Canberra, 16 March 1972
Secret
President Nixon’s visit to China and
the Joint Communique
A. THE VISIT
Public attention has naturally concentrated on the joint communique issued at the end of President Nixon’s visit to China from 21–28 February 1972. But in many ways the most significant and portentous development was the very fact of the visit itself—a visit by President Nixon, the Head of State and Commander in Chief, to a country which the USA had been fighting, militarily, economically and politically, directly or by proxy, for 20 years; a country with which the USA had no diplomatic relations and to which the USA had not even accorded diplomatic recognition; a country which had heaped vituperation on the President personally and on the policies of his and previous Administrations. Chinese agreement to the visit was an equally remarkable bouleversement, for much the same reason but for the additional reason that the US had made it publicly and repeatedly clear before the visit that on the issue of central importance to China—Taiwan, which the PRC had always previously insisted must be settled first before serious discussions on anything else could be begun—there was no prospect of the USA’s breaking its diplomatic links or security treaty with the ROC and that there was therefore no prospect of its entering into formal diplomatic relations with the PRC.
2. What prompted this extraordinary development? Both sides must have been impelled by powerful motives in seeking to establish a working if wary relationship with each other rather than a relationship of simple hostility across the board.
3. For the USA’s part, there were probably factors such as a realisation that the policy of containment had not worked and that the cost in terms of damage to the national fabric, as well as in money and men, of pursuing an unsuccessful policy was too high; a judgement that the policy of containment had proved to be not only unsuccessful but also unnecessary, because there was no longer a Communist bloc, because the Sino–Soviet split was clearly irreparable, and because China for all its aggressive words was restrained in its deeds and need no longer be regarded as a clearly–defined threat in Asia; a judgement that the USA could better influence China’s development and policies by helping to bring it out of what President Nixon called its ‘angry isolation’ than by using only the ‘big stick’ approach; a desire to seize what might have been only a fleeting opportunity offered by the end of the Cultural Revolution and changes in China’s leadership, and before either Mao died (since Chou on his own might not have been able to carry through such a marked change of policy) or China’s nuclear capability went too far; a realisation that a better relationship with China could be an advantage in the USA’s dealings with the USSR and free the USA to some extent in determining its place in the quadrille now forming up in north Asia; and a desire to make it easier to engage and to influence China on many practical matters of great importance such as Law of the Sea questions. President Nixon would also not have been unmindful of the electoral advantage he could gain from a visit.
4. On the Chinese side, the principal judgements probably were that better relations with the USA would help China to cope with its greatest fear, the USSR, by bringing in the USA as a counterpoise—perhaps even a deterrent—to the USSR; would bring pressure on other countries—particularly Japan, China’s second fear for both immediate economic and longer–term military reasons—to modify their policies in respect both of the USA and China; would make even more improbable a US threat to China; would encourage the continued contraction of US power and influence in Asia; and would not damage—indeed, could enhance—China’s prospects of eventually recovering Taiwan.
5. Thus for both the USA and China there was the prospect of gaining important advantages from the visit itself and all it symbolised, quite apart from whatever could be agreed during the visit and expressed in a joint communique.
B. THE JOINT COMMUNIQUE1
6. This began with a statement by each side of its position in general and on particular subjects; went on to an agreed statement of general principles; returned to individual statements by each side on the Taiwan issue; and concluded with another agreed statement on the concrete agreements reached.
[ matter omitted ]
Taiwan
17. In this section of the communique the PRC stated squarely that ‘the Taiwan question is the crucial question obstructing the normalisation of relations between China and the United States’, and went on to reaffirm in standard terms its well–known position on the Taiwan issue.
18. The USA for its part, however, used new language which was taken by many—and was probably intended—as giving the appearance of a shift in US policy towards the PRC. Most attention on this score has been concentrated on the references to the progressive reduction and ultimately the complete withdrawal of US forces and military installations from Taiwan. These references were certainly striking, especially as they followed hard upon the heels of the Chinese assertion in the communique that ‘all US forces and military installations must be withdrawn from Taiwan’, and may have been one of the reasons why President Nixon and Mr Chou had to stay up into the early hours of the morning finalising the Taiwan passages in the communique. But what many of the critics and the fearful missed, until it was pointed out by Dr Kissinger and Mr Green, was that in general the references were no more than an application to Taiwan of the Nixon Doctrine;2 and that in particular the ‘ultimate objective’ of complete withdrawal was hinged to the prospect of a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves, and the interim objective of progressive reductions was hinged to diminution of tension ‘in the area’—by which phrase, Dr Kissinger explained, was meant ‘the general area’, not ‘any particular part of Asia’.
19. In any case, the US military presence on Taiwan numbers only some 8,000, about three–quarters of whom are connected with the Viet Nam war effort. The question of force withdrawals is thus not of much intrinsic importance even to Taiwan, except in so far as even 2,000 US personnel on Taiwan would serve as a ‘trip–wire’. Certainly force withdrawals is not nearly as important a matter as the continued presence in the Pacific of the US Seventh Fleet, and the continuation of the US/ROC security treaty and the US commitment it contains to defend Taiwan.
20. In that connexion, many—not least the ROC—were troubled by the lack of any reference in the communique to the treaty. But as Dr Kissinger explained, to have included such a reference would only have drawn a counter–reference by the Chinese denouncing the treaty; and in any case Dr Kissinger was at pains to explain, while still in China, that the American position on the treaty as set out in the President’s foreign policy report had not changed. Moreover, he followed this up by stating that the PRC knew he would be making such a statement.
21. Another element in the American position on Taiwan as expressed in the communique was the reaffirmation of United States interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves. This was not new either in terms (it had been expressed before by Dr Kissinger, late last year, and by President Nixon himself in his foreign policy report of February 1972) or in substance (both the PRC and ROC have long known that the USA would not countenance any attempt by either China to effect a settlement by force). But it does serve as a formal disengagement by the USA from its previous position as a party principal to the Taiwan dispute; and it signals the new point of US acquiescence in advance in the dispute’s being settled by the return of Taiwan to the sovereignty of the PRC provided it is done peacefully. Moreover, while not in terms urging the ROC to treat with Peking (something the ROC has said it will never do), and while specifically disclaiming any attempt to urge either party to follow any particular course, President Nixon simply by making his statements that Taiwan is a matter to be settled peacefully by the Chinese themselves is in effect putting pressure on the ROC to negotiate with the PRC. (While Mr Marshall Green during his visit to Australia told us that the USA would neither encourage nor discourage contacts between Taipei and Peking, it is interesting that in the past the US Embassy in Taipei has thrown out the thought, in ‘personal’ and discreet soundings with ROC officials well known to the Embassy, that there might be specific areas of concrete interest to both the ROC and PRC, such as sea–bed resources, on which it might be mutually advantageous to reach some sort of understanding.)
22. The remaining—and only strictly novel—element in the communique regarding Taiwan is the United States ‘acknowledgement’ that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China; and the statement that the US does not challenge that position.
23. Some have interpreted this to mean that the USA has formally taken up a ‘One China’ position. This is not so. Indeed, the US has been careful not to endorse the ‘One China’ concept: the USA simply does not challenge it. Moreover, the US (unlike Canada, for example) has been careful to acknowledge that both Chinas take the position that there is only one China, of which Taiwan is part. Nevertheless, although Mr Marshall Green has told us that ‘not challenge’ meant the same as ‘take note’, in one respect the US can be said to have gone further than those countries like Canada which have ‘taken note’ of Peking’s claim to Taiwan: Canada has said that it neither challenges nor endorses Peking’s claim, while the USA has left open the question of whether or not it endorses the One China concept.
24. Nevertheless, the USA has gone very close to endorsing ‘One China’. This has an important consequence. The ROC can hardly object to what the USA has said, since ‘One China’ is the ROC’s formal position. Yet some on Taiwan, including some senior Ministers and officials, have recently been moving in their thinking towards the creation of a separate, independent Taiwan, which is seen as the best way of preserving the reality of the ROC even if it means giving up the myth of eventually returning to the mainland. But such thinking (which Marshall Green said the USA would not be encouraging, though he doubted it even existed) is anathema to the ‘old guard’, notably President and Mrs Chiang. It is of course possible that the ROC leadership (perhaps after Chiang’s death) will one day opt for a separate, independent Taiwan, in which case the USA will be put in a difficult position. But the very fact that the USA has now gone so far in the direction of ‘One China’ must inhibit those on Taiwan seeking a new direction. For example, before moving to create an independent state on Taiwan, the ROC would need to be very sure that the US security treaty would continue in force; but what are the chances of the US’s now agreeing to that?
25. Another consequence of the US statements in the communique on ‘One China’ is that it has undercut the possibility of self–determination for Taiwan. This has been something with which indigenous Taiwanese have been toying for years. Admittedly the prospects of this being allowed by the ROC leadership have always been slender indeed. But the US position, which makes no distinction (as Mr Marshall Green made very clear to us during his visit here) between the native Taiwanese (the majority) and the Mainlanders, must have discouraged the former in their ambitions and even in their hopes of getting greater representation in the ROC governmental system, which is dominated almost exclusively by Mainlanders.
[ matter omitted ]
CONCLUSIONS
(a) The very fact of the visit’s having been sought, agreed and successfully made marked a point of departure in the policies of both the USA and China. The visit may not have been ‘a week that changed the world’. It may not even have set the USA and China on ‘parallel paths in Asia’. But it certainly represented the breaking of the set pattern of hostility in which Sino/ American policies have been immured for a generation. This in turn has to a considerable extent freed both countries to pursue more flexibly, and less trammelled by past policies, their own interests in the new balance of power which is emerging in North Asia, and in their bilateral relations with their main preoccupation, the USSR.
(b) None of this would have been possible without very considerable shifts by both sides. The principal US shift—the conscious ending of the policy of containment, and all that is expressed and implied in the Nixon doctrine—was made some time ago. The principal Chinese shift—agreement to set on one side the Taiwan issue and not to insist (as heretofore) on making it a hurdle of principle to be cleared before going on to other matters—is much more recent, as is China’s almost equally important decision no longer to make the Indo–China problem a central issue in Sino/US relations.
(c) The new relationship between China and the USA has not been established without cost, principally in the form of a reduction in the trust reposed in them by their allies—notably North VietNam and Japan—and the consequent likelihood of those and other allies themselves turning to more flexible and independent policies.
(d) Nor is the new relationship without its contradictions, especially for China’s policies. For example, by agreeing to set Taiwan on one side and to develop what will be only just short of normal relations with the USA, China has removed from the USA the necessity to choose to stick by Taipei at the expense of getting nowhere in its relations with China, or to choose Peking at the expense of abandoning Taipei. (The removal of this necessity to choose between Peking and Taipei is unlikely to be extended by China to countries of lesser importance to it than the USA.) Another example of a ‘contradiction’ is China’s wish to see US power and influence removed from Asia, but not if it leads to the substitution of the USSR for the USA or to Japan’s feeling compelled to acquire greater military strength (perhaps even including nuclear weapons) of its own.
(e) The shift in the communique in the US position on the Taiwan issue is in many ways more apparent than real. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the USA is now clearly no longer a party principal to the dispute between the two Chinas, is perfectly willing—perhaps even wishes—to see the ROC absorbed into the PRC provided only that it is done peacefully, and is not interested in setting up an independent state of Taiwan.
(f) The shift in the communique in China’s position on the Taiwan issue is in many ways more real than apparent. China has in fact abandoned its former insistence on the need to reach agreement with the USA on Taiwan before moving on to other issues, and has agreed to the development of what amounts to normal bilateral relations across the board, drawing the line only at the establishment of conventional diplomatic relations. Nevertheless, China maintains its legal position on the Taiwan issue and no doubt reckons that time, and the effects on the ROC of all that underlies the visit and the joint communique, are on China’s side.
(g) The mutual understanding over Taiwan seems to be that the PRC will maintain its position of principle that ‘the liberation of Taiwan is China’s internal affair in which no other country has the right to interfere’ but will in fact do nothing about it by force; while the USA will maintain its position of principle that it stands by its security commitment to the ROC but will in fact refrain from making too much of it and will remove some of the outward signs of that commitment.
(h) The implications of the visit and communique, and all that underlies them, will be long in the working out. But already it is clear that many of the old verities which guided the policies of the USA’s allies are no longer to be relied upon, that the great power quadrille now forming up in North Asia will not be composed of permanent and opposed partners, and that it will be necessary for the middle and smaller powers to work out their own salvations through greater self-reliance and more flexible and independent policies.
[NAA: A1838, 3107/401161/4, vii]
1 For the text of the communique see Current Notes , vol. 33, 1972, pp. 50–52.
2 See footnote 3, Document 135.