The world's two superpowers, the United States of America and the People's Republic of China, have entered into an all-round race from technology development, economic power, and military capacity to ideological confrontation. The tension between the United States and China has also focused global attention on the importance of cross-relations. Traditionally, the Cross-Strait Conflict is viewed through the prism of realism or liberalism. According to the balance of power, realists consider China (the status quo hegemonic power) and Taiwan (the anti–status quo rising power) as two strategic competitors that are expected to compete. Conflict is unavoidable and ultimately occurs in the Taiwan Strait. The realist paradigm shows its utility in explaining the increase in defense expenditure of China and Taiwan (Glaser et al., 2020). However, realism cannot explain why after the 1958 Taiwan Strait Crisis, a major military conflict between Taiwan and China has yet to erupt. Instead, Cross-Strait economic and cultural cooperation has increased, especially during the eight years of Ma Ying- jeou Administration (2008–16). The liberal school, on the other hand, believes that cooperation in the economic and social arenas would eventually spill over into the political realm of unification; yet liberalism also failed to predict the path of Cross-Strait Relations. The continued integration— primarily in the areas of “low politics,” including economic, cultural, and societal integration between China and Taiwan during the Ma Administration— has not made the two sides come any closer to a visible and realistic road map of political integration, not to mention unification.

Recent discourses suggest that Cross-Strait Relations have increasingly evolved into a conflict of identity (Li and Zhang, 2016). Accordingly, social constructivism (in shorthand: constructivism) better serves to view Cross-Strait Relations and understand the consolidation of Taiwanese identity, which is the major factor for Taiwan to resist unification with China. Traditional IR theories focus on the distribution of material power whereas constructivism rejects such a one-sided view and argues that the most important aspect of international relations is social. Constructivists are concerned with human consciousness and knowledge and treat ideas as structural factors that influence how actors interpret the world.