A Brief History of the Cross-Strait Conflict

The cross-Strait conflict is a consequence of the Chinese Civil War (1927–1949), which resulted in 7.5 million military and civilian deaths (White 2011). In October 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under Chairman Mao Zedong established the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as it achieved a decisive military victory over the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT). In December 1949, some two million soldiers and followers of the KMT, who lost their territories in the mainland to the CCP, retreated to Taiwan. With the KMT’s retreat, the seat of the Republic of China (ROC) moved to Taiwan. Over the next three decades, the PRC waged strenuous campaigns for international recognition, ultimately securing UN recognition in 1972 and U.S. recognition in 1979. When the United States normalized its ties with the PRC, it severed its official ties with the ROC and instead established close unofficial ties with Taiwan.

Although the Taiwanese and mainland Chinese societies experienced profound social transformations over the next half-century, many of the defining elements of the cross-Strait conflict have remained intact, continuing to influence both societies’ perceptions of the other and their interpretations of the conflict’s historical significance. From the mainland Chinese perspective, at stake in the disputed political status of Taiwan is the Chinese need to ensure the dignity, integrity, and unity of the nation (Wang 2012; Arai 2016), a need rooted in their collective memory of the foreign interferences and internal divisions from which Chinese society has long suffered (Wang 2012). A central theme in this collective memory is the “Century of Humiliation,” a dark period of Chinese history that began with the Qing dynasty’s defeat in the First Opium War with Britain in 1839–1842 and paved the way for foreign invasions, unfair treaties, and colonial rule (Wang 2012). Viewed from this historical perspective, reunification with Taiwan, which the Japanese empire occupied between 1895 and 1945, is an important step that Chinese society must take to close this chapter of the nation’s history. Reunification is also an important step toward national rejuvenation—the CCP’s long-standing vision of a strong and dignified China that is respected on the global stage.

From the Taiwanese perspective, at stake in the cross-Strait conflict is their yearning for the freedom to choose their political future without outside interference (Roy 2003; Arai 2016), including freedom from military threat and economic control. A powerful driver of the Taiwanese quest for freedom and security is the rise of distinct Taiwanese identities (Zuo 2012; Lin 2019), which are grounded in the Taiwanese experiences of nation building that center around a Western-styled market economy, democracy, freedom of speech, security, and economic ties with the United States, and the enduring legacies of the Japanese rule.

Strait Talk and Walk-Through History

Strait Talk is a youth-led nonpartisan initiative for cross-Strait peacemaking. It regularly brings together three cohorts of five civil society delegates aged 18–35 from Taiwan, mainland China, and the United States for weeklong conflict resolution workshops using the Interactive Conflict Resolution (ICR) method. Widely practiced in diverse conflict-affected societies over the past several decades, ICR is a sustained, collaborative process of promoting dialogues and relationship building in which trained intermediaries work side by side with all sides of an international, national, and/or intercommunal conflict (Saunders 1999; Fisher 2016). ICR participants jointly analyze a conflict’s sources, find mutually acceptable means to contribute to its resolution, and apply lessons from the dialogues to social change initiatives within and across the societies to which they belong. While some ICR organizers conduct a series of workshops for the same group of participants, Strait Talk holds an intensive one-time dialogue for each cohort of participants.

Strait Talk was established in 2005 by student volunteers at Brown University in the United States to respond to deepening cross-Strait tensions. The Brown University chapter has held annual workshops for the past seventeen years and has offered a model for Strait Talk chapters at four other universities: the University of California at Berkeley (operating from 2009 to 2019), the University of Hong Kong (operating from 2011 to 2019), the National Taiwan University (ongoing since 2012), and George Washington University (ongoing since 2021). While the U.S.-based chapters recruit English-speaking participants, the other chapters hold dialogues in Chinese. By mid-2022, Strait Talk’s alumni numbered approximately one thousand. They play increasingly influential roles in business, government, diplomacy, think tanks, academia, media, and other fields.

Strait Talk’s ICR workshops include an exercise for conflict analysis called “walk-through history,” which is introduced in the early phase of the weeklong workshops. Developed by Joseph Montville, a former U.S. diplomat with a background in psychology, walk-through history is an experiential method of facilitating conflict parties’ self-reflections, dialogues, and learning about conflict history (Montville 1993). Strait Talk’s adaptation of walk-through history involves asking the three teams of five participants—Chinese, Taiwanese, and American—to meet separately for an hour. Each of the three teams identifies eight historical events that it considers most important in explaining the current state of the cross-Strait conflict and writes each event on a large sheet of paper. The organizers collect the three sets of events and use them to present three parallel timelines on the floor. The fifteen participants form a single line and walk slowly and silently along the timelines. As they walk, they reflect on the three versions of conflict history. This exercise is followed by facilitated discussions on discoveries and lessons learned (Arai 2015).

Since the founding of Strait Talk, the author has facilitated twenty-three ICR workshops—fifteen at Brown (since 2005), seven at Berkeley (2009–2015), and one at George Washington (2021). In twenty of the workshops, the author gave participants the same instructions for the walk-through history; this article analyzes the twenty sets of Chinese and Taiwanese timelines from these workshops. American timelines are outside the scope of this study and excluded. Table One summarizes the years and locations for the workshops from which the timelines were adopted.

Years marked with an (x) in Table One indicate the availability of timelines. There were no workshops in 2020 due to COVID-19. The inaugural 2021 workshop at George Washington was held remotely. Analysis of the data will follow.

Examples of Walk-Through History Timelines

Two sets of sample timelines are introduced for illustration. These examples highlight the promise of a comparative, longitudinal analysis. The first set is adopted from the inaugural 2005 workshop at Brown University that took place six months after the passage of the Chinese Anti-Secession Law, which affirmed Beijing’s preparedness to use force to prevent Taiwan’s independence. Explanations of the events in Table Two, as well as the events in Table Three that follows, are omitted because the tables are merely intended to show what walk-through history timelines look like.

In the 2005 workshop, the Chinese participants started their timeline with the unification of the historical territories of China in 221 BC, stressing their understanding of One China as having deep historical roots (Arai 2015).

The second set of timelines comes from the 2018 workshop at Brown and is shorter than the 2005 timelines. These timelines focus on the events of the past half-century and emphasize social movements and protests; this is especially true of the Taiwanese timeline. This shift in emphasis will be examined later.

Description of the Research Data

Additional information on participant selection explains the unique characteristics of the walk-through history timelines. As noted earlier, Strait Talk participants are eighteen to thirty-five years old. Eighty percent of the participants are graduate or undergraduate students aged twenty to twenty-five. However, recent years have seen a gradual increase in the proportion of young professionals in their late twenties to early thirties affiliated with business, government, and academic institutions. Men and women are equally represented. Nonbinary participants are included.

Participant selection is based on an open competition among applicants who have responded to the organizers’ public call, which is circulated through academic, professional, and alumni networks. A trained selection committee reviews application essays and conducts virtual Zoom interviews with shortlisted candidates. The selection criteria for U.S.-based workshops are: (1) a demonstrated commitment to working on the cross-Strait issue academically, professionally, and/or otherwise, (2) sufficient knowledge of cross-Strait relations to express informed opinions, (3) demonstrated leadership skills, (4) openness to dialogue, and (5) English proficiency.

The English proficiency requirement likely sets participants in the U.S.-based Strait Talk chapters apart from their peers in Chinese and Taiwanese societies because they either have studied abroad or have taken a significant amount of university coursework in English at their home institutions and have had more exposure to Western thinking than their peers. Moreover, their demonstrated willingness to listen to people from the other side of the Strait on controversial political issues indicates a greater degree of political tolerance than that of many of their peers. Still, observations from the seventeen years of dialogues suggest that the participants’ emotional commitments to their own national identities are deep and heartfelt (Arai 2015, 2016).

While data collection did not follow random sampling, it was highly systematic for two reasons. First, the twenty pairs of timelines were developed in response to the same instructions given by the same facilitator over the seventeen-year period. Second, Strait Talk has consistently followed the same criteria and procedure for recruitment. The consistency of the recruitment process has ensured that each cohort of participants immersed in cross-Strait relations at the point of their recruitment examined cross-Strait history by following the same instructions. In this process, each cohort developed a timeline to communicate a negotiated image of their historical present as if it were the only version of cross-Strait history they could imagine. It is worth stressing that those who came up with their own version of a timeline had no knowledge of different timelines developed by their peers in the same workshop or in any of the previous workshops. Figure One illustrates this distinct quality of walk-through history timelines as reflections of evolving historical viewpoints. At each juncture of cross-Strait history over the past seventeen years, each cohort of participants negotiated and presented a consensus view of their internalized images of cross-Strait history.

Each set of eight events does not necessarily represent a collective memory because each cohort of civil society delegates is neither expected nor able to represent their society, let alone their governing authorities. However, the fact that the participants did not receive any master list of sample events from which to choose but came up with eight or more events on their own and subsequently formed consensus on their eight choices indicates some level of group-based thinking. It is inferred, therefore, that the requirement of consensus-building has turned the timelines into negotiated, organized forms of social memory. It is also inferred that the timelines illustrate how the participants framed their images of cross-Strait history within the bounds of the oldest and latest events of their choice. Walk-through history timelines thus provide conflict resolution researchers and practitioners with a useful way of supporting participants in negotiation, mediation, and facilitated dialogue to deepen their self-awareness of social memory and apply their awareness to peacemaking.

Data Analysis and Validity Issues

As noted, each of the twenty pairs of timelines contains one Chinese timeline and one Taiwanese timeline, and each timeline consists of eight events. (As each pair contained five Chinese and five Taiwanese participants and there were twenty ICR workshops, the total number of participants was 200.) The collected data thus contains at least three units of analysis—twenty pairs, forty national timelines, and 320 events. The data was examined by means of content analysis, which Holsti defined as “any technique for making inferences by objectively and systematically identifying specific characteristics of messages” (Holsti 1969: 14). The research questions set forth above, including the one on the structures and patterns of social memory, guided the content analysis.

In conducting the content analysis, the author first identified general longitudinal trends across the twenty pairs of timelines as well as between the Chinese and Taiwanese societies. Commonalities and differences between Chinese and Taiwanese timelines were then examined. A comparative analysis of commonalities and differences identified the number of times that each cohort selected events. Analytical narratives contextualized and complemented the descriptive statistics on frequency.

One of the challenges to the validity of the data relates to the use of historical events. As memory researchers point out, social memories are products of social experiences, which are in turn shaped by social institutions and structures. Persistent social memories reflect their underlying mnemonic structures and patterns. By asking the participants to identify discrete events, the walk-through history exercise reduces the organic nature of social memory into snapshots of historical moments. While the exercise is useful for experiential learning, it runs the risk of fragmenting social memories. An analysis of events therefore requires a systematic, purposeful effort to identify and reconstruct the underlying structures and patterns of social memories (LeCompte and Schensul 1999). Countermeasures to mitigate this validity threat include explanatory narratives on mnemonic structures and patterns informed by contextual analysis.

Another challenge to validity is the difficulty in determining what counts as an event. Since the participants freely chose all the events on their own, different groups adopted different descriptions of the same events. Some participants identified a series of events (for example, a series of international events that led to the UN and U.S. recognition of the PRC in the 1970s) as one “event”; other participants chose only one specific event (for example, U.S. recognition of the PRC in 1979) to highlight the same historical process. Since the goal of this study is to develop a broad conceptual understanding of the dynamic nature of social memory, variability in the participants’ framings of events is interpreted flexibly within the bounds of the stated methodological requirements. Specifically, when there is reason to believe that different descriptions of the same event or the same series of events refer to the same historical process, they are interpreted and coded as such for data analysis. Such special cases are accounted for with explanations to ensure methodological consistency.

Finally, the limitations of the study’s generalizability are acknowledged. As this study builds on an analysis of conflict timelines produced by two hundred young, English-speaking civil society delegates who willingly participated in cross-Strait ICR workshops, its findings reflect the views of young, university-educated Chinese and Taiwanese willing to learn from each other. This study thus makes no claim of its direct relevance to senior government officials. Nor does it claim to reflect the general public in each society. References to the “Chinese” and “Taiwanese” perspectives in the following sections are not intended to represent the views of the officials or general populations of either society. None of these limitations, however, undermines the study’s methodological and conceptual significance, which lies in its demonstration of how to operationalize conflict timelines as data and how to carry out a comparative, longitudinal analysis of data adopted from a sustained, ongoing practice of conflict resolution dialogue.

Lengths of the Timelines

To establish a bird’s-eye view of the twenty pairs of timelines, the length of each timeline is determined by calculating the number of years between the first and last events. In the tables below, “S” stands for a spring workshop at Berkeley (2009–2015). The rest of the workshops took place at Brown (2005–present) except for the 2021 workshop at George Washington.

An overview of the lengths of the timelines suggests that both sides generally understand either 1894–1895 (the Sino-Japanese War and the Treaty of Shimonoseki; see below) or the 1940s as the beginning of the cross-Strait conflict. The choice of the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki (called the Treaty of Maguan by the Chinese)—which required the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) to cede Taiwan to the Japanese empire—is anticipated because of its significance as a watershed event in cross-Strait history. However, four of the twenty national timelines (China 2005, Taiwan 2007, China 2017, and Taiwan 2019, all italicized in Table Four) start with pre-modern events. Psychologically, the participants’ selection of these pre-modern events represents their internalized images of the conflict’s pre-modern origin, which in turn illustrates their perceptions of the historical legitimacy of their respective versions of conflict history.

Figure Two shows the trends in the lengths of the timelines over the seventeen years of ICR workshops. The 2005 timelines, which include the Chinese reference to 221 BC, are omitted because of their anomalous status. Figure Two does not account for the uneven lengths of the intervening years between the workshops.

The lengths of the timelines expand or contract from year to year. However, they generally stay within a predictable range—the mean length of the seventeen Chinese timelines (omitting the three anomalous years of 2005, 2017, and 2019) is 89 years, while the mean length of the nineteen Taiwanese timelines (omitting the anomalous year of 2007) is 79 years. These findings suggest that the two sides generally view the origin and evolution of the cross-Strait conflict as contemporary in nature but participants sometimes included pre-modern events. These findings also suggest a relatively stable nature of the bounded timeframes that the two sides have internalized about their respective images of conflict history.

Commonalities Between the Two Sides

There are three events that the two sides frequently incorporated into their timelines. The first of these is the Treaty of Shimonoseki (Maguan), which is in nearly half the timelines. The frequency of the treaty’s appearance suggests its enduring significance as a watershed event in cross-Strait history. References to the treaty are shown in Table Five.

The next event, the founding of the PRC, is more recent and even more persistent from a mnemonic standpoint. References to the founding of the PRC are shown in Table Six.

The PRC’s founding plays a definitive role in the two sides’ collective memories and both the Chinese and the Taiwanese participants included it in two thirds of their timelines. A close examination of the descriptions of the PRC’s founding, however, reveals that the two sides emphasized different aspects of this event. For example, the Chinese participants characterized it as “1949: the Chinese Civil War ended, the PRC established” (2011, Berkeley) and “1949: PRC founded (One China Principle)” (2014, Brown). In contrast, the Taiwanese participants described it as “1949: KMT, under Chiang Kai-shek’s leadership, retreated to Taiwan” (2006, Brown) and “1937–1949: Progression of KMT’s eventual retreat to Taiwan” (2021, George Washington). When performing a ceremonious walk, the participants recognized the conspicuous differences between the two sides’ word choices. These differences presented them with opportunities to exchange personal experiences about why and how they had come to believe in the versions of conflict history they had internalized since childhood (Arai 2015, 2016).

Importantly, all forty timelines include at least one action taken by the U.S. in the 1970s. Although the Chinese and the Taiwanese selected different events from this period, the two sides’ consistent references to the influential role of the United States in cross-Strait history are notable.

Differences Between the Two Sides

The different events that the two sides have chosen to develop their timelines illustrate contested views of cross-Strait history. As discussed below, such contested views are deeply connected to what Yael Zerubavel (1995) refers to as master commemorative narratives. To illustrate the contested nature of their views, we first examine the events that the Chinese participants more frequently chose, and then examine the events that the Taiwanese participants more frequently chose.

Table Seven shows the frequency of references to the 1992 Consensus, which is a shared understanding between Beijing and Taipei that the two sides belong to China. It builds upon a tacit acceptance of the unresolved state of the question of whether the PRC represents the whole of China or the two sides of the Strait constitute two distinct parts of a divided China (Bush 2005). While the proponents of the 1992 Consensus maintain that it resulted from a cumulative cross-Strait exchange of official memorandums, Taiwanese opponents categorically reject this perspective (Bush 2005).

Adopted by seventy percent of the Chinese timelines, the 1992 Consensus is arguably the most essential part of the Chinese participants’ collective memory of the cross-Strait conflict. The Taiwanese rejections of its validity often led to heated debates during the workshops (Arai 2016). Its mnemonic significance is even more conspicuous when it is compared to another event, the Anti-Secession Law. The frequency of references to the law is shown in Table Eight.

In March 2005, the PRC adopted the Anti-Secession Law, which declared Beijing’s resolve to use force if Taiwan takes steps toward a formal separation (Embassy of the PRC 2005). The law signaled Beijing’s strong response to the heightened pro-independent sentiment in Taiwan as demonstrated by the victory of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) leader Chen Shui-bien in the 2004 presidential election, which gave him a second four-year term (Bush 2005). The Chinese participants’ attention to the Anti-Secession Law was anticipated because its passage was well-publicized by the Chinese government.

However, what is less obvious is the Chinese participants’ underlying psychological and mnemonic rationale for consistently placing both the Anti-Secession Law and the 1992 Consensus in their timelines. One way of interpreting their rationale is that they viewed the Anti-Secession Law as a means to prevent Taiwanese independence (which would pose an existential threat to One China), while considering the 1992 Consensus as a basis for cross-Strait reunification. An underlying mnemonic rationale that connects these two events is the Chinese yearning for national unity, territorial integrity, and respect. This observation of the Chinese participants’ mnemonic rationale is consistent with the high frequency of their references to both events over the past seventeen years. It is supported by the fact that they were well-educated English-speaking students and professionals who willingly came to the dialogues to learn about Taiwanese perspectives. More conservative members of Chinese society who may not wish to learn from Taiwanese perspectives are likely to be even more strongly attached to the mnemonic significance of the two events.

We now turn to the events that the Taiwanese participants referenced frequently, including the February 28 incident. Table Nine shows the frequency of references to this event.

The February 28 incident was a public protest that the Taiwanese people organized in 1947 against the corruption and injustice of the Chinese Nationalist (KMT) authorities from the mainland (Roy 2003). The KMT forces killed thousands of Taiwanese people to suppress the protest. The Taiwanese workshop participants who incorporated February 28 in their timelines noted that this incident deepened Taiwanese distrust in the mainland and increased their desire for independence.

While the seven of the twenty Taiwanese timelines (35 percent) may appear modest in number, it is still high by the Taiwanese standard because the Taiwanese selection of events was generally less convergent than the Chinese. However, a more fundamental reason for highlighting the Taiwanese reference to February 28 is its highly evocative and representative status in relation to the broader universe of Taiwanese experiences in the making of their identity and their memories of the conflict across the Strait. To illustrate this universe further, it is useful to mention the 1994 Qinandao Lake Incident. The Taiwanese participants in the 2006 and 2016 workshops incorporated this incident into their timelines. It involved a Chinese criminal gang hijacking a tourist ship in the Qinandao Lake in Zheijian Province, China. Twenty-four Taiwanese tourists, six Chinese crew, and two Chinese tour guides were on board and all tragically died. According to the Taiwanese dialogue participants, the Taiwanese public was outraged at the Chinese authorities’ inadequate response to the death of the Taiwanese passengers. The participants noted that the incident deepened the Taiwanese resolve to seek independence. Similar sentiments of frustration and resolve were expressed by the 2018 Taiwanese participants, whose timeline included the rise of the Taiwanese public’s demand for attaining observer rights in the World Health Organization to cope with the 2002–2004 outbreak of a severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in China (Zuo 2012). Repeated observations of the participants’ reflections on the walk-through history exercises suggest that the highly emotional events both shape and symbolize the Taiwanese experiences of voicelessness, powerlessness, and victimhood and drive their yearning for freedom from insecurity and control (Arai 2015, 2016).

As Table Nine indicates, the Chinese participants rarely paid attention to the February 28 incident, let alone the other two events of mnemonic significance to Taiwanese society and identity. In fact, most of the Chinese participants had never heard of February 28. The absence of Chinese attention to Taiwanese events mirrors the Taiwanese general inattention to the Anti-Secession Law and other expressions of One China. The participants found candid discussions on the reasons for this gap in knowledge and perception to be both challenging and revealing. Opportunities to acquire a basic knowledge of the historical events and human experiences that matter to the other side have often been transformative (Arai 2015, 2016).

Changes and Continuities

The final question to be explored in this section is how social memory of conflict changes. A useful starting point of inquiry is the two sides’ references to the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA). Established in 2010 as a de facto cross-Strait free trade agreement, the ECFA was a significant landmark in the long cross-Strait history of enmity and mistrust. Under this agreement, Taiwan decided to lower tariffs on 539 commodities exported to China while China offered to lower tariffs on 267 commodities bound for Taiwan. The two sides also expressed their commitment to negotiate a separate agreement to reduce tariffs on cross-Strait services in such sectors as banking and tourism.

Table Ten shows that the ECFA, which appeared in nine of the eighteen timelines (50 percent) developed between 2010 and 2014, never reappeared between 2015 and 2021. This shift paralleled the broader political shift that Taiwanese society was undergoing during this period. A powerful driver of this shift was the convergence of public mobilization efforts led by the DPP, independent youths, and other opponents of the KMT administration’s cross-Strait economic liberalization policy. Some of these opponents argued that KMT’s trade policy would harm Taiwanese farmers, small-to-medium size companies, and other vulnerable constituents. Others, including independent youths, distrusted the political establishments altogether and rejected their cross-Strait policies (Lin 2019).

On March 18, 2014, over 300 Taiwanese students dissatisfied with the government’s attempt to ratify a cross-Strait service agreement occupied the Taiwanese parliament and demanded direct talks with President Ma Ying-jeou. Their protest, called the Sunflower Movement, generated significant publicity and political impact both nationally and internationally. The movement successfully convinced the Ma administration to cancel the scheduled ratification of the cross-Strait service agreement. Moreover, it played a significant role in KMT’s decline and the subsequent victory of DDP leader Tsai Ing-wen in the 2016 presidential election (Lin 2019). The participants in the Strait Talk workshops convened during this period shared their own experiences of the shifts in cross-Strait relations. Reflecting these sociopolitical shifts, eleven of the fourteen walk-through timelines (79 percent) produced since 2015 mentioned the Sunflower Movement, as shown in Table Eleven.

It is significant that all the seven Taiwanese cohorts and over two thirds of the Chinese cohorts have mentioned the Sunflower Movement since 2015. The participants’ consistent emphasis on the Sunflower Movement since 2015 stands in sharp contrast to the disappearance of the ECFA from the timelines since 2015. This is an important mnemonic shift because all the cohorts of Strait Talk participants developed their timelines independently and still, the systemic shift from one way of remembering to another is clear and compelling. The shift illustrates how individuals from different societies can unknowingly act in unison. It also illustrates that people emphasize and de-emphasize—and perhaps even remember and forget—facts and experiences according to the prevailing modes of thinking and interacting.

Moreover, the insight from this mnemonic shift combined with the two sample timelines (Tables Two and Three) presented earlier suggests that since 2014, Strait Talk participants have framed cross-Strait history differently than their predecessors. The participants—especially the Taiwanese—who have attended the workshops since 2014 have generally expressed cross-Strait history as a history of grassroots social movements. As noted in the discussion of Tables Two and Three, the greater emphasis on social movements is evident in the 2018 timelines relative to the 2005 timelines.

In short, the analysis of the timelines has demonstrated that social experience shapes social memory. It has also demonstrated that social memory is inherently subjective and dynamic.