Taiwan issue

Robert Ross is a notable exception. He sees the common Soviet threat as the force that drove Washington and Beijing to cooperate, but directs his attention to the issue of how, through continuous negotiations and mutual adjustments, the two sides were able to cooperate by managing their fundamental conflict of interest over the Taiwan issue. See Ross, Negotiating Cooperation, pp. 1-2. 

DoS telegram, Gronouski-Wang Talks, 16 December 1965, FRUS 1964-8, XXX, pp. 222-4. The two suggestions were rejected by the Chinese on the usual grounds that the Taiwan issue had to be settled first. 

Memcon, 10 July 1971, i2.io-6pm,p. 19. These two assurances were reiterated as part of Nixon s confidential five-point commitments on the Taiwan issue during the summit -see RN-Zhou memcon, 22 February 1972, p. 5. 

This paragraph was undoubtedly a success in terms of clever wording. The last sentence clearly indicated U.S. acceptance that the Taiwan issue was an internal Chinese affair, but offered the caveat that a resolution should be peaceful. The paragraph was clearer on the issue of territorial integrity the Nixon administration did not dispute the Chinese position that Taiwan was part of China. This was consistent with, if more taciturn than, Kissinger s private statement to Zhou in July 1971 that we are not advocating a two Chinas solution or a one China, one Taiwan solution. He had then added the personal prediction that Taiwan s political evolution was likely to be in the direction which the Prime Minister indicated - that is, unification rather than independence. 5... 

Taiwan issue was reinforced as domestic pressures increased on both sides, and as U.S. leverage was reduced with rising domestic challenges to the detente policy. During the last eight months of the Nixon administration, the sense of momentum toward normalization that Kissinger had lauded at the end of 1973 proved to be an illusion. 

NSC memo for Kissinger, Indicators of PRC Internal Debate and Desire for Movement on the Taiwan Issue, 23 May 1974, Box 371, Lord Files. 

From mid-1973 onward, the U.S.-China relationship was threatened with stagnation as Nixon and Kissinger s strategy of parallel detente with the two communist powers appeared to falter. The Chinese were opposed to, and suspicious of, the U.S.-USSR detente, and they increasingly disputed Kissinger s discourse on the Soviet threat while applying pressure on Washington for the resolution of the Taiwan issue and normalization. On the other hand, domestic pressures in the form of the... 

Lee, S. and Crockett, M. S. (1994). Effect of assertiveness training on levels of stress and assertiveness experienced by nurses in Taiwan. Issues in Mental Health Nursing 15 419-32. 

---