March 30, 2000

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS

FROM: GARY SCHMITT

SUBJECT: Clinton, China and Taiwan

In his press conference yesterday, President Clinton made some remarkable statements on Taiwan and China that have largely gone unreported but which reflect a troubling trend in Administration policy. Increasingly, the president appears to back Beijing in its attempt to intimidate Taiwan’s nascent democracy.

When asked to comment on the fact that the Chinese had told National Security Advisor Sandy Berger that the U.S.-China relations were at a "critical juncture," the president stated that the reason for this was “the China-WTO decision before the Congress." Clinton utterly ignored the obvious and real source of the crisis -- China's threat to use force against Taiwan. President Clinton went on to say that Taiwan's newly elected president, Chen Shui-bian, "seems to be quite well aware of the weighty responsibility he now has" to diminish tensions with China, suggesting the burden for maintaining peace lies with the democracy being threatened rather than the dictatorship doing the threatening.

President Clinton also identified himself with China's position in reunification negotiations. "The Chinese," he said, "have been quite clear that they were willing to be patient and to negotiate an arrangement which might even be different from that in Hong Kong." (Hong Kong returned to China as a special autonomous region of China in 1997; since then it has seen Beijing disregard its promises of democracy and rule of law for Hong Kong.)

It is as if the president believes that Taiwan’s exercise in democracy -- the recent elections saw 86 percent of the eligible voters go to the polls and resulted in the first transfer of power from one democractically elected government to another in the 5000-year history of the Chinese people -- is more threatening than Beijing’s saber-rattling. Rather than celebrating Taiwan’s embrace of American political freedoms, President Clinton sent Berger scuttling to Beijing to reassure the Chinese leadership that the White House opposes any effort to recognize Taiwan's international legitimacy, and that it also opposes increased defense ties between the United States and Taiwan, passage of the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act and/or sales to Taiwan of military systems by which it could defend itself.

What a disgrace.