Taiwan Climb Down

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No questions about Taiwan? You guys asleep? (Laughter.)

Q: What about Taiwan?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Okay. Glad somebody is awake out there. Which meant I forgot to include it in my opening remarks. On Taiwan, the President repeated our policy of a one-China policy based on the three communiqués, the Taiwan Relations Act, no support for Taiwan independence. The Chinese basically accepted that, and said, okay, that's positive. They did say that they have concerns about forces on Taiwan moving towards independence. The President said, we don't support independence.

The President also said, however, within that context, if necessary, we will help Taiwan to the extent possible defend itself [emphasis added].We will, as we say in the Taiwan Relations Act, provide necessary defensive weapons."

— Background briefing by a senior administration official on the president's meeting with Chinese president Hu, Evian France, June 1, 2003

"Whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself [emphasis added]."

— President Bush, asked in an interview with ABC whether America would use "the full force of the American military," April 24, 2001

More than a few eyebrows were raised at Washington yesterday as those concerned with the preservation of Taiwanese democracy got a look at the White House transcript that is excerpted above. In it, an unnamed senior Bush administration official briefs reporters on the outcome of talks on Sunday between President Bush and the dictator of Communist China, Hu Jintao. Most of the briefing focused on North Korea, but at the end the briefer made a point of delivering comments on Taiwan. What is striking is the extent to which these comments climb down from Mr. Bush's admirable statement of two years ago, made in an interview with ABC and also reprinted above, that America would do "whatever it took" to save the island nation should the butchers of Beijing ever attempt its slaughter.

Parsing the difference between "to the extent possible" and "whatever it took" might be seen as a neurotic diversion. But diplomacy regarding Taiwan has long turned on such fine distinctions. The "One China Policy," after all, is based on the idea that America "acknowledges" the Chinese position without endorsing it. Thus, it seems of more than passing significance that on Sunday an administration official made such a point of softening the language. And of twice reiterating that America does not support independence for the only Chinese people living under a democracy. "When the president of the United States starts to approach the Taiwan issue as if Taiwan has no right to be independent, then he is creating a framework that will eventually legitimize China's use of force," a research fellow in China studies at the Heritage foundation, John Tkacik, told The New York Sun yesterday. "Now we're back to a point where the Chinese perhaps think the United States won't be as forceful as the United States indicated."

What Mr. Tkacik sees shaping up is a battle within the administration and with hardliners in Congress as to the future of American policy on Taiwan. The majority leader in the House, Thos. DeLay, yesterday put the issue in sharp relief. "At the time the United States established the 'One China Policy,' it was essentially a diplomatic contrivance on which foreign servicemen could hold polite conversations," Mr. DeLay told a parley at the American Enterprise Institute. He continued: "The One China Policy, like the peace process in the Middle East, is the means to an end, not the end itself. America's primary objective in Asia, and everywhere in the world, is the preservation of democracy and the expansion of freedom."

We suspect that Mr. Bush understands this intuitively — witness his quotation above, made in an interview setting. To send a message to Beijing going forward, America could start taking a more supportive line on such issues as Taiwan's request for observer status at the World Health Organization. Come Sep tember, at the World Trade Organization's meeting at Cancun, America could put its foot down on the attempt of the director general of the WTO to downgrade Taiwan's "permanent mission" to an "economic representative office." Beijing's bullying of Taiwan won't stop until it gets a loud and clear message from America. As Mr. DeLay put it: "The notion that these oppressive and dangerous men could convince the United States that their murderous ideology should be imposed on a free and independent Taiwan is absurd. And refusing to say so, for fear of upsetting Beijing, is not tact: It is infantilism."