Canberra, 10 December 1971
Confidential
China Policy
Paragraph 5 of the attached savingram from London1 points to a possible future dilemma for Australia should the Government decide to reopen the dialogue with Peking for the purpose of establishing diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China.
2. If and when the Government takes that decision, implying as it does the eventual severance of relations with the Republic of China, it will need to consider the problem of public presentation involved in reconciling its decision with previous Australian statements about the rights of the 14 million people on Taiwan. (The problem need not be tackled immediately the dialogue was resumed, but it would have to be faced once the Government reached an agreement with Peking.)
3. As things stand at present, it should be possible to tackle the problem of public presentation by stating frankly:
a) We have to choose between two Governments, each claiming to represent China;
b) We face a new situation now that the United Nations has recognized and admitted the PRC as the legal government of China;
c) We must adapt to the judgment of the United Nations and the facts of international life (which require inter alia day–to–day dealings with the PRC in international bodies);
d) On an objective assessment of national interest, and since we must choose, we choose Peking as being more important to Australia than Taipei.
4. To some extent, the present ROC claim to sovereignty over all China enables us to side–step, or at least to soft–pedal, the question of the rights of the people of Taiwan—including their possible right to self–determination.
5. If, on the other hand, the ROC gives up its claim to sovereignty over the mainland and sets up Taiwan as a separate state, independent of China and representative only of the Taiwanese people, some of the arguments above will be invalidated or weakened and it will become much harder for us to play down the self–determination aspect in any public presentation of an agreement with the PRC.
6. Moreover, the PRC itself is likely to stiffen its terms for recognition if Taiwan becomes a separate state. It may still be open to us at present (although we cannot be sure) to reach an agreement with Peking on the basis of the Canadian formula, under which we would recognize the PRC as the sole legal government of China, the PRC would assert that Taiwan is a province of China and we would ‘take note’ of this claim without giving it specific endorsement. But once the ROC declares itself a separate. state (e.g. as ‘The Chinese Republic ofTaiwan’), Peking will see relatively little value in statements which recognize it as the sole legal government of China, and will attach greater weight to explicit recognition of its sovereignty over Taiwan as a Chinese province.
7. For these reasons it would seem easier for us to try to negotiate an agreement with Peking before the ROC moves to divest itself of its claims to sovereignty over China as a whole. Conversely, a move by the ROC towards separate status as the government of Taiwan alone would confront us—if we still had diplomatic relations with Taipei at that time—with the need to decide whether to recognize Taiwan as an independent state or not. We have so far avoided making any pronouncement on the international status of Taiwan as such, but we would then have to choose between:
a) recognition of an independent Taiwan, which would be consistent with our past statements about the rights of the Taiwanese people, but incompatible with any future move to establish diplomatic relations with Peking; and
b) non–recognition and withdrawal of our mission, which would open way to diplomatic relations with Peking, but would give us more formidable problems of public presentation than the approach outlined in paragraph 3 above.
[NAA: A1838, 3107/38/18, xxii]
1 Pritchett reported comments by David Wilson, Editor of The China Quarterly. Wilson commented that Australia, with an Embassy in Taiwan, would be of increasing interest to China should movement occur toward the declaration of Taiwan as a separate state: Australia would be positioned to offer recognition, which Peking would be seeking to avoid. Wilson agreed that Taiwan offered Australia the opportunity to show the PRC that it acted with deliberation and regard to principle but added that Australia risked entanglement with Taiwan, entanglement which would impede progress toward a relationship with the PRC.