On Tuesday last week, former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) mixed up Washington’s “one China policy” with Beijing’s “one China principle” in a presentation at the Brookings Institution.
The Democratic Progressive Party’s representative office in Washington complained, protesting that US President Donald Trump did not use the term “one China principle” in his telephone call to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Dec. 2 last year.
On Friday last week, Richard Bush, former chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan and director of Brookings’ Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, said it was not clear to him why Ma confused Beijing’s “principle” with US policy, because the two are distinctly different.
During his eight years as president, Ma downgraded Taiwan’s international status, weakened its national defense and facilitated China’s economic and fifth-column infiltration of Taiwan. He actively paved the way for China’s eventual annexation of Taiwan.
So it is not surprising that he has intentionally distorted the US’ “one China” policy to promote Taiwan’s absorption by the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
However, what is distressing is that much of the US media and the rest of the world have fallen into the PRC’s propaganda trap.
Reporting on the Trump-Xi phone conversation, Scott Pelley of CBS stated in his national news broadcast that Trump had now recognized Taiwan as an inalienable territory of China.
This is patently incorrect.
Perhaps one cannot expect a television journalist to be knowledgeable about the history of US-Taiwan relations, but the misinformation attests to the shallow quality of US journalism.
Otherwise well-informed Australian commentator Sushil Seth also wrote in a Taipei Times opinion piece that Trump’s concession meant that the US has now accepted the PRC’s claim that Taiwan is part of China.
The confusion over the US’ “one China” policy is widespread among the media, academia and perhaps even among members of the US Congress and junior US Department of State officials. The reason is simple. Successive US administrations have failed to explain Washington’s “one China” policy clearly so as not to offend Beijing’s sensibility.
China’s “one China” principle is clear, even though it is defective: There is only “one China,” ie, the PRC. The Beijing government headed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the sole, legitimate government of China and Taiwan is part of China.
Note the verb “is.”
In reality, Taiwan is a de facto independent nation with its own currency, passport and defense forces.
What Beijing means is that Taiwan “should be” part of China. Yet its claim is weak, on both historical and legal grounds.
The US position is that Taiwan’s international status is still undetermined. In May 2000 then-US president Bill Clinton said: “The issue between Beijing and Taiwan must be resolved peacefully and with the assent of the people on Taiwan.”
So what is the US’ “one China” policy? When asked, State Department officials simply say it consists of the three US-China joint communiques and the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA). To a layman the answer is difficult to understand without further explanation.
In the 1972 Shanghai communique, the US “acknowledged that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States ... affirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves.”
In the 1979 communique, which established diplomatic ties between the US and the PRC, the US repeated the acknowledgment of China’s position, but did not recognize or accept it.
Note the phrase “all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait.”
Since 1996, when Taiwan held its first direct presidential election, the nation has evolved into a democracy with peaceful transfers of power. Less than 10 percent of the population regard themselves as Chinese. A great majority identify themselves as Taiwanese, not Chinese, and they prefer keeping the island as a democracy, separate from China.
So the basic premise of the 1972 and 1979 communiques is no longer valid, if it ever was.
The Aug. 17, 1982, communique was negotiated by then-US secretary of state Alexander Haig Jr, with Beijing, apparently without then-US president Ronald Reagan’s knowledge. By the time Reagan got wind of it, the process was too far gone to be stopped.
In the communique the US promised to gradually reduce its sales of arms to Taiwan. This led to two developments: Reagan later fired Haig and he then sent then-US ambassador James Lilley to Taipei to give then-ROC president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) “six assurances” on July 14, 1982.
While assuring Taiwan about continuing arms sales, Reagan also reaffirmed the US’ position regarding Taiwan, “that its international status had yet to be determined, and that Washington would never recognize Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan” (Arthur Waldron, “China’s Taiwan Dilemma,” Orbis, Fall 2016).
The TRA, which was passed by the US Congress on April 10, 1979, is the foundation of US-Taiwan relations, encompassing friendly, commercial, cultural and other ties. The TRA affirmed the preservation and enhancement of the human rights of all the people in Taiwan as objectives of the US.
It declared that it is the policy of the US to consider any efforts to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means ... a threat to peace and security of the western Pacific area, and of grave concern to the United States; to provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character; and, to maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other means of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan.
The US Congress last year passed legislation affirming the TRA and Reagan’s “six assurances,” and in his Jan. 11 Senate confirmation hearing, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson pledged to live up to the commitments under the TRA and the “six assurances” — so it should be abundantly clear that the US’ “one China policy” is nothing like the PRC’s “one China principle.”
The essential difference is that the US does not accept Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan, whether it is claimed by the PRC or the ROC government. Yet the misinterpretation of the US’ “one China” policy is pervasive and persistent. This is partly due to the PRC’s sly propaganda tactics.
Beijing has recently started to use “one China policy” and “one China principle” interchangeably, to mislead the uninformed into believing that the PRC and the US share an identical policy position regarding Taiwan’s status.
Far too many have succumbed to such word play.
Another reason is Washington’s habitual feckless response to aggressive Chinese behavior. When Beijing puts wrong words into Trump’s mouth and creates the impression that China has made him back down, there is no rebuttal or clarification from the US government.
Such excessive deference to Beijing is nothing new. Successive US presidents have adopted this policy of avoiding China’s displeasure and in the process treated US national interests as secondary.
Perversion of the US’ “one China policy” is harmful in many ways.
First, misunderstanding of the policy reduces many Americans in the media, academia and the policy establishment to unwitting tools of PRC propaganda warfare.
Second, the debasing of the US policy enables Beijing to convince its citizens that Taiwan is a sacred Chinese territory that must be restored at all costs. If China decides to invade Taiwan, any US efforts to help defend Taiwan would be portrayed as US betrayal of Sino-US agreements.
Third, the distortion erodes the Taiwanese morale and diminishes Taiwan’s chance of survival as an independent democracy.
Finally, former US president Dwight Eisenhower and US General Douglas MacArthur said that Taiwan needs not be in US hands, but it must not be occupied by a hostile power because of its critical geostrategic location at the center of the first island chain in the Western Pacific.
Yet if the world is persuaded that Taiwan rightly belongs to the PRC, the US will have no allies to help defend it in a military contingency.
In his inaugural address, Trump emphasized that all nations have the right to protect their national interests first. If Washington continues its kowtow policy and fails to assert its interests in the face of Chinese aggression, the US will give credence to the narrative that China’s rise is inevitable and the US is destined to decline.
The US will lose credibility among its allies, lose influence and eventually become a secondary power, unable to resist PRC encroachment on ideological, economic and military fronts. The end result is most likely a major war between China and the US.
Only a clear-eyed and powerful US, never hesitant to assert its national interests, can earn China’s respect and forestall such a disastrous conflict. As a first step, will the White House or State Department dare say clearly that the US does not recognize the Chinese claim of sovereignty over Taiwan?
Li Thian-hok is a freelance commentator based in Pennsylvania.
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