More on the anti-secession Law

Max writes in Comments:

I heard today that a critical portion of the text transferred control from the Party Council to the military. And... what if Taiwan declared independance during the 2008 games?!!? That'd be whack.

It would indeed, be whack. (I'm trying to do my best Nibblonian voice there.)

The English translation of the law is here, at Xinhua.net. The only place that mentions the military is in Article 8, which I'll paste in it's entirety:

In the event that the "Taiwan independence" secessionist forces should act under any name or by any means to cause the fact of Taiwan's secession from China, or that major incidents entailing Taiwan's secession from China should occur, orthat possibilities for a peaceful reunification should be completely exhausted, the state shall employ non-peaceful means and other necessary measures to protect China's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The State Council and the Central Military Commission shall decide on and execute the non-peaceful means and other necessary measures as provided for in the preceding paragraph and shall promptly report to the Standing Committee of the National People'sCongress.

To my eyes, all this means is that the military shall be consulted if hostilities erupt. Which kind of makes sense, unless you're the Bush administration. However, even this might be stretching the meaning of "military". But this requires a bit of explanation on the structure of the Chinese government.

When the Manchus took over China, they found it was much simpler to simply take over the reins of government than to try and eliminate the old structures. So the Manchus simply have every old bureaucrat a Manchu minder. This ensured both continuity and obedience. Similarly, when the Japanese demanded effective control of China in 1915, their demand was to have Japanese "advisors" in every major office. The Communists, no fools they, obliterated much of the old state structure when they took power. However, they did find if useful to create two parallel structures: A "state" set of offices and a "party" set of offices. Make no mistake, the party was where the power was and is.

The "Central Military Commission" mentioned in the law is one of the most important organs of power in China. So important is it, that if you're the head of the CMC and are reasonably well respected, you don't need any other office to run China. Deng Xiaopeng was "only" the head of the CMC during Tiananmen, whereas Zhao Ziyang was the Prime Minister. Zhao was a moderate, Deng wanted the students crushed. We know who won that fight. The CMC is therefore not just a "military" institution like the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the US, but is also a highly political institution as well. There are in fact two CMCs, a party one and a "state" one within the Chinese Ministry of Defense. However, the Party CMC is quite obviously the more powerful of the two - until the 1990s I believe, the Chinese Ministry of Defense did not have so much as a broom close to it's name - it now has a whole building to itself, but this has only come recently. The Party CMC is where the action is and continues to be.

At the same Congress as the anti-secession law was passed, Jiang Zemin gave up his last symbolic role in government as head of the State CMC. He had already passed the Presidency and the Party CMC to current President Hu Jintao, so this was a simple formality. However, the Party (and specifically the politicians, not the military) remains firmly in control.

As for the possibility that Taiwan might secede during the Olympics, that would be ballsy but I don't think it changes things. The protesters at Tiananmen thought they'd be protected by the fact that Gorbachev was visiting during their protests. They were right, until Gorbachev left. Taiwan would still be next to the mainland after the last medal ceremonies were over. Then, we'd see some fireworks.