The United States and China in Power Transition - Strategic Studies ...

cultural, and historical interests. No matter who is in
charge of China, the unification of Taiwan with mainland
China is an unavoidable mission. If China were
to become a democratic nation, unification would presumably
take place in a more amicable way. Taiwan
may even want to join the union willingly.
In addition to the reasons discussed above, the
Taiwan issue is intrinsically a problem between the
United States and China. The United States has been
involved in the Taiwan issue since the very beginning.
As the Taiwan issue evolves, the United States
and China have always found themselves in a test
of will, strength, and wits over the handling of this
thorny problem. Moreover, the significance of the
Taiwan issue gets more intense in the context of the
power transition. Letting Taiwan go is tantamount to
conceding defeat. Chinese leaders will never entertain
this option.
The United States’ first involvement in the Taiwan
issue took place in 1943 when President Franklin D.
Roosevelt met with British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill and Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek
in Cairo, Egypt, to address the war against Japan. The
three heads of state issued the Cairo Declaration that
at the war’s end, Japan “be stripped of all the islands in
the Pacific which she has seized or occupied since the
beginning of the first World War in 1914, and that all
the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such
as Manchuria, Formosa, and the Pescadores, shall be
restored to the Republic of China.” 61 The three allies
reaffirmed these terms in the Potsdam Proclamation
in 1945. 62 Upon its defeat in the war, Japan complied
with the demands and relinquished Taiwan (along
with its other relinquishments).
105