"Taidu" Muhou—Meiguoren de changyi yu zhengce (Behind the Taiwan Independence Movement: American advocacies and policies) (review)

Reviews 57 much prefer them to unicorns in gardens (James Thurber: Under the circumstances the reviewer perhaps may be allowed one allusion ofhis own). They translate better, too. D. E. Pollard The Chinese University ofHong Kong Shaolin Bao. "Taidu"Muhou—Meiguoren de changyiyu zhengce (Behind the Taiwan Independence Movement: American advocacies and policies) Taibei, Haixia Pinglun Chubanshe, 1993. 198 pp. (Originally published in Hong Kong by Chung Hwa Publishers, 1992.) What has been the United States' role in the Taiwan independence movement? This question has long been neglected by the majority ofAmerican Sinologists due to both the lack of clarity in the policies of successive U.S. administrations and the shift ofresearch focus to the People's Republic of China since the 1970s. Bao's book is one of the few studies that directly addresses this question and provides an answer that may startle many Sinologists in America: the United States has long been and continues to be an advocate ofindependence for Taiwan. Bao's five-chapter book reaches this conclusion by taking a deconstructionist approach to the history of the American encounter with China. He focuses not on what public pledges successive U.S. administrations have made but rather on the contradictions with regard to the "one China" issue between the public policies and pledges made since the Korean War and the views held by the few influential Sinologists with backgrounds as missionaries and intelligence officers in China prior to 1949, when China became formally divided. According to Bao, since many ex-intelligence officers and academics advocating independence for Taiwan later became China policy makers in the administration and China lawmakers in Congress, altruism in the politics ofChinese national reunification has always been, since the conclusion of the Korean War, an underlying principle in official U.S. government policy (chapters 1, 2). Chapter 3 is an assault on John King Fairbank and like-minded culturalists who argued that Chinese culture is embodied in the "mythology" that China should be united at whatever cost (p. 47). In fact, "Fairbank reportedly even encouraged some of his Chinese students to become separatists [of Taiwan from Chiang Kai-shek's republic]" (p. 49). Regarding Robert Scalapino, author ofthe copyrightiQQA1959 C°l°n Reportto Congress,and otherswho also argued for maintaining the by Universityofstatus quo ofTaiwan as separate from the Chinese mainland, Bao wonders why Hawai'i Pressthey failed to ask this question: whose intervention is responsible for the status 58 China Review International: Vol. ?, No. ?, Spring 1994 quo as it is now? (p. 62). To help make his case, Bao attaches an appendix (pp. 110-169) containing translations of the full texts of three pro-Taiwan independence texts (two by Fairbank and one by Lillian Craig Harris) and Bao's own critique of a book on American arms sales to Taiwan by a Taiwan scholar educated at Pennsylvania State University. In chapter 4, Bao looks into declassified American documents concerning covert China operations and research reports by historians in Taiwan and Beijing and finds that America's interest in Taiwan dates back to the mid-1800s, about the same time that the U.S. "opened" Japan (pp. 70-73). Regarding the Korean War period when America's role in Chinese reunification became most visible, Bao finds that the so-called "non-interference" policy was nothing more than a smoke screen. The short chapter 5 (pp. 90-99) criticizes the various legal justifications supporting the passage of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) in 1979. Bao asserts that Taiwan's fate should have been decided by the Chinese (not the allied nations) following their victory in ending Japanese colonialism in mainland China and on Taiwan (pp. 90-91). Therefore, the TRA was nothing more than an unjustified, naked American intervention into domestic Chinese politics. Transcending the book are accounts ofhow some pro-Taiwan independence activists have been "protected" in the U.S. and of the kind of moral support they have received from some congressmen and retired China policy makers from the administrative branch of the U.S. government. Of course, Bao's point is that without the U.S. government's tolerance for such activities, the Taiwan independence movement would not have been as...