United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently said, “We remain committed to our ‘one China’ policy…We do not support Taiwan’s independence.”
Blinken may have been speaking on behalf of the U.S. government, but he was not speaking on behalf of the American people. Poll after poll has shown that a majority of Americans support diplomatic recognition of Taiwan as a sovereign independent country.
Possibly, Blinken’s statement did not even represent his personal views or the views of his boss, President Joe Biden. Veering off script, Blinken has twice referred to Taiwan as a country, and President Biden has bluntly stated that Taiwan is independent.
Biden made an even stronger expression of support for Taiwan's independence when he vowed on four separate occasions that the U.S. military would help defend Taiwan against potential Chinese aggression.
If the majority of Americans as well as their elected representatives support Taiwan’s independence, then why does Secretary Blinken not just say it? Who is the “we” that he claims to represent?
Blinken explained that America’s “one China” policy is guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the three Joint Communiqués, and the Six Assurances.
These documents were written more than 40 years ago by individuals who, for the most part, have since passed away. The documents are the product of negotiations with two separate authoritarian Chinese regimes, the victorious Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in China and the defeated Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) that fled to Taiwan. Both regimes claimed to be the sole legal government of China and staunchly opposed permanent independence for Taiwan. They each hoped that Taiwan and China would eventually be unified under their own rule.
When the KMT occupied Taiwan after World War II, Taiwanese had already lived under Japanese rule for 50 years. They spoke Japanese and a mix of Taiwanese, Hakka, and Indigenous Austronesian languages.
They did not identify as Chinese nationals because they literally were not. When the KMT lost the Chinese Civil War in 1949 and more than a million Chinese fled to Taiwan, the Taiwanese still outnumbered the new Chinese immigrants by a factor of roughly six to one.
Because the Chinese were a minority, democracy was considered a threat to the KMT’s survival. Dissent was brutally crushed. The KMT forced the Taiwanese to learn and speak Mandarin, the national language of China, and to adopt a Chinese identity.
The Taiwanese were not supposed to have a choice about their future. According to both the CCP and the KMT, Taiwanese were going to be a part of China whether they liked it or not. Shamefully, the United States government was complicit in the denial of Taiwanese self-determination.
In 1979, the U.S. switched diplomatic recognition from the nationalist Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan to the communist People’s Republic of China (PRC) in China. The Normalization Communique stated, “The United States of America acknowledges the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China.” The Taiwanese position was so irrelevant that the U.S. did not even mention it.
The 1982 US-PRC Joint Communique reiterated that the U.S. will maintain “unofficial relations with the people of Taiwan” and that the U.S. has “no intention” of “pursuing a policy of ‘two Chinas’ or ‘one China, one Taiwan.’” This meant that the U.S. would not recognize Taiwan as a sovereign, independent country under any circumstances, regardless of whether it kept the old ROC constitution or replaced it with a new Taiwanese one.
After the death of the Chiang dynasty, the ROC government began to democratize, allowing Taiwanese to govern themselves for the first time. They had no desire to fight the CCP for territory that was never theirs to begin with.
Most Taiwanese abandoned the Chinese identity imposed on them by the KMT and began to proudly identify as Taiwanese. According to a 2023 public opinion survey, less than 3% of people in Taiwan identify as solely Chinese, while more than 60% now identify as solely Taiwanese.
Despite the dramatic evolution in personal identity, Taiwan’s national identity remains stuck in the past. Remnants of Chinese authoritarianism still remain, such as the KMT party itself, the ROC name, as well as the ROC flag, which bears the emblem of the KMT.
For many Taiwanese, symbols of the ROC are symbols of oppression, which trigger thoughts of a traumatic past. What they feel when they see an ROC flag is akin to what African-Americans may feel when they see a Confederate flag.
A 2022 public opinion survey found that more than 70% of Taiwanese would favor a declaration of Taiwan’s independence if the PRC did not threaten to invade in response.
The notion of declaring Taiwan’s independence is a misleading concept because, to uninformed foreigners, it suggests that Taiwan is a part of the PRC, even though it never has been. Formal independence is actually a reference to changing the ROC constitution.
It would entail redefining the ROC’s territory as the territory that it actually controls, renouncing claims to territory lost to the CCP, changing the country’s formal name from the “Republic of China” to the “Republic of Taiwan,” and adopting a national flag that represents Taiwan’s democratic future rather than its authoritarian past.
In 2020, when a BBC reporter asked President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) if she “in principle” supports a formal declaration of Taiwan independence, she rejected the premise of the question. She said, “We don't have a need to declare ourselves an independent state. We are an independent country already.”
Earlier this month, a Bloomberg reporter asked Vice President and 2024 presidential frontrunner Lai Ching-te (賴清德), “Do the Taiwanese people want formal independence, and do you want formal independence?” Lai echoed President Tsai’s position, saying, “Taiwan is already a sovereign, independent country called the Republic of China.” He added, “There are no plans to change the name of our country.”
Part of the reason there are no plans to change the name of the ROC is because amending the ROC constitution would be challenging under the current circumstances. It requires approval from three-fourths of the legislature and holding a public referendum, at a time when the PRC is escalating its military intimidation.
Instead of pursuing a constitutional amendment, which is desirable in principle but difficult in practice, Taiwan’s leadership is currently pursuing a more achievable goal of simply regaining the diplomatic recognition that the ROC lost in 1979. Lai said, “If a Taiwanese president can enter the White House, we will have achieved the political objective that we have been pursuing.”
Recognizing both the ROC and PRC would require abandoning the “one China” policy. Although the constitutions of the ROC and PRC claim the entirety of each other's territory, this is not a barrier to dual recognition.
Most countries in the world, including the PRC, have a “two Korea” policy, recognizing both the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), even though both Koreas claim the territory that the other Korea occupies.
Taiwan has risen to the top of global freedom and democracy rankings, and it stands on the front lines against PRC authoritarianism. Taiwan deserves America’s recognition now more than it ever did under the KMT regime.
Whether Taiwan keeps the old ROC constitution or adopts a revised one is for the Taiwanese to decide. Their preference should have no bearing on U.S. recognition, because it will not change the fact that Taiwan is already just as independent as South Korea.
When Antony Blinken said the U.S. government does not support Taiwan independence, it betrayed America’s core values, misrepresented the views of the American public, disrespected the views of the Taiwanese public, and signaled weakness in the face of PRC intimidation. The U.S. government's commitment to a “one China” policy is outdated, out-of-touch, anti-democratic, pro-authoritarian, and morally offensive.
Americans support Taiwan independence. The U.S. government should too.
