Poor Treatment Of Taiwan.

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The foundation for normal diplomatic relations with China lies in three Sino-U.S. joint communiques that were issued in a different time and under dramatically different circumstances. Tense Cold War competition, U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, and martial law on Taiwan led U.S. officials to make accommodations and concessions to China in those documents that today seem unnecessary or counterproductive. Chief among China's outdated notions was its desire to limit U.S. contact with Taiwan's leaders and to isolate Taiwan from the world.

Tough treatment of Taiwan as part of America's broader China policy is based on a particular interpretation of two policy statements in the joint communique. In the 1972 Shanghai Communique? 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." This is the origin of the so-called one-China policy, further refined in the 1979 Normalization Communique? when the United States recognized "the government of the People's Republic of China as the sole legal government of China" and vowed within this context to maintain only "unofficial relations with the people of Taiwan."

On the basis of these diplomatic statements, some within the U.S. government have circulated internal guidelines that severely restrict contact with Taiwan officials in the United States as well as travel to the United States by Taiwan's top leaders.

These internal guidelines have led U.S. officials to oppose Taiwan's membership in most international organizations. The most formal articulation of these guidelines is the Administration's 1994 Taiwan policy review. Such constraints undermine Taiwan's standing in negotiations with Beijing and its ability to participate meaningfully in international organizations--an explicit goal of the 1994 review.