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	March 8, 2000	atimes.com

China

Beijing's 'three ifs'
By Harvey Sicherman*

Those who hoped the forthcoming presidential elections in Taiwan might pass without further disturbance to the island's relations with the mainland have now been sorely disappointed. Beijing has added fuel to the fire with a new and forceful statement of its position. This comes at a most awkward moment for the Clinton White House as it prepares for a vote on giving China permanent normal trading relations that would allow it to enter the WTO.

The theology of the Taiwan dispute is often expressed in sacred numerology. From Beijing comes one China, two systems, and three nos (no two Chinas, no one China-one Taiwan, no independent Taiwan). From Taipei comes one country, two states or political entities negotiating on one equal basis. The US offers three communiques and one act (the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979). Beijing has now added to this list the "three ifs", conditions that would trigger PRC military action. These are worth analyzing to see whether they represent something new rather than just something provocative.

1. The White Paper

On February 21, the PRC State Council and Taiwan Affairs Office released "The One China Principle and the Taiwan Issue", a lengthy exposition of Beijing's views. The main targets of this document include: Lee Teng-hui's two-state position; Lee Teng-hui himself; the US policy of selling arms to the island; and, doubtless, the Taiwanese voter. The Chinese evidently fear the attractiveness of Lee's comparison of the PRC-Beijing and ROC-Taiwan to the two Germanies during the Cold War and the document earnestly refutes this on grounds of history and international law, the most important point being that Taiwan was part of China except during the Japanese occupation, defining the island's fate as a "domestic" rather than an international issue.

Lee himself is depicted as duplicitous, having accepted the One China (ie, Taiwan is part of China) formula until quite recently. He is condemned with the worst epithets in Beijing's nationalist vocabulary: "separatist", "saboteur", "stumbling-block", "trouble-maker". Such hostility would work to Lee's electoral advantage as did the missiles of 1996 if he were running again for president, but he is not. Instead, these verbal missiles (preceded by a sailpast of a new Russian-made missile cruiser) seem intended to warn the Taiwanese voter and the three candidates that the "Lee line" is a risky one. Equally risky would be the "democracy line" of Taiwan's opposition Democratic Progressive Party - its idea for a referendum on independence.

The US also comes in for a share of condemnation, notably the charge that its actions, whether in granting Lee a visa in 1995 or in selling arms to Taiwan, seriously violate the three communiques that govern US-PRC relations.

None of these strictures are new, although the timing is most peculiar. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott had just left Beijing and no doubt part of his message was to reassure the PRC that President Clinton would veto the latest congressional attempt to give Taiwan more arms: the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act passed by the House on February 1. Talbott surely advised the Chinese not to rock any boats in the Strait given the Administration's task to get the same Congress to pass on China's permanent trade status. This project has already been complicated by Vice-President Al Gore's political debts to the AFL-CIO trade union bloc and the strange budding bedfellowship of unionists, leftists, rightists, human rightists, yellow perilists, and the unwashed on display at Seattle.

2. Another linguistic disturbance

Badly timed though it may be for the United States, the White Paper is not entirely a rant. It presents a sophisticated case intended to lodge the PRC's claims within the framework of widely accepted international law and procedures. Overall, however, its main message is a variation on Beijing's long held view that, in the absence of a military threat, Taipei will never negotiate seriously on unification. Lee's two-state formula seems to be regarded by the PRC as, at worst, the threshold of formal separation from China or, at best, a way to stall serious negotiations by undermining the useful myth of One China. And here is Beijing's new condition. The authors of the White Paper take careful aim at the "stall" through the "three ifs", a paragraph that lists the triggers for war: if Taiwan is separated from China "in any name" (presumably a declaration of independence); if Taiwan is invaded or occupied by foreign countries; "or if the Taiwan authorities refuse, sine die, the peaceful settlement of cross-strait reunification through negotiations". In those eventualities, China "will be forced to adopt all drastic measures possible, including the use of force to safeguard China's sovereignty and territorial integrity and fulfill the great cause of reunification".

Oddly enough, the key phrase is written neither in Chinese nor English, but Latin. "Sine die" means "without a date". Beijing seemed to be insisting that negotiations over unification have a deadline, which sounded perilously close to an ultimatum. But just as alarm bells clanged in Washington and elsewhere, a senior Chinese diplomat hastened to explain that the Chinese word, translated as "sine die," means "indefinitely", not "without a date". The difference? Beijing was merely insisting that negotiations should commence and could not be put off indefinitely, not that a date certain for unification had to be fixed at the outset. "Notice that there is no timetable in the document, so you shouldn't worry that we are about to invade," the diplomat reassured the Washington Post correspondent in Beijing on February 22. Seven days later, Deputy Prime Minister Qian Qichen was quoted on state television disputing the view of "some foreign media" that the White Paper contained "a major change". Defense Minister Chi Haotian also reportedly reaffirmed China's commitment to peaceful reunification to Admiral Dennis Blair, commander of US forces in the Pacific.

Back in July 1999, Taipei had gotten into serious confusion when it turned out that Lee's two-state formula could only be expressed in a Chinese phrase that suggested a separate entity from China altogether (see FPRI E-Note, "A Linguistic Disturbance," July 28, 1999). The firewall proved to be Taiwan's constitution, which, after heavy US pressure, was not modified to reflect the change, reassuring Beijing that "two states" did not mean independence from China. Now a Latin phrase drawn from a learned familiarity with the technical vocabulary of Western international law produced a similar confusion, this time suggesting that unless Taiwan agreed to a unification date, then war was in the offing.

The White Paper evoked unusually robust condemnations from the United States. While State sought clarifications, Undersecretary of Defense Walter B Slocombe, who had accompanied Talbott to Beijing, warned of "incalculable consequences". Democratic Senator Kerry huffed that "the White Paper comments are unacceptable"; Republican Senator Smith called it "very alarming"; and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said that China's behavior was a "great danger" to the trade deal. Assistant Secretary of State for Asian Affairs Stanley Roth told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that "you will see additional sales [of arms to Taiwan]".

But in Taipei, Beijing's statement seems to have been read as containing more than just the "three ifs". The presidential candidates, Lien Chan (Kuomintang), James Soong (Independent), and Chen Shui-bian (Democratic Progressive Party), had already signalled their lack of interest in the two-state formula, and they coupled a defense of the island's freedom with pledges to work for improved relations with the mainland. On February 22, the ROC's Mainland Affairs Council issued a rebuttal of the White Paper that invoked the old 1992 formula that allowed both sides to begin negotiations: "One China, different interpretations." The White Paper's own chronology of mainland-island relations depicts that compromise as the right track from which, in Beijing's view, Taiwan deviated. Mutual reaffirmation of the 1992 formula may now be the basis for a fresh negotiation following the Taiwan elections. If the two sides do resume constructive contacts, then the White Paper will appear in retrospect a concession disguised as an ultimatum.

3. Dubious diplomacy

No matter the outcome, the three parties to the Taiwan dispute have fulfilled each other's worst expectations over the past 14 months. Each side has fed the fire. Clinton refused Zhu Rongji's WTO deal; it took half a year to get back on track, complicated by the Kosovo war and the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Then Lee Teng-hui had his swing at both Beijing's One China formula and Clinton's earlier acceptance of China's version of the "three nos". Then Congress retaliated against the PRC's bellicose denunciation of Lee by offering up the Taiwan Security Enhancement Bill. Now comes Beijing with its "three ifs". It will be extraordinarily difficult for the White House to detoxify this poisonous brew.

Clinton will have to constrain Gore, vigorously oppose his union allies, weaken the cross-party coalition forming against both the China-WTO deal and the WTO itself, and secure a veto-proof Senate against the Taiwan Security Enhancement Bill. He should reiterate US support for the only policy that makes sense: two nos and one yes. No to Beijing's force; no to Taipei's formal independence; yes to a pragmatic inter-Chinese exchange, for which the 1992 formula offers the best bet. Any alternative is a losing gamble for all sides.

*Harvey Sicherman, PhD, is president of the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a former aide to three US secretaries of state. He is co-editor, with Murray Weidenbaum, of The Chinese Economy: A New Scenario (FPRI, 1999).

Foreign Policy Research Institute, 1528 Walnut Street, Suite 610, Philadelphia, PA 19102- 3684. For membership information, contact Alan Luxenberg at 215- 732-3774, ext 105 or fpri@fpri.org

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