Taiwan’s
President Tsai Ing-wen is visiting the U.S., but under the odd
diplomatic protocol that governs U.S.-Taiwan relations, she isn’t on a
state visit or even a visit. Officials at the State Department and the
White House are at pains to refer to it as a “transit.”
When Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger negotiated the 1972 Sino-U.S.
Joint Communiqué in Shanghai, Taiwan’s status was the most difficult
issue. Beijing made some hard demands, which the American side neither
accepted nor challenged, leaving room for “strategic ambiguity” in its
support for Taiwan after the U.S. formally established relations with
Beijing and broke with Taipei in 1979.
That approach was probably wise at the time, but stability would now be
better served by an unambiguous American statement on the legality of
the Taiwan government. The U.S. could recognize Taipei under a
principle of “one country, two governments.” That would fall short of
supporting Taiwan independence and wouldn’t abrogate the “one China”
principle on which Beijing has insisted since 1972. Instead, it would
follow the evolution of Beijing’s own approach to relations with Taipei.
In the Shanghai Communiqué, the Chinese side explicitly rejected “one
China, two governments” in addition to these other formulas: “one
China, one Taiwan,” “two Chinas” and “an independent Taiwan.” The
Chinese Communist Party’s position remained the same until the
mid-1990s, when subtle changes began appearing.
In a speech in January 1995, President Jiang Zemin expressed “resolute
opposition” to “two Chinas” and to “one China, one Taiwan,” but notably
made no mention of “one China, two governments.” A 1993 party white
paper on Taiwan stated that China rejects the “two Germany” and “two
Korea” solutions to the Taiwan issue, but another white paper, in 2000,
maintained opposition to the two-Germany model but said nothing about
opposing the two-Korea model. Since then, “one China, two governments”
and “two Koreas” have been systematically missing from official
speeches and documents. On a topic as sensitive as Taiwan, these minor
shifts can’t have been inadvertent. They meant something.
The Germany and Korea models were different. The East German
Constitution of 1974 conceived of East Germany as a separate country,
distinct from West Germany. By contrast, the constitutions of both
North and South Korea see their governments as ruling part of a single
Korean motherland. That is the “one country, two governments” notion
that Beijing in the late 1990s dropped from its “resolutely oppose”
list.
For Taiwan, a “Korean solution” would be a major advance. North and
South Korea both allow the other to have diplomatic relations with
foreign countries, to join the United Nations and other international
organizations, and to play as independent teams in the Olympics and the
World Cup. Beijing itself has maintained diplomatic relations with both
Pyongyang and Seoul since 1992.
To be sure, there would be objections on both sides of the Taiwan
Strait. Some Taiwanese wouldn’t want to live under a “second” Chinese
government because they don’t think of themselves as Chinese at all.
But even for them, it would be hard to reject a “one country, two
governments” arrangement because it would radically reduce the fearsome
threat from Beijing that they live under.
The regime in Beijing has obvious reasons to insist on the illegitimacy
of its counterpart in Taipei. The island is a vibrant democracy and has
the world’s 21st-largest economy but is an embarrassment to the Chinese
Communist Party as a living refutation of the claim that democracy and
Chinese culture are incompatible. “Uniting the motherland” has been
crucial to the party’s efforts to stimulate nationalism and to take
credit as its champion.
Yet Beijing has shifted as practical needs have demanded. From the
1950s through 1970s, the regimes in Beijing and Taipei denounced each
other as pseudo-governments; cross-straits commerce and movement were
essentially zero. But beginning in the 1980s, increasing in the 1990s
and mushrooming in the 2000s, exchange flourished, and so did problems
that demanded joint efforts to address. The two sides have signed more
than 20 agreements on investment, trade, exchange of personnel,
fighting crime and other matters.
Such agreements normally are signed by governments, so cross-straits
negotiations inevitably raised the thorny problem of how to do so while
pretending not to. The answer—as with U.S.-Taiwan relations—was that
each side launched a nongovernmental organization. On the mainland the
Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits was born; on Taiwan
it was the Straits Exchange Foundation. In Chinese the two are called
“white glove” organizations, but everyone knows whose hands are at work.
In practice “one country, two governments” is already in place. In 2005
and again in 2011, think-tank scholars in mainland China made this
point overtly and weren’t punished for doing so.
In 2015 Xi Jinping himself did so. He agreed to meet in person with
Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou, as a nominally equal counterpart. The
two met in Singapore as “Leader of Taiwan” and “Leader of Mainland
China.” Both set aside official titles and addressed each other as
xiansheng, or “mister.” That Mr. Xi agreed to these terms suggests that
he initiated them. No one could have forced him. (Mr. Ma this week
became the first former Taiwanese president to visit the mainland.)
Beijing would surely denounce a U.S. move to recognize Taiwan; the
party doesn’t miss opportunities to bolster its prestige by stoking
nationalism. But a more sober response could lie beneath the surface.
It is hard to imagine that planners in Beijing have not anticipated the
world’s responses to the way its stance toward Taiwan has gradually
shifted. In real terms, the change wouldn’t alter the status quo so
much as acknowledge it.
Mr. Hu is a Chinese dissident in exile and editor of Beijing Spring.
Mr. Link is professor emeritus of East Asian Studies at Princeton.
