“We oppose any unilateral decision by either China or Taiwan to change the status quo. And the comments and actions made by the leader of Taiwan indicate that he may be willing to make decisions unilaterally, to change the status quo, which we oppose.”

— President Bush, December 9, 2003

It was quite the spectacle yesterday as the president of America, George W. Bush, was caught out in Washington kowtowing to Communist China. The occasion was the visit to the president by China’s premier, Wen Jia bao. It is enough of an occasion to hold one’s nose anytime that an American president sits down with the leader of a murderous regime, but the president’s rhetorical concessions as regards Communist China and its threats against democratic Taiwan were downright odious.

Red China is upset about a referendum that is set to go forward in Free China in March, to coincide with the presidential election. The referendum, advanced by Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian, would ask Taiwanese voters to demand that China withdraw hundreds of ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan and renounce using force against the island. It would be a largely symbolic measure, but it is seen by many — including Beijing — as a move toward Taiwan declaring independence. President Chen likely wants it interpreted that way, too, to woo the nation’s pro-independence voters.

And so, yesterday, Americans found their president decrying the Taiwanese president — and by extension the Taiwanese people — for preparing to vote on a democratic initiative. Meanwhile, China, the country aiming all those missiles at Taiwan that the referendum mentions, escapes without a scolding. “Sell out,” “appeasement,” and “disgusting,” were only three of the words that came to mind when The New York Sun got a research fellow in China studies at the Heritage Foundation, John Tkacik, on the phone. “The idea that the president of the United States finds Taiwan’s democracy more provocative than mainland China’s threats to war simply is incongruous with the president’s recently stated commitment to the expansion of global democracy,” he said.

It’s hard to get around Mr. Tkacik’s point. “Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe — because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty,” the president said. He may have been speaking of the Middle East in that November address, but his words could just as easily apply to the Taiwan Strait.”The advance of freedom is the calling of our time; it is the calling of our country.” It should also be noted that Mr. Bush’s language today was also a climb down from his statement in an interview with ABC News in 2001 that America would do “whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself” if China attacked.

It’s hard to see the logic in the Bush administration’s policy. As Mr. Tkacik remarked to us, it would be one thing if America were getting something in return for these statements on China’s behalf — something like North Korea dismantling its nuclear program. Even then, it would be wrong and dangerous to abandon Taiwan, but there would be some logic to the strategy. Here, there is none. “Frankly, we’re getting nothing for it,”Mr. Tkacik said. Instead, we are encouraging the butchers of Beijing to sharpen their knives with an eye toward Taipei.

Perhaps Mr. Bush, in addition to reviewing his own remarks from November, might benefit from looking at the statements of the majority leader of the House of Representatives, Thos. DeLay, from this summer. “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, of America’s method of acknowledging the Chinese position on Taiwan without endorsing it. But, 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.” Mr. Bush and his advisers on this policy need to wake up to this soon.