12. The Taiwan Question: An obstacle to U.S.-China relations

China and the United States have severed diplomatic relations five times

Looking back at history, since the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States, Sino-US military exchanges have been interrupted a total of five times: the political turmoil in 1989, Lee Teng-hui's visit to the United States in 1996, the US bombing of the Chinese Embassy in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999, the Sino-US plane collision incident in 2001, and the US arms sales to Taiwan in 2008.

The five interruptions of Sino-US military exchanges have common characteristics, and they were all provoked by the United States first.

When a sovereign country handles its own sovereign affairs, especially when it comes to its own security affairs, it has no choice but to make corresponding statements. The interruption of each round of military exchanges was not made by our side on its own initiative, but was made by force and under the grim security situation.

Since the suspension of China-US military exchanges in October 2008, the US side has repeatedly expressed its desire to resume military exchanges with China. Because China-US military exchanges are a very important part of the exchanges between the two countries to build deep mutual trust. It is also an important barometer of the relations between the two countries, and the suspension of Sino-US relations is first of all the suspension of military relations. From this point of view, the resumption of Sino-US military exchanges is of great indicative significance to the relations between the two countries.

The main reason for the suspension of Sino-US military exchanges this time is the US arms sales to Taiwan -- the United States has sold more than $6 billion worth of weapons to Taiwan, which is unprecedented in terms of international law and the law of state relations.

It is very difficult in the history of state-to-state relations to have such a situation in which a country sells a large number of weapons to a part of another sovereign state, and although it claims to be defensive weapons, the impact on that country is very heavy. So in this case, Sino-US military relations are temporarily suspended.

The main cause of this suspension is that the United States sells arms to Taiwan, so the United States wants to resume military exchanges with China, showing a relatively positive posture. First of all, Keating, commander of the Pacific Headquarters, has spoken on many occasions and expressed great hopes for the resumption of Sino-US military exchanges. Immediately after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited China, she undertook a very important task for the US military, and the US military asked Hillary Clinton to convey her hope for the resumption of Sino-US military exchanges.

However, on the way to Japan, Hillary Clinton told the media that the United States will continue to assist Taiwan's defense in accordance with the Taiwan Relations Act and sell defensive materials to Taiwan.

Hillary Clinton spoke in the same tone as before. In the past, every time the United States sold arms to Taiwan, the reason was to invoke the Taiwan Relations Act. This Taiwan Relations Act is a domestic law passed by the US Congress and Senate.

This is a very ridiculous law. The dominance of the United States with a domestic law that overrides international law and the law of international relations can also be seen from this level.

Since Obama took office, he has made some good statements about establishing a benign interactive relationship with China and getting out of the financial crisis as soon as possible. Clinton's visit to China also brought a lot of good information, and she also quoted a Chinese idiom called "helping each other in the same boat".

You said that you want to be in the same boat, and on the one hand, you will row with us through the crisis, and on the other hand, you will think about other problems, which will have an impact on the relationship between the two sides.

Of course, Hillary's statement can also be understood as her usual political statement. Because this is Hillary's first trip to Asia as secretary of state since Obama took office, she will inevitably fulfill the so-called security commitments of the United States to Japan and South Korea. Including her invoking the Taiwan Relations Act, she wants to say something face-saving.

The Chinese also have a saying, "Listen to their words and watch their deeds." The most important thing is to see what she does, and she says yes, and we listen. If she continues to sell arms to Taiwan, especially offensive weapons, it will be another matter.

But to be honest, it is very difficult to distinguish between offensive weapons and defensive weapons.

For example, the F-16 sold by the United States to Taiwan in the early 90s of the 20th century, and the Mirage 2000 fighter sold to Taiwan by France, are they defensive weapons? Completely offensive weapons.

She explained that Taiwan has sold offensive weapons to Taiwan, but there is no ammunition, such as medium-range air-to-air missiles and air-to-ground missiles, and Taiwan bought a large number of them, but the United States detained them and refused to hand them over, so they were placed in the United States, Guam, and Okinawa for safekeeping, and then paid for them to the Taiwan side when needed.

As a matter of fact, the so-called US commitment to sell only defensive weapons has been broken, and the US commitment to reduce arms sales to Taiwan year by year, as stated in the 1982 "August 17 Communique." Now it's all big orders of billions of dollars or tens of billions of dollars.

Not to mention the relationship between the two armies, this has a great impact on the relations between the two countries.

The premise for the resumption of normal military exchanges between China and the United States is that both sides pay attention to each other's security concerns. In particular, the US side should respect the Taiwan issue and China's core national interests.

American hegemony

The Chinese Government strongly condemns and solemnly protests against US arms sales to Taiwan. The US State Department argues that US arms sales to Taiwan are conducive to Taiwan's security and stability.

The United States believes that it must listen to everything it says in this world and that all regional security must be maintained by it, so it prefers to regard this country as two parts of permanent division, as it did with Germany in the past -- East Germany and West Germany, and today it treats North Korea as well, and it treats both sides of the Taiwan Strait in the same way.

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and Germany faced reunification, US President George H.W. Bush was very clear that he was against German reunification.

At that time, the social system and ideology of the West German-Federal Republic of Germany were exactly the same as those of the United States. However, in the process of pursuing national reunification, the United States resolutely opposed the imminent reunification of the two Germanys. At one point, the United States even wanted to win over Gorbachev in the Soviet Union and stop the process of reunification between the two Germanys.

What's more, our social system and ideology are completely different from those of the United States. In the future reunification of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, the United States will certainly try all kinds of ways and use all kinds of means to prevent China from completing the process of reunification. In fact, this point has been clearly revealed through arms sales to Taiwan.

Comrade Deng Xiaoping said that the Chinese people have never done anything sorry for the American people, so today we need to think about it in reverse: Why is the United States repeatedly doing things that are sorry for the Chinese? Why did the United States repeatedly do things that were sorry for the Chinese, and we took appropriate measures, but only expressed our limited anger and limited protests, which caused such a big backlash from US public opinion? That is to say, it seems that the Chinese should swallow the bitter fruit by nature, and only when the United States sells arms to Taiwan does the Chinese not say anything, and we must also say that the US arms sales to Taiwan are conducive to peace in the western Pacific region and the East Asian region, and only then can the United States be satisfied and find an ideal partner.

Such an ideal partner existed in the era of colonialism. But in today's independent China, since Mao Zedong announced in 1949 that the Chinese people have stood up since then, we should never expect China, as a sovereign country, to agree, tolerate, and acquiesce to part of the US arms sales to China!

Americans have repeatedly talked about the China threat theory. Let's look at what security problems the United States is facing now, and what are the security problems facing China.

China is still facing the most traditional security issue, that is, the issue of sovereign independence and territorial reunification. The United States does not have this problem at all, and the territory of the United States can reach Hawaii and Guam, and there is no piece of land that has not been reunified. In this sense, the security pursuits of China and the United States are completely different.

Today, China is still fulfilling its most traditional task, how to effectively safeguard its territorial integrity, sovereign independence, and national dignity. The United States, on the other hand, is pursuing freedom of action in the world, control over major regions of the world, and control over major resources.

So to this extent, how does China threaten it? It sells arms to a province of China, a sovereign state, and it obviously poses a serious threat to China's territorial integrity, China's national dignity, and China's sovereignty and independence. When the Chinese recognize this threat and take countermeasures, it is perfectly fine.

We can look at it the other way around, and there are some arguments in Europe, including Japan, that Alaska is pursuing independence, and that Hawaii is pursuing independence. So, how would the United States react if China sold weapons to Alaska and Hawaii, which pursued independence? The United States must have been furious, must have thought that war is coming, and must have declared that it should enter a state of war.

When the United States pursues hegemonism, it expects other countries to swallow the bitter fruit it has given to others, and as the Chinese people really stand up, not only materially, but also spiritually, Americans should never expect the Chinese to swallow this bitter fruit.

Accomplishing our own national sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity is our firm belief, and this is the goal that many generations of Chinese have worked towards, and we will never give up and will never waver in the slightest degree in our goal just because the Americans sell weapons to Taiwan.

Military subordination to economy

The military is not a separate field, the military is actually subordinate to politics, so what is politics subject to? Politics is largely subordinated to the economy today, so Marx has this assertion, which is why everything comes from the economy.

Marx's analysis of the basic laws of capitalism is to start with capital and surplus value, revealing the secrets of capital and the laws of capital. That's why Marx said that all problems are due to the economy. The same is true of U.S.-China relations.

Of course, if we observe Sino-US relations according to Marx's thesis, we will find that China and the United States seem to have great differences, such as different social systems, different ideologies, and different national strategic goals.

Today, however, there is one of the greatest convergence tendencies, that is, the complementarity and softness of the Sino-US economies established by China and the United States, which has become a spectacle of the world economy. No one expected that the economic relationship between China and the United States would reach such a level, for example, in 2008, when trade between China and the United States exceeded $330 billion. This trade volume is very large, in fact, it has surpassed the other trading partners of the United States.

The trade between the United States and the North American Trade Community, Canada, and Mexico has a lot of preferential border inspection, exemption from inspection, no tariff, tax rebate and a series of other preferential treatments, and it has many restrictions on China, such as prohibiting the export of high technology to China and prohibiting the import of a series of Chinese goods. Under such restrictions, since the trade between China and the United States has reached 330 billion US dollars, it exceeds the trade between the United States and the European Union, and the trade between the United States and Japan. It is conceivable that the volume of trade between China and the United States has reached a level where the two sides complement each other.

It is very difficult for Americans to live without China, and this is a completely new relationship, and the relationship between the two countries is built on this basis, and the political relationship between the two sides has to be adjusted according to the economy.

The same is true of military relations, which must be subordinated to the needs of politics and national interests. That's why we often say that no matter how dissatisfied the US military is with us, how wary it is against us, and how much it harbors a Cold War mentality toward us, it has to take care of US national interests.

Although Hillary Clinton, as President Clinton's wife, has been to China before, she was in a different capacity this time in 2009, making her first foreign trip as secretary of state, especially in the new Obama administration. She walked in order, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, and then to China. The U.S. side claimed that the last stop, China, was the most important stop on the Asian trip.

It is difficult to talk about a lot of substantive things at this stop, but her visit to China hopes to build understanding and trust between the leaders of the two sides, which is more important than anything else.

Henry Kissinger, a veteran US diplomat, once told Hillary Clinton that it is much more important to win understanding and trust between leaders and leaders in China than to talk about specific matters. Kissinger said that Americans are mainly keen to talk about specific things, but in China, the first thing is to gain trust. It's whether you are worth talking about, whether you are trustworthy, what purpose you have, what intentions you have. Building trust among leaders is important in Eastern politics. That's why Kissinger warned Clinton to keep this in mind and build trust with China's leaders.

So Hillary Clinton's visit to China, of course, has a purpose, but she doesn't care about the specific results. She's actually on a journey of discovery, a journey of trust, or a journey of building basic relationships.

Of course, Hillary's trip paid off. After her visit, the common-sense talks between China and the United States to resume military exchanges began.

U.S.-China Defense Meeting

On 27 and 28 February 2009, the Chinese and US ministries held their annual working meetings in Beijing, and Qian Lihua, director of the Foreign Affairs Office of the Chinese Ministry of National Defense, said at the beginning of the meeting that the Chinese side agreed to the US proposal for a national defense meeting only after proceeding from the overall situation of bilateral relations, but the restoration and development of relations between the two militaries has a long way to go, because none of the obstacles have been removed.

The first major obstacle to Sino-US military exchanges was the forced suspension of Sino-US military exchanges in October 2008 -- US arms sales to Taiwan. The sale of arms to a province of a sovereign State cannot be tolerated by any sovereign State.

The second major obstacle is that the United States has been conducting coastal reconnaissance of our country for many years, including a series of surveys by the navy and air force, mainly the navy, including hydrogeological surveys, bathymetric surveys, and Haitian current temperatures.

These surveys are very close to our coast, fully penetrating into our 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone, and sometimes even approaching our contiguous zone, which could trigger a series of maritime conflicts. The plane collision incident in 2001 was of such a nature.

These are all actions that the US side has done to affect the normal relations between the Chinese and US militaries.

Of course, there are also some potential problems of military encirclement of China. Among the series of military agreements reached between the United States and China's neighboring countries, including the "US-Japan Security Treaty," the ROK Treaty, and a series of military agreements between the United States and Thailand, these also pose potential damage to Sino-US relations.

Because the underlying consciousness of all this is to build a latent or invisible military encirclement with China as the main hypothetical adversary. Including the nuclear strike target announced by the United States in 2000, China was listed as a target for future nuclear strike by the United States. These are many of the military aspects of the act.

On the other hand, the US Congress has passed a series of legal documents, which in fact constitute an obstacle to the development of Sino-US military relations. For example, the "DeLay Amendment" passed by the US Congress in 2000 set a number of restrictions on the content of military exchanges between China and the United States, the venues for exchanges, including the level of exchanges, and these are the main obstacles to Sino-US military exchanges.

During the Sino-US national defense meeting, the Chinese side proposed that "respect," "mutual trust," "reciprocity," and "reciprocity" be taken as the basic principles for developing relations between the two militaries.

This is because there are basic norms that both sides must abide by in developing relations between countries. For example, the Five Basic Principles of Peaceful Coexistence put forward after the founding of the People's Republic of China. We have been abiding by these five basic principles for a long time, and this is true for any country.

The establishment of the three joint communiques on Sino-US relations is also of such a nature and is a basic criterion. Of course, sometimes the US side violates these norms, such as the August 17 Communique, and sometimes the US side violates it, and when it does, we take out this communiqué to remind it of its violation of the communiqué, which is a basic provision that regulates and restricts the code of conduct of both sides.

The military relationship between China and the United States is highly sensitive, and it is difficult to establish and easy to damage. The damage to Sino-US state relations begins with the damage to military relations, and the restoration of Sino-US state relations ends with the restoration of military relations.

China and the United States are two big countries, and the establishment of long-term stable relations between these two powers is not only conducive to the security of both China and the United States, but also to the security of the Asia-Pacific region. Under these circumstances, it is interesting to establish a solid norm for Sino-US relations. Such a norm, if both sides can be restrained and regulated, will undoubtedly be helpful for the development of Sino-US relations.

Bush Jr. realization

Since the Bush administration in China, the United States has become more sober and attaches more importance to the Taiwan issue, which is China's core interest.

In the past, when we said that the Taiwan issue involved the core interests of the country, the US side to a large extent thought that it was a very simple political declaration. When President George W. Bush visited Beijing in 2002, the question at Tsinghua University was very stimulating to him.

At that time, President George W. Bush himself designated the students who asked the questions, not the people from China. George W. Bush appointed the first student to stand up and ask the Taiwan question, and the second student stood up and asked the Taiwan question. George W. Bush was very surprised that it was the Taiwan issue again!

From this series of questions, whether a politician or a military figure, he recognizes an emotional question. This perceptual cognition is no less precious than rational cognition, and there is no rational cognition without even perceptual cognition.

Through contacts with ordinary Chinese and ordinary Chinese students, Bush Jr. felt that the Taiwan issue occupies a vital weight in the entire consciousness of the Chinese nation and in the entire national interests. So throughout President George W. Bush's tenure, he took this issue very seriously.

China has such a very strong public opinion, and there is no room for concession on the Taiwan issue, which involves China's core national interests. On this issue, both the US political and economic circles, including the US military, have gained a deeper and deeper understanding of this issue.

Obama's pressure

The new century has entered a new stage, and the United States is facing difficulties, the crisis of the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus a financial crisis; China's role in maintaining international peace and economic growth has increased substantially, and China-US relations are on a completely different platform than in the past.

Therefore, many people at home and abroad have made an assessment that under such circumstances, the United States should be more cautious about arms sales to Taiwan, and may even eventually cancel them. In fact, the international power struggle is often not so simple.

When Obama came to China, he tried to avoid making a decision to sell arms to Taiwan before his visit to China. He postponed this decision, which may be a technical solution, that is, to try to maintain good relations and a good atmosphere between China and the United States during his visit to China.

So after the end of the visit to China, can we sell arms to Taiwan? This is a big issue in Sino-US relations.

From the perspective of the United States, it is only a utilitarian consideration to add some friendly atmosphere between the two sides before Obama's visit to China, and after the visit, the United States can immediately take actions that are unfavorable to China, which is not a normal exchange of mutual trust between the two countries.

Although the final decision on arms sales to Taiwan is on Obama's desk, there is no doubt that there is still a lot of pressure from the Pentagon-military, even from American industry.

The pressure from the military calls for strengthening Taiwan's armed forces and strengthening its ability to compete with the mainland; The pressure from the economic circles and the defense and military industry circles, after all, this is a big deal, more than $6 billion.

Of course, we hope that Obama will cancel arms sales to Taiwan, but we also have to see that our hopes are largely a bubble. This is because U.S. policy is not decided by one person, it is a long-term and fixed national policy of the United States.

As long as there is a gap in arms sales in a country, from the perspective of US national interests, it will certainly have to drill into this gap.

According to Russian media, the timing of the US revelation of arms sales to Taiwan is a hidden mystery, and the United States wants to persuade China to support the Iranian nuclear issue in the UN Security Council by threatening to engage in arms deals with Taiwan.

There is a possibility of such an analysis. In Western politics, it is common practice to bargain and exchange benefits to achieve an end. However, we still want to stress that these are two completely different issues, and if we link one China's internal affairs with the Iranian nuclear issue, it is not only far-fetched, but also completely unacceptable to China.

Once we accept it, more problems will inevitably arise in the future, and we will all use the Taiwan issue as a kidnapping. It's like terrorists committing terrorist acts, kidnapping a hostage and making all sorts of demands. Is the United States using arms sales to Taiwan as a means to kidnap China? This is dangerous.

Looking back at the history of the past 30 years, we can see that from time to time the US Government has used arms sales to Taiwan to sting China, and this is based on the so-called "Taiwan Relations Act."

We must take countermeasures, and this countermeasure must punish and damage the other side. We should send a strong signal to the world: It is impossible for anyone who infringes on the interests of the Chinese nation and China's national interests without retaliation, and it is impossible for anyone to do such a thing without risk or cost.

Attached: Three Sino-US joint communiqués

The Joint Communiqué between the People's Republic of China and the United States of America signed on 28 February 1972 (the "Shanghai Communiqué"), the Joint Communiqué between the People's Republic of China and the United States of America on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between the People's Republic of China and the United States of America published on 16 December 1978 (the Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between China and the United States) signed on 17 August 1982. In the three joint communiques, the United States has stressed the need to uphold the one-China principle, and they are important historical documents on Sino-US relations and China's Taiwan issue.

In the "August 17 Communique," the United States made a three-point commitment on the issue of arms sales to Taiwan: 1. The quality and quantity of US arms sales to Taiwan do not exceed the level of the United States and China in recent years since the establishment of diplomatic relations; 2. The United States is prepared to gradually reduce arms sales to Taiwan; and 3. This issue will be finally resolved after a period of time.