Written by Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, Professor of History at Georgetown University and at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, from Foreign Policy Research Institute website:
Discussion of the United States’ relations with China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong can be framed as an issue of nationalism and national humiliation. Taiwan and Hong Kong are and have been crucial symbols of China’s emergence as a strong state in the international system, as evidenced by the huge clock that stood in the heart of Beijing in 1997 counting down the minutes to Hong Kong’s “liberation” from British rule and its return to China. Hong Kong and Taiwan have been neither simply prosperous territories whose possession would enrich China, nor merely strategic liabilities as loci for foreign powers threatening China.
Hong Kong and Taiwan are fundamental to the very legitimacy of the CCP and China’s government. They have constituted a continuing challenge to Chinese nationalism and China’s potential as a great power while posing the challenge of being models of what China could, should, or might be under a different form of government. From the Chinese perspective, so long as Hong Kong and Taiwan remain beyond China’s control, China’s century of humiliation at the hands of Westerners continues. This conviction, which the Chinese have shamelessly exploited in diplomatic negotiations and in propaganda outlets, has been hard for some of China’s interlocutors to understand. It has also constituted a reason for some, particularly in Washington and Tokyo, to keep Taiwan out of China’s grasp. But even those who do not have a hidden agenda might find that war with China over Taiwan is in fact possible, whether by accident, inadvertence, or design.
