Decoding Cross-Strait Tension Through a Legal–Historical Lens: Far More Complex Than a Democracy–Authoritarianism Divide Can Capture
- UCL Law for All Society
- Dec 6, 2025
- 17 min read
By Cathy Liu
Introduction
Since her inauguration, former President Tsai Ing-wen has consistently situated Taiwan within the global community of democracy, portraying it as the “frontline of freedom and democracy” standing up against China’s “authoritarian aggression” and as a responsible stakeholder safeguarding the regional “peace and stability”[1]. Although increasingly treated as the default epistemological lens for understanding Cross-Strait relations, this “democracy versus authoritarianism” framework remains deeply problematic, as it erases the depths and complexities underpinning the Mainland-Taiwan status-quo. This article first outlines the historical root of today’s cross-Strait stalemate. It then explains the continuation of the stalemate from both legal constitutional and political perspectives.
The Historical Roots of Cross-Strait stalemate
Following Admiral Shi Lang’s naval defeat of the Ming loyalist Zheng Chenggong’s Tungning regime, Taiwan was incorporated into the Qing Empire in 1684 under the administration of Fujian Province, and was subsequently designated a separate province in 1887. The Mainland and Taiwan remained under the same regime until the first Sino-Japanese War in 1895, after which the defeated Qing government dispatched Li Hongzhang to sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki, ceding Taiwan in perpetuity to Japan.
Taiwan remained under the Japanese colonial rule until the turning point of World War II. The Cairo Declaration of 1943 demanded that territories seized by Japan, including Taiwan, be restored to their pre-colonial status. Since Taiwan had been part of the Qing Empire prior to its cession to Japan, it would theoretically have been returned to the Qing. However, the Qing dynasty had already collapsed in 1911 amid intense political volatility, leading to the establishment of the Republic of China (the ROC) under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen. Given that the ROC had formally replaced the Qing as the governing authority on the Mainland, Taiwan was ultimately incorporated into the ROC in August 1945 following Japan’s surrender, marking the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War.
For a brief four-year period, both the Mainland and Taiwan were under the administration of the ROC. Meanwhile, the Chinese Civil War between Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (the KMT, aka the ROC’s ruling party) and Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist Party (the CCP, then regarded as the rebelling party by the KMT), which had continued intermittently since 1927, escalated into a full-scale warfare. Mao’s Red Army eventually defeated Chiang’s Nationalists, enabling the CCP to take full control of the Mainland and establish the People’s Republic of China (the PRC) in 1949. After its defeat, the KMT retreated to Taiwan, where it secured the ROC’s authority over Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu (known as the Tai-Peng-Kin-Ma Area). As the ROC government had not been fully eradicated but merely relocated, the newly established PRC had not yet replaced it as the internationally recognised government of China. For the CCP regime, taking over Taiwan and unifying China under the PRC was therefore essential to achieving full legitimacy. Conversely, the remaining KMT regime in Taiwan enacted martial law [2] as part of its plan to recapture the Mainland and unify China under the ROC. The Mainland and Taiwan became divided once again. This time the Mainland found itself under the CCP rule for more than seventy years, whereas Taiwan was first governed by the KMT and later alternated between KMT and DPP [3] rule following democratisation. It could therefore be argued that the inconclusive Chinese Civil War was the fundamental historical root of the Cross-Strait tension that persists to this day.
The Unresolved Cross-Strait Stalemate: Constitution and Political dynamics
The PRC Constitution vs the ROC Constitution
Both the PRC and ROC Constitutions are the historical products of the inconclusive Chinese Civil War. Building on a one-China [4] framework, both claim sovereignty over China [5] as a whole. Moreover, both constitutions regard the current Cross-Strait separation under two political regimes as a temporary condition and envision the eventual reunification of the mainland and Taiwan into a single sovereign state of China [6].
Taiwan was first explicitly referred to in the PRC’s short-lived 1978 Constitution, which declared that “Taiwan is China’s sacred territory. We must liberate Taiwan and finish the great task of unifying the motherland.” According to The PRC’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the “Taiwan-related legal framework” consists of the PRC Constitution and two other legal documents under it, published sequentially in the order given below:
1) The fifth publication of the Message to Compatriots in Taiwan, published in 1979, [7] is the first official legal document that expresses strong willingness to end post-1949 military confrontation between the two sides (mainly the small-scale shelling on Kinmen Island since 1958), expands cross-Strait exchanges and actively works towards unification together.
2) Following the PRC’s open-arm attitude towards the then KMT-led ROC government in Taiwan, the 1982 Constitution [8] (currently in effect) relinquishes the militant term of “liberating Taiwan”. Instead, it replaces this “us-subsuming-them” narrative with a more inclusive tone to incorporate the people of Taiwan into its reunification project. It also specifies the PRC as the one and only “China”. As stated in its preamble, “Taiwan is part of the sacred territory of the People’s Republic of China. It is the lofty duty of all Chinese people, including our compatriots in Taiwan, to accomplish the great task of reunifying the motherland.”
3) The tone was tightened again within a decade nevertheless. In response to the re-election of former President Chen Shui-bian [9] in Taiwan, the Anti-Session Law [10] was ratified and immediately went into effect in 2005. It defines the cross-Strait issue as the legacy of the Chinese Civil War, formally stating that the PRC government may take "non-peaceful means and other necessary measures to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity", should Taiwan seek independence from China and peaceful reunification become impossible. However, it is important to note that the Anti-Session Law does not equate “China” with “the PRC” as the Constitution does, thereby strategically leaving buffer zone for future negotiations on reunification. In fact, it is still the only Taiwan-related legal document that does not constrict the definition of one-China to the PRC.
The ROC Constitution currently in effect in Taiwan was originally drafted by the Constituent Assembly in 1946 [11] and enacted in 1947 on the Mainland, when both the mainland and Taiwan were under the ROC’s administration. It was subsequently nullified for 43 years under Martial Law from 1949 to 1987, superseded by The Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of National Mobilisation for Suppression of the Communist Rebellion since 1948, though ultimately reinstated in 1991. As the original framework could no longer cater to Taiwan’s political realities, it underwent fundamental amendments in 1991.
The amended Constitution in 1991 [12] first clarifies the ROC government’s de facto authority over the Tai-Peng-Kin-Ma Area (the “Free Area”), while simultaneously maintaining the Mainland Area as the inherent ROC territory. Mirroring the PRC’s 1982 Constitution, the 1991 amendment also affirms a strong commitment to the unification of China with the opening clause: ‘To meet the requisites of the nation prior to national unification.’ This indicates that the amendment, at least on paper, was designed to accommodate Taiwan’s actual political circumstances before its envisioned reunification with the Mainland under the ROC. Building on this constitutional foundation, the “Act Governing Relations between the People of Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area” was enacted in 1992 [13] and, to this day, continues to serve as the principal law regulating cross-Strait civilian contacts “before national unification [takes place]”. Said document defines Mainlanders not as foreigners nor as the PRC citizens, but as the ROC nationals from the Mainland Area who do not possess household registration in the Taiwan Area. Another significant contribution of the 1991 amendment was repealing The Temporary Provisions. This formally marked the KMT’s abandonment to recapture the Mainland Area from the Communists and decriminalised contacts with the CCP, thereby paving the way for cross-Strait re-engagement after 40 years of frozen relations.
This Constitution has undergone six additional amendments. The most recent amendment, enacted in 2005 [14], explicitly prohibited the use of referendums to alter the ROC’s inherent territory. In other words, it excluded the possibility of using popular vote to renounce the ROC’s claimed sovereignty over the Mainland Area and confine its sovereignty to Taiwan. This amendment further safeguards the one-China and pro-unification constitutional framework against Taiwan’s increasingly pro-status quo, or even pro-independence political sentiment.
Constitutions: the legal barrier of cross-Strait stalemate
The shared constitutional ground on one-China as both present reality and the future goal has nonetheless not been successful in facilitating peaceful unification. This is because both the PRC and ROC constitutions claim their respective government’s sovereignty over all of China, covering both the Mainland and Taiwan, and each asserts itself as the sole legitimate representative of China. This mutual disagreement became the impassable barrier in various unification talks after the CCP and KMT resumed contacts in the early 1990s.
Before explaining constitution’s role as a practical barrier, some brief historical background is required. The ice-breaking between Mainland and Taiwan was initiated by the CCP through the Message to Compatriots in Taiwan on the New Year’s Day of 1979. The KMT regime, then led by President Chiang Ching-kuo, [15] initially rejected the PRC’s overtures and announced the Three Noes Policy – No contact, No negotiation, and No compromise with the Communists. The turning point came following Chiang Ching-kuo’s lifting of Martial Law in 1987, facing pressures from Taiwan’s democratic movements and demands from KMT veterans to visit back their Mainland hometowns, which they had left decades ago after CCP takeover, with little hope of return. President Chiang Ching-kuo passed away in 1989 and Lee Tung-hui subsequently rose to power. In his inauguration speech, Lee openly affirmed that “Taiwan and the Mainland are indivisible parts of Chinese territory” and stated that the common goal on two sides of the Strait is national unification. Practical measures were taken alongside mere verbal acknowledgement. President Lee established the National Unification Council in 1990 and the Council issued the Guidelines for National Unification in 1991.
As both sides have made practical moves in seeking reconnection and reunification, the semi-official Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), representing the KMT-led ROC government in Taiwan, and Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS), representing the CCP-led PRC government, initiated the first peace talk through a secretive meeting held in Hong Kong from 26 to 30 October 1992, with subsequent correspondences until 3 December 1992. The SEF and ARATS agreed that that both the Mainland and Taiwan, currently under different administrative bodies, belong to one China in terms of sovereignty and will strive to end the current separation of administration and pursue national reunification, while disagreeing over the political connotation of one-China (i.e. whether ‘China’ here refers to the PRC or ROC). After several rounds of correspondence, a consensus was finally reached: both the PRC and ROC government would verbally state in their own ways that “both sides of the Taiwan Strait adhere to the one-China principle”, and the political connotation of China could be excluded from functional dialogues. In other words, both sides agreed to quickly initiate cross-strait exchanges on the basis of one-China consensus, but the precise meaning of “China” in terms of political regime could be put aside and discussed later. This informal agreement, termed as the “1992 Consensus” [16], was confirmed by at the CCP-led PRC and the then KMT-led ROC government as the fundamental framework of Cross-Strait relations.
This decision seemed to be a tactical short-term one, allowing the two sides of the Strait to cooperate and communicate effectively on practical issues like commerce without confronting political disagreements. The PRC government, which replaced the ROC government as the representative of China in the United Nations in 1971, has nonetheless never forced the ROC to accept “China” to mean the PRC as a precondition of dialogue, indicating that headroom regarding the political connotation of “China” promised in the 1992 Consensus still sufficiently remained.
However, such a solution likewise intensifies stalemate in the long-term, as disagreement over the sovereignty of China, which is unavoidable should the status-quo is to change, has never been addressed, but merely set aside evasively. Both sides continue to claim their interpretation on “China” in line with their respective constitution. The KMT has officially interpreted the 1992 Consensus as “One China, different interpretations” [17], meaning that the ROC government insists on interpreting China as the ROC and denies PRC’s sovereignty over China, yet understands the PRC’s will to interpret China as the PRC. The CCP has formally rejected the KMT’s interpretation and has always maintained that one-China can only be PRC at official level. The ROC government is unwilling to relinquish the constitutional sovereignty over China to the Communists. The PRC, having already replaced the ROC as China’s legitimate representative in the United Nations, will certainly not tolerate any other political authority claiming sovereignty over China.
These unsettled constitutional disagreements over sovereignty ultimately contributed to the unbridgeable divide over unification plans. The reunification plan offered by the PRC is called “One Country, Two systems”, first proposed by Deng Xiao Ping in 1978 and formalised into White Paper: the Taiwan Question and China’s Unification in 1993 [18]. As the plan promised, after Taiwan incorporates into the PRC as a Special Administrative Region, it would be allowed to maintain its own political and economic systems. It would possess independent executive, legislative, judicial and military powers, as well as a certain degree of diplomatic authority. Moreover, while the central government would neither station troops nor send personnel to Taiwan, officials from Taiwan could assume leadership positions in central government bodies and participate in the administration of national affairs. Overall, the “One Country, Two systems” plan guarantees a high-level of autonomy to Taiwan on the condition that the ROC government renounces its claimed sovereignty over the Mainland and Taiwan and accept PRC’s sovereignty over the two territories. This plan, however, has been rejected by both the KMT (excluding a minority of party leaders like Hung Hsiu-chu) and the DPP, as both parties [19] claim that the plan wholly eliminates the ROC’s constitutionally defined sovereignty.
According to Taiwan’s constitutional logic, the Mainland and Taiwan could only be unified under the ROC. However, such aspirations exists only on paper for three reasons. Firstly, due to both political and practical concerns, the ROC government simply has neither the political incentive nor the capability to advance any form of unification, including unification under the ROC framework. In 2006, President Chen Shui-bian announced that the Guidelines for National Unification would cease to apply and that the National Unification Council would stop functioning. Since then, unification with the Mainland has been officially removed from the ROC’s agenda. Secondly, even if the ROC government wished to pursue unification under its name, this option is entirely unnegotiable, as it violates the PRC’s constitution, with the ROC lacking the leverage to make the PRC even consider such a possibility. Finally, in the context of Chinese political culture, no regime, including the current CCP regime, would not tolerate any “restoration of the former dynasty”. In this case, restoring the ROC would severely undermine the CCP’s legitimacy as a whole.
As a result, not only is unification nonviable, but independence is also blocked by the one-China constitutional framework, which defines Taiwan as a region of the ROC rather than a state in its own right. As noted above, renouncing the ROC’s claimed sovereignty over the Mainland and limiting it to Taiwan is prevented by the 2005 constitutional amendment. Amending the Constitution to replace the ROC with a “Republic of Taiwan” is equally unrealistic. Such amendment would almost certainly be interpreted as a declaration of Taiwan independence by the Anti-Secession Law, which would trigger the PRC to pursue unification by military means.
Democratisation: the political cause of enduring stalemate
The PRC Constitution provides the legal basis for Beijing to justify its pursuit of unification with Taiwan, whilst the ROC government utilises the ROC Constitution as the legal foundation for framing its rejection of the PRC’s “One Country, Two Systems” proposal. From an electoral-political perspective, it is therefore crucial to examine why both the KMT and the DPP reject unification with the Mainland under the PRC’s proposed framework.
Democratisation, marked by the first direct presidential election in 1996, fundamentally transformed the political landscape of Taiwan. It disrupted the previously precarious cross-Strait balance by bringing in a new stakeholder, the DPP, into what had long been an inconclusive struggle between the CCP and the KMT. The DPP rejected both the validity and the content of the 1992 Consensus.
On the question of validity, the DPP argued that the Consensus was merely an informal understanding reached between the CCP-led PRC government and the KMT-led ROC government, which had ruled Taiwan as an authoritarian party for four decades. Following the establishment of the first democratically elected government that was said to genuinely represent the will of the Taiwanese people, the agreement negotiated behind closed doors by two Chinese authoritarian regimes could no longer be seen as legitimate or representative of Taiwanese preferences.
Regarding the content of the Consensus, the DPP rejected its one-China framework and argued that the pursuit of unification was no longer appropriate. As Vice President Annette Lu asserted, the ROC’s historical claim to sovereignty over both mainland and Taiwan had effectively become obsolete; after the election of the first president by popular vote in 1996, Taiwan has already became a de jure sovereign state operating under the name of the Republic of China (the ROC), no longer an area parallel to the Mainland under the ROC’s territorial claim. According to the DPP, Taiwan functions as an independent state alongside the PRC; hence, there is no longer a single “China” – regardless of how one defines “China” – across the Strait, but rather two separate nations, “one China, one Taiwan”, on each side of the Strait. Under such circumstances, the DPP maintained that there was neither a need nor a political rationale to pursue unification.
The DPP’s views of “de jure independence”, however, exist largely at the level of informal political narratives. In the realm of law and official discourse, the DPP consistently downplays and even institutionally constrains its pro-independence positions. During his 2000 inauguration address, President Chen Shui-bian pledged that he would not declare Taiwan independent and the DPP ruled out the possibility of independence though constitutional amendments in 2005 [20]. This divergence between ideological stance and institutional behaviour is shaped primarily by electoral considerations.
Given most Taiwanese voters recognise that a formal declaration of independence would risk direct military confrontation with the Mainland, candidates who openly advocate such a position tend to be electorally untenable. To secure support from median voters, the DPP must therefore convince its constituents that it has no intention of advancing independence at the constitutional level. Overall, the DPP’s pro-independence stance on the one hand and its anti-independence institutional practices on the other have contributed to the persistence of the Cross-Strait stalemate, in which neither unification nor independence has progressed.
For similar electoral reasons, the KMT also abandoned its earlier narrative of “the ROC unifying the Mainland and Taiwan”, a position it had upheld during the authoritarian era. Surveys indicate that roughly 70% of respondents support the KMT’s interpretation of the 1992 Consensus and 34.4% to 44.8% of the population agree to maintain status quo. In contrast, merely 1.5% to 4.1% supports unification, and only 6% to 16.3% agree to pursue independence [21]. This indicates that both pro-unification and pro-independence constituencies represent minority preferences within Taiwanese society. Responding to these popular attitudes, during his run in the 2008 Presidential Election, President Ma Ying-jeou centered his campaign on the “New Three Noes Policies” (No unification, No independence, and No use of force) to frame the continuation of the status quo in terms of the KMT’s position on “One China, different interpretations”. [22] In line with this electoral pledge, Ma did not reinstate the Guidelines for National Unification and the National Unification Council upon taking office. The replacement of Hung Hsiu-chu as the KMT’s candidate for the 2016 presidential election, following her expression of pro-unification views, further validates the KMT’s electoral incentives to refrain from advancing unification. These dynamics together contribute to the Cross-Strait stalemate.
Although neither unification nor independence has made any progress and the overall stalemate persists, Cross-Strait relations were nevertheless markedly more stable during the Ma Ying-jeou (KMT) administration from 2008 to 2016 than when the DPP was the ruling party. Under the KMT rule, a range of trade agreements and policies perceived as beneficial to Taiwan were concluded, and non-commercial exchanges including academic, policy and municipal interactions also expanded during this “honeymoon period”. In contrast, the PRC government refused to engage in direct communication with the DPP administration upon their election. This divergence in attitudes stems from the fact that the KMT acknowledges the 1992 Consensus, albeit with their own interpretation, whereas the DPP government completely denies the Consensus and dismisses it as a political fabrication. Consequently, even with Beijing growing increasingly impatient and signaling a desire to accelerate reunification, the PRC central government nevertheless continued to maintain an open and receptive attitude [23] towards Cross-Strait exchanges when the newly elected Chairman of KMT openly reclaimed the one-China framework in the 1992 Consensus. [24]
Conclusion
This essay has outlined the historical origins of the Cross-Strait stalemate and examined how constitutional contestation and electoral incentives – a result of democratisation – contribute to a status quo in which neither unification nor independence has advanced. Far more complex than the dominant Western geopolitical narrative that frames the PRC as an authoritarian imperialist monster seeking to annex a democratic Taiwan, the present cross-Strait status quo is fundamentally rooted in the unresolved Chinese Civil War that began out in 1945 and entered a de facto truce when the ROC government retreated to Taiwan in 1949 due to the KMT’s defeat. The constitutions governing both sides, as well as the PRC Constitution and the ROC Constitution (with Additional Articles), are themselves products of this unfinished civil war.
Indeed, constitutional opposition over the sovereignty of China remains a fundamental barrier preventing both sides from negotiating or moving beyond the stalemate. Although the CCP and the then-ruling party KMT reached an agreement on the one-China principle and a future unification goal through the 1992 Consensus, the deeper disagreements over their overlapping sovereignty was never resolved. Yet it is the political use of the ROC Constitution as justification for anti-unification, rather than surface meaning of the constitutional texts themselves, that have played a decisive role in today’s stalemate. Both major parties in Taiwan, the formerly pro-unification KMT and the pro-independence DPP, have strategically drawn on the Constitution to legitimise their rejection of unification under the PRC’s “One Country, Two Systems” proposal as well as pledging not to declare Taiwan independent, largely for electoral reasons.
Prior to democratisation, Cross-Strait engagement operated as a government-to-government process: once the ruling authorities reached agreement, both sides could move forward from stalemate. After democratisation, however, ruling parties have had to navigate the preferences of the Taiwanese electorate and their partisan constituencies. These electoral constraints have shaped the narratives, positions, and behaviours of both parties on Cross-Strait issues. Any attempt to change the status quo now requires broad public approval, making it nearly impossible to break the stalemate in the short term, unless military force is mobilised to terminate the century-long Chinese Civil War.
However, even amid today’s deepening stalemate, the PRC still adopts a welcoming attitude towards Cross-Strait exchanges so long as its counterparts acknowledge the 1992 Consensus, leaving some interpretive space for the KMT on the connotation of China. Finally, it is important to recognise the profound asymmetry of power that characterises the current stalemate. When Cross-Strait contact resumed in the 1980s and 1990s, the Mainland lagged far behind Taiwan in most domains. Today, however, Taiwan’s smaller economic scale, its high economic reliance on the Mainland, and its noticeably weaker national defence capabilities place the PRC in a uniquely advantaged position to determine what to do with the status quo.
This reading of the Cross-Straights tension does have several limitations. Firstly, it lacks international perspective. In particular, it does not fully engage with the USA’s longstanding involvement since the outset of the Chinese Civil War, the ways in which cross-Strait tensions were embedded within the broader Cold War order, and how the USA employed strategic ambiguity to leverage Taiwan as a tool in managing its relationship with the PRC. Secondly, this analysis primarily maintains through a legal-political lens, focusing on constitutional frameworks and the political reasons behind adopting them as legal justification to reject unification. As a result, details on how each presidency’s policies and practices escalated or deescalated the cross-Strait relations are not sufficiently discussed.
Sources and Footnotes:
[1] See https://www.scmp.com/video/asia/3099173/taiwan-frontlines-freedom-and-democracy-after-hong-kong-tsai-ing-wen-says
[2] The martial law was not enacted by Chiang Kai-shek himself, but by Chen Cheng, the then Governor of Taiwan Province.
[3] The DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) emerged from the tangwai movement in the 1970s, a grassroots political force that challenged the KMT’s authoritarian governance at the time.
[4] Although both sides invoke the notion of ‘one China,’ the PRC and ROC governments interpret it in fundamentally different ways: the PRC Constitution defines ‘one China’ as the PRC under CCP leadership, whereas the ROC Constitution understands ‘one China’ as the ROC.
[5] The sovereign territories claimed by the PRC and ROC largely overlap, though important discrepancies remain. Notably, different from the PRC Constitution, the ROC Constitution continues to encompass territories such as present-day Mongolia as well as areas bordering Burma and India (see Figure 1).
[6] The PRC Constitution acknowledges this sovereign state as the PRC while the ROC Constitution acknowledges it to be the ROC.
[7] See https://www.mfa.gov.cn/web/ziliao_674904/zt_674979/dnzt_674981/qtzt/twwt/stflgf/202206/t20220606_10699016.html
[8] See https://www.mfa.gov.cn/web/ziliao_674904/zt_674979/dnzt_674981/qtzt/twwt/stflgf/202206/t20220606_10698959.html
[9] Former President Chen Shui-bian was one of the founding members of the DPP and upheld a pro-Taiwan independence stance, which the CPP considered as threatening to the reunification project.
[10] See https://www.mfa.gov.cn/web/ziliao_674904/zt_674979/dnzt_674981/qtzt/twwt/stflgf/202206/t20220606_10699015.html
[11] 18 representatives in the Constituent Assembly came from the then Taiwan Province of the ROC, yet the 4 out of 427 proposals advanced by them were all rejected in the Constituent Assembly.
[13] See https://www.mac.gov.tw/cn/News_Content.aspx?n=AA7F5E39A6D3B893&sms=00448BCAAC624955&s=547B4FD948FED617
[15] President Chiang Ching-kuo was the eldest and only biological son of Chiang Kai-shek.
[16] See http://www.gwytb.gov.cn/wyly/201607/t20160712_11506678.htm
[17] “One China, different interpretations’ was the KMT’s understanding of the 1992 Consensus, in which both sides agreed that ‘China’ referred to the PRC for the PRC government, and referred to the ROC for the ROC government in Taiwan.
[18] See https://www.mfa.gov.cn/web/ziliao_674904/zt_674979/dnzt_674981/qtzt/twwt/twwtbps/202206/t20220606_10699029.html
[19] The DPP maintains that relations between mainland and Taiwan are not “one China (the ROC), two ruling authorities”, as defined in the ROC Constitution, but two entirely separate nations. However, it still strategically invokes the constitutional assertion of the ROC’s sovereignty to justify its political opposition to the PRC’s unification proposal.
[21] See https://www.mac.gov.tw/cn/News_Content.aspx?n=311E6AC9C5FF64EE&s=E1C362A01F32B339&sms=3893D3AA3EB6225A&utm
Lin, C.C., 2022. The Birth of the Constitution of the Republic of China. In Constitutional Foundings in Northeast Asia (United Kingdom: Hart). Hart.
Sullivan, J. & Nachman, L., 2024. Taiwan: A Contested Democracy Under Threat. Newcastle upon Tyne: Agenda Publishing.
Edited by Artyom Timofeev
Image sources: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-the-historic-ma-xi-meeting-could-mean-for-cross-strait-relations/ ; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ROC_Administrative_and_Claims.jpg ;
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