Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (90 page)

To regain Taiwan and Hong Kong, and to keep Tibet firmly under Chinese rule, Deng, like other Chinese leaders, was prepared to use armed force if necessary, but he much preferred to expand and maintain control through peaceful means. To gain the cooperation of local people and avoid the use of force, he was willing to grant considerable autonomy. In January 1979, immediately after becoming preeminent leader, Deng announced a policy that proclaimed Chinese sovereignty and ultimately control over Taiwan and Hong Kong, yet also granted a high degree of local independence. The essence of the policy had already been enunciated by Zhou Enlai, but in 1982 under Deng, it was elaborated on and systematized as the “one country, two systems” policy. As part of this policy, Hong Kong and Taiwan would be allowed to keep their very different social systems in place for half a century or even longer. Deng was also willing to grant considerable autonomy to Tibet and to allow it to retain much of its own culture.

Seeking Reunification with Taiwan

Even after he learned that the United States would continue selling arms to Taiwan despite normalization of U.S.-China relations, Deng remained determined to reunite Taiwan with the mainland while he was at the helm.
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The importance of regaining Taiwan did not derive from geostrategic considerations. Instead, the island, which was ruled by China's bitter enemies, was a painful reminder that the Communists had yet not finished their civil war. Even more galling, Taiwan stood as a towering symbol of the century of humiliation inflicted by the imperialists who had taken parts of China.

In his New Year's message on January 1, 1979, the day China and the United States officially established diplomatic relations and only weeks after he became the preeminent leader, Deng made clear how important he considered regaining Taiwan. He listed his three overall goals: (1) achieving the four modernizations, (2) normalizing U.S.-China relations, and (3) setting an agenda for the return of Taiwan to the mainland.
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A few days later, he told a delegation of U.S. senators led by Senator Sam Nunn that the use of Chinese force for regaining Taiwan could not be ruled out, for that would be like tying one's hands behind one's back and it would make impossible any peaceful resolution of the Taiwan question.
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Deng's logic was easy for the Chinese to understand. In their view, without U.S. support, Taiwan would choose to unite with the mainland to avoid being overrun militarily; thus the United States, by maintaining its ties to Taiwan, was blocking this peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue. In January 1980, when Deng spelled out his major goals for the next decade, again one of them was regaining Taiwan.
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At the time of normalization talks he expected, as did Ambassador Leonard Woodcock, that Taiwan would become part of the mainland within several years.

A historical parallel gave Deng particular hope for realizing his plans. In 1683, some twenty-two years after Koxinga, with the remnants of Ming troops, had fled to Taiwan after being defeated by the newly established Qing dynasty, Koxinga's grandson, then the ruler of Taiwan, had agreed that Taiwan would again become part of mainland China. Deng hoped that his classmate in Moscow, President Chiang Ching-kuo, son of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek who had fled to Taiwan in 1949 after being defeated by the newly established Communist government, would follow that precedent. In a 1979 New Year's letter addressed to their Taiwan compatriots, China's National People's Congress (NPC) declared that if Taiwan were to rejoin the mainland, China would respect the island's status quo. Deng also told Senator Nunn's delegation that if Taiwan did rejoin the mainland, it could keep its own social system for as long as a thousand years. Taiwan would have to take down its flags, but it could even keep its own army.
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When he was informed of Deng's proposal, however, Chiang Ching-kuo was defiant: he repeated his intention to increase the military budget, build up his fighting forces, and eventually retake the mainland.
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In addition, he continued to maintain that his “Republic of China” on Taiwan represented all of China, and that the members of his Legislative Yuan represented all of China's provinces.

The U.S. Congress further complicated the situation when, on April 10, 1979, it passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which gave encouragement to Chiang Ching-kuo. The act was designed in part to adjust a variety of agreements
with Taiwan on trade, exchanges, and other fields, steps that were needed since officially Taiwan no longer represented the government of all of China. Yet the content and spirit of the Taiwan Relations Act went beyond these updates to reflect the sentiment of many in Congress who were critical of normalization with the mainland. In normalization discussions, Congress had been kept in the dark, and Kissinger and Brzezinski, preoccupied with relations with China, had given little consideration to the security of Taiwan nor had they fully anticipated the strength of political support in the United States for Taiwan.
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The insulting way that Chiang Ching-kuo in December 1978 had been awakened in the middle of the night to be told that normalization was to be announced a few hours later added to Congressional determination to help Taiwan. Members of Congress, some of whom had received generous financial contributions from Taiwan sources or had connections with American companies selling arms to Taiwan, complained that the normalization process had been no way to treat loyal friends in Taiwan. The act sought to rectify these slights by committing the United States to supply the necessary military weapons for Taiwan to defend itself, and it stated that any effort to resolve the Taiwan Strait issue by other than peaceful means would be a matter of grave concern to the United States.

The spirit of the Taiwan Relations Act made sense in U.S. politics: the United States was being loyal to its ally. But it was out of keeping with the spirit of the normalization discussions with China, and some contended even with the letter of the Shanghai Communiqué of 1972, in which the U.S. government acknowledged that “all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of China.” Issues that later became important to members of Congress—Taiwan as a beacon of democracy, respect for human rights, and rule of law—were not then discussed because Taiwan was still under martial law and exercised repressive measures to control the opposition, practices for which human rights activists then criticized Taiwan and would, on a far larger scale, later criticize the mainland.

Passage of the Taiwan Relations Act infuriated Deng, who was also criticized by other high Chinese officials for not having been tougher on the United States when he negotiated normalization. He was not concerned with the question of whether the Taiwan Relations Act was technically legal; he was worried about its political impact. The act made his deeply felt political mission of finishing the civil war against the Guomindang and regaining control over Taiwan—a mission for which he had fought for so many years
and had seen tens of thousands of his troops die—far more difficult, and perhaps even impossible during his lifetime. Deng objected particularly to the clause that specified that the United States would supply Taiwan with “enough defensive arms to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability.” This U.S. commitment to provide military aid had destroyed Deng's leverage for persuading Taiwan to voluntarily rejoin the mainland.

What more could Deng do to increase the possibility of reaching an agreement with Taiwan? In addition to showing his “feisty” side through diplomatic channels, Deng invited members of the U.S. Congress to China, where he could present China's views directly. On April 19, 1979, Deng told Senator Frank Church, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that the Taiwan Relations Act did not acknowledge that there was only one China. The act, Deng added, contained clauses designed to assist in the defense of Taiwan, which violated the most basic premise of the normalization of relations. (Deng later stated that the Taiwan Relations Act was an even greater problem than the sale of arms itself.
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) Deng also pushed to isolate the people of Taiwan as much as possible. He supported lobbying other countries to keep Taiwan out of regional and international organizations, and he vowed to shut out of the mainland market any foreign company that traded with Taiwan.

Even more disturbing to Deng than the Taiwan Relations Act was the presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan, who vowed to treat Taiwan “with dignity,” including seeking to establish formal relations with Taiwan. On August 22, Reagan's running mate, vice presidential candidate George H. W. Bush, traveled to Asia to meet an infuriated Deng Xiaoping. James R. Lilley, who accompanied Bush (and later served as U.S. ambassador to China), called their discussion a “particularly unpleasant meeting.” Bush tried to reassure China that Reagan would not carry out a two-China policy, but during the meeting, Deng's aides brought him up-to-date news dispatches, including a report of a press conference in which Reagan had said that Taiwan was a country and that the United States should restore diplomatic relations with it and supply whatever it needed to defend itself. Deng complained: “He did it again.”
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He went on to say, “On more than one occasion, Reagan has said he supports official relations with Taiwan. . . . No matter what one's views and positions are on other international issues, if Reagan's remarks and the Republican platform should be carried out, this is bound to damage Sino-U.S. relations.” Deng also announced that if the Republicans continued to support Taiwan, he would be forced to stand up for the “interests of one billion
Chinese.” As much as Bush tried to soften the U.S. stance, Lilley reported, “Deng was unmollified.”
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After Reagan's election, the close bond between China and the United States that had been created during Deng's visit two years earlier gave way to growing Chinese discomfort, as President Reagan nurtured warmer relations with Taiwan and sold more advanced weapons to the island. Deng sought to build even closer relations with the United States; he wanted the Americans' help with China's four modernizations. But he considered the Taiwan issue sufficiently important that he was prepared to downgrade relations with the United States if it officially recognized Taiwan. Deng was absolutely steadfast on the issue. As one American diplomat said at the time, dealing with China then was like pulling apart a clam with one's bare hands.

On January 4, 1981, shortly before Reagan's inauguration, Deng laid down a marker when he met Republican Senator Ted Stevens and Anna Chennault—the ethnic Chinese widow of General Claire L. Chennault, the U.S. Flying Tiger hero who had piloted for China in World War II. Knowing that Anna Chennault was a friend of Taiwan and a member of the Reagan inaugural committee, Deng warned her of the serious consequences for U.S.-China relations if the United States were to encourage Taiwan independence. Deng told his visitors that he wanted to see U.S.-China relations develop, but that China was concerned about some things Reagan had said. Deng said he realized that some things a candidate says before an election are different from what he does after he is elected. But he wanted to clarify his position given comments in an American paper asserting that as long as the United States took an anti-Soviet stance, China needed American help. While acknowledging that China was indeed poor and weak, as the paper had claimed, Deng stated that the remaining comments were false: China, he said, had become independent by its own power, it was not a supplicant, and it would stand up for its views—it would not swallow the Taiwan issue if the United States took a firmly anti-Soviet stance. He further warned that if Reagan were to send a private representative to Taiwan, China would regard this as a formal government decision, a violation of the Shanghai Communiqué as well as a violation of the communiqué on the establishment of diplomatic relations. If these delicate relationships were not handled properly, Deng said, China was prepared to return not to the U.S.-China relations of the 1970s but to the adversarial relations of the 1960s. He was absolutely determined not to allow Reagan to reach agreements with Taiwan that would make it more difficult in
the long run to regain the island, and he let his visitors know unequivocally that China would be watching carefully what Reagan said and did.
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The fear that President Reagan would treat Taiwan as a country was reduced when China's ambassador to Washington, Chai Zemin, was able to attend Reagan's inauguration ceremony. Chai had threatened not to take part if the invited representatives from Taiwan were to attend, and in the end they did not, a development that the Chinese took as a positive sign.
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But Deng remained deeply concerned about Reagan's relations with Taiwan.

Deng then tried to develop a package of carrots for Taiwan that would make improving relations with the mainland more attractive. China drew up a new document describing China's policy toward the island. After showing British Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington a draft in March 1981, this document, written under the direction of Liao Chengzhi, was formally presented to the public in the speech given by Marshal Ye Jianying on September 30, 1981, the day before China's National Day. Marshal Ye was chosen because he had many friends in the Guomindang dating back to his early days at the Whampoa Military Academy during the Communist-Guomindang United Front. Marshal Ye's “nine-point proposal” included the following proclamations:

• Talks should be held between the Communist Party and the Guomindang;