At Cross Purposes

U.S.-Taiwan Relations Since 1942

Richard C. Bush

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317476290
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Written by the former chairman and managing director of the American Institute in Taiwan, this book sheds new light on key topics in the history of U.S.-Taiwan relations. It fills an important gap in our understanding of how the U.S. government addressed Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait issue from the early 1940s to the present. One theme that runs through these essays is the series of obstacles erected that denied the people of Taiwan a say in shaping their own destiny: Franklin Roosevelt chose to return Taiwan to mainland China for geopolitical reasons; there was little pressure on the Kuomintang to reform its authoritarian rule until Congress got involved in the early 1980s; Chiang Kai-shek spurned American efforts in the 1960s to keep Taiwan in international organizations; and behind the ROC's back, the Nixon, Carter, and Reagan administrations negotiated agreements with the PRC that undermined Taiwan's position. In addition to discussing how the United States reacted to key human rights cases from the 1940s to the 1980s, the author also discusses the Bush and Clinton administrations' efforts to preserve U.S. interests while accommodating new forces in the region. All these episodes have an enduring relevance for the people of Taiwan, and in his conclusion the author discusses where the relationship stands today. The book includes related documents that helped shape the U.S.-Taiwan relationship.

 

 

 

1

Introduction

 

 

 

I wrote most of these essays during the period that I was chairman and managing director of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), from September 1997 to June 2002. During my time at AIT several questions of a historical nature piqued my curiosity. How was it that Franklin Roosevelt decided that Taiwan should be returned to China? What stance did the United States take toward the Kuomintang (KMT) regime’s repression from the 1940s to the 1970s? What was the substance of the so-called two-China policy that the United States pursued between the beginning of the Korean War and the Nixon opening to China? What do the three U.S.–PRC communiqués and the Taiwan Relations Act really say?

This volume offers answers to those questions, answers that I hope will have value beyond the satisfaction of my personal curiosity. These are relatively unstudied issues. On some, there exists a conventional wisdom but little supporting documentation. Filling out the historical record on an important chapter in the history of American foreign relations is important for its own sake.

The outlines of that history are well known.¹ After Pearl Harbor, the United States and the Republic of China (ROC) were allies in the World War II fight against Japan. The relationship was a rocky one, however, upset by disputes over military strategy, allocation of resources, and the role of the Chinese Communist Party. Still, President Roosevelt was prepared to give Chiang Kai-shek the benefit of the doubt and take steps to keep him in the war. Moreover, he concurred in Chiang’s territorial war aims, including the return of Taiwan to China after almost fifty years of Japanese colonial rule. That intention was proclaimed in the Cairo Conference of December 1943. After Tokyo’s surrender, it was ROC forces, authorized by Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Far East, that accepted the surrender on the island. The residents of the island, Chinese in their social and cultural background, welcomed reversion to China.²

The American focus, however, was not on Taiwan but on the looming civil war on the Chinese mainland. President Truman sent George Marshall to try to broker peace between the Nationalists and the Communists, but he failed in the face of mutual Chinese mistrust and the efforts of each side to gain a tactical advantage over the other. Fighting broke out in earnest, just around the time that KMT misrule on Taiwan sparked a revolt by the Taiwanese. In spite of efforts by local leaders to resolve the latter conflict through negotiation, the ROC government sent troops to the island who brutally ended any resistance.³

The United States provided some support to Chiang’s forces during the civil war, but increasingly concluded that Nationalist incompetence would lead to military defeat. Washington then distanced itself from Chiang, in the hope of ultimately driving a wedge between the Chinese Communists and the Soviet Union. The ROC government was able to slow the process of disassociation by mobilizing its supporters in the U.S. Congress but could not stop it.

Once the Nationalist cause seemed lost, Washington then worried about the vulnerability of Taiwan, to which the KMT was retreating. There was a consensus that a Communist takeover was both likely—again because of Nationalist political and military ineptitude—and detrimental to American security interests. On the other hand, the United States lacked the military assets to defend it. Various schemes were considered and abandoned, and President Truman signaled in January 1950 that Washington would not intervene.⁴

Taiwan and the ROC were saved by North Korea’s invasion of South Korea in June 1950. Washington decided to deploy ships of the Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Strait, in order to prevent either the PRC or the ROC from attacking each other. In order to justify this policy reversal, the Truman administration asserted that Taiwan’s legal status (whether it was indeed part of China) had not yet been determined, and so was an international issue, not a purely domestic one.

Over time, Taiwan became part of the American structure of anti-Communist containment. The United States established a significant military assistance and training relationship with the ROC armed forces, and the two governments concluded a mutual defense treaty in late 1954. Still, it was a case of same bed, different dreams. Chiang wanted to fight his way back to the mainland with American help but American presidents sought to avoid being drawn into an unwanted war. The United States recognized that limited contact with China would help in managing conflict. Chiang simply saw that contact as a degradation of his legitimacy.⁵

In the meantime, the KMT regime imposed harsh repression on Taiwan. This was a minority government, made up of mainlanders from China who ruled over the 85 percent of the population whose ancestors had migrated from southeastern China to the island from the sixteenth century on. As a minority regime, the KMT rationalized its denial of majority rule on the grounds that it was the government of all of China. Thus the memberships in the Legislative Yuan and the National Assembly were frozen because it was not possible to hold elections in districts throughout China. Taiwan representation had to be limited, more or less, to its share of the Chinese population. Political freedoms were severely restricted, it was asserted, because of a national emergency to suppress the Communist rebellion. Under martial law, challenges to KMT rule were tried in military courts. Countless Taiwanese dissidents lost their lives or their freedom, and those who chose caution still regarded their rulers with silent, sullen hostility. The U.S. government concluded that this was a reality it should not change (for geopolitical reasons) or could not change (because of Chiang Kai-shek’s rigid opposition). To be sure, the ROC did embark on a program of export-led growth with substantial American assistance and persuasion. That produced impressive prosperity and removed poverty as a source of instability, but did not translate into an early, parallel program of political liberalization.⁶

This configuration—containment of China, ambiguous alliance with the ROC, and KMT repression—began to change in the early 1970s. The starting point was Richard Nixon’s and Henry Kissinger’s strategic calculation that China could make a significant contribution to the struggle against the Soviet Union, sufficient to justify a reduction of ties with Taiwan. Jimmy Carter continued this process by “normalizing” relations with the PRC and acceding to Beijing’s demands that it break diplomatic relations with Taipei, end the mutual defense treaty, and withdraw the remaining military personnel and facilities. Washington now inclined more toward the view that Taiwan was a part of China, but continued to state a strong interest in a peaceful resolution to the Taiwan Strait issue and an intention to sell defensive weapons to Taiwan. Ronald Reagan reaffirmed the fundamentals of the new arrangement in August 1982, while agreeing to exercise restraint on arms sales. Simultaneously, the ROC lost its presence in most international organizations and the number of countries that had diplomatic relations with it shrank to around thirty. Over the course of a decade, Taiwan’s international standing had seriously deteriorated. Beijing, now in a position of relative strength, mounted a new offensive for reunification, and there was some expectation that the three-decade state of division was about to end.⁷

International isolation for Taiwan triggered internal political ferment. Each new blow to the ROC’s legitimacy as the government of China diminished its right to maintain a political monopoly on the island, at least in the eyes of its political opponents. Under the emerging leadership of Chiang Ching-kuo (Chiang Kai-shek’s son), the regime began moving toward a soft authoritarianism, in which limited political expression and elections would serve as a barometer of KMT performance. Yet the critics wanted reform to go further and faster, and they called for a democratic system. They were coalescing into an opposition party, which was a violation of KMT limits. Simultaneously, Taiwanese exiles in the United States, in order to exert some pressure on the Taiwan government, were beginning to cultivate members of the U.S. Congress (which was an irony, since the ROC government had used Congress for decades to constrain the U.S. Executive Branch).

The regime cracked down on the growing opposition movement, most notably at the Kaohsiung Incident of December 1979, but the pressure for change continued. Reformers around Chiang Ching-kuo argued that a democratic Taiwan could make a stronger appeal for American support, and Chiang himself came to the counterintuitive conclusion that the KMT could better maintain its hold on power by opening up the political system than by continuing repression. Once the process of liberalization began, KMT conservatives complained that it was too fast and leaders of the newly formed Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) thought it was too slow, but the direction was clear. Lee Teng-hui, a Taiwanese, succeeded Chiang as president after the latter’s death in January 1988, and he soon accelerated the process. By the mid-1990s, Taiwan had a vibrant and fractious democratic system.

The United States was a bit ambivalent about this outcome. In terms of American values, this could only be a welcome development, and it did indeed solidify U.S. support for Taiwan. On the other hand, the open discussion of independence, the emergence of a strong Taiwanese identity, and the possibility that the DPP might come to power could not be ignored because of their potential implications for peace and stability.⁸

The late 1980s and early 1990s brought three other developments. The first was the growing economic and human interaction between Taiwan and the mainland. A no-man’s-land for four decades, the Taiwan Strait became a highway for trade, investment, and family reunification. Taiwan companies needed a new production platform for labor-intensive goods like shoes as wages rose on the island itself and the New Taiwan dollar appreciated under American pressure. Aging mainlanders leapt at the chance to see their relatives and native places again. There was even hope that economic intercourse might lead to political reconciliation. Semiofficial channels were established to manage problems like document certification and illegal immigration that stemmed from greater contact.

The second development was the Tiananmen Incident of 1989 and its profound impact on U.S.–China relations. This shattered the consensus that had existed in the United States in favor of ties with Beijing, and led to intense conflict within the American political system over China. The contrast between a repressive China and a democratizing Taiwan was stark, and the impact on American political opinion was profound.⁹

The third development was the fall of the Soviet Union. Containing Moscow had long since lost its value as a geopolitical basis for U.S.–China relations, and the sudden decline in the prospects for international conflict had a very practical consequence: a radical shift in the international arms market. The new Russia was desperate to find new markets for its producers of military equipment. Western defense contractors were in the same predicament as their traditional customers cut back on orders in light of a more benign security environment. China was able to purchase relatively advanced systems from Russia, thus increasing the threat to Taiwan. American companies pressured the Bush administration to ease the policy of restraint on arms sales to Taiwan that in 1982 it had pledged Beijing it would follow. In the end, the Bush administration agreed.

Cross-strait reconciliation stalled over the fundamental issue of the legal status of Taiwan in a unified China. Beijing asserted that it would be an autonomous yet subordinate unit. Taipei claimed that its government was a sovereign entity, essentially equal to the PRC government. In part to improve his negotiating position with China, President Lee Teng-hui sought to take advantage of Taiwan’s new approval in the United States by making a trip to his alma mater, Cornell University. He mobilized Taiwan’s supporters in the Congress, who in turn were successful in pressuring the Clinton administration into approving the visit, which occurred in June 1995. That sparked a crisis in both cross-strait and U.S.–China relations. Beijing concluded that there was a dangerous trend toward the permanent separation of Taiwan from China, a trend that could be stopped only by cutting back both relationships and displays of military force. The United States shifted to an approach of dual deterrence: deterring the PRC from using its growing military assets and restraining Taiwan from taking actions that might provoke a Chinese attack.

That is basically where the situation is today. In some respects, we see parallels with the past. Dual deterrence was essentially what Washington pursued in the 1950s and 1960s, making it harder for China to “liberate” Taiwan and for Chiang Kai-shek to “retake the mainland.” The legal status of Taiwan and its government is the key sticking point now as it was then. What has changed is the emergence of a democratic system on the island, which not only complicates the task of managing a delicate triangular relationship but also reduces the possibility that Washington will make decisions on Taiwan’s fate without regard to the views of its citizens, as was the case in 1943, 1950, 1972, and 1978.

The chapters that follow fill in some of the gaps in our understanding of this history. Chapter 2 details the background of Roosevelt’s decision to return Taiwan to China after Japan’s defeat in World War II. Chapter 3 documents U.S. actions—or inaction—in the major cases of KMT repression from the 1940s to the 1970s. Chapter 4 reveals how in a conceptual sense five administrations addressed Taiwan’s legal status from 1950 to 1971, the period in which it took the explicit position that the status was undetermined. Chapter 5 explores how the United States treated Taiwan—both its legal status and its security—in the key documents of U.S.–PRC normalization. Chapter 6 presents the story of how a few members of the U.S. Congress mounted an effort to pressure the Taiwan government to end its repressive regime and move toward a democratic system. Chapter 7 describes American policy making regarding Taiwan in the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

There is, I think, a reason for going over old ground that is far more significant than satisfying personal curiosity or filling historical lacunae. For the people of Taiwan, this is not ancient history or the stuff of musty archives. They are in the process of recovering their past, and these issues are relevant as they assess how the island crafts its relationships with both China and the United States.

It thus matters for them that Franklin Roosevelt chose to ignore for Taiwan the option of a trusteeship and plebiscite even as he favored it for Japan’s other colony, Korea. It matters that American diplomats sometimes gently pushed Chiang Kai-shek to create a system that could attract Taiwanese support but most of the time accommodated to his harsh repression. It matters that for more than a decade the United States explored the idea that there were equivalent, sovereign entities on each side of the Taiwan Strait in order to ensure that the ROC could keep its seat in international organizations, but that this creativity was spurned for too long by an ideologically rigid Chiang Kai-shek. It matters that U.S. officials, in negotiating normalization with the PRC, tended to make their concessions up front and then had to struggle to assert America’s—and Taiwan’s—interests. And it matters to the people of Taiwan that in the 1980s the KMT regime faced for the first time a good-cop, bad-cop approach from the United States on human rights and democracy, with the administration as the good cop and congressional activists as the bad cop. This book represents a small effort to give them back their history.

2

The Wartime Decision to Return Taiwan to China

How did it happen that Taiwan was transferred to China after World War II? It is well known that the first public signal of the island’s postwar fate came in the Cairo Declaration of December 1943, in which Prime Minist...