One Taiwan Policy
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

If only Attorney General Alberto Gonzales were in charge of this country’s policy towards China.
Donald Keyser, former principal deputy assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs, pleaded guilty on Tuesday in the Eastern District of Virginia to unlawfully removing classified documents from the Department of State and to two counts of making false official statements.
A court document states that “on September 7, 2003, upon his return to the United States from overseas, Keyser submitted a Customs Declaration form at Dulles International Airport … In response to an item on the form requiring the traveler to identify the ‘[c]ountries visited on this trip prior to U.S. arrival,’ Keyser wrote only ‘China, Japan’ omitting Taiwan, a ‘material’ omission for purposes of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001(a).”
I’m no lawyer, but I simply fail to see how the defendant did anything wrong by omitting Taiwan. To the American government, Taiwan has formally stopped existing as a country in 1979, when Jimmy Carter dumped the island state for China. And seven years before that betrayal, Richard Nixon approved the Shanghai Communique, which states that “the United States acknowledges all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States government does not challenge that position.” This is the so-called One China Policy dictating the American official position of “Taiwan is a part of China” ever since.
Mr. Keyser perhaps might have committed a political offense by visiting Taiwan. But legally speaking, is equating Taiwan with China a crime? I’m glad the Department of Justice has finally established this principle, though. Now, Mr. Gonzales, please make sure each and every department in the U.S. government, especially the one at Foggy Bottom, would strictly follow this precedent and start treating Taiwan with the long-overdue respect it deserves.
The One China Policy was created by Henry Kissinger to appease China while not appearing to sell out Taiwan totally. True, both Mao Zedong’s People’s Republic of China and Chiang Kai-shek’s Republic of China at that time believed that Taiwan was part of China. The only dispute lay on who represented the legitimate government of China. This is no longer the case, though.
The vice president of International Assessment and Strategy Center, Arthur Waldron, argued that when the U.S. expected the Taiwan issue would be settled peacefully by the Chinese people themselves, the expectation was that “the autocratic government in Taipei would have no alternative but to come to terms with China and would thus disappear as a festering issue in international politics.” Mr. Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and other great minds never in a million years dreamed that Taiwan would develop into a vibrant democracy and negate their formulas for “solving” the Taiwan problem.
The One China Policy, a myth that now only serves the interest of China, should be debunked. On April 21, 2004, James Kelly, then assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs, admitted the difficulty on defining this policy to the House International Relations Committee: “I didn’t really define it, and I’m not sure I very easily could define it.” While people living in Asia can be quite inscrutable at times, the U.S. doesn’t have to adopt a similar attitude for the sake of reciprocity. Equipped with such a confusing policy in hand, no wonder otherwise clear-headed American officials are often forced to talk fiction whenever they speak about China and Taiwan.
Even President Bush is trapped in this game. While praising Taiwan as a model of a free and democratic society in his speech delivered in Kyoto last month, Mr. Bush, nevertheless, has to repeat the One China Policy mantra. And this supposedly shining example of freedom and democracy is still treated worse than any pariah state on earth one can name. U.S. officials can hold talks with the North Koreans, who are seeking a remote but not totally impossible chance of getting diplomatic recognition from the U.S. Officials from Taiwan, on the other hand, are persona non grata.
A sharper contrast couldn’t be found in Washington last week. While the Chinese executive vice foreign minister, Dai Bingguo, and the deputy secretary of State, Robert Zoellick, were holding a two-day senior dialogue, an official from Taiwan was also in town. The chairman of Taiwan’s mainland affairs council, Joseph Wu, was meeting think tanks and officials in the administration in a low-key three-day visit. Beijing protested, as always, but didn’t prevail.
Mr. Dai, representing the remaining communist giant, which doesn’t share any fundamental value with his host country, received all the courtesy. Mr. Wu, coming from a democracy that implements the American spirit, was lucky to be allowed to speak on Capitol Hill to a small gathering. Mr. Zoellick was trying to engage Mr. Dai on China becoming a stakeholder, hoping China and the U.S. can cooperate in the present international system. Mr. Wu, whose country is already a responsible stakeholder, was shunned instead. Does this make any sense at all?
Citing “reality constraint,” Mr. Wu said the One China Policy is something “we can live with at this moment.” But with China squeezing Taiwan out of any international space, how much longer can the Taiwanese live without any well-deserved international participation and recognition? “China doesn’t allow us to use the name Taiwan. When we use the Republic of China, it’s not permitted either,” Mr. Wu said. China, threatening an independent Taiwan means war, ironically is the party which inflames the independence sentiment in Taiwan.
The One China Policy perhaps can still be salvaged, with one clarification. One China means, well, the People’s Republic of China that rules the mainland. As for Taiwan, which has not been ruled under the People’s Republic of China for one second, the people living on the island are more than capable of deciding for themselves. America should tell the Chinese to stick to this One China Policy.
Mr. Liu is a Washington-based columnist.