The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long tried to distort the meaning of UN Resolution 2758, signed on Oct. 25, 1971, attempting to link it with Beijing’s “one China principle” to strangle Taiwan’s ability to engage in international events. However, recently, that subterfuge has elicited the attention and concern of democratic countries.
The CCP has consistently attempted to rewrite the language of diplomatic documents, such as with the US-People’s Republic of China (PRC) Joint Communique of 1979, in which Washington and Beijing first mentioned and defined the “one China” concept.
On Oct. 21, 1971 — just days before the signing of Resolution 2758, during the wrangling for who was to represent China in the UN, the PRC in China or the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan — then-Chinese premier Zhou Enlai (周恩來) and then-US national security adviser Henry Kissinger were in Beijing, discussing the wording of the UN resolution.
In the official US Department of State memorandum of the conversation, Zhou referred to how the British government “acknowledges” the PRC’s position. “Not recognize, but acknowledge, so for lawyers there might be a slight differentiation between ‘acknowledge and recognize.’ That is a question of international law,” he said. That position was made clear in the first of the Three Joint Communiques in 1972, the only one Zhou was involved in.
However, that changed by the second communique. Article 7 of the English version of the US-PRC Joint Communique of 1979, released on Dec. 15, 1978, states that the US “acknowledges the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China,” while the Chinese version states that the US “recognizes China’s position, that is, that there is only one China, and that Taiwan is a part of China.”
Similarly, Article 1 of the Chinese-language version of the 1982 US-PRC Joint Communique released on Aug. 17, 1982, states that the US “recognizes China’s position, that there is only one China, and that Taiwan is a part of China.” The official English version simply states that the US “acknowledged the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China.”
In his 2003 book Rein in at the Brink of the Precipice: American Policy Toward Taiwan and US-PRC Relations, former US Department of State principal director of the policy planning staff Alan Romberg included other examples of CCP wordplay. He said that the practice of rewriting the US’ position on “one China” in the Chinese-language versions of the joint communiques became normalized over many years.
In the Shanghai Communique of 1972, the US “acknowledged” the Chinese authorities’ “one China” stance that “Taiwan is a part of China,” and in the Chinese translations of the communique, “acknowledged” is translated as renshi (認識, acknowledged), not chengren (承認, recognized). All of the people involved at the time accepted that this was an appropriate way to translate the word “acknowledge.”
Moreover, Kissinger believed that one advantage of using English to negotiate the wording of the communique was that, in the event of any dispute, the English version would prevail.
Zhou was a foreign relations expert. He pointed out in October 1971 that there was a discrepancy between the terms “acknowledge” and “recognize” in international law, but as the Chinese versions of the subsequent 1979 and 1982 joint communiques strayed from that wording, it is difficult not to conclude that the CCP was engaging in a form of lawfare.
Now that the issue of “motherland” has come to the fore in public debate, we need more clarity on the uses of the Chinese terms for “recognize” and “acknowledge” in the Three Joint Communiques.
Chen Yi-nan is an arbitrator.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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