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TAIWAN INDEPENDENCE
OR UNIFICATION?
(Updated Tuesday, Apr 1, 2008, 05:54:56 PM)

he most pressing Asian foreign policy issue currently faced by the U.S. is the Taiwan question. The email we receive in reaction to our articles relating to this issue suggests that it's an emotional one for many of our readers. Perhaps one reason for the emotion is the fact that the issue isn't amenable to an easy or simple solution.
     The first historical mention of Taiwan appears to have been when Portugese traders found it to be a resting place on their journey to Japan and named it Isla Formosa. Beijing's claim to Taiwan dates back to the 16th century when a Chinese general fought off the Portugese to claim the island for the emperor. In 1895 the expansion-minded Japanese annexed it after defeating China in a war on the Corean peninsula. China briefly reestablished sovereignty over Taiwan following Japan's defeat in August of 1945.
     At the time the official government of China, as recognized by most nations of the world, was under the control of the Kuomingtang headed by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. He was engaged in a desperate war against Mao Tse-tung's peasant army. Despite billions of dollars of aid by the U.S. based mainly on intensely partisan reporting by Henry Luce's Time/Life empire, the spectacularly corrupt Chiang lost that war and fled to Taiwan with 2.5 million followers.
     He established the present government of Taiwan on December 7, 1949 and proclaimed it the sole legitimate government of all China. Mao made the same claim. The claims competed until 1971 when it became clear to most of the world that Mao's was more persuasive. Taiwan was kicked out of the UN. The Beijing government took its place as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, a seat given in recognition of China's role in fighting Japan in World War II.
     Mired in its own misguided war in Vietnam, and intensely fearful of anything red, the U.S. was one of the last nations to recognize the legitimacy of Mao's government. In 1972 Richard Nixon made his historic journey to Beijing. In 1976 the U.S. took the next step by recognizing the People's Republic as China's sole legitimate government. It began pursuing the "One China, One Taiwan" policy under which official diplomatic contacts were exclusively with Beijing but continued to sell billions of dollars a year of fighter jets, helicopters, tanks and missiles to Taiwan to help defend against a possible Chinese effort to refunify by force.
     In 1997 President Clinton declared a "strategic partnership" with Beijing over intense Republican objections. It was an astute recognition of the fact that China's 1.2 billion people must be accorded a central place in U.S. foreign policy. But the historic, moral and economic ties that bind the U.S. to Taiwan's 23 million people stand squarely in the way of cutting off arms sales and renouncing the pact under which the U.S. obliged itself to come to Taiwan's defense in the event of attack by China. That U.S. pledge and continuing arms sales continue to inflame Beijing to periodic bursts of violent anti-U.S. rhetoric.
     Taiwan has been a domocracy since 1989 when it legalized opposition parties. It held its first democratic presidential elections in 1990. Lee Teng-hui handily won to keep the presidency which he had originally gained in 1988. Lee won again in 1996. Since 1997 he began efforts to warm up relations with Beijing by agreeing to enter into negotiations under a "One-China" framework with an eye toward eventual reunification. Beijing's leaders continued their highly successful campaign of pressuring diplomatic partners into severing ties with Taiwan. China even raised hell when Lee made a semi-surreptitious trip to New York in 1997. Since then China has scared neighborning nations like the Philippines into not allowing Lee to enter. As of 1999 Taiwan's diplomatic allies number about 18 out of about 220 nations on earth. All are tiny, impoverished Central American, African and Pacific Island nations that appreciate Taiwan's generous aid packages. Pago Pago is considered a major ally.
     Feisty Lee Teng-hui launched his own guerilla offensive in July, 1999 by declaring over German radio that Taiwan was in fact a separate state and would negotiate with Beijing on an equal footing. That sent Beijing into a tizzy. It fired off bombastic threats to take Taiwan by force and to annhilate the U.S. Navy if it intervenes. On October 18 during his British visit Chinese President Jiang Zemin assumed a softer, more relaxed tone in telling a London newspaper that China would be peacefully reunited with Taiwan under a one-nation two-systems formula by the middle of the next century. One might have expected Lee to have been relieved by that statement. Instead, he brushed it aside as "a hoax". China should try instead to set a timetable for its democratization as that was the only way to ensure reunification, sneered Lee's Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi. Most polls show that a clear majority of Taiwanese prefer to maintain the status quo indefinitely rather than moving toward unification.
     Beijing's reunification mandate appears based on the idea that in winning the mainland, the Chinese people had rejected the "criminal" Kuomingtang and its right to rule any part of China. It also sees Taiwan as a galling symbol of the division wrought and preserved by western imperialists -- namely, the U.S. -- seeking to enjoy global hegemony at the expense of Chinese dignity.
     Meanwhile the U.S. remains on the hook to defend Taiwan and sell it arms though doing so keeps its relations with a quarter of humanity rocky and on edge. Under its current policy the U.S. is the asbestos firewall that keeps friction between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait from igniting into war.
     Should the U.S. continue alienating Beijing to help Taiwan protect its independence or improve relations with China by pressuring Taiwan to reunite?

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