Is Taiwan independent? I have never met anyone in Taiwan who claimed otherwise, although the mainland constantly impeaches Taiwan as a "renegade province" with shrill, militant denunciations. And the PRC asserts that if Taiwan declares independence, such action would be cause for declaring war. It is chilling rhetoric.

In this last installment from notes taken on my trip as an international observer of Taiwan's legislative elections last December, there are two points left to make about the U.S.- Taiwan relation. The first is Taiwan's claim to independence from the mainland. What is the claim, and why should the United States consider it legitimate? The second point is closely related to the first, namely, Taiwan's independence from the mainland is strategically important to U.S. security in East Asia.

So is Taiwan independent from the mainland? The historical record compiled by one of West's most widely acknowledged China scholars, Harvard University's John K. Fairbank, convincingly argues "yes"! And since the saga is not a terribly long and overly complex one, let me share it. Research shows the Manchu dynasty was the first to call Taiwan a "province" of China in 1877. But then the Japanese defeated the Manchu's in 1895 and took Taiwan (well, it was ceded in perpetuity - forever - to the Japanese in the Treaty of Shimonoseki). So Taiwan was Japanese (or Japanese-occupied) from 1895-1945.

And consider this. 

In an interview with American reporter Edgar Snow [1930s], Chairman Mao said: "...we will extend them (the Koreans) our enthusiastic help in their struggle for independence. The same thing applies for Taiwan" (p. 110 in Red Star over China, by Edgar Snow).

Then append this interesting question. To whom did Taiwan belong after the Japanese were defeated in 1945? Answer: 1) the Allied Cairo Declaration (1943) assigned Taiwan to Chiang Kai-shek's (Nationalist) China. In 1945, Chiang's forces were to "temporarily occupy Taiwan, on behalf of the Allied forces." In 1949, Chang was driven from the mainland to Taiwan. It is arguable whether Chiang was the legitimate representative of the Taiwanese, as the leader of Nationalist China, or if he was simply another autocratic occupier. What is not arguable is whether the rulers of the People's Republic were the legitimate rulers of Taiwan, as they now claim. They were not!

Here's another interesting question. Who was the legitimate representative of Taiwan between 1949 and 1971 when the United Nations recognized the People's Republic as the "sole representative of China"? The UN record shows Resolution 2758 was concerned only with the question of China's representation in the United Nations...but not Taiwan's. Taiwan was a separate issue to be dealt with as a follow up on the decisions of the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951-52. This legalistic-appearing argument is really the all-important one because as the last Nationalist Chinese ambassador to the U.N., Yu-tang D. Lew, told me: 

I urged the ROC government to fight the issue [of recognition at the United Nations] on legal, constitutional grounds, and not on political and diplomatic grounds, as that would be a sure loser. My point was that the name of "Republic of China" which is us [now ROC on Taiwan] remains indelible in the UN Charter, of which we were [a] signatory, and we should adhere to the Charter, which legitimizes our membership unless it is amended. (And our name is still in the Charter!)

In 1971 "China" changed hands at the United Nations from the ROC government to the PRC government, and the following year President Nixon and Henry Kissinger joined Mao in Beijing to change the course of cold war history. In signing the Shanghai Communique the United States "acknowledged" the PRC's "one China" policy, which many U.S., Taiwanese and other analysts argue does not mean, "accept or concur with," but rather "take note of." It is usual diplomatic-speak.

In any case, like the ABM (Anti-ballistic Missile) Treaty (made in the same year, also applied to the cold war, and abandoned by President George W. Bush), the Shanghai Communique was necessary for Kissinger to play China off against the USSR in his modern adaptation of "realist" Austrian Prince Clemens von Metternich, Kissinger's dissertation hero. Those cold war days and those surrealist policies are thankfully gone. What remains is the sole contention of the PRC that there is only one China, and it is the sole representative. It is a hollow contention based on a self-serving connecting of the historical dots. But more importantly, U.S. interests now supercede that self-serving rhetoric, and it is time to articulate those interests clearly, as I argued in article 12 because Taiwan's independence from the mainland is strategically important to U.S. security and the stability of East Asia.

My second argument in this article, that Taiwan's independence from the mainland is strategically important to U.S. security in East Asia, centers on the issue of China's maritime expansion. The PRC is projecting its influence and access to offshore oil and gas, as well as making lavish territorial claims to protect its sea-lanes of communication to Persian Gulf oil. These disputed claims assert the right to occupy and control the Paracel, Spratley and Senkaku Islands, among others. And in an even broader claim of "offshore active defense," China asserts a security claim (says Chris Rahman in the Naval War College Review, Autumn 2001) not only of the "first island chain" (Kuriles, Ryukyus, Taiwan, the Philippines to the Indonesian archipelago) but also including the "'second island chain' (stretching from the Bonins through the Marianas and Guam to the Palau island group)." 

The significance of this challenge is that one-half the world's trade passes through these sea-lanes. They are a choke point of inestimable value, if China decided to exercise its might lawlessly...as it did to the United States EP3 reconnaissance plane on April 1, 2001. The United States must work for and hope for a "constructive cooperative relationship" with the PRC, as Presidents George W. Bush and Jiang Zemin agreed to pursue in their February meeting. But recent actions by China clearly show the United States must also prepare for less favorable scenarios in order to protect half the world's sea-based trade. Under such conditions, U.S./Taiwan relations are not just about Taiwan and China; they are about U.S. strategic stability and regional order. Let us not lose sight of the real "end game."