Richard Bush: The American position on Taiwan, as we’ve stated it since June 27, 1950, was that Taiwan’s status was undetermined. We fundamentally changed our view on what was going to happen to Taiwan. We didn’t say it wouldn’t be returned to China, but we indicated that it would happen at a later time, under better circumstances. At the time of the San Francisco Peace Conference, we insisted that the treaty say that Japan renounced sovereignty over Taiwan, which had been a Japanese colony for 50 years, but the treaty did not say to whom Japan was transferring sovereignty. The United States and its allies could not agree, moreover, on which Chinese government should attend the San Francisco Peace Conference, the Republic of China on Taiwan or the People’s Republic of China on the mainland. So, there was no Chinese government at the San Francisco Peace Conference. Instead, we engineered a separate bilateral peace treaty between Japan and the Republic of China. And in that treaty as well, Japan renounced sovereignty over Taiwan, but didn’t designate to whom it would be transferred, which was a tad annoying to the Republic of China.
So, this has been our stated position for a long time. It was essentially reconfirmed in the normalization communiqué establishing diplomatic relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China in 1979, where we said, the government of the United States acknowledges the Chinese view that Taiwan is a part of China. In other words, we made clear that China’s view was not our view. There are practical reasons why this was important. If we recognized that Taiwan was a part of China, that would mean that it really was China’s internal affair, as Beijing was saying, and that what existed between the two sides of the Strait was a civil war. According to international law, the United States shouldn’t be in the business of providing arms to one side in a civil war, nor should the United States be intervening militarily to defend one side in a civil war against another. A late friend of ours, Alan Romberg, studied this issue very carefully and came to the conclusion that, essentially, our position still is that Taiwan’s status is undetermined. It doesn’t mean it couldn’t be resolved in some way, but it should be done through negotiations between the two sides of the Strait.
R. Bush on the US position on #Taiwan:
We engineered a separate bilateral peace treaty between Japan and the ROC. And in that treaty as well, Japan renounced sovereignty over Taiwan, but didn't designate to whom it would be transferred.
Our position still is that Taiwan's status is #undetermined.
