Seeking Common Ground While Keeping Differences: Using the Case of the Cross-Strait Relations as A Case

Abstract

For the past decade, the “joint democracy produces peace” theory has received substantial attention. Evidence has confirmed that democracies rarely, if ever, engage in large-scale conflicts with each other. However, there is a lack of specific information regarding the mixed dyads (democracies and non-democracies), especially when we attempt to study their peace scenarios. Hence, some other international relations scholars proclaim that even though the political structures may be different between democracies and non-democracies, sharing similar interests provide certain strong incentives for states to behave peacefully. Regime types may be influential, but under the mixed dyads scenario, states’ vital interests have surpassed the importance of regime similarity. It is an interesting question as to whether we can apply this theoretical framework to the situation between China and Taiwan. Since these two political entities belong to two different regimes, and mainland China has no such intention to become a more democratic regime, it seems that we are able to use the same structure of interest similarity to explain the current cross-Strait scenario.