Has Secretary Powell mis-spoken on the Taiwan issue?
Chen Ching-Chih 陳清池
Thursday, October 28, 2004. 登於太平洋時報

Freedom-loving Taiwanese are shocked and disappointed by Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Taiwan-related statement made in China on Monday. In elaborating on America’s “one China” policy, he said, “Taiwan is not independent. It does not enjoy sovereignty as a nation.” More importantly, he went a step further in expressing his view that “reunification” is a goal sought by the Taiwanese as well as the Chinese.

The United States is Taiwan’s most important ally. Under the Taiwan Relations Act, the US has a legal obligation to sell weapons to Taiwan for self-defense as well as to come to the aid of Taiwan when it is attacked by China. It is only naturally that the American decisions makers hope to see the disputes between Taiwan and China resolved peacefully. Unfortunately in the last few years the U.S. government has been on a slippery backsliding road to make one concession after another to the rising Chinese might and influence.

Ex-president William Clinton, for example, stated in 1998 while visiting China that the U.S. would not support Taiwan independence. Now Secretary Powell has suggested that eventual “reunification” with China should be the goal of negotiations between Taiwan and China. Not unlike Clinton’s statement, the statement of Powell, if allowed to stand, is a departure from the US promise that it does not wish to dictate the outcome of the peaceful settlement between Taiwan and China. In making his statement, Secretary Powell has clearly leaned to the Chinese position. For the US to dictate the “eventual reunification” as the outcome of the Taiwan-China talk is tantamount to America’s supporting authoritarian, repressive China’s eventual annexation of democratic Taiwan.

We hope the white House will disown Powell’s view. It is also hoped that the US will morally refrain from crushing the self-determination dream of the Taiwanese, who until recently had suffered under harsh alien rule of the Dutch, Manchu Ching, Japanese, and Nationalist Chinese successively for nearly four centuries.