I don't believe that economic and cultural interaction automatically brings greater peace and understanding, although it may help in that regard.
Now, I believe that war is never inevitable until it starts, but there has been a great proclivity in human history, and including in recent history, for war.
The greater concerns in China and Taiwan are on the political side, not on the economic side.
There is no question that Taiwan is a state in any political science definition of a state.
The Chinese government since 1979 has been very successful in economic development, and successful enough, simply by surviving, in the realm of political development.
Harvard is first and foremost a university and not a consulting operation, and our job here is to teach and to research and to create knowledge on Asia in conjunction and in cooperation with scholars as well as with political, intellectual, and cultural leaders in Asia.
East Asia has prospered since the end of the Vietnam War, and Northeast Asia has prospered since the end of the Korean War in a way that seems unimaginable when you think of the history of the first half of the century.
Another goal is to look to the resources we have and to see how we could do better to plan, in a sense, for the faculty and infrastructure that we will need to study Asia well into the 21st century.
Taiwan is a major economy.
So, I think China desperately needs to legitimize some form of opposition.
The most important thing that certainly the United States and other Asian and Pacific actors have done is to urge that whatever happens, however the dispute is resolved, that it be resolved peacefully.
