The impasse continued until the day before the communique was to be released, that is, 10pm Feb. 26, 1972, when Kissinger spoke to Qiao over the phone, saying, "The US side declares: The US acknowledges ..." Qiao requested that Kissinger repeat his statement three times, and then he read back an English transcript of the statement to Kissinger for confirmation. After getting the OK, Qiao immediately called Zhou Enlai (周恩來) to report. Zhou said, "It looks all right to me. Doctor Kissinger is worthy of his PhD." Zhou then reported to Mao immediately. Mao said, "Good enough! Let's write it as he suggested. Kissinger knows how to smooth things over too. Let's accept his proposal." Later, in internal discussions, Mao said, "That's right. The Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait say there is just one China. Our `one China' is the PRC. Chairman Chiang's `one China' is the ROC. We want to unify Taiwan. Taiwan wants to recover the mainland. Whichever side succeeds, in the end it will be `one China'! And Kissinger says, `The United States government does not challenge that position.' Fine. Then we can call it a `Joint US-China Communique'."
The PRC disregards the Joint US-China Communique:
Now, recalling the perception that Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and Qiao Guanhua had of this passage regarding the "one China" statement by Nixon and Kissinger on the US side, is it not precisely a "consensus" on "one China, with each side having its own interpretation"? But now the leaders of the PRC insist on the principle that "one China" is the PRC, refusing to accept the idea of "one China, with each side having its own interpretation" arrived at in the US-(Communist) China agreement. Does this not violate the "consensus" of the Shanghai Communique? Does it not disregard the strategic thinking and policy direction developed to handle cross-strait relations by Communist China's first generation of leaders, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai?
Kim is former editor-in-chief of Hong Kong's Wen Wei Po (
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