The Curse of the Shanghai Communique.(United States relations with China)(Brief Article)

Last week President George W. Bush arrived in Beijing 30 years to the day after Richard Nixon landed in the Chinese capital for what he called "a week that changed the world." By all accounts, there were neither surprises nor important results from Bush's talks with Chinese leaders. Nixon, however, really did change the world--without specifying who was to benefit from the change.

The way Nixon and his national-security adviser, Henry Kissinger, humbled themselves before Chairman Mao Zedong reminded many in China and abroad of the tribute-bearing foreign emissaries of previous centuries paying homage to Chinese emperors. At the end of his trip, Nixon and Prime Minister Zhou Enlai signed the now celebrated Shanghai Communique, agreeing to "make progress toward the normalization of relations " and committing the United States to the notion of "one China," including Taiwan. The two sides had some differences. Beijing asserted that "Taiwan is a province of China" and that "the liberation of Taiwan is China's internal affair in which no other country has the right to interfere." Washington more gently reaffirmed that a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question was a U.S. "interest."

When Jimmy Carter established full diplomatic ties with the People's Republic of China on Jan. 2, 1979, he accepted Beijing's definition of one China and cut off diplomatic relations with the Republic of China on Taiwan. This treatment of a long-term ally infuriated Congress; it quickly passed the Taiwan Relations Act, committing the United States to help provide for Taiwan's defense--and putting Beijing on notice that any use of coercion against Taiwan would be a threat to regional peace and "of grave concern to the United States."

The Taiwan Relations Act has preserved peace in the Taiwan Strait for a generation. It has done so by providing security and defense assistance to the island, enabling its people to move ahead with confidence on economic development and democratic reform in spite of China's refusal to renounce the use of force. The law's important security provisions have been reiterated and reaffirmed by congressional resolutions on many occasions since 1979. And the U.S. government acted on them when it dispatched two carrier battle groups to the waters near Taiwan in March 1996, after China test-fired missiles and used the threat of force to interrupt Taiwan's first popular presidential election.

On the other hand, the one-China policy initiated by Nixon three decades ago is obsolete and should be changed. Taiwan and its friends in the U.S. Congress have gone to painstaking lengths to remind everyone that Taiwan is a sovereign state and a democracy whose people have gradually come to ...