Tense Triangle

TAIWANESE legend has it that whenever the muddy Chuo Shui River runs clear, great events follow. Recently, the Chuo Shui ran clear for the first time since 1949, when Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's shattered armies retreated to Taiwan from the mainland. The event apparently portended this time was Peking's venture in Ping Pong diplomacy and Washington's warm response. One thing is clear besides the water: any real rapprochement between the U.S. and the mainland regime hinges on Taiwan, a verdant island of 14 million people. As Peking's Premier Chou En-lai recently put it, "The main dispute between the U.S. and China is the imperialist occupation of Taiwan, and we are prepared to start negotiations with the U.S. from this point."

The Nationalist regime on Taiwan shows every sign that it expects to hold power for some time to come. The island's economy is booming. A huge new foreign ministry is going up in the middle of Taipei, and on a lush green hill at the edge of the city the Grand Hotel is adding a twelve-story wing. Still, there is an air of nervousness if not desperation in the diplomatic counteroffensive that the Nationalists are mounting in the face of Peking's recent successes. Sixty-three countries still recognize Taipei as the legal government of China, but Peking has added ten in the past eight months--including Austria last week--to bring its total to 55. Last month Taipei's new Ambassador to the U.S., James Shen, presenting his credentials at the White House, pointedly remarked that "new winds of appeasement are blowing over a part of the free world."

Sweet and Sour. President Nixon will not be deterred by Taipei's diplomatic offensive from his declared intent of improving relations with Peking. The President's next signal will be to define the terms of more liberal trade. In April, Nixon freed U.S. business to sell directly to China for the first time in 22 years. This week or next Nixon is expected to announce which goods may and may not be traded with China. Despite such gestures, however, as long as the problem of Taiwan remains unsolved, Peking is unlikely to change its current sweet-and-sour policy toward the U.S.--praising the American people but attacking their Government.

That presents Washington with a triangular dilemma, wrapped in official mythology, encased in old enmities, and enshrouded in the shaky precedents of international law. The U.S. cannot recognize Peking's claim to Taiwan without disavowing an old ally and denouncing a solemn treaty commitment to defend the island. To uphold Chiang's contention that he represents the 800 million Chinese on the mainland, as well as those on Taiwan, is simply no longer tenable. To recognize the claims of both governments is impossible. The major questions:

WHO SITS IN THE U.N.? The question of what to do is urgent, since it is entirely probable that the United Nations will vote this fall to admit Peking at Taipei's expense. Nixon has been considering two options: to continue to side with Taipei and oppose Peking's admission, or to push for a separate seat for each. Last month a 50-man commission chaired by former Ambassador to the U.N. Henry Cabot Lodge recommended in effect a "two Chinas" policy, which the U.S. could pursue by voting to admit Peking but opposing the expulsion of Taiwan.

Should the U.S. succeed and the U.N. grant membership to the People's Republic on the mainland without expelling the Republic of China on Taiwan, the result could be a game of international chicken. Both governments have long vowed not to sit in the U.N. if the other is there as well--but which one would swerve first? Taipei's Foreign Minister Chow Shu-kai told TIME Correspondent Bruce Nelan that, as in the case of diplomatic recognition, "the negotiation and announcement is one matter and the final appearance [of Peking's men] is still another. Our position is that as soon as a formal diplomatic representative is received by any government, we have no choice but to withdraw. We would remain, and would hope to remain, if the other side doesn't show up." Taipei, however, may not even have a choice. The question before the U.N. has always been who should represent China, rather than whether either or both regimes should be admitted or expelled. If the vote goes Peking's way, Taipei would be forced to leave whether the Communists arrive or not.

The brewing U.N. debate raises two prickly questions: Who owns Taiwan? Who governs China? The State Department six weeks ago declared that "in our view, sovereignty over Taiwan is an unsettled question, subject to future international resolution." Peking and Taipei alike were infuriated, since both insist that sovereignty clearly belongs to whatever government rules China.

WHO CONTROLS CHINA? Though there are no hard and fast rules in international law, there is strong support for Peking's claim under the so-called "Estrada Doctrine." Named for a Mexican Foreign Minister of the 1930s, it holds that any government in control of the bulk of a country's population and territory and in no immediate danger of being deposed should be accepted and recognized, no matter how it came to power. Strictly applied, however, the Estrada principle could support both the Communist claim to the mainland and the Nationalist claim to Taiwan.

The Nationalists, meanwhile, contend that they are the de jure representatives of all of China because they were the last to be chosen in freely contested elections, ending in 1948. According to a school of diplomatic thought dating back to Woodrow Wilson, only constitutionally elected governments should be acceptable to the community of nations. The Nationalists can also cite a more widely held point of international law, the so-called "Ethiopian Principle," which dates from 1938 when Emperor Haile Selassie was in hiding from his country's Italian invaders. Rome then sought international recognition of its sovereignty over Ethiopia but was rebuffed on the grounds that so long as a government retains any part of its territory, it is still the legal government of the whole country.

In practice, as Harvard Law Professor Jerome Cohen puts it, "every lawyer knows that the name of the game is what label you succeed in imposing on the facts." Obviously, the Communist government in Peking rules China, and nonrecognition of that fact today is a legal shell game. By the same token, the Nationalists in Taipei rule Taiwan. But the question of the island's sovereignty is not so easily settled.

WHO OWNS TAIWAN? Almost any case could be argued from the island's varied history. Taiwan reluctantly became a prefecture of China's Fukien province under the Manchu dynasty in 1684; 15 major rebellions occurred there over the next 200 years. After the Sino-Japanese War of 1895, China ceded the island to Japan over the protests of the Taiwanese, who declared independence in a vain attempt to shake off foreign rule. At the end of World War II, the Japanese forces on Taiwan were directed to surrender to the Chinese. As recently as 1947, the Taiwanese again rebelled against their Chinese rulers.

When Chiang and his mainlanders arrived in 1949, they set up not only a top-heavy military establishment on the island (1,600 generals and 200 admirals by one authoritative estimate) but also two parallel civilian governments. One supposedly rules the Republic of China. The other administers the province of Taiwan, which since 1949 has been under martial law, backed up by an active political police force.

Separate Development. If they had any say in the matter, the 12 million native Taiwanese would undoubtedly prefer a government of their own--though most of them are of mainland Chinese stock (200,000 are aborigines, chiefly Malay). It is considered treason for them to talk of independence, but their case rests on the fact that Taiwan was ruled as a fully integrated province of China for only 13 years--from 1886 to 1895, and 1945 to 1949. Thus the island has in effect been separated from the mainland for more than 70 years--and an international doctrine of "separate development" has been cited by former British colonies that broke away from the motherland, most notably the U.S. Such are the stakes involved among the superpowers, however, that the Taiwanese are unlikely to find many listeners for that point of view.

The U.S. hopes through some formula to achieve diplomatic ties with Peking without abandoning its commitments to Taiwan. But the issue will probably not be settled until both Mao Tse-tung, now 77, and Chiang Kaishek, 83, pass into history, along with their personal hatreds. Only then, in all likelihood, will an accommodation be possible. Harvard Sinologist John Fairbank suggests that the two governments might one day agree simultaneously to recognize Peking's "sovereignty" over the island and Taipei's "autonomy"--a device the British employed to engineer continued Chinese sovereignty over separatist Mongolia and Tibet after the fall of the Manchu empire in 1911.

Last Stronghold. There is also an older precedent, dating back to the 17th century civil war between the decadent Ming dynasty and the energetic Manchus. After Peking and Nanking fell to the Manchus, one loyal Ming general, known as Koxinga, took his army across the strait to the redoubt of Taiwan, where his troops dominated the indigenous islanders. Koxinga died in 1662, and though his regime lasted another 20 years, his people gradually lost interest in the Ming cause. Meanwhile, the Manchus gradually won acceptance on the mainland. Though they often met opposition with barbaric cruelty, they also punished incompetence and corruption. When the Manchus pushed again in 1683, after the death of Koxinga's grandson, the last Ming stronghold collapsed, and the next year Taiwan became a part of China.

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