The telephone call between President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and US president-elect Donald Trump is the greatest diplomatic surprise in US-China diplomacy since 1979, an op-ed in the Sankei Shimbun said yesterday.
Japanese columnist Kunihiko Miyake wrote that the phone call was not happenstance, but the result of long-term, careful planning.
Citing the Shanghai Communique, Miyake said: “The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China,” which was not an agreement or recognition.
The phone call therefore is in no way a violation of the communique, Miyake said.
The Japan-China joint communique in 1969 similarly dodged open recognition of Beijing’s claims by stating: “The Government of Japan fully understands and respects this stand [sic] of the Government of the People’s Republic of China, and it firmly maintains its stand [sic] under Article 8 of the Potsdam Proclamation,” Miyake wrote.
The phone call would have a beneficial effect on the US-Japan alliance, he added.
Then-Japanese prime minister Eisaku Sato had, in the joint statement made with then-US president Richard Nixon in 1969, stressed that “the maintenance of peace and security in the Taiwan area was also a most important factor for the security of Japan.”
The telephone call between the US and Taiwan had “real meaning” and the US reinforcing US-Taiwan relations is “very welcome,” Miyake said.
However, he added that countries in the region hope Beijing does not read the wrong message into the call and jump to the wrong conclusions, which could escalate regional tensions.
Despite Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) saying that the call was a “small trick by Taiwan,” it was evident from Wang’s facial expression that he was angry and worried, Miyake said.
Miyake, a representative for Japan’s Foreign Policy Research Institute, was a former Japanese diplomat who was stationed in Washington, Beijing and Iraq.
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