Giving Taipei a Place at the Table
Article Summary and Author Biography
Taiwan's campaign to return to the United Nations merits serious attention. China is hurting its own interests by failing to understand the factors--most important, the democratization of Taiwan--that drove Taipei to seek membership. Taiwan knows that the road to the United Nations ultimately goes through Beijing, and China can promote the goal of eventual reunification if it endorses Taiwan's bid. Given that Taipei has made its U.N. participation negotiable, Beijing should recognize the opening that is being presented.
Ross H. Munro is Director of the Asia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was a correspondent in Asia for Time magazine, and The Globe and Mail during the 1970s and 1980s.
LET TWO CHINAS BLOOM
What in the world is Taiwan up to? More than two decades ago, the Republic of China on Taiwan was forced out of the United Nations when a majority of U.N. members voted to seat the People's Republic of China. At that time Taiwan adamantly refused to endorse any formula that might have allowed it to retain its U.N. membership alongside the P.R.C., which was being given the Security Council seat. Now Taiwan is pressing for a role in the United Nations under almost any conditions. Launched in mid-1993, Taiwan's all-out campaign to return to the United Nations is being widely dismissed even by some of its friends as quixotic at best. Nevertheless, it merits serious attention in Washington, and even more so in Beijing, because it is emblematic of the rapid democratization of Taiwan's politics that is transforming its foreign policy, particularly toward the P.R.C.
The rationale for Taiwan's U.N. stance is that, while the Republic of China (R.O.C.) remains committed to the idea of one China and thus theoretically to the eventual reunification with the mainland, a separate government has ruled the island and its now 21 million residents continuously since 1949. And it has ruled well: Taiwan boasts a modern economy that provides a good living standard for the vast majority of its citizens and a political system that has virtually completed the transition to democracy. Today Taiwan outstrips most U.N. members in GNP (with the world's twentieth-largest economy), trade volume (the world's thirteenth-largest), and population (larger than that of two-thirds of the U.N. membership). Following the precedent set by Germany and Korea of dual representation for divided nations, the Republic of China on Taiwan clearly deserves a place in the U.N. system.
CHINA'S HOLLOW VICTORY
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