Pessimism: A Strategic Culture Examination of Taiwan's Underbalancing against the Military Threat from China

Due to the influence of the Chinese Nationalism and its ambition to seek for hegemony in Asia, China has a strong determination to unify Taiwan and, if necessary, considers accomplishing this task by military force. On the hand, due to a growing Taiwanese identity, the overwhelming majority of ordinary Taiwanese and leaders from both of the majority parties object to unify with China under the "One Country Two System" formula as proposed by the Chinese government. In face of this conflict in the ultimate status of Taiwan, Taiwan faces a constant survival threat from China. Thus, as forecasted by the balance of power theory, Taiwan should properly balance against the threat by strengthening its own military force. Nonetheless, while the national defense expenditure of China has been increasing for more than a 1000% in the past 20 years, there has been a stagnation in the national defense expenditure of Taiwan at the same period when calculating in real terms. This clearly shows that Taiwan underbalances against the threat from China. This paper examines this phenomenon from a Neoclassical Realist perspective. It contends that Pessimism, a strategic culture characterized by a widespread of distrust of the Taiwanese Armed Force amongst the majority of political leaders and ordinary citizens, plays a pivotal role for the emergence of the underbalancing as it impedes the Taiwanese government to strengthen its national defense, no matter which party comes to power. Therefore, the Taiwanese government prefer to opt for either strengthening ties with the US or accommodating China as the top mission of their grand strategy, whereas balancing the threat from China by strengthening its own national defense is just an auxiliary measure.