Two paradigms for, and two approaches to, the Taiwan and Tibet questions can be roughly grouped under the headings of realism and democracy. Analytically, these two are distinctive, but in reality each approach interacts and overlaps with the other. The two paradigms have shaped both political debates and intellectual research.

Over the past decades, realism has dominated in China, while Taipei and Dharamsala have advocated democracy. The US has favoured a democratic principle and supported the democratisation of Taiwan and Tibet communitties in exile, but has to come to grips with the fact that China has become a greater regional power. Different actors in Beijing, Taipei and Dharamsala have different interpretations of and emphases on the paradigms.

When realism and democracy are viewed as oppositional and exclusive, they constitute two closed knowledge systems. They can be considered ‘boxes’: each approach will be persuasive only to those who look at the issue from the same perspective. Recycling its own ideas, each side has perpetrated paradigms, predetermining opinion and rationality. Chinese realism regards the democracy and human rights language as a disguised attempt to disrupt Chinese unity and order. In contrast, the human rights discourse dismisses Chinese realist thinking as an attempt to maintain the authoritarian system and demand surrender to it. Both paradigms strengthen polarisation, leaving little room to search for a third way, an alternative to address the dilemma that the Tibet and Taiwan questions pose. It is important to develop an intellectual approach to break down closed knowledge production systems and find a way out of this predicament.

This book adopts Eric Wright's real utopian approach as an overriding methodology. Wright's ‘Real Utopian Project’ seeks to embrace the tension between ‘dreams and practice’, and is based on the belief that what is possible is not predetermined but is in fact shaped by one's vision. However, it advocates the notion of envisaging utopian ideals that are simultaneously grounded in real possibilities. Thus, the objective is to find radical, yet specific and plausible, solutions to problems (Wright 2010).

A real utopian approach does not endorse immoral realism. It challenges the diminished imagination of realism and calls for a more democratic imagination in addressing the Tibet and Taiwan questions. It takes democracy as central in addressing the Tibet and Taiwan questions. It holds that a utopian way is not wishful thinking, nor is it an intellectual luxury.