Canberra, 6 January 1972
Confidential
China—I.M.F. and I.B.R.D.: Draft Submission to Minister2
I greatly appreciate the opportunity to comment on your draft submission to the Minister on the position to be taken by the Australian Executive Director in the I.M.F. as to the representation of China in the Fund.
2. On first reading, I felt that the draft submission was too closely confined to the issues raised by the Treasurer and the Fund staff, and that the recommendations to be made to the Minister ought to be put more clearly in the wider perspective of their bearings on Australia’s relations with and policy towards the People’s Republic of China. I have since learnt however that, concurrently with your own draft, a submission on the wider issues is being prepared by the North Asia Division.3 I shall therefore not comment in detail here on the substance of the wider issues. I have seen a revised draft of para.s 17 to 19 prepared by Mr M.J. Cook,4 with which I am in broad agreement. There is however one point on which my own view seems to differ both from Mr Cook’s and from your own. On this I comment below.
3. Both your own draft (para. 11) and Mr Cook’s paper (twice in para. 19) refer to Australia as, legally, regarding the Government of the R.O.C. as the Government of ‘all China’. I do not think this is any longer a correct analysis. It does not take into proper account, as it seems to me, of the public statements made during 1971 by the Prime Minister and by successive Foreign Ministers, still less of the implications of the resolutions that Australia co–sponsored in the General Assembly, which were wholly in line with what Ministers had said in Australia.
4. To propose, as Australia did at the United Nations, that the P.R.C. should be seated in the General Assembly, and as a permanent member of the Security Council (in the latter case to the exclusion of the R.O.C.), necessarily implied, in my view, the rejection of Australia’s former recognition of the R.O.C. as the Government of all China. So also the ‘non–expulsion’ resolution necessarily implied, in my view, recognition of the R.O.C. as a Member of the U.N. in its own right as a state. This in fact was precisely one of the things that Peking and the supporters of the Albanian resolution most strongly objected to. In their long–settled doctrine, the so–called R.O.C. was not a state at all. It was a province of the P.R.C., in which a rebel army had unlawfully usurped the government.
5. In fact and in law, recognition of a government (or of a state) does not carry with it any implied recognition of the territorial claims that that government makes vis–a–vis any other government. For example, in according recognition to and establishing diplomatic relations with the Republic of Ireland, Australia is not to be taken as recognising the Irish Government’s legal claim to sovereignty over the Six Counties. Likewise there would be nothing to prevent Australia from recognising both the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China, aware but taking no position with regard to the asserted claim of each to sovereignty over all China. But the People’s Republic has confused this issue by refusing to enter into diplomatic relations with any state that does not agree to ‘recognise’ it as the sole legal government of China—a phrase which is intended to necessitate, and in practice does necessitate, withdrawal of recognition from the Republic of China.
6. In my view, the Australian action in the General Assembly impliedly abandoned its former position of legally recognising the Government of the R.O.C. as the Government of all China. Instead, by virtue of the ‘Chirep’ resolutions, Australia impliedly took the more realistic position of continuing to recognise the R.O.C. but without any commitment to its territorial claims. However, the Albanian doctrine’ (para. 4 above) prevailed. In dealing therefore with the representation of China in the specialised agencies, the policy of ‘abstention’ has enabled Australia to accept passively, in effect, the application to the R.O.C. of the ‘Albanian doctrine’.
7. In relation to the monetary agreements, the question has arisen whether Australia should not, in its own interests, take active steps to retain for the R.O.C. membership of the agencies concerned. In effect, this would reject the ‘Albanian doctrine’ and revert to the position that Australia had taken in the General Assembly.
8. As stated in the draft submission, a decision on this question cannot usefully be taken by reference to the operations of the monetary agencies alone. The bearing of the decision on the question of the possibility of Australia’s entering into diplomatic relations with the P.R.C. must also be considered. On doctrinal grounds alone, the P.R.C. must be assumed to be strenuously opposed to continued membership by the R.O.C. of any international agency. A non–state cannot be party toa multilateral treaty.In addition, any strengthening of Taiwan’s private enterprise economy by recourse to International finance must be strongly repugnant to the P.R.C.’s ideas for incorporating the province into the socialised economy of the mainland.
9. I would not myself want to modify the specific reasons given in the draft submission for not taking, at present, a decision to support action in favour of retaining membership for the R.O.C. in the monetary agencies. But my principal reason for this would be to gain time for Ministers to consider the present proposals further, in the light of the China question as a whole.
[NAA: A1838, 3107/38118/, xxii]
1 P.J. Flood, Assistant Secretary, Economic Policy Branch, Department of Foreign Affairs.
2 Not found. A different draft, and the final submission, exists in NAA: A1838, 3107/36/2/6, i. The drafts appear to have advocated discreet support for retention of the ROC’s position in the IMF and IBRD, though the final argued that Australia should probably abstain on any vote.
3 See Document 294.
4 M.J. Cook, Assistant Secretary, North Asia Branch, Department of Foreign Affairs.