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.
There has been much catastrophizing in Taiwan recently about America becoming more unreliable as a bulwark against Chinese pressure. Some of this has been sparked by debates in Washington about whether the United States should defend Taiwan in event of conflict. There also were understandable anxieties about whether President Trump would sacrifice Taiwan’s interests for a trade deal when he sat down with President Xi (習近平) in late October. On top of that, Taiwan’s opposition political leaders have sought to score political points by attacking the Lai (賴清德) administration for mishandling relations with the United States. Part of this budding anxiety
The diplomatic dispute between China and Japan over Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comments in the Japanese Diet continues to escalate. In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, China’s UN Ambassador Fu Cong (傅聰) wrote that, “if Japan dares to attempt an armed intervention in the cross-Strait situation, it would be an act of aggression.” There was no indication that Fu was aware of the irony implicit in the complaint. Until this point, Beijing had limited its remonstrations to diplomatic summonses and weaponization of economic levers, such as banning Japanese seafood imports, discouraging Chinese from traveling to Japan or issuing
On Nov. 8, newly elected Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) and Vice Chairman Chi Lin-len (季麟連) attended a memorial for White Terror era victims, during which convicted Chinese Communist Party (CCP) spies such as Wu Shi (吳石) were also honored. Cheng’s participation in the ceremony, which she said was part of her efforts to promote cross-strait reconciliation, has trapped herself and her party into the KMT’s dark past, and risks putting the party back on its old disastrous road. Wu, a lieutenant general who was the Ministry of National Defense’s deputy chief of the general staff, was recruited
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Nov. 5 recalled more than 150,000 eggs found to contain three times the legal limit of the pesticide metabolite fipronil-sulfone. Nearly half of the 1,169 affected egg cartons, which had been distributed across 10 districts, had already been sold. Using the new traceability system, officials quickly urged the public to avoid consuming eggs with the traceability code “I47045,” while the remainder were successfully recalled. Changhua County’s Wenya Farm — the source of the tainted eggs — was fined NT$120,000, and the Ministry of Agriculture instructed the county’s Animal Disease Control Center to require that
RSS