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An
event forty years ago (February 19, 1972) brings back memories that are at once
exhilarating and maddening for me. This was the day on which the “Shanghai
Communique” was jointly issued by two governments at the end of President
Nixon’s trip to China.
The
exhilarating part of the memory, which I didn’t know until thirty-three years
later after the verbatim account of the talks had been declassified, was the
attention in the talks given to how human rights
leader Dr. Peng Ming-min escaped from Taiwan two years earlier. Chinese Premier
Chou En-lai was convinced that the U.S. authorities had spirited Peng out on a
U.S. military aircraft and suspected that the U.S. secretly supported the
independence of Taiwan.
President
Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger protested that they didn’t
know. Chou probably didn’t believe them, but they were telling the truth. They
didn’t know that my former wife, Judith, and I, with Dr. Peng, two other
missionary couples, a missionary in Hong Kong, an American Quaker friend in
Japan, and two Japanese, arranged for his escape disguised and on a commercial
airline flight to Hong Kong, then to Sweden. None of us had experience with
escapes. But determination and luck trumped naiveté and Chiang Kai-shek’s
Stalinist style security system. Chou, Nixon, and Chiang all went to their
graves without knowing of our roles in Peng’s escape. The thought of three of
the most powerful people in the world in that Beijing room not knowing still
makes me chuckle.
But
not much! What comes back with those memories is sadness that Dr. Peng was in
exile, separated from his family and homeland. Hsieh Tsung-min and Wei
T’ing-chao, who with Dr. Peng were our two closest colleagues and friends, were
in the Detention Center of the feared Garrison Command at Jing-mei south of
Taipei. They were arrested February 23, 1971, a week before Judith and I.
Unlike the “fireproof moths” we were as U.S. citizens, Hsieh and Wei were being
horribly tortured with wounds from which they would never heal.
Then
there was the maddening agreement Nixon and Kissinger approved. In a PBS
presentation in 1999, the Communique on Taiwan was summarized in this
way:
the PRC firmly rejected any "two Chinas" formulation, declaring unequivocally that "the Government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government of China" and "Taiwan is a province of China." The U.S., in deft phrasing, acknowledged "that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China," but neatly avoided the question of who should govern this "one China."
What
Kissinger’s “deft phrasing” didn’t avoid was the false statement that all
Chinese on both sides maintain that Taiwan is a part of China. While Chiang and
his Nationalists who had lost the civil war and retreated to Taiwan in 1949 and
proclaimed it “Free China,” the majority population of the island knew better;
they were clear that Taiwan was neither “free” nor “China.” In one simple sentence,
Nixon and Kissinger put the U.S. on record accepting China’s false claim that Taiwan
was a part of China.
The
declassified account of the negotiations indicated that Nixon and Kissinger
were quite willing to give Taiwan to China without regard for what the people
of Taiwan wanted. According to James Humes, a speechwriter for Nixon on the
trip, Nixon’s overriding goal was to drive a
wedge between the People’s Republic and the Soviet Union. The people of Taiwan
were expendable, if they entered Nixon’s mind at all. The only restraint was
Nixon’s concern that “Congress and the American people wouldn’t stand for it [giving
Taiwan to China].” He said he needed time to convince them.
It
would be seven years and after three more
communiques
before diplomatic relations would be established between the U.S. and the
People’s Republic of China. But the Shanghai Communique gave U.S. legitimation
to China’s claim to Taiwan.
Some
with Nixon hailed the agreement as
ending a generation of bitterness and taking
an historic first step in creating a world of peace. To me, it sounded
like British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 agreement at Munich that gave Hitler
the right to annex Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland. Chamberlain called it “peace
in our time.” Czechoslovakia, who was not represented at the conference, called
it the “Munich Betrayal,” which was how I viewed Nixon and Kissinger’s Shanghai
Communique in 1972. Like the Czechs, the people of Taiwan had no part in giving
their land to the Chinese.
The
Communique was a betrayal of the people of the Taiwan. It was not the first nor
would it be the last. Decisions made in
ending World War II did not result in liberation for everyone. In fact, those
decisions resulted in the enslavement of millions of others, including the
people of Taiwan. The treaty signed at Yalta in 1945 between Roosevelt,
Churchill, and Stalin defined postwar zones of control, opening the door to the
Soviet occupation of eastern and central Europe, and giving Taiwan to Chiang
Kai-shek.
Chiang’s
occupation of Taiwan in 1945 was another betrayal of the people of the island.
The Nationalists on Taiwan were as brutal and corrupt as they were on the
Mainland. After an incident on
February 28, 1947, there was a civil and largely peaceful uprising.
Taiwanese sent an appeal for reform to Chiang, still fighting the Communists on
the Mainland. In response Chiang sent troops that massacred ten to thirty
thousand Taiwanese, beginning the forty years of “White Terror.”
Against
overwhelming odds, Taiwan has become a democracy. Freedom and democracy are
precious but fragile, and can be lost far easier than attained. The main threat
to Taiwan China
Freedom
loving people may only hope that U.S. citizens won’t stand for betraying the
people of Taiwan again, that the Taiwanese have an opportunity to decide their own
future, and not continue to be pawns in China/U.S. geopolitical games as they
have been for so long.
- Milo Thornberry
