When in May 1994 Lee, en route to Central America, landed at Honolulu for refueling, the Clinton administration, out of deference to Beijing’s sensibilities, ordered him restricted to the airport. But in November 1994 the U.S. elections elevated Republican supporters of Taiwan to positions of power in Congress. By then American and Taiwanese money had been gathered to endow a professorship in Lee’s honor at Cornell, where in 1968 he earned a Ph.D. In 1995 Cornell asked Lee to address an alumni reunion. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, with a wary eye on Congress, reportedly gave Beijing the vague assurance that a Lee visit “would be inconsistent with our policy.” Beijing was subsequently infuriated when the Clinton administration allowed what Congress would have demanded: a visa for Lee.
Inconstancy causes misunderstandings, which can cause wars. Granted, there are occasions when carefully calibrated ambiguity can be creative diplomacy, paralyzing an adversary with uncertainty. But on most occasions, and this is one, it is better to heed the advice of Lord Curzon, the British diplomat: Know your own mind and make sure the other fellow knows it, too. The mind of the U.S. government has been somewhat foggy – deliberately so, in part – since President Nixon in his 1972 opening to China embraced the principle of “one China.” The policy has been to pretend that Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait want to live under one sovereignty, and that the passage of time will somehow make things come out right. The problem is, as Taiwan passes quickly to democracy and prosperity and confidence, the passage of time is, temporarily at least, working against convergence.
The law of the land is clear. The Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 commits the United States to “resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people of Taiwan.” But is the administration clear in, and is it being clear about, its own mind? Careless or misinterpreted words by American diplomats may have encouraged North Korea’s invasion of South Korea in 1950 and Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. One wonders if the administration has privately said to Beijing what The Washington Post has said editorially: “If it came to that, the United States would have no choice but to help Taiwan – a flourishing free-market democracy – defend itself against attack by Communist China.”
The task is to keep it from coming to that. Surely Beijing would not attempt anything as militarily ambitious, and foolhardy, as an amphibious invasion across more than 125 miles of water under Taiwan’s F-16s and other weapons the United States has supplied. But with communist ideology dead as a doornail, the Leninists still running China need nationalism to hold the nation together. That partly explains their attempts to treat the South China Sea as a Chinese lake, something else the United States, with its longstanding commitment to freedom of the seas, cannot tolerate. Other U.S. grievances include Beijing’s ghastly human rights abuses, such as the starvation of orphans, Beijing’s refusal to honor its obligations regarding intellectual property rights (pirating U.S. software and CDs) and Beijing’s sales, in violation of treaty commitments, of nuclear-weapons-related material to Pakistan.
China, our sixth largest trading partner (Taiwan is seventh) and the largest potential market for almost everything, is the key to stability in the crescent stretching from Korea to India. The CIA estimates that in 25 years the crescent will contain five of the world’s six largest economies (China, the United States, Japan, India, Indonesia, South Korea – with Thailand pressing Germany for the seventh rank). The hope is that China’s sizzling economy – growth has averaged 10 percent annually since 1990 – will break the political regime to the saddle of civility.
Prosperity and entrepreneurial ferment do not necessarily produce open societies or democratic politics. But sustained economic growth requires the rule of law regarding contracts and other instruments of commerce, the free flow of information, and competition in international markets for an increasingly scarce essential – capital. China may need to invest $1 trillion just in infrastructure in the next 10 years and must export furiously to pay for rivers of imported grains. How much is China willing to risk in the form of legal sanctions and other economic losses in order to combat Taiwan’s assertiveness?
That question is pertinent to the U.S. presidential campaign. Bob Dole recently said he would support a Taiwan seat in the U.N. and said that would be consistent with a “one China” policy. (In 1945 the Soviet Union was given seats for itself and Ukraine and Belorussia.) He also said “it would be all right with me” for any president of Taiwan to visit the United States during a Dole administration. President Clinton will be asked about those matters, and about how he uses, or does not use, the Seventh Fleet to support Taiwan.
But the main aim should be to buy time. The most important sound out of China is not the roar of rockets but the death rattle of the regime. Radical economic transformation is never just economic. There may yet be a convergence between the societies separated by the Strait, a convergence less on the terms of Mao’s heirs than on the terms of the heirs of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.
