In 1987 and 1988, the 14th Dalai Lama proposed that the government of the People's Republic of China would remain responsible for Tibet's foreign policy while Tibet would be governed by its own constitution or basic law, and that the Tibetan government would comprise a popularly elected chief executive, a bicameral legislature and an independent legal system. Ten years later, in 1998, the Dalai Lama expressed his great disappointment. ‘Sadly, the Chinese government has not responded positively to my proposals and initiatives over the past 18 years for a negotiated resolution of our problem within the framework [apart from the question of total independence of Tibet all other issues could be discussed and resolved] stated by Mr Deng Xiaoping’ (Shiromany 1998: 144).

Over the years, Western leaders and governments have pressed the Chinese leadership to talk with the Dalai Lama. In October 2001 the US Congress passed the Tibetan Policy Act initiated by Dianne Feinstein, the US Senator from San Francisco, and Tom Lantos, Representative of San Mateo County. EU External Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten and Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes also called on China to begin dialogue with the Dalai Lama in March 2002 (Tibetan Bulletin, Jan-Apr 2002: 9). A twenty-strong European delegation to China in July 2002 urged dialogue between Beijing and the exiled government of the Dalai Lama, but was told by China's leader Li Peng and Vice-Premier Qian Qichen that Beijing was not ready for talks with the Tibetan leader (Canada Tibet Committee 2002). In response to the March 2008 Tibetan uprising and Chinese government crackdown, some Western leaders as well as influential celebrities boycotted the Beijing Olympic Games, while others conditioned their attendance on progress being made in talks between China and the Dalai Lama's envoy (Traynor and Watts 2008). In recent years Western leaders have also been meeting with the Dalai Lama, including the US President in February 2010 and the UK Prime Minister in May 2012, despite protests from Beijing.

So far Beijing has not accepted the Dalai Lama's proposals but has allowed visits to China led by the Dalai Lama's special envoy, Lodi Gyari. Gyari led the first delegation to China and Tibet in September 2002. A year later, Lodi Gyari and Kelsang Gyaltsen, accompanied by Sonam N. Dagpo and Bhuchung K. Tsering, visited the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Yunnan from 25 May to 8 June 2003.

This chapter aims to develop an understanding of the rise of Taiwanese nationalism associated with Taiwanese democratisation, and the impact of Taiwanese democratisation on the politics of the national identity question. It will also examine the possible effects of Chinese democratisation on the resolution to the national identity conflicts across the Taiwan Strait, and the relationship between democratisation, federalism and the resolution of the conflict between Taiwan and the Mainland.

The chapter begins with a discussion of the national identity question in Taiwan and the rise of neo-nationalism in Taiwan. It then investigates the impact of democratisation on the Taiwan national identity question, in particular the hypothetically possible and plural impacts of Chinese democratisation. The chapter develops several hypotheses concerning the impact of Chinese democratisation on the resolution of the Taiwan question. The idea of federalism, as a super-national arrangement which could manage national identity conflicts, its limits and resistance to it, is also discussed, with the suggestion that the PRC should be renamed Huaxiang Guo.

THE NATIONAL IDENTITY QUESTION

Taiwan possesses a number of unique historical, political and social characteristics that differentiate it from the Chinese Mainland. Taiwan's colonial history includes half a century of Japanese colonial rule from 1895 to 1945, during which time the introduction of the Japanese education system and language had a major effect on Taiwanese culture (Copper 2003: 16). Not only did Taiwan possess unified and modern systems of law, administration and education, but Taiwanese who had grown up under Japanese rule had also been introduced to a worldview in which Taiwan, as part of the Japanese empire, was superior to China (Chu & Lin 2001: 112). In the second half of the twentieth century, Western culture also became much more influential in Taiwan than on the Mainland. Political development has also taken a completely different path to that of the Mainland. After early decades under the control of the Kuomintang (KMT) government of Chiang Kai-shek and then his son Chiang Ching-kuo, from the late 1980s Taiwan began to move away from a system of government that claimed to represent the whole of China and towards a stand-alone democracy. In 1996 the first direct presidential election was held and since then rule of the country has changed hands between the KMT and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), indicating the consolidation of Taiwan's democratic system (Copper 2005).