Trends of change across the Taiwan Strait towards 2020

This paper forecasts the futures across the Taiwan Strait in the first two decades of the century. Data were collected utilizing the Delphi survey process with 18 Taiwanese experts in 1999. Eleven of the participants are scholars engaging in China studies, and the remaining seven are government officials handling Chinese mainland affairs. The results indicate that 32 scenarios are forthcoming across the Strait from 2001 to 2010 and 24 will appear from 2011 to 2020. After data reduction, the first decade is denoted by nine prospects and the second decade involves six futures. All these outlooks agreeably indicate a trend of peaceful evolution.