{"id":75003,"date":"2022-09-07T14:30:13","date_gmt":"2022-09-07T04:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=75003"},"modified":"2022-09-07T13:49:57","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T03:49:57","slug":"australia-refused-to-endorse-chinas-claim-to-taiwan-in-1972-because-it-foresaw-a-time-like-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/australia-refused-to-endorse-chinas-claim-to-taiwan-in-1972-because-it-foresaw-a-time-like-this\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia refused to endorse China\u2019s claim to Taiwan in 1972 because it foresaw a time like this"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Journalists and policy analysts should spend more time reading history. If they did, they would be better placed to challenge the diplomats and politicians who casually requisition the past in order to lay claim to the present.<\/p>\n

We might also find our way towards policy prescriptions with real meat, as opposed to the all-too-common superficialities that substitute true engagement with historical context for little more than a doff and a wink at times gone by. Wisdom is in the files.<\/p>\n

Certainly, when it comes to Australia\u2019s relationship with China today, Cold War history seems more relevant than ever. That history is being used to insist on policy positions that are (allegedly) obligatory or self-evidently in our self-interest. Such claims cannot be properly scrutinised without close examination of the primary sources. And, funnily enough, when we do so, we find conspicuous and useful parallels with the broader strategic quandary in which Australia finds itself during the 2020s.<\/p>\n

In his recent address<\/a> to the National Press Club, China\u2019s ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, drew some familiar lines in the sand about his government\u2019s position on the status of Taiwan: the island was, he said, \u2018a province of China\u2019 and Australia should \u2018take the one-China principle seriously\u2019 if it hoped to have a half-decent relationship with its northern giant. Quoting the joint communiqu\u00e9 of December 1972 that had established diplomatic relations between Australia and China, he insisted that Australia had formally acceded to Beijing\u2019s position on Taiwan\u2014and that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese\u2019s government simply had to do the honourable (and wise) thing, and fall into step with successive Australian governments that had stood by the original agreement. No one at the Press Club questioned the ambassador about his interpretation.<\/p>\n

But did Australia, in fact, endorse the claim that Taiwan is an integral part of Chinese territory when it shook hands with China 50 years ago?<\/p>\n

As usual, some of Beijing\u2019s Australian groupies rushed to play the game of stacks-on that happens every time China lectures its southern minnow on its dangerous temerity. Former diplomat Gregory Clark has written<\/a> that China\u2019s \u2018taking over Taiwan [is] a right granted by every nation recognising Beijing, including the US and Australia\u2019. Others<\/a> have asserted that the 1972 agreement merely acknowledged China\u2019s stance on Taiwan, but did not agree to it, and have appealed to the wording of the communiqu\u00e9, but gone no further. (The pertinent sentence<\/a> reads: \u2018The Australian Government recognises the Government of the People\u2019s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China [and] acknowledges the position of the Chinese Government that Taiwan is a province of the People\u2019s Republic of China..)<\/p>\n

Formerly classified Australian documents\u2014reproduced in an official documents volume of 2002 commemorating the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations\u2014show clearly that Australia refused to sign a document endorsing China\u2019s claim to Taiwan, and that it did so quite deliberately. Indeed, the sentence about Taiwan was the subject of considerable haggling and disagreement between the two sides during what was an otherwise amiable negotiating process.<\/p>\n

The documents volume is available online<\/a>, as it has been for many years (without the useful editorial commentary that appears only in the hardcopy), yet few who talk at length about the bilateral relationship appear to have read it.<\/p>\n

The emergence of differences over Taiwan in late 1972 is all the more striking in view of the public statements made by Gough Whitlam, who was first elected prime minister in November of that year and was in a rush to establish relations with Beijing as part of a helter-skelter program of policy change. In July 1972, for example, he had said<\/a>: \u2018There is only one China. Peking is the capital of one China. Taiwan is a province of one China.\u2019<\/p>\n

But when it came to a formal agreement, he proved more cautious and cagey. The instructions<\/a> given to the Australian diplomat charged with negotiating the joint communiqu\u00e9 were that he should seek Chinese agreement to a formula in which Australia \u2018takes note\u2019 of China\u2019s position that Taiwan was \u2018an inalienable part of the territory of the People\u2019s Republic of China\u2019. The Department of Foreign Affairs had explained<\/a> to Whitlam that the formula was one of \u2018several \u2026 which various countries have used, all of them falling short of endorsing Peking\u2019s claim to Taiwan\u2019, and was intended to demonstrate that Australia \u2018neither challenges nor endorses\u2019 the PRC\u2019s position.<\/p>\n

The Chinese immediately responded with their own proposed text<\/a>\u2014Australia \u2018recognises that Taiwan is a province of China\u2019\u2014which Foreign Affairs had forecast<\/a> as an \u2018extreme position\u2019 that the Chinese were likely to advance in an attempt to take advantage of Whitlam\u2019s desire to establish diplomatic relations forthwith. The department advised him to reject such a ploy because the Chinese would \u2018be given the impression that we can be dragooned into accepting Chinese positions\u2019. Other important domestic and foreign policy considerations were also said to be at play\u2014among them, a potential view among Southeast Asian neighbours that Australia was content to be pushed around by China. And then there was United States, which, though seeking rapprochement with China, had made clear to its allies that it viewed approval of the PRC\u2019s claim over Taiwan to be a concession too far.<\/p>\n

The Australian negotiator therefore refused categorically<\/a> to accept the Beijing\u2019s formula, telling his Chinese counterpart, \u2018Australia should not be asked \u2026 to accept explicitly the Chinese position \u2026 Some middle ground had to be found.\u2019 There was, he remarked, \u2018no further compromise to propose\u2019 on the question of an outright endorsement\u2014a statement that proved \u2018sufficient to draw from the Chinese Ambassador a further proposal\u2019 on Taiwan, in a form of words that eventually found its way into the final communiqu\u00e9.<\/p>\n

Even so, the Australians tried hard to push the Chinese back to the earlier formula (\u2018takes note\u2019), arguing, with Whitlam\u2019s approval<\/a>, that Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai had agreed to such wording when Whitlam had discussed the matter with him as leader of the opposition during a visit to China in July 1971.<\/p>\n

This time, it was the Chinese who dug in their heels. The Chinese envoy agreed<\/a> that such a formula had been discussed, but denied that Zhou had approved it\u2014and later insisted that there could be no compromise on Australia\u2019s \u2018acknowledging\u2019 the position of China in relation to Taiwan. When asked why, he retorted<\/a> that there were \u2018many such reasons but he had no authority to reveal them\u2019.<\/p>\n

The reasons seem to have been precisely those that have animated Ambassador Xiao. The Chinese hoped to hold on to a modicum of ambiguity in order to be able to claim that Australia had recognised Taiwan to be part of China. According to Foreign Affairs<\/a>, \u2018the Chinese characters used for \u201cacknowledging\u201d are the same as those used elsewhere in the communique for \u201crecognising\u201d\u2019. In other words, the interchangeability of the two words conferred on the Taiwan sentence a whiff of Australian endorsement, given that the communiqu\u00e9 also referred to Australia\u2019s recognition of the PRC government as the sole legal government China.<\/p>\n

But the Australians were quick to explain to other governments how they viewed the agreement. Whitlam signed off<\/a> on a message that was intended to show \u2018that we stood up to China on the Taiwan issue and achieved a satisfactory result\u2019. Nine governments\u2014most of them in Asia\u2014were told<\/a> that the \u2018principal point at issue\u2019 during negotiations was the status of Taiwan, and Australia had \u2018argued hard\u2019 for the \u2018takes note\u2019 formula, but was satisfied with the final result because \u2018\u201cAcknowledges\u201d is very similar to \u201ctakes note\u201d\u2019.<\/p>\n

The intensity of Australia\u2019s wrangling over one sentence of the communiqu\u00e9 raises the question of why such strenuous efforts were made over a minor element of a much larger relationship. Aside from a general desire to resist Chinese bullying, what were the strategic concerns that informed Australia\u2019s determination to neither challenge nor endorse Beijing over Taiwan?<\/p>\n

In their first<\/a> and most wide-ranging submission to Whitlam on the matter, Foreign Affairs officials tried to cast their minds forward to a day when great-power conflict over Taiwan might place Australia in an unenviable position:<\/p>\n

[C]omplete Governmental endorsement of Peking\u2019s claim in a formal communique \u2026 would make it very difficult for Australia to protest against any future move by Peking\u2014unlikely as this seems at present\u2014to recover by force of arms an island we had recognised as being part of China\u2019s sovereign territory. Equally, such endorsement would make it very difficult to find a ground for not condemning any counteraction that might be taken by the United States under its Security Treaty with [Taiwan].<\/p>\n

Xiao and his government have made plain that the threat of force has moved well beyond \u2018unlikely\u2019, giving added weight to another concern of Foreign Affairs\u2014namely, that Taiwan\u2019s position was not so different from Australia\u2019s: \u2018Unqualified endorsement of Peking\u2019s claim could also give substance to charges that Australia had \u201cabandoned\u201d Taiwan, a country with a population a little larger than our own.\u2019<\/p>\n

The question implied in 1972 seems yet more germane in 2022: if a great power can ride roughshod over others without our raising so much as a whimper, why should we expect anybody to come to our aid in a time of trouble?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Journalists and policy analysts should spend more time reading history. If they did, they would be better placed to challenge the diplomats and politicians who casually requisition the past in order to lay claim to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":829,"featured_media":75006,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2212,601,285,66],"class_list":["post-75003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-australia-china-relations","tag-foreign-affairs","tag-foreign-policy","tag-history"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAustralia refused to endorse China\u2019s claim to Taiwan in 1972 because it foresaw a time like this | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/australia-refused-to-endorse-chinas-claim-to-taiwan-in-1972-because-it-foresaw-a-time-like-this\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Australia refused to endorse China\u2019s claim to Taiwan in 1972 because it foresaw a time like this | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Journalists and policy analysts should spend more time reading history. 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