1: All Taiwan's investment is going into China, therefore China has gained enormous economic leverage without doing anything.
2: China has joined the WTO. The importance of this cannot be overstated. China's primary goal is that the country's economy successfully transforms and competes on the world stage.
3: An attack would have very unpredictable results at a time when China's markets are starting to liberalize. When China had protected markets, it had a lot more control over its economy and was a lot less vulnerable to outside factors.
4: The Taiwan issue is just a diversion. Politicians have formented or hyped up the possibility of conflict abroad as a way of diverting attention from the mess at home. As I stated before, China doesn't need to invade Taiwan.
The massive social instability that the changes in the chinese economy has wrought and the almost total lack of political reform means that 'the man in the street' needs to be distracted. What is closer to every man (and womane etc.) but an deeply emotive territorial question? It is my belief that the Chinese saw the disaster in the Soviet Union where political reform preceeded economic reform and so reversed the strategy. A man cannot 'eat' political rights. With a billion + people, it is not a decision taken lightly. Such a strategy syncs with Chinese tradtion of focusing much more on the long term goals. It's my bet that political reform will start with a two party state setup...
I could, of course, be completely wrong. We'll see (in the next 5 to twenty years).
VRN
It's my understanding, for what it's worth, that some in the KMT and a few others are aiming at exactly such a "solution" on the mainland, though theoretically with any number of "parties."
On the other hand, the ChiComs argue, that by maintaining a few inconsequential dummy "parties", they are obviously already a multi-party state, hehe.
At any rate, the ChiComs don't seem to grasp easily that the ROC on Taiwan is not the British in Hongkong or the Portuguese in Macau.
Best regards. S&W R.I.P.
There are more than 1 million people from Taiwan work in China and China really needs Taiwan's business and factory managemnent skill badly. Here is a real example: A sr. executive who works in a large US company had a business trip to Taiwan. He was originally from Taiwan. Once he arrived in Taiwan he wanted to see his old college friends and could not find them because all of them work in China. So he flew to GuangZho, China and had the reunion there.
Today's KMT is splitted into 3 parties and it is not a major party anymore. Most of those KMT members do not maintain the old slogan "Take back China and Save the Chinese culture and people". Now DPP is the leading party in Taiwan, China can control DPP easily. Look at those members established DPP who are no longer DPP member now, they all are doing big businesses in China.
Military action against Taiwan is not an option because it does not worth the benefit. Open up China for Taiwanese is the best and easiest way to take Taiwan back and US's intervention will never happen.
US has to create a fake tension atmosphere between Taiwan and China so we can sell more out-dated weapons to Taiwan.
"Some industry analysts believe it would even be possible to assemble a team to build a world-class submarine in Taiwan, particularly if some of the best talent from Russia and Europe could be recruited. Senior officials in Taipei suggest that Taiwan would want at least half the submarines built in a local shipyard...."Australia too?
Regards to all. S&W R.I.P.