of levels of analysis, from the individual search for identity, to the search for political stability, and ultimately to the quest for international order. In such a situation the main actors must work to manipulate a fluctuating balance of political power and to develop the vocabulary of political discourse that they inherit. The result is a process of historical change in which established patterns of power and old concepts tend to take on new meanings as the context changes.