From Guardian Unlimited: There are other ways for Beijing to achieve reunification with Taiwan than issuing military threats.
The National People’s Congress, China’s parliament, has never been what you could call a radical body. So when it adopted the Taiwan secession law, a measure that gives China the right – in her own eyes at least – to take military action against any attempt by Taiwan to declare formal independence, it is obvious to everyone that this is the voice of the Chinese party-state. In Shanghai a few days after the measure was adopted, I asked China’s foreign ministry spokesman what China could possibly gain by military action against Taiwan. “It would,” he said, “restore the territorial integrity so beloved of the Chinese people.”
