Has Taiwan a Future?

Discussion of the Taiwan issue since the Shanghai communiqué has been a mixture of naïveté and deceit—naiveté prevailing among the general public, with a liberal seasoning of deceit in the comments of officials. The chatter about “standing by our commitments” is beside the point, a placebo to quiet the conscience of the speaker or dupe his audience.

Commitments, like laws and policies, come and go, and as with laws or policies, the latest in time takes precedence over the earlier. It is easy to learn what our current and prevailing commitments are in the Taiwan instance. They are written out in the Shanghai communiqué, signed, sealed and delivered by our President. We are committed to the proposition that there is one and only one China, that Taiwan is part of that one China, and that China’s legitimate as well as de facto government is the Communist government in Peking. We are committed to the withdrawal of our military forces from Taiwan, and we have already withdrawn them from the Taiwan Strait. We are committed to noninterference in relations between Mainland China and Taiwan while looking forward to the day when “a peaceful settlement is achieved.” Self-evidently, the only conceivable settlement on these premises, whether peaceful or not, is the incorporation of Taiwan within Communistruled China.

JB

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James Burnham

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Discussion of the Taiwan issue since the Shanghai communiqué has been a mixture of naïveté and deceit—naiveté prevailing among the general public, with a liberal seasoning of deceit in the comments of officials. The chatter about “standing by our commitments” is beside the point, a placebo to quiet the conscience of the speaker or dupe his audience.

Commitments, like laws and policies, come and go, and as with laws or policies, the latest in time takes precedence over the earlier. It is easy to learn what our current and prevailing commitments are in the Taiwan instance. They are written out in the Shanghai communiqué, signed, sealed and delivered by our President. We are committed to the proposition that there is one and only one China, that Taiwan is part of that one China, and that China’s legitimate as well as de facto government is the Communist government in Peking. We are committed to the withdrawal of our military forces from Taiwan, and we have already withdrawn them from the Taiwan Strait. We are committed to noninterference in relations between Mainland China and Taiwan while looking forward to the day when “a peaceful settlement is achieved.” Self-evidently, the only conceivable settlement on these premises, whether peaceful or not, is the incorporation of Taiwan within Communistruled China.