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| | Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development |
 | | More recently, Chinese officials have made both inducements and threats toward Taiwan a regular staple of their diplomacy, ranging from a threat to bury the island under a “sea of fire” if it pursues independence to a promise to let it retain substantial autonomy under “one country, two systems” if reunification proceeds. |
 | | Forced to abandon the Chinese seat in the United Nations in 1971, the ROC’s international marginalization culminated with the United States decision to break diplomatic relations with Taipei, and abrogate its formal alliance treaty with the island, at decade’s end. |
 | | Once unification happens, and the strong and weak states have already committed, the weak state is now simply a region in a unified state and it is vulnerable in ways that the strong state, now the central region, is not. |
| www.gwu.edu /~igis/kastnerrector.DOC (9062 words) |
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