China's Dilemma: The Taiwan Issue

3. US China Policy: Facing a Rising China

39 U.S. China Policy: Facing a Rising China© 2001 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore 3 U.S. China Policy: Facing a Rising China1 The Taiwan Strait crisis of 1995-96 was not an accident. It should be examined in the broad framework of post-Cold War international politics, in which the United States, China and Taiwan, in the process of bargaining over Cold War dividends and redefining their positions in the new strategic structure emerging in the Asia Pacific, had unavoidably come into conflict. Lee Teng-hui’s United States visit was obviously not simply a personal trip. It reflected Taiwan’s intensified effort to change the status quo in the strategic structure in the Asia Pacific that had been in place for the previous two decades during the Cold War. Taiwan felt that it had been deprived of its former international status as member of the United Nations, as well as diplomatic recognition by the United States and most other countries, because of U.S. efforts to seek China’s strategic support at the expense of Taiwan. The collapse of communism in Europe and the former Soviet Union dramatically reduced China’s strategic weight in the eyes of the United States and encouraged Taiwan’s eagerness to redress what it perceived to be the wrong it had suffered during the Cold War. To China, Taiwan’s efforts posed a serious threat not only to stable China– United States relations but also to the established strategic structure in the Asia Pacific, which already accepted the “one China” principle, a condition China insisted on for every country wanting to establish diplomatic relations with it. Taiwan’s efforts were also a serious threat to China’s vision of the future strategic structure in the Asia Pacific which, as China firmly demanded, should not go against the “one China” principle. China also wanted to reap dividends from the Cold War. As a matter of fact, China had played a significant role in containing Soviet expansion and in its collapse. In hindsight, without China’s de facto strategic alliance with the United States and its efforts in forming an international anti-hegemonic united front in ISEAS D OCUMENT DELIVER Y SERVICE . No reproduction without permission of the publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace, SINGAPORE 119614. FAX: (65)7756259; TEL: (65) 8702447; E-MAIL: publish@iseas.edu.sg 40 Part II: China vs. the United States over Taiwan© 2001 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore the 1970s–80s, the Soviet Union would not have collapsed so easily. The United States would have spent much more time licking its wounds after the Vietnam War and would not have been in a position to deal Moscow any heavy blows. Moreover, the whole of Southeast Asia would not have been so stable following the shock of the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. During the Cold War, China tried to exploit its strategic weight to get concessions out of Washington over Taiwan. The Taiwan issue was raised during the talks for the China–United States rapprochement of 1972 and China–United States normalization of 1979. In the 1980s, Beijing once again tried to persuade Washington to help solve the Taiwan issue. On one occasion on 19 December 1984, Deng Xiaoping asked the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, to tell the U.S. President, Ronald Reagan, that he hoped to see co-operation between the United States and China for the resolution of the Taiwan issue during Reagan’s second term as president. In July 1985, during his visit to the United States, Chinese President Li Xiannian made the same request, which was repeated later on numerous occasions, such as during Deng’s interview with an American correspondent on 2 September 1986, during Premier Zhao Ziyang’s talk with U.S. Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger on 9 October 1986 and during C.M.C. Vice Chairman Yang Shangkun’s visit to Washington in May 1987. However, the United States only glossed over the issue in the 1970s as discussed in Chapter 1. In the 1980s, it refused to help on the grounds that the Taiwan issue should be settled peacefully by the Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait and that it would not get involved. The end of the Cold War did not leave China well-compensated for its role in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Instead it was subject to economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation and political bashing from the...