Anticorruption is now a serious political issue and an ever-popular demand on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. As recent mass protests show, the Taiwanese people are openly holding their president accountable for his associates’ and family members’ corrupt behaviour. But to address corruption across the strait, Beijing still relies largely on the secretive, often politically motivated work of “discipline inspectors.”

Great hopes have been pinned to the peaceful rise of Chinese power, which is widely viewed to be in the interests of the Chinese people and world peace. China’s rise now increasingly depends on the successful political transformation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the direction of the rule of law and democracy. Key in catalysing this change is the already democratic Republic of China (ROC) on the island of Taiwan.

Since the time of its first emperor, Qin Shihuang, China had been under centralised, authoritarian rule. But when the ROC was formed in 1912, hopes were high for democratic political change. However, external and internal wars, self-serving warlords, and abysmal ROC leaders tragically retarded China’s political progress.

In 1949, a peasant rebellion influenced by communist ideology created the PRC and drove the ROC offshore to Taiwan. Mao Zedong, the self-proclaimed new Qin Shihuang, perpetuated and intensified mainland China’s despotic political tradition. Today’s China is once again on the verge of parting from its Qin system. Yet democratic reform in the PRC is still far from a certainty, much less a success.

The latest signals from Taipei are promising. The opposition leader Ma Ying-Jeou, while upholding the “one-China” principle, insists that unification with the Chinese mainland must be conditional: The PRC must democratise, and Beijing must be held accountable for its misdeeds. More encouraging, many senior cadres of the ruling party (which has traditionally supported independence) now assert that “unification is one of our future choices, too,” while echoing Ma’s conditions. The maturing Taiwanese democracy seems to be making the hard choices for its future, which is inseparable from the fortune of Greater China.

The US must also assist. A sustainable security commitment is required to ensure the democratic viability of Taiwan.

Washington should encourage and support the emerging consensus among the Taiwanese elite to make conditional unification with China a firm future choice. It should urge and facilitate direct Beijing-Taipei talks about their one-China political future. Federation-style political integration under the rule of law will allow Greater China to abandon the Qin political system for good. Only when the Chinese government is accountable to its own people can (and should) there be a peaceful rise of China.

Toward that end, the democratic, free, and Chinese Taiwan will work wonders when it genuinely unites with China. — The Christian Science Monitor