The United States, China, and Taiwan - Public International Law ...

James Lilley, Former American Ambassador to China and South Korea, and former Director ofthe American Institute in Taiwan.You have clearly worked over the complicated relationship between Taiwan and China. I canonly try to build on what Dr. Lin Chong--pin and Mr. Rostow have already described so lucidly.I would like to point out first that China chooses, for both tactical and emotional reasons, toplace a special heavy emphasis on its relationship with Taiwan and to its point that Taiwan ispart of China. Emotional, because this stirs up nationalism among a skeptical Chinese elite whohave lost ideology. Tactical, because driving home the unity and sovereignty themes forces theU.S. on the defensive, i.e., the U.S. interferes in China's internal affairs, a cardinal sin in China'sown lexicon. In reality, however, China has been practical. For almost fifty years Chinesepropaganda has focused on Taiwan as a pure target, but objective circumstances have changedand so has China's strategy. China took over the Ta Chen Islands peacefully in 1954, its lastsignificant territorial acquisition in the Taiwan Strait. Its later more militaristic approach againsta well--defended Quemoy (Chin men) failed in 1958, and China retreated with much bluster andfiring of cannons, many of them empty.The Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), passed in 1979 after the U.S. and China normalized relations,provided much needed continuity to U.S. assurances concerning Taiwan's security after theMutual Defense Treaty had been terminated. The assurances were given teeth for the first timesince Quemoy, when, in March 1996, the U.S. sent two carrier battle groups off the east coast ofTaiwan in response to Chinese missile shots and its threatening military live fire exercises. Thisaction was consistent with Admiral Arleigh Burke's admonition that the best preventive of war isa credible deterrence. But as often seems to be the case, the dramatic actions by the U.S. andChina were obscured by caricature and demagoguery as well as with simplistic judgments. "The[*744] Chinese had backed down" was one cry, or that the U.S., by its actions, had provoked aChinese military build--up was another. And further, that the U.S. was afraid to send its carriersinto the actual Strait out of fear of Chinese missiles, or that the Chinese military got a black eyebecause of its ineffective adventurism.In the end, Lee Teng--hui won a landslide election victory in spite of angry Chinese threatsagainst him. But this was the tenor of much of the commentary.Getting back to Chinese shifting strategy, Chinese statements have slowly evolved over theyears. "We must liberate Taiwan" was the belligerent war cry of the 1950s and 1960s, even in theface of a growing Soviet threat to China in the north. This particular war cry began to soundemptier and emptier as the Soviet build--up grew on China's northern border and the horribleGreat Leap Forward campaign, the worst of Mao's lunatic social engineering, almost destroyedthe livelihood of the provinces facing Taiwan in the southeast. The population, as a result, ratherthan wanting to liberate Taiwan was probably more anxious for its material help.Later, Chinese rhetoric started to use the term "unification" or "reunification" in Marshall YehChienying's nine points in 1979. Now we hear "one country, two systems" often repeated andapplied to Hong Kong.