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.

The controversial referendum proposals and the first island-wide referendum on 20 March 2004 were a crucial aspect of the emergence, growth and acceleration of the conscious effort by President Chen Shui-bian and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to articulate and redefine a distinct Taiwanese national identity. The controversial issues concerning Taiwanese national identity and the referendum have drawn much attention from policy-makers and scholars in Taiwan, Mainland China and the US. Yet a substantial study of the intrinsic and complex multirelations between Taiwanese national identity and the referendum question has not been undertaken.

This chapter focuses on the important topic of the debate over the resolution of Taiwanese national identity through referendums. The previous chapter provided the political background against which the impact of Taiwanese democratisation on the national identity question and the politics of referendum took place. Through a case study of the referendum in 2004 in Taiwan, this chapter shows how the proposed referendum was manipulated and watered down. While it points out the limits of referendums in general and the flaws of the Taiwanese referendum in particular, the chapter still favours referendums as a conflict-resolution mechanism, and argues for increasing the deliberative component of such referendums.

The chapter begins by outlining the party-political origins of the referendum and then examines the influence of outside actors on the process. It then describes the process of political struggle and negotiation between the pan-Blue and pan-Green camps and assesses the outcome of that struggle before finally arguing in favour of deliberative over mobilised form of referendum (Chapter 1).

REFERENDUM: PRINCIPLES AND PROBLEMS

Today, national groups are seen to have a right of secession, that is, a right to leave the existing state and to take over control of the territory that they currently occupy. The legitimacy of state boundaries is thought to be conditional upon the popular vote. There is a growing consensus that state boundaries are legitimate only if the state protects the peoples within them and the people assent to remaining within those boundaries. If these conditions are not met, peoples are increasingly able to divorce themselves from the political unit and take their land with them.

To find a solution to the Taiwan question, policy-makers and scholars have discussed the proposal of the interim (or peace) agreement across the Taiwan Strait (Chang 1999b; White 2000; for a critique of White, see Dittmer 2000). Nevertheless, the proposal does not address the underlying question of sovereignty, and misses the key issue of Taiwan's place in international society.

This chapter aims to fill this gap. It argues that the solution to the Taiwan question must take into account Taiwan's desire and place in international relations; to do so, Beijing has to reconsider its Taiwan policy in terms of a new concept of sovereignty. Beijing's rigid approach to sovereignty has led to Taiwan's attempts to take the alternative route of trying to generate international legitimacy by emphasising democracy (Larus 2006). This chapter examines ways to move beyond these diverging approaches and bring China and Taiwan back into a shared framework that reduces the likelihood of conflict and meets the needs for international recognition of both sides.

The notion of sovereignty is a key concept in the normative thinking and strategic policy on the Taiwan question, yet it appears illusory, ambiguous and problematic. It lends political leaders forceful justification for their actions on the one hand, and traps them in a fixed way of thinking without policy innovation on the other. Currently the One China policy means recognising only ‘one China’, the Mainland, as legitimate. And the membership of the UN means international recognition as a sovereign state. In this normative conceptual imperative, Taiwan is excluded from the UN.

To deal with the Taiwan question, Professor Wang Yizhou (2000) from the Academy of Social Sciences of China has called for a search for a new concept of sovereignty which is capable of defending the core element of the sovereignty principle while at the same time providing greater flexibility. Wang, however, does not propose a concrete idea. The chapter attempts to transcend nationalist thinking, challenge the traditional concept of sovereignty, and outline an alternative approach to international recognition for China and Taiwan. It will provide an analysis of China's conceptions of sovereignty, the Taiwanese response, and options for bringing these diverging approaches back into a shared framework for interna- tional recognition. The chapter does not focus on any immediate practical solution to the Taiwan question, but on the long-term intellectual ‘solution’.

This chapter serves as a conceptual introduction to the book and provides an intellectual foundation for the quest for democratic governance with regard to the Taiwan and Tibet issues. It first traces the history of democratic ideas and defines the core components of democratic governance related to the national boundary/identity question. It then develops an analytic classification of different kinds of national boundary/identity or membership issue, followed by an investigation of the criteria for choosing national boundaries. It explores the question as to why national boundaries should be a matter of democratic choice, and of whether democracy has the capacity of addressing the issue. It addresses the issue of why democratic management of the boundary issue is desirable and discusses the functions the democratic management entails. Finally it qualifies the project of democratic management with a cautious note.

THE ORIGIN AND COMPONENTS OF DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE

The French Revolution first gave practical effect to the idea that people should have some choice of national boundary/identity. Since the French Revolution was based on the idea of popular sovereignty, it was argued that new rulers should not annex territories without consultation with the inhabitants of those territories (Goodhart 1971: 99). In 1791, the French Assembly rejected the Communes’ vote for annexing Avignon, by a vote of 487 to 316, on the ground that there was not sufficient evidence about the freedom of voting. This was the first modern exercise of the democratic principle to resolve national boundary questions (Goodhart 1971: 100–1).

The following is a review of three classical thinkers on this topic in the last three centuries: Immanuel Kant, J. S. Mill and John Calhoun. The reason these writers have been selected is because their theories have far-reaching influence and a strong following in the 21st century.

Kant (1724–1804): perpetual peace and democracy

Kant implicitly and explicitly discussed the boundary question in his famous essay on perpetual peace (1795). Kant's approach to the boundary question was cosmopolitan and democratic, which was evident in his idea of three articles for a perpetual peace. The first definitive article for a perpetual peace is that the civil constitution of every nation should be republican. There are three principles of republicanism: the freedom of the members of a society, the dependence of everyone on a single, common legislation, and the law of the equality of all citizens (Kant 1983: 112).

China has a long history of dealing with minorities, and a long tradition of theorising about ethnic relations, based largely on the Confucian tradition, and supplemented with Marxist belief in the twentieth century. These two very different traditions are still influencing the Chinese practice of minority rights and multiculturalism. They both stand in some contrast to the Western liberal model of minority rights. With the growing influence of liberalism in China, it is important to see how traditional Chinese political thought will respond to Western liberal ideas of multicultural citizenship, and how the Western liberal model of minority rights will impact on China's ethnic minority policy.

The above different theoretical traditions constitute paradigms through which we can think about the Tibet issue and the future of Tibet. Currently, the dominant Western theoretical paradigm is a liberal-democratic one with several features like self-determination, referendum and autonomy. While I subscribe to this theoretical paradigm, I think that it is necessary for us to look at different theories of autonomy which offer different answers and scenarios. One possibility is the Confucian notion of ronghe, a kind of civilisational intermingling or integration between peoples and different religions.

The above three theoretical traditions are difficult to reconcile, and create theoretical tensions and difficulties in addressing the autonomy question in Tibet. Currently Beijing's Tibet policy is a mix of Confucius’ assimilation, Karl Marx's classless society, and Adam Smith's market force which will diminish the importance of ethnicity. The critical question is to explore areas of convergence to help reduce the theoretical gaps, and also to assess how Beijing can go beyond the Confucian and Marxist traditions.

This chapter examines the theoretical sources of current Chinese policies on minority rights. It will trace a complex combination of various intellectual inheritances, combining echoes of Confucian ideas of paternalistic guardianship over ‘backward groups’ or ‘younger brothers’ with echoes of Marxist/Leninist ideas of ethnic autonomy, mixed with echoes of liberal ideas of minority rights and affirmative action policies for minority groups.

The structure of this chapter is as follows. It begins with a brief introduction of the competing views of autonomy so as to highlight how different theoretical traditions offer different solutions to the Tibet issue, followed by an examination of both Confucian and Marxist discourse on minority issues and minorities’ rights.

This chapter comprises seven sections. Section 3.1 raises the question of the impact of democratisation on the national identity issue and political unity. Section 3.2 proposes several theoretical hypotheses. Section 3.3 undertakes a historical test of a controversial ‘empire thesis’ through an historical overview of China's national identity question, in particular an historical account of the various episodes when Chinese nationalism has clashed with democratisation over the national identity question. Sections 3.4 and 3.5 examine further the clash between democratisation and nationalism in today's China, with a particular focus on Taiwan and Tibet. Section 3.6 argues against a strong historical determinism by formulating an antiempire thesis, and explores the possible democratic mechanisms through which China could avoid the logic of ‘the empire thesis’. Section 3.7 is a short conclusion.

THE IMPACT OF CHINA'S NATIONAL IDENTITY QUESTION ON CHINESE DEMOCRATISATION

The Chinese leadership is now reluctant to initiate large-scale democratisation at the national level in China. Indeed, Chinese state nationalists oppose democratisation, which they see as threatening national unity and control of the territories. In particular, the break-up of the former USSR and the separation of East Timor from Indonesia have reinforced Beijing's fear and resistance to democracy, while China's successful reunion with Hong Kong and Macau has strengthened Beijing's belief that power, not democracy, can unify China.

In contrast, Chinese liberal dissidents, such as Yan Jiaqi, Wei Jingsheng and Hu Ping, call for democratic federalism to resolve the questions of Taiwan and Tibet. It is argued that through federalism, a grand-coalition government and genuine autonomy, China might be able to maintain its size and unity while also becoming democratic. This view is contested by this empirical study of Chinese modern history and the effect of the national identity question on democratisation.

This chapter attempts to analyse the impact of China's national identity question on Chinese democratisation and to explore why China has difficulty in establishing democracy. Shaohua Hu (2000) has used historical legacies, local forces, the world system, socialist values and economic development to explain China's difficulty in establishing democracy. This chapter focuses on the national identity question and examines the conditions in which Chinese nationalism can be said to constitute an obstacle to democratisation. It will seek to demonstrate the logic of the conflict between democracy and state nationalism in the context of China's national identity issue.

This book examines the simple but significant idea that ordinary citizens have the right to voice their opinion on the national boundary/identity question and to cast votes on it in a form of referendum. Citizen's voice and public deliberation mechanisms are powerless without a voting device. A vote without citizen's voice and public deliberation is fraught with danger; it escalates conflict rather than solving or managing it. It is necessary to combine referendum and public deliberation: a sort of deliberative referendum (Chapter 11). It is around this idea that this book brings together current work on the normative question of national boundaries with current work on deliberative democracy.

In the long history of human life, the national boundary/identity issue is largely decided by state powers and elites and/or by ruthless military force: ‘might’ defeated reason with regard to the boundary question. It is also true, historically, that the origins of state boundaries were accidental and that in most cases national boundaries were not made democratically. However, upon the arrival of the Enlightenment Movement and Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason, we can discern the beginning of a rational and democratic project.

Changing contemporary conditions make democratic choice increasingly possible. A number of new conditions which were absent, or at least hard to discern, have been created. They include the prevalence of democracy throughout the world, international support for and sympathy with minorities, and sophisticated communication systems which make people aware of minority issues quickly. Deliberative institutions, multiculturalism and the coexistence of multiple identities go a long way towards sustaining these new conditions. Moreover, the effectiveness of force as a means of solving boundary questions has been eroding. There is also a widespread belief that democracy can accommodate multiple identities and demands and can consequently help to manage problems of national identity. Under these conditions, democratic theories in the 1990s thoroughly rethought the boundary question using a new set of democratic ideas and devices, thus challenging the thesis that democracy cannot manage the boundary question. Today, with the deepening process of democratisation around the world, we are able to continue to enrich the great Enlightenment tradition to solve, settle and manage the national boundary/identity conflict in a rational, peaceful and democratic manner.

INTRODUCTION: LINGUISTIC TRENDS

In recent years, Tibetans have engaged in a series of protests to defend their increasingly marginalised language. In October 2010, more than a thousand Tibetans in Qinghai protested against reports that the government was planning to put in place policies that would limit the use of the Tibetan language in schools by teaching all subjects except for English and Tibetan in Putonghua (BBC 2010). These protests spread to Beijing, where Tibetan university students also protested their concern about the proposed policies (Wong 2010). The European Parliament has supported Tibetans in defending the status of their language. It adopted a resolution in support of a language policy in which all subjects can be taught in the Tibetan language and condemned the Chinese government for its use of Putonghua as the main medium of instruction in Tibet.

China was, and still is, a multi-lingual society, and has practised multi-lingual teaching for many centuries. The fifty-five recognised minorities in the PRC use more than 120 different languages (Sun Hongkai 2004). Officials in ethnic autonomous regions are encouraged to speak multiple languages, including both Putonghua 普通话 (common speech, mandarin) and local languages (Zhou 2004). The National People's Congress uses seven different languages in its work, and five different scripts appear on Chinese bank notes. Among the Han Chinese majority there is also great linguistic diversity, with a number of spoken Chinese language groups, such as the Wu, Yue and Min, having tens of millions of speakers. The expansion of Chinese state power and the power of the market into all corners of China has, however, witnessed the dramatic spread of Putonghua across China, which has slowly diluted the importance of minority languages.

There now seems to be a tendency towards the strengthening of Putonghua, as indicated by a number of factors: the decline in the use of minority languages; the increasing use of Putonghua as an official teaching language in minority areas; the use of Putonghua in official meetings involving minorities; and the lack of incentives for those Han Chinese who work in minority areas to study minority languages (see Evans 2010; Feng 2009; Lin 1997).

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).