US Representative Steve Chabot in an opinion piece on Friday called for the US Congress to rethink support for the “one China” policy.
In an article titled “Xi Jinping’s Communist cronies can’t control Taiwan’s future” published by the Washington Examiner, Chabot said that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in his address on Jan. 2 “created a firestorm with his vigorous insistence that Taiwan should rejoin China on China’s terms.”
“Xi’s fixation with reunification relies on the one China principle, through which the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] lays claim to Taiwan. This principle underpins Xi’s hyperbolic assertions that reunification is ‘inevitable’ and that ‘no one and no force can change the fact that Taiwan is part of China, and the historical and legal fact that both sides of the strait belong to one China.’ Xi needs to let go of this way of thinking,” Chabot said.
Photo: AP
“China’s increasing authoritarianism has made reunification less and less inevitable, especially since Taiwan has consolidated its democracy,” he said.
“The CCP’s rejection of democracy, human rights, and international norms is driving a wider and wider wedge between Taiwan and China,” he said, adding: “Whatever Xi thinks, the historical and legal facts are that Taiwan is independent from China.”
“As we begin a new Congress, it’s time that the United States accept these basic facts by rethinking support for the one China policy and by more fully embracing the six assurances, positions I have long supported,” he said, urging the new Congress and the administration of US President Donald Trump to “more forcefully assert the policy that the Taiwanese authorities are the legitimate representatives of a flourishing democracy.”
“What it comes down to is that Taiwan’s future ought to be determined by its citizens — not by President Xi and his communist cronies,” Chabot said, adding that the US should continue its policy of encouraging both sides of the Strait to conduct constructive dialogue without preconditions.
In a statement released on Friday, Mike Kuo (郭正光), president of the Washington-based Formosan Association for Public Affairs, said his group fully agreed with the article.
“It is time that the US government proactively challenges the one China policy and rethinks support for that policy,” the statement said.
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