If there is one assumption taken for granted by all of us familiar with Chinese sensitivities, it is that of “One China” — the inflexible policy adhered to by Beijing that requires the world to accept the unity and indivisibility of the Chinese nation, including not only Tibet but also Hong Kong (despite its autonomy, separate administration and currency) and Taiwan (despite its de facto, but not de jure, independence).

Taiwan has tended to go along with the assertion of One China: it still officially calls itself the Republic of China (ROC), claiming descent from the regime established in Beijing by Sun Yat-Sen when he overthrew the last Emperor of the Q’ing dynasty in 1911. Still, it has been a while since the world took seriously the Taipei government’s pretence of speaking for the whole country. Once seen by a majority of members of the United Nations in the 1950s as the legitimate government of China temporarily displaced by Communist usurpers, Taiwan has been marginalised for decades: it was forced to surrender its UN seat to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) by an overwhelming vote in 1971, and has been largely ostracised from the global political community since.
At the same time, no one pretends that Beijing speaks for this island nation of 23 million, with its GDP of $460 billion (a per-capita income of over $20,000) and its robust democracy. Taiwan has not been ruled from the mainland since 1949, and for all practical purposes it conducts itself as a separate country. Not only is it a major trade powerhouse, out of all proportion to its size, but a significant source of foreign investment. It also has a robust defence establishment, designed to ward off threats from the mainland, and a pro-active foreign policy. But it is recognised as a sovereign state by only 23 of the 192 member states of the United Nations. As a result, the other 169 nations must deal with it by subterfuge. So the US, India and other countries maintain quasi-diplomatic relations with Taiwan by assigning foreign office personnel to Taipei in nominally trade-related jobs. The Indian “ambassador” in Taiwan is officially the director-general of the India-Taipei Association; his Taiwanese counterpart in India rejoices in the designation of director of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Centre in New Delhi.
Seems fair enough. There’s only one catch: deal with Taiwan more formally, and China goes ballistic. Any contact that implies official recognition of a “state” or a government of Taiwan provokes furious outrage and protests on Beijing’s part. Thus the President of Taiwan could not set foot on US soil as long as he was President; ministers of countries recognising Beijing are forbidden from meeting ministers from Taiwan. Taiwanese officials are, of course, banned at the United Nations, where the PRC’s sway is confirmed by a General Assembly resolution. I remember, in my UN days, apoplectic Chinese diplomats prompting successive Secretaries-General to bar entry to Taiwanese representatives who had been invited to address the UN Correspondents’ Association. The resultant standoff at the UN gates usually got the Taiwanese diplomats more publicity than if China had simply ignored them altogether, but the bad press was less important to Chinese officialdom than insisting on their rights to prevent the “pretenders” from sullying the UN’s precincts.
The strange thing, as I discovered during a recent visit to Taipei, is that these rules don’t apply to China itself. Behind the formal rejection, a thriving and almost incestuous level of contact flourishes. There are 370 flights a week between the mainland and Taiwan; some three million Chinese tourists came to the ROC last year. Taiwanese businesses are China’s largest investors, with an estimated $300 million pumped into their economy, and one of the largest trading partners, to the tune of over $110 billion. Some one million Taiwanese are either living, working or studying in China at any given time. Chinese officials, up to and including governors and ministers, travel happily to Taiwan, and are quite pleased to welcome high-ranking Taiwanese visitors in return; when I was there, the Mayor of Taipei (a crucial post, since the last two mayors became the country’s Presidents) was planning a holiday in China. Obviously, Beijing does not recognise the Taiwanese passport, but it is quite pragmatic and flexible when it wants to be: travel by the two sets of citizens uses informal documentation that implies no recognition of separate sovereignty by either side.
Some think this implies an extended willingness to co-exist: rather than the “One China, Two Systems” formula that applies to Hong Kong, this is almost “One China, Two Entities”. Others, more cynically, think that what Beijing is doing is to envelop Taiwan in a smothering economic embrace while continuing to isolate it politically, so that Taipei’s dependence will inevitably oblige it to submit to a Hong Kong-type merger with the PRC. And then there are the optimists, who think the increased contact will instead change China, making the PRC more like the ROC. “You know what these Chinese tourists do?” a senior official asked. “They enjoy a day’s tourism, have dinner and then sit in their hotel rooms in front of the TV for hours, watching Taiwanese talk shows. They can’t get enough of the cut-and-thrust of our democracy. ‘Imagine,’ a mainlander said to me, ‘my taxi driver had an opinion on nuclear policy, as if it had anything to do with him.’” But in Taiwan, unlike in China, the taxi-driver gets to vote on who makes the policy, so it has everything to do with him. Chinese citizens are learning that, and going back to the mainland infected with the taste of freedom. Soon, the optimists aver, “they will want to be like us. Then Taiwan will have conquered China”.
It’s a pity that Indians can’t engage more formally with this vibrant land, because China demands that we be more purist than they are. There’s a lot we can do to attract more investment (a measly $1 billion in India so far), tourism (just 25,000 Taiwanese a year, from a country that sends 1.8 million to Hokkaido alone!) and educational and scientific exchange. But that means greater and higher-level contact in our dealings with Taiwan, not holding its leadership at arm’s length. Given the PRC’s penchant for needling us on Arunachal Pradesh and Kashmir, isn’t it time we picked up a Taiwanese thimble of our own? More on how, in my next column.

The second part of this column will appear on May 27

Shashi Tharoor is a member of Parliament from Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram constituency