Anti-Secession Law
These events in late 2004 caused a great deal of alarm in Beijing. Observers indicated that many in Beijing believed that its policies toward Taiwan had failed both because it did not have sufficient incentives to gain Taiwanese public support for reunification and at the same time, it seemed that many in Taiwan did not take Beijing's stated threats of force seriously. The ROC government had defined the status quo in such a way that a de jure declaration of independence could be argued to not represent a change in the status quo. Some Chinese believe these events led to the formulation in 2003 and 2004 of the Anti-Secession Law.