Posted on 10/28/2004 7:29:24 AM PDT by tallhappy
Thursday, October 28, 2004, 12:00 A.M. Pacific
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Powell backpedals on Taiwan remarks
By Reuters and The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday carefully avoided repeating a suggestion he made earlier this week of an eventual reunification of China and Taiwan.
Powell's suggestion, made during a visit to China, alarmed Taiwanese officials who regard the island as an independent nation.
Asked about the comment, Powell reverted to the U.S. State Department's long-standing position that China and Taiwan should seek a "peaceful resolution" of their disagreements. He took no position on the outcome in comments to CNBC, according to a transcript released by the State Department.
Powell, in a pair of television interviews Monday in Beijing, said the United States holds that there is only one China and that Taiwan is not an independent nation. He went on to suggest that Taiwanese and Americans as well as Chinese are seeking to bring about the island's reunification with the mainland.
The comments, broadcast by CNN and the Hong Kong-based Phoenix news channel, veered noticeably from the standard formulations of U.S. policy, which was worked out in three U.S.-Chinese communiqués issued after President Nixon resumed contacts with China in 1972.
China has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan since their split at the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949 and has threatened to invade if the self-ruled democratic island, which it regards as a renegade province, formally declared independence.
The fuss demonstrated anew the high level of tension across the Taiwan Strait and the strained formulas that China and Taiwan use to argue about their long standoff. But it also drew attention to an expanding gap between U.S. policy, which has not changed in a quarter-century, and Taiwan's steadily evolving idea of itself as an independent country determined not to be swallowed up by China.
Alarmed, Taiwan's leaders accused Powell of springing an unfair surprise with a major policy shift and reaffirmed their passionate insistence that the island is independent, in fact if not in law.
"Other countries, with or without formal diplomatic relations with us, cannot affect or deny the current situation and the fact that the Republic of China, or Taiwan, is a sovereign, independent country," President Chen Shui-bian said in Taipei on Tuesday.
Now Taiwan is politically free and democratic. It makes as much sense for Taiwan to be part of China as it does for the US to become part of the UK again.
The view that taiwan is Taiwan and China is China has now won elections and will continue.
They want to be their own people, as do Americans, and don't trust China anyhow.
In my opinion this makes sense and is the best thing -- even if China becomes free.
Yah, which contradicts your earlier comment that the "last time the United States acted as Nationalist China's protector (1941) it brought us the attack on Pearl Harbor, involvement in World War 2, and 400,000 dead."
War with Japan happened because Japan wanted war with us, not simply because we were protecting China. President Bush has said that allowing murderous tyrannies that attack their neighbors to go unchecked threatens all of us. That premise is applicable ot Imperial Japan in the 1930s and 40s.
You may be right that the people support independence, but the "The KMT insists that the ROC is an independent country," so what is the dispute? What good would a declaration of independence do? How would the U.S. react to such a declaration? I think badly. It could cost Taiwan vital U.S. support.
I agree and the President of Taiwan agrees and that is the view I am talking about.
It is the KMT, or Pan-Blue, that keep making some sort of distinction which makes no sense. They are also the ones trying to stop the arms sales. They sound like liberal dems now.
That's funny, I thought their indignance at Powell's remarks reminded me of you.
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