Washington took issue with Taipei after then-president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) in 1999 suggested Taiwan and China be treated as two different jurisdictions, a former senior defense official said on Saturday.
Former National Security Council (NSC) deputy secretary-general Chang Jung-feng (張榮豐) recalled the events leading to an interview Lee gave with German radio station Deutsche Welle on July 9, 1999, in which he first proposed the so-called “two-state” theory, as well as the political uproar that followed.
The theory, which characterizes the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as two different jurisdictions, is considered by many as one of Lee’s major political legacies, as it emphasized Taiwan’s national identity.
Photo: Chen Yu-jei, Taipei Times
In an interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times), Chang, 68, said Taiwan was hoping to send officials to the US following Lee’s interview to “offer an explanation,” but the idea was rejected by Washington.
Asked by Deutsche Welle how he coped with pressure from China, Lee, Taiwan’s first popularly elected president, said Beijing “ignores the very fact that the two sides [of the Taiwan Strait] are two different jurisdictions.”
“The historical fact is that since the establishment of the Chinese communist regime in 1949, it has never ruled Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu — the territories under our jurisdiction,” said Lee, who died on July 30, 2020, at the age of 97.
Lee said that amendments to the Constitution in 1991 meant that cross-strait relations are “a special state-to-state relationship.”
Lee’s comments, a departure from Taiwan’s previous position of China and Taiwan being “two equal political entities,” were met with a frosty reception in Beijing and Washington.
Chang said that at the end of July 1999, he and two other national security officials traveled to Tokyo to meet with senior US officials, including then-US deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asia and the Pacific Kurt Campbell.
“It was a rather unpleasant meeting,” Chang said.
Campbell, who now serves as US National Security Council Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, and the other US officials said Taipei should have communicated with Washington before Lee made those statements, Chang said.
They described the situation as a nuisance to them, he added.
Chang said when the Taiwanese officials tried to explain what Lee had meant by a special state-to-state relationship, one US official simply said: “I don’t care.”
Chang, who is chairman of the Taiwan Association of Strategic Simulation, also recalled how the phrase that caused such uproar had come about.
Chang said Lee added a note to a script prepared by Lin Bih-jaw (林碧炤), who was also an NSC deputy secretary-general at the time, for the Deutsche Welle interview.
Chang recalled the note as saying: “Taiwan is not a renegade province. At the least, cross-trait [relations] are a special state-to-state relationship.”
Although he had suggested that such a statement should not be made because “the time is not ripe,” Lee eventually did so, Chang said.
Lee, in a memoir published in 2016, described the move as an attempt to get the drop on Beijing, which intended to characterize Taiwan’s status as equivalent to that of Hong Kong during the 50th anniversary of the PRC in 1999.
Lee said he believed Beijing was planning to announce a proposal to “unite” Taiwan under its “one country, two systems” formula, and such a plan prompted him to make the first move by designating cross-strait relations as a special state-to-state relationship.
The interview with Chang came after remarks made earlier this year by United Microelectronics Corp founder Robert Tsao (曹興誠) about Lee’s “two-state” theory renewed public interest in the concept.
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