Over the past 30 years there have been many moments when Taiwan-watchers worked themselves into a tizzy worrying about the potential for conflict in the Taiwan Strait. Whether it was Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui describing the relationship between Taipei and Beijing as a “special state-to-state relationship” in 1999, President George W. Bush rebuking Lee's successor during a meeting with a PRC leader in 2003, or the PRC's National People's Congress passing the Anti-Secession Law in 2005, all three sides of the Washington-Beijing-Taipei triangle have done their part to keep things … interesting. Until now, though, I have been confident that worst-case thinking was unjustified, and the chances of open conflict were low.
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