Former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) on Thursday criticized US President Barack Obama for referring to Taiwan, during his end-of-year White House news conference on Dec. 16, as an “entity.” “Taiwan is an independent state, not an entity,” Lu said.
Lu was right to point out this distinction. Words, especially from the US president, are powerful. However, Obama is known for his very careful choice of wording. It is worth looking at exactly what he said, rather than focus on the word “entity.” Not to act as the US president’s apologist, but because of what it tells us of the reality of the situation.
Obama’s actual words were “China views Taiwan as part of China, but recognizes that it has to approach Taiwan as an entity that has its own ways of doing things.”
First, the word “entity.” According to the chapter on constitutive theory of statehood in the World Heritage Encyclopedia (WHE), a sovereign state is “a nonphysical juridical entity of the international legal system that is represented by a centralized government that has supreme independent authority over a geographic area.”
Few — outside of China — would argue against the view that Taiwan has a centralized government, or that this government has supreme independent authority over a geographical area. Taiwanese follow laws promulgated in Taipei, not Beijing. The government’s authority is invested in the executive and legislative branches of the Republic of China (ROC) government on Taiwan, not that of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in China, and upheld by the ROC police administration and Taiwan’s own judiciary. All of these operate independently of Beijing. That Taiwan complies with the international law definition of what a sovereign state is, which can also be referred to as an “entity,” makes Obama’s word choice less objectionable.
Obama also said that China views Taiwan as part of China. He did not say the US views Taiwan as part of China, nor did he mention the international community. The WHE states that, in international law, “the existence or disappearance of a state is a question of fact” and that a sovereign state can exist without being recognized by other sovereign states.” That is, Taiwan’s existence as a de facto independent, sovereign state is not up for question, and it therefore exists as such in international law, irrespective of the interpretation or recognition of other sovereign states.
China’s “one China” principle — that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory — reflects Beijing’s position, and only affects Taiwan’s relations with the international community insofar as other nations comply with it, which most do under pressure from China. The US’ own “one China” policy, as first stated in the 1972 Shanghai Communique, is that it acknowledges that the PRC and ROC maintain that there is only one China and that Taiwan is a part of China, and that the US itself does not challenge that position.
Next, Obama said that China “recognizes that it has to approach Taiwan” in the manner stated.
That is not the same as equating Taiwan with an entity, even if that were an objectionable thing to do. He is saying not only that it is only China, not the US, nor the international community, that has to approach Taiwan as an entity, but that China recognizes that this is the most practicable and viable way of dealing with Taiwan, a nation that it aspires to control and argues that it has sound historical territorial rights over, but that in reality, or in international law, it cannot, and does not.
Lu is right, Taiwan is an independent state. She has no need to fear the word “entity,” especially not if this is recognized as Beijing’s interpretation alone. The international community’s adherence to the “one China” policy — as opposed to the “one China principle” — ceases to be a problem if the government ceases to identify itself as the ROC.
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