"Diplomatic recognition" may sound like a question that only the striped-pants set could love, but in fact it embodies critical political realities. Nowhere else is the issue posed more dramatically for the United States than by the Republic of China on Taiwan, derecognized by the Carter administration when it established relations with the Peoples Republic of China in 1979. This American concession to Beijing was a mistake at the time, which we can and should correct. Since then, the US and the ROC on Taiwan have not carried on formal diplomatic relations. Instead, their extension trade and economic relationships have been carried on through supposedly private channels, known on the US side as the "American Institute on Taiwan." The Taiwanese have offices in the US known as "Taiwanese Economic and Cultural Relations Offices," which function in virtually every significant way exactly as do embassies from countries which the US does recognize.
The issues handled by the AIT and TECRO are enormous. Taiwan is America's seventh largest international trading partner, and is a critical supplier of semiconductors and other vital components necessary for the continued progress of the information-technology and telecommunications revolutions. Similarly, with most other countries, Taiwan is forced to rely on informal offices which in every way proclaim that it is not accorded the full status of a recognized sovereign nation. President Carter's decision to downgrade relations with Taipei had its antecedents in President Nixon's initial overtures to the PRC. Nixon believed that "playing the China card" would gain for the US an unusual and highly unexpected ally in the global struggle again the Soviet Union and its satellites.
By outflanking the Soviets geographically, President Nixon forced the Soviets to realign their defensive configurations along the Sino-Soviet border, placing substantial strains on their military capabilities. Moreover, the US obtained prime locations near that border for eavesdropping on internal Soviet communications and weapons testing. The PRC obviously also benefited significantly, by using the obvious American interest to end its own relative international diplomatic isolation.
China's first "payment" from the US came, in effect, at the United Nations in 1971. The PRC had wanted to hold "China's" UN seat ever since1949, when the Red Army captured the mainland from Nationalist Chinese forces led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, and drove his remaining supporters to the island of Formosa (only recently returned to Chinese rule in 1945 after 50 years of rule by Japan). Not only would UN membership represent for the PRC an important measure of international legitimacy, it would also make it one of the five Permanent Members of the UN Security Council, with the power to veto any resolution that could conceivably threaten the PRC's interests. The US had vigorously opposed the PRC's membership campaign, arguing that the ROC, even though its jurisdiction was limited to Taiwan and some nearby islands, was still the constitutional government of all of China, and that its stay on Taiwan was only temporary.
As the years passed, this argument became harder and harder to sustain, and even close allies of the US began to shift their formal diplomatic relations to Beijing, and away from the ROC. When word of Henry Kissinger's secret trips to Beijing became public in 1971, it became apparent that "Red China" would inevitably succeed in its 22-year campaign to replace "Nationalist China" in the United Nations. Nonetheless, then-Ambassador George Bush, representing the US, proposed a compromise: both Chinas would have UN General Assembly seats, but the PRC would assume China's place as a Security Council permanent member.
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