INTRODUCTION
This term paper focuses on China-Taiwan relations in terms of One China policy and the Taiwan question. The paper will first provide an overview of the historical background of Beijing-Taipei relations and its ties with the United States. After, we will discuss One China policy and its different interpretations.
From an international relations perspective, the Taiwan Strait, one of the most likely conflict zones in the Asia-Pacific region, has been dubbed the “Balkan Peninsula of the East.” The status of Taiwan has been one of the most intricate issues in international relations arena for the past decades. The Taiwan question is essentially an extension of the “two Chinas” problem, which creates a dilemma for accommodating the existence of Taiwan under the vague concept of the ''One China'' policy (Hsieh, P., 2009). The Taiwan issue has been regarded as the most sensitive question between China and the United States. Although China-U.S. relations have made significant progress, the Taiwan issue concerns Chinese and American decision makers for many years.
The Taiwan question has been at the center of Chinese foreign policy ever since the founding of the PRC. Normally understood as a question of state sovereignty, territorial integrity and vital national interest, the Taiwan question can be discussed at four levels. First of all, at the domestic level, the question is one of state legitimacy that concerns much of the rationale for the communist leadership in China. Secondly, at the cross-straits level, it concerns the enduring historic dispute between the Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Straits over the reunification of China. Thirdly, at the regional level, it is part of the regional power politics among the gr...
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Jonathan Spence tells his readers of how Mao Zedong was a remarkable man to say the very least. He grew up a poor farm boy from a small rural town in Shaoshan, China. Mao was originally fated to be a farmer just as his father was. It was by chance that his young wife passed away and he was permitted to continue his education which he valued so greatly. Mao matured in a China that was undergoing a threat from foreign businesses and an unruly class of young people who wanted modernization. Throughout his school years and beyond Mao watched as the nation he lived in continued to change with the immense number of youth who began to westernize. Yet in classes he learned classical Chinese literature, poems, and history. Mao also attained a thorough knowledge of the modern and Western world. This great struggle between modern and classical Chinese is what can be attributed to most of the unrest in China during this time period. His education, determination and infectious personalit...
First, if the CCP recognizes Taipei as an independent state, the CCP risks losing it bargaining power over the decisions and actions taken in regard to the island. A country’s bargaining power is the strength of a states claim over the disputed territory. A decline in this power mea...
In 1972, President Richard Nixon was quoted as stating that his visit to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) “changed the world…to build a bridge across sixteen thousand miles and twenty-two years of hostilities.” By meeting with Chairman Mao Zedong in Beijing, Nixon took groundbreaking first steps to opening relations and formally recognizing the People’s Republic of China. The history of the aforementioned hostilities between the United States and the PRC dates back to the Chinese Communist Party’s takeover of mainland China following its civil war in the post-World War II era. When the PRC was formally proclaimed in 1949 towards the close of the Chinese Civil War, the United States decided against recognizing its establishment and instead chose to back Taiwan, also known as the Republic of China. This decision was a product of its political environment, as President Harry Truman had just established the Truman Doctrine, which sought to check presumed Communist and Soviet aims to expand. In order to remain consistent and credible with its containment policy, a precedent was set and relations between the United States and the PRC remained closed. Tensions were only exacerbated during the Korean War in the 1950’s as the PRC intervened on behalf of the North Koreans and during the War in Vietnam in the 1970’s in their support of the North Vietnamese. Thus it is understandable that to the public eye, Nixon’s meeting with Mao Zedong in 1972 seemed to come out of the blue and was difficult to interpret given the context of Sino-US relations in the two deca...
It can also be argued that the political activities of Chairman Mao’s Communist China were more of a continuation of traditional Imperial China, based heavily in Confucian values, than a new type of Marxist-Leninist China, based on the Soviet Union as an archetype. While it is unquestionable that a Marxist-Leninist political structure was present in China during this time, Confucian values remained to be reinforced through rituals and were a fundamental part of the Chinese Communist ...
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The article “U.S., China and Thucydides” (Robert B. Zoellick, 2013) addressed the security dilemma between the rising China and the U.S. through the historical story, “the Thucydides trap”. In addition, the chapter 15 in the book US FOREIGN POLICY, by Michael Cox and Doug Stokes, indicated the situation of changing East Asia, rising China, and the role of the U.S. in this region in different periods. Therefore, the materials have revealed an important question about Sino-US relation, which is should the United States cooperate or compete with the rising China?
Zhang, Jianhong, Arjen van Witteloostuijn, and J. Paul Elhorst. "China's Politics and Bilateral Trade Linkages." Asian Journal of Political Science 19.1 (2011): 25-47. Academic Search Premier. Web. 13 Dec. 2013.
Relation between china and Taiwan Introduction The current conflict between china and Taiwan originally began in 1949 when Chiang Kai-shek (President of Republic of China) and his followers fled to Taiwan after their defeat by the Chinese communist party (led by Moa Tse-Tung) in the Chinese civil war, which erupted immediately after the Second World War. In 1950, the Chinese Communist Party established the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and invaded Taiwan, to unify all of China under their rule. Their plan failed, when the United States sent naval forces to defend Taiwan. Since then, both countries have existed in neither a state of complete independence nor integration of neither war nor peace.
ICL Document, (1988) . ICL- China Constitution: Retrieved March27, 2001 from the World Wide Web: http://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/law/ch00000_.html
The Instability of China–US Relations", The Chinese Journal of International Politics 3, no. 3 (2010): 263-292, http://cjip.oxfordjournals.org/content/3/3/263.
Since the initial warming of U.S.-China relations in the early 1970’s, policymakers have had difficulty balancing conflicting U.S. policy concerns in the People’s Republic of China. In the strange world of diplomacy between the two, nothing is predictable. From Nixon to Clinton, presidents have had to reconcile security and human rights concerns with the corporate desire for expanded economic relations between the two countries. Nixon established ties with Mao Zedong’s brutal regime in 1972. And today Clinton’s administration is trying to influence China’s course from within a close economic and diplomatic relationship.
Wei-Wei Zhang. (2004). The Implications of the Rise of China. Foresight, Vol. 6 Iss: 4, P. 223 – 226.