US officials used to admonish China after the Tiananmen Square massacre that enduring stability could only be achieved through democracy. They argued that in the modern world no democratic countries have ever gone to war against each other.
That was then, under the administration of George Herbert Walker Bush. The US leaders of the time took a stand on principle and promoted the values embodied in the UN Charter and relevant treaties.
Now, in the name of stability, the administration of George W. Bush has recently warned Taiwan to restrain its moves toward democracy.
Bush, sitting side by side with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (
They argued that referendums are not of the essence of democracy. That is as absurd as some liberal scholars arguing in the 1960s that only communist systems were perfect democracies.
Of course, the US is not against democracy in Taiwan. It was under pressure from and with the encouragement of the US that Taiwan moved toward democracy.
The US is worried because the Communist regime in China is sabre-rattling in response to democratization.
Obviously the problem is not Taiwan's democratization, but the hegemonism embraced by China, which has never learned to respect or practice democracy.
The right approach for the US in the region is to warn China against the use of force and encourage it to move toward democracy -- not to restrain democracy in Taiwan.
It should not be surprising that US officials and some journalists in the US media, most of them educated during the Cold War, are uncomfortable dealing with Chen's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government. The nature and the visions of the old Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the DPP are radically different.
The old KMT regime ruled without the consent of the people. Facing military threats from China and increasing challenges from Taiwanese people, the KMT regime was happy to accommodate US demands as long as that would allow them to continue to rule Taiwan under a fiction of "one China."
Taiwanese people appreciated US efforts to hinder Chiang Kai-shek's (
In fact, people in the opposition movement in Taiwan -- whether mainlanders such as Lei Cheng (
The KMT regime and its followers maintain a fiction of "one China" -- the Republic of China. That is not a view shared by a Taiwanese population that has been ruled by two non-indigenous regimes in the past century.
When US President Richard Nixon acknowledged in the Shanghai Communique in 1972 that "all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China," a group of young Taiwanese lawyers protested to the US embassy in Taipei.
In fact, John Holdridge, an old China hand who accompanied Henry Kissinger to Beijing in 1971, and was his aide at the National Security Council, admitted the difference of views between the two groups in Taiwan and the necessity of changing the wording of the communique at the last minute.
He explained to professor Nancy Tucker of Georgetown University that the US side in the final session of negotiation had asked to change the words "all people" to "all Chinese," because "there were many people in Taiwan who did not call themselves Chinese. They called themselves Taiwanese. If we had said `all people,' this would mean that Taiwanese also maintained a position of `one China' and Taiwan as part of it, which is not necessarily the case. If you said `all Chinese,' this gets you into something else again."
Holdridge was honest and correct in his assessment.
As another US diplomat, O.V. Armstrong, predicted in the 1970s, democratization in Taiwan would inevitably lead to the Taiwanization of the Republic of China. That was what happened in 1999 when former President Lee Teng-hui (
Taiwan's nationalism has been suppressed for so long that it has now become an irresistible force. Taiwanese leaders with backgrounds in the opposition movement admired US democracy and appreciated US assistance in promoting democracy in Taiwan.
However, they were also disappointed that the US failed to give the people in Taiwan an opportunity to decide their own future after World War II.
They will react strongly if the US tries to stand in the way of efforts to solidify Taiwan's separate identity through the democratic process.
Bush announced his repackaging of policy toward Taiwan and China as "opposing any unilateral decision either by China or Taiwan to change the status quo."
The problem is how the US defines "status quo." The "one China" notion has never had an agreed-upon definition and the US has never recognized Taiwan as part of China. The term "status quo" adds one more layer of ambiguity.
As far as Taiwan is concerned, the status quo is one country on each side of the Taiwan Strait, and Taiwan welcomes the US to maintain status quo.
But if the status quo means that whatever Taiwan tries to do is subject to China's approval, the people will not accept it. It is simply wrong for the US to allow itself to be told by China to bully Taiwan at the expense of the nation's democracy.
Just as the US recognized both East Germany and West Germany, it should also recognize both China and Taiwan and deal with the status quo that has existed for more than half a century.
I am particularly impressed by the statement made in the communique by the Chinese side:
"Whenever there is oppression, there is resistance. Countries want independence, nations want liberation and the people want revolution -- this has become the irresistible trend of history.
"All nations, big or small, should be equal; big countries should not bully the small and strong nations should not bully the weak. China will never be a superpower and it opposes hegemony and power politics of any kind.
"The Chinese side states that it firmly supports the struggles of all the oppressed people and nations for freedom and liberation and that the people of all countries have the right to choose their social systems according to their own wishes and the right to safeguard the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of their own countries and oppose foreign aggression, interference, control and subversion."
John Holdridge knew all the tricks in the Shanghai Communique and he was right about them.
When Bush reiterates his willingness to observe the "three communiques," he should also remind the Chinese side of what they proclaimed in the Shanghai Communique.
James Wang is a journalist based in Washington.
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