The One-China policy that recognizes the existence of a single government, including Taiwan is a lie, said a Washington-based expert, according to Beijing Bulletin.

Taiwan was never a part of China, and in all historic and legal spheres, the One-China policy is untrue, Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) was quoted as saying.

The US and many other countries have accepted China’s ‘One China Policy even as they maintain contacts with Taiwan, which in Beijing’s view is no more than a renegade province to be reunified with the mainland one day.

Contesting the Beijing view that President Richard Nixon had acquiesced to the One-China idea in the Shanghai Communique, Michael Rubin, asserts that Nixon’s agreement was never as clear as Beijing claims.

Rather than unequivocally endorse Mao’s statement that ‘the Government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government of China; Taiwan is a province of China’, Nixon said the ‘United States Government does not challenge that position’ but instead ‘reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves’, observes Michael Rubin, according to Beijing Bulletin (BB).

“According to Rubin, Taiwan was never a part of China, and in all historic and legal spheres, the One-China Policy stays untrue,” it says.

Historically speaking, Taiwan has not been ruled by the Chinese since Japan took the island from the Qing Dynasty in 1894. On its part, the Qing Dynasty, whom the Han Chinese considered as foreign interlopers, ruled the area only on paper for two centuries.  Before them, the Dutch and Portuguese were known to have ruled what is now Taiwan, or at least its main coasts, says the BB report.

According to the despatch, Beijing’s current legal claim to Taiwan is largely based on the Cairo Conference of 1943 wherein Chang Kai-Shek, signed a joint statement stating that “all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as Manchuria, Formosa, and the Pescadores, shall be returned to the Republic of China.  

Japan renounced all rights, titles, and claims to Formosa and the Pescadores in the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco, which established the terms of peace between the two countries. However, the Treaty did not cede sovereignty to any other state.

For this reason, despite the Treaty of San Francisco’s replacement, Chinese communist officials still rely on the Cairo Declaration when making their points, says Michael Rubin, while finding fault with Biden Administration’s readiness to cede to the Beijing narrative “built on repetition instead of facts.”

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