Canberra, 22 February 1971
China: Recognition of Peking by France and by Canada Respectively
You asked, I think, for elaboration of the view I have expressed several times in and around the Department that, in recognising Peking, Canada found itself forced to concede more than the French had done.
2. According to its own doctrine, France ‘recognises’ only States, and not Governments. As regards Governments, the French say, the only question is whether or not to establish diplomatic relations with them. For present purposes, however, I do not think this really matters.
3. The joint Franco-Chinese Communiqué of 27 January 1964, was as follows: ‘The Government of the French Republic and the Government of the People’s Republic of China have jointly agreed to establish diplomatic relations. With this in view, they have agreed to designate Ambassadors within three months’.
4. Both before and after the issue of this Communiqué, the French Government emphasised that the decision to recognise the People’s Republic did not oblige France to break her existing diplomatic relations with the Republic of China. It was in fact Taipei that took the initiative in breaking off diplomatic relations and withdrawing its Mission.
The joint Communiqué on the establishment of diplomatic relations between Canada and China, however, was in terms which made it necessary for Canada to break off diplomatic relations with Taipei. In paragraph 2 of the Communiqué, Canada merely ‘takes note of’ the reaffirmation by Peking that Taiwan ‘is an inalienable part of the territory of the P.R. C.’. But by paragraph 3 of the Communiqué
‘the Canadian Government recognises the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal Government of China’.
This, as Mitchell Sharp candidly admitted, made it necessary for Canada to break off diplomatic relations with the R.O.C., since the Chiang-Kai-shek Government claimed also to be the Government of China.
5. Mitchell Sharp, in elaboration of paragraph 2 of the joint Communiqué, said in the House of Commons that the Canadian Government ‘does not consider it appropriate either to endorse or to challenge the Chinese Government’s position on the status of Taiwan’. I do not myself think this was anything more than a window-dressing formula, to conceal Canada’s de facto acceptance of Peking’s position. Canada’s support of the ‘Albanian Resolution’ at the General Assembly really made this clear. Mitchell Sharp had earlier said several times to me that to offer recognition to both Republics would not be a possible solution, since neither would accept it and Canada did regard it as a major matter of policy to establish diplomatic relations with Peking.
6. In point of strict chronology, I think it is probably true that Taipei did order the withdrawal of its Mission in Ottawa before the Canadian Government could itself act to break off relations. But Mitchell Sharp’s candid admission that in any case Canada would itself have had to take this step immediately distinguishes Canada’s position from that of France in 1964.
7. How long De Gaulle would have been able to maintain his initial position in the face of a protracted refusal by Peking to establish an Embassy in Paris so long as the R.O.C. Embassy remained is perhaps open to question. On 28 January 1964, Peking issued a trenchant declaration that it was as the sole legal representative of the whole Chinese people that Peking had negotiated with Paris; and that under international law the recognition of Peking necessarily implied withdrawal of recognition from Taipei. On the following day (29 January 1964) Paris reacted to this statement by declaring that what Peking has said ‘does not modify the position taken by France’. But Taipei broke the threatened deadlock by withdrawing its Mission on 10 February 1964, saying that to continue diplomatic relations with France would involve recognition of the unacceptable ‘two Chinas’ concept.
8. It seems to me that by confining the Communiqué to ‘the establishment of diplomatic relations with the P.R. C.’, France neatly avoided being drawn into any discussion of the territorial status of Taiwan. By the time the Sino-Canadian negotiation began in 1968, Peking had evidently learnt from its experience with France, and felt itself in a position to take a tougher line.
[NAA: A1838, 3107/38/18, iii]