Taipei, 11 March 1969
Secret
China
I was most interested to read the record of your conversation with the Canadian High Commissioner on 4th February on the above subject.1 One passage in particular caught my attention, viz: ‘The future status of Taiwan had not been resolved in the post-war settlement; since that time Taiwan had acquired for itself a degree of viability and self-confidence which was increasing as time went on and which surely entitled it to an assured, independent future if this were what it wanted—and there was no evidence that it wanted anything else’.
One difficulty I have with this statement is the suggestion that Taiwan’s viability and self-confidence ‘entitles’ it to an assured, independent future. Whilst we have traditionally recognized the G.R.C. as the Government of China, the fact that the Nationalists have made an economic success of Taiwan does not give them any legal ‘entitlement’ to be the Government of Taiwan, as distinct from the Government of China. As you know, one thing that the Communists and the Nationalists agree on is that Taiwan is part of China, although I agree with you that the status of Taiwan was never clearly resolved in the post-war settlement. As a matter of international law, the question of where sovereignty resides in respect of Taiwan is a nice lawyer’s argument which is certainly beyond my competence to debate. However, when the Japanese surrendered Taiwan to the Nationalists in October 1945, both the Nationalists and the Communists regarded this act of surrender as a formal act of retrocession of Taiwan to China. Meanwhile, since that time no allied Government has been disposed to champion the cause of Taiwanese independence, or to dispute the Chinese assertion that the Japanese surrender constituted an act of retrocession to China. In other words, it is difficult to deduce from all this that Taiwan has any legal status or the right to an existence as anything other than a part of China. To the extent, therefore, that the G.R.C.’s claim to represent the whole of China becomes weaker, so also does the legitimacy of their rule over Taiwan become weaker. Morally, the only people on Taiwan entitled to an independent future are the ten million Taiwanese, but most of them are resigned to the fact that they cannot hope to remain outside the Chinese orbit. The only question for them is whether they are ruled by Taipei or Peking.
This brings me to the second point in your statement which caused me some difficulty, namely that ‘there was no evidence that it (Taiwan) wanted anything else’ but an assured, independent future. To those of us here who are subjected to almost daily assertions by the Nationalist press and propaganda machine that the Communist regime is on the point of collapse, and exhorted to prepare for the day of ‘national recovery’ and return to the Mainland, the suggestion that the G.R.C. is content with its lot as the de facto Government of Taiwan is plainly not true. Indeed, one of the difficulties in carrying on a meaningful dialogue with a Nationalist official is that everything has to be predicated on the somewhat unreal assumption that the G.R.C.’s present writ is only a temporary one and that the return to the Mainland will be accomplished in due course. Whatever we may think about this proposition, it is one that the G.R.C. cannot afford to abandon, because once it concedes that it is not the Government of China, it has no legal status at all. It has certainly never claimed to be the Government of Taiwan (except in so far as Taiwan is a ‘Province’ of China), nor could it legally sustain such a claim. As the defeated party in a civil war, its only hope is to overthrow the Peking Government in order to sustain its claim to legitimacy. As we both know, our continued recognition of the G.R.C. is based on moral, not legal grounds, and therein lies our difficulty in the future. The assumption seems to be that eventually we (and the Americans and others) can force Peking and Taipei to accept a separate State of Taiwan under Nationalist rule. In other words, we appear to assume that eventually Peking can be induced to accept two Chinas and that the Nationalists, whatever their propaganda may say to the contrary, would be quite happy to contemplate their future as being confined to Taiwan. I don’t believe that either of these propositions is correct, but even if the Nationalists were forced by the pressure of events to settle for Taiwan, there is no evidence to suggest that Peking will retreat one inch from its claim to be the only legal Government of China, including Taiwan. On the contrary, with a number of countries currently seeking to recognize Peking, is there any reason to suppose that the Americans (or anyone else) have enough leverage to induce Peking to abandon its claim to Taiwan, particularly when the claim rests on such strong historical, ethnic and legal grounds?
For what it’s worth, I do not myself believe in an ‘assured, independent future’ for Taiwan. I am convinced that just as both parties to the dispute recognize Taiwan as part of China, ultimately nationalism will triumph over ideology and Taiwan will become part of China in fact as well as in theory. (I should perhaps add that I am not alone in professing this heresy. It is shared by many foreign observers in Taiwan including representatives whose Governments are firm supporters of the G.R.C.) One can only hope that the China problem will ultimately be settled by peaceful means. My own guess is that when the Nationalists finally accept that they cannot persuade the Americans to help them fight their way back, they will endeavour to negotiate with Peking. As President Chiang Kai-shek has stated many times: ‘the Chinese problem can only be solved by the Chinese people themselves’. The same point was recently echoed by Senator Fulbright2 in a paper presented to the meeting of the Japanese–American Parliamentary Group in California on 24th January. Fulbright said: ‘Can the Chinese themselves solve the seemingly intractable problem of Taiwan? My answer would be that, in the first place, only they can solve it. And in the second place, surely both the Chinese on the Mainland and the Chinese in Taiwan have a mutual interest in reaching a solution. The two million Chinese on Taiwan cannot continue to justify their role in the world on the obviously fictitious argument that they represent the eight hundred million people of Mainland China; it is difficult enough for them to justify the argument that they represent the eleven million Taiwanese. And surely at least the future leaders of China, and perhaps even the present Peking Government, will not wish to continue to see the assumption of China’s proper role in Asia blocked in perpetuity.’
Finally, I should like to make it clear that nothing I have said is intended as a criticism of our China policy to date. Despite the inconsistencies in our policy, I fully accept that this is not the time to start making concessions to Peking. On the other hand, we should not, in my view, be content simply to go on defending the status quo indefinitely, if only for the reason that there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the status quo cannot be maintained much longer. After all, our diplomatic support for the R.O.C. as the Government of China is a fiction that we may have to abandon sooner than we think. If as I, and a good many other observers here believe, the two Chinas concept will not work, we should be thinking about other possibilities. There are, of course, numerous possibilities ranging from a complete take-over by Peking to the establishment of an autonomous self-governing province which is nevertheless recognized by all parties as a part of China. Even the latter would be anathema to the Nationalists at the present time, but it is probably the most they can hope for in the long run.
There is one last point. I have heard our China policy defined as: ‘We do whatever the Americans do’. Apart from the fact that the statement is not true, U.S. policy on China probably represents the biggest blunder that the Americans have ever made, and consequently Australia needs to do its own thinking on China. In any event, one of the lessons of Vietnam is surely that we cannot assume that the Americans will always consult us if and when they decide that the time has come to attempt to settle the China problem.
[NAA: Al838, 519/3/1, x]
1 McIntyre’s comments, quoted below, were made within the context of remarks by the Canadian High Commissioner (A.R. Menzies) that he ‘could never get anything from the Department except completely negative and defensive arguments against any accommodation with Peking’.
2 J. William Fulbright, US Senator from Arkansas.