The Foreign Service Journal, May 2005

Taiwan dispute are all deeply intertwined, so playing with words has been an essential element in maintaining the uneasy peace of the past 33 years. Take the “one China” principle, a core issue common to numerous documents and statements issued by the United States, the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan) both before and after the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act codified the current diplo- matic arrangements between the U.S. and the ROC. With few exceptions, political leaders in all three capitals have been careful not to define the term precisely or to directly challenge their counterparts’ interpretations of the concept. Although the origin of the idea of “one China” can be traced as far back as the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the first modern use of the term occurs in the Cairo Declaration of 1943, followed by the Potsdam Declara- tion of 1945. Both documents state that all Chinese ter- ritories then occupied by Japan, such as Taiwan and the nearby Pescadore Islands, were to be restored to the Republic of China at the war’s end. In Beijing’s view, of course, the ROC ceased to exist in 1949 when communist forces drove Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists off the main- land into exile on Taiwan, leaving the People’s Republic of China as the sole legitimate government of China. The PRC’s subsequent entry into the Korean War on the side of North Korea, and the deepening of the Cold War, pushed Washington and Taipei even closer togeth- er; General Douglas MacArthur memorably described Taiwan as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier.” As political leaders in Washington also grew increasingly wary of China’s future intentions, it became a major target of the U.S. containment strategy in the western Pacific during the 1950s. To understand how the “one China” principle is inter- twined with the vital interests of the U.S., one needs to look back to Henry Kissinger’s secret mission to Beijing in July 1971, when Kissinger told Premier Zhou Enlai that the United States did not seek “a two-Chinas, one- China or one-Taiwan solution, nor an independent Taiwan.” At that time, Zhou already showed a concern for China’s sovereignty over Taiwan as well as a future Japanese role in the region. He wanted assurances that China’s claim of territorial integrity, including Taiwan, was respected and that Washington would not support any movement that was inconsistent with the concept of one China, even though the nascent independence movement on the island was relatively small and insignif- icant. According to a National Security Archive report issued on Dec. 11, 2003, we now know that President Richard Nixon assured Chinese leaders in February 1972 that he would indeed work against such an outcome. (These statements were closely held until a mandatory declassification review was completed by the Nixon pres- idential materials staff in 2003.) Following President Nixon’s historic visit to China and the signing of the Shanghai Communiqué on Feb. 28, 1972, Sino-American relations warmed steadily. This eventually led to the signing of a joint communiqué establishing diplomatic relations between the People’s Republic of China and the United States on Jan. 1, 1979. Under this agreement, the United States recognizes the PRC as the sole legal government of China, though it maintains cultural, commercial and other unofficial rela- tions between the people of Taiwan and the United States. To codify those ties, congressional supporters of the ROC enacted the Taiwan Relations Act on April 10, 1979. Under the TRA, the American Institute in Taiwan, a nongovernmental entity, was created to maintain unof- ficial bilateral ties. Thus, the AIT’s headquarters is locat- ed in Rosslyn, Va., not within the Department of State; and to maintain the concept of unofficiality, personnel assigned to the AIT are on loan from the U.S. govern- ment for the duration of their assignments (per Section 11 of the TRA). Taiwan also maintains a similar office in the United States, the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Representative Office (originally known as the Coordin- ation Council for North American Affairs), with its head office located in Washington, D.C. Otherwise, however, with a few exceptions, the AIT field office in Taipei func- tions as a regular U.S. embassy. The TRA also specifies that “The United States will make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capa- bility.” The PRC government has consistently objected to this provision, which it considers to be interference in F O C U S M A Y 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 59 Stanton Jue is a retired FSO who served for 30 years, mostly in East Asia and the Pacific. His main profes- sional focus has been Chinese affairs from the Cold War, through normalization of relations, to China’s recent rise as a global economic player.