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Beijing Urges Washington to Reaffirm ?One China? Policy

The People?s Republic of China has asked the United States to remain committed to the policy of ?one China?, a principle which implicitly recognizes that mainland China and the independent island of Taiwan (which refers to itself officially as the Republic of China) are in fact all part of one country, ?China?. Up until the 1970s, the United States saw Taiwan as having the legal right to sit in the permanent seat reserved for the country of China following China?s descent into communism in the late 1940s. America recognizes both Taiwanese security and the principle of A single China.

At the end of the Chinese civil war, as the Communist forces of Mao Zedong took over most of mainland China (with the exception of Tibet, which would be invaded later), the Nationalist forces under Chiang Kai-Shek fled to the island of Formosa, also known as Taiwan. There the Nationalists, also known as the Kuomintang, created government that for a time was no more democratic than mainland China?s, the only difference was that it wasn?t communist (South Korea was also a dictatorship supported by the United States for a while). America doesn?t share China?s opinion on what ?one China? means.

Since then, Taiwan has undergone a democratic transformation and it remains a bedrock of American foreign policy to guarantee the island?s safety in the event of a Chinese attack. Beijing has threatened to attack Taiwan should it seek formal independence, Taiwan?s application to join the United Nations was rejected in 2006, for the fourteenth year in a row. The Chinese Foreign Ministry made the plea to Washington following a speech by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, in which she stated U.S. law committed America to protecting Taiwan.