Why reaffirming one China principle is a just cause

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OPINION

By George Musiime

A profound misconception I have heard regarding the One-China principle is the notion that countries, especially in the global south, support this position because of a vested interest in guaranteeing continued Chinese investments in their economies. Uganda also reaffirmed its commitment to the One-China Principle once again as it marked 63 years of Uganda-China relations, raising the question of whether Uganda acted out of self-serving sycophancy.

With more than 180 nations worldwide giving the policy a nod, to those aspiring to see a fair and peaceful world, Uganda’s reaffirmation of the One China principle can neither be surprising nor disappointing.

Albeit being situated on the other side of the strait, Taiwan has always been Chinese territory, and was one of the provinces of China as early as 1885. This historical continuity was only interrupted when the Qing dynasty ceded the territory at the end of the 1^st Sino-Japanese War in April 1895. As one of the concessions agreed to in the treaty of Shimonoseki at the end of this conflict, Japan would occupy Taiwan along with other concessions; even then, it was an occupied territory. It shouldn’t be an intricate deduction that as the occupying force left Taiwan became as before a part of sovereign China.  

Indeed, following victory in the Chinese people’s war of resistance on August 15^th 1945, Japan was forced to vacate all Chinese territories it had hitherto occupied— including Taiwan. Therefore, it would follow that even before the United Nations resolution 2758 of 1971, Taiwan had become what it was pre-1895, [a province in the People’s Republic of China] with the defeat of the Japanese imperial army. The assumption that Taiwan sort of became an autonomous territory after 1945 is akin to saying Scotland would, for instance, cease to be a part of the United Kingdom if an invading force ran over Glasgow— even after the invader was later defeated.

To address the part on [just cause], let’s look at what happened after the war ended. Previously, during the period between 1895-1945, Taiwan was a territory occupied by Japan. Notably, though, neither Germany nor Italy got a permanent seat on the UN Security Council yet, the Republic of China (ROC) established in Taiwan and run by separatists in 1949 somehow fluked that seat, not the People’s Republic of China.

By this logic, if the victors in the Second World War got these privileged positions as permanent members of the UNSC, it would appear that either Japan had won a victory against itself or Taiwan had unjustly occupied the People’s Republic of China’s legitimate seat on the Security Council until 1971. Surprisingly or rather unsurprisingly, the same powers that let ROC [Taiwan] occupy this seat for this long are the very ones championing its supposed right to self-defence today.

With the expansion of the UN, fissures in the colonial enterprise continuously gave way and the emergence of the non-aligned movement during the Cold War, which the UN General Assembly voted, in 1971, in favour of resolution 275,8, restoring China to its legitimate position. Of course, this was not without some thirty-five members, including Japan, the power that had as a result of the defeat in 1949 vacated Taiwan; the seat of the [ad hoc republic of China] at the time, voting against the resolution. Even then, Uganda supported this resolution, hence the reaffirmation – it only reaffirmed a position it has held since then.

Surprisingly, the United States, which had voted in favour of the resolution to expel the ROC from the security council’s permanent membership in 1971, followed up with more diplomatic steps in February 1972. A high-level diplomatic visit to China by President Nixon, the first lady, his chief diplomat Bill Rogers and national security advisor Kissinger. It was this visit that culminated in the Shanghai communique, in which Washington acknowledged that there was no bigger obstacle to the normalisation of China-US relations than the Taiwan question.

At the end of this trip, both the United States and China agreed that all Chinese on either side of the strait maintained that there was one China with Taiwan being a part of that one China. If the US made this acknowledgement in 1972, what then does Washington’s position today say about its policy towards China?

The attempt to pull a face to face Hussein – McMahon correspondence couldn’t have gone worse. Obviously, going by the current stance, there was a duplicitous ploy to lure China away from the Communist camp in the midst of the Cold War. Justification for this premise can be found in how soon Washington walked back its commitments from the Shanghai Communique, something it was doing by 1979, as Congress and the president claimed to find the Taiwan Relations Act a matter of necessity.

By committing to [making services and articles of self-defence] available to a territory agreed and believed to be historically a part of a sovereign state at its own [discretionary assessment], Washington was interfering in the internal matters of another country.

The Taiwan Relations Act was the single most important undoing of the previously held position that [normalisation of relations was in the best interest of China-US relations, but Asia and the world as a whole]. By anchoring the relations between the two countries on the future of Taiwan, Washington seemed to overtly set out on a path that would only end up with a new country carved out of China. 

What we see is a foreign power providing guarantees, services, and articles of defence to a part of another country, fomenting strife within that territory. It is my strong belief that the latter’s manoeuvres to maintain territorial integrity against forces of interference and subversion mustn’t or should not be viewed as aggression. Similarly, neither in this case can re-affirming the one-China principle by Uganda be viewed entirely as self-serving interests, guaranteeing continued Chinese investments in the country’s economy notwithstanding.

The writer is a research fellow at the Sino-Uganda Research Centre