Taiwan After Chiang Ching-kuo

The uncertain outlook in Taipei following the death of President Chiang Ching-kuo on January 13 has underlined the dilemmas confronting American policymakers as they seek to develop stable ties with the People’s Republic of China while at the same time fulfilling U.S. obligations to Taiwan. When the United States and China established diplomatic relations nine years ago, they were able to paper over their differences on the future of Taiwan. Increasingly, however, this sensitive problem has become a focal point of conflict between Washington and Beijing.

Characterizing its policy as one of noninvolvement, the United States says that it does not care whether, or how, the island is reunified with the mainland, so long as force is not used. Reagan Administration spokesmen have carefully remained within the confines of the Shanghai Communiqué of February 1972, in which the United States "acknowledges" that "all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China."

Secretary of State George Shultz has resisted continuing pressures to endorse Deng Xiaoping’s "one country, two systems" model for reunification. He made a cautious gesture to Beijing in early 1987 during a visit to China, when he said that the United States "welcomes" the current growth of trade and contacts across the Taiwan Strait, expressing support for "a continuing evolutionary process toward a peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue." But P.R.C. leaders argue that the American role in Taiwan obstructs progress toward an accommodation. Pointing to U.S. sales of weaponry and military-related technology to Taipei, which have totaled more than $6 billion since 1979 and will approach $800 million in the 1988 fiscal year alone, Beijing contends that Washington continues to be deeply involved in what is the final stage of the Chinese civil war.