Economic reform on the mainland ended three decades of Taiwanese non-contact policy

Evidence

Expansion of Taiwan’s ties with the mainland lagged behind Hong Kong’s. Significant changes, nonetheless, began to occur in the 1980s. For three decades after 1949, the two Chinese republics refused to recognize each other’s existence or legitimacy, had no communication with each other, and were in a virtual state of war, manifested from time to time in the exchange of gunfire at the offshore islands. After Deng Xiaoping consolidated his power and began the process of economic reform, however, the mainland government initiated a series of conciliatory moves. In 1981 the Taiwan government responded and started to shift away from its previous “three no’s” policy of no contact, no negotiation, no compromise with the mainland. In May 1986 the first negotiations occurred between representatives of the two sides over the return of a Republic of China plane that had been hijacked to the mainland, and the following year the ROC dropped its ban on travel to the mainland. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 465

Categorization

• XREF: Deng’s economic-opening move thawing a frozen inter-state standoff parallels the Milgrom/Champagne fairs pattern where institutional openings enable previously impossible interaction.