As expected, Beijing has lodged strong protests against the arms sale to Taiwan announced by the administration of US President Barack Obama last month.
The Chinese government expressed “strong indignation,” accusing the US of violating the so-called “one China” principle, the three Sino-US communiques, infringing upon China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and undermining China’s efforts at peaceful unification with Taiwan, among other things. Moreover, Beijing has suspended military exchanges with the US and has said it will impose sanctions on the US firms involved in the sale.
For 30 years, the US has observed a “one China” policy, but the definition of that policy is vastly different to Beijing’s. After former US president Jimmy Carter established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1979, recognizing it to be China’s legal government and severing official ties with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government in Taipei, he and his successors have not accepted the PRC’s claim of sovereignty over Taiwan.
This was why in April 1979 Carter signed the Taiwan Relations Act, a law approved by Congress that contains security clauses and mandates the US to provide arms so that Taiwan can defend itself.
The PRC has since relentlessly pressured the US to terminate arms sales, but neither Carter nor his Republican or Democratic successors have ever agreed to do so. As a matter of fact, in the process of negotiating the US-China “normalization of relations” in the second half of 1978, Carter insisted on the rights of the US to continue to sell arms to help Taiwan defend itself, a demand that then-Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) rejected at the outset. The issue was a bone of contention for months.
By December 1978, Beijing seemed to take a different tact and saw an urgent need to establish the “American connection” to strengthen China’s strategic position. Chinese leaders were in earnest preparation for another major task — to move against Vietnam (then a Soviet client), or as Deng put it: “To teach Vietnam a lesson.”
Thus, the issue of US arms sales to Taiwan was no longer a stumbling block. Whereas Beijing continued to voice its objections to US arms sales to Taiwan, it agreed to formalize official ties with the US. The decision was simultaneously announced in mid-December by Beijing and Washington.
After Taiwan-friendly former US president Ronald Reagan came to office in 1981, Beijing mounted an intense campaign to pressure the US to end arms sales to Taiwan. The result of 10 months hard bargaining was a joint communique on Aug. 17, 1982, better known as the “817 Communique.”
While the US refused to set an explicit cutoff date for its arms sales to Taiwan, it declared its intention to restrict its arms supplies at 1982 levels of quality and quantity, and to reduce sales gradually, “leading, over a period of time, to a final resolution.”
Reagan maintained that the US pledge would be linked to China’s promise to strive for a peaceful resolution of Taiwan’s future, but Beijing has denied and rejected such a linkage.
On July 14, more than a month before the “817 Communique” was issued, Reagan transmitted “six assurances” through his representative in Taipei, James Lilley, to then-president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國)
These reaffirmed US policy not to set a cutoff date for arms sales to Taiwan, not to consult with the PRC on the arms sales, not to pressure Taipei to begin negotiations with Beijing, not to undertake the role of mediator between Taiwan and China, not to revise the Taiwan Relation Act and to affirm that the US position regarding sovereignty over Taiwan and its associated islands had not changed.
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