1 Some sources, in a large literature on American-Taiwan relations, include: Ralph, Clough, Island China (Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 1978), chs. 1, 8 and 9;Google ScholarStephen, Gibert P. and Carpenter, William M. (eds.), America and Island China: A Documentary History (Lanham, MD:University Press of America, 1989);Google ScholarFeldman, Harvey and Kim, Ilpyong J. (eds.), Taiwan in a Time of Transition (New York:Paragon House, 1988), chapter by FeldmanGoogle Scholar; Shen, James C. H., The U.S. and Free China: How the U.S. Sold Out Its Ally (Washington, D.C.: Acropolis Books, 1983);Google ScholarLasater, Martin L., The Taiwan Issue in Sino-American Relations (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984);Google ScholarMartin, Lasater, The Changing of the Guard: President Clinton and the Security of Taiwan (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995);Google ScholarNancy, Bernkopf Tucker, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the United States, 1945–1992: Uncertain Friendship (New York:Twayne, 1994);Google ScholarMartin, Lasater, U.S. Interests in the New Taiwan (Boulder, CO:Westview Press, 1994);Google ScholarMosher, Steven W. (ed.), The United States and the Republic of China: Democratic Friends, Strategic Allies, and Economic Partners (New Brunswick, NJ:Transaction Press, 1992);Google Scholar and Finkelstein, David M., Washington's Taiwan Dilemma: From Abandonment to Salvation (Fairfax, VA:George Mason University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

2 For American-Chinese relations, consult, inter alia: Harry Harding, A Fragile Relationship: The United States and China Since 1972 (Brookings, 1992); David Shambaugh, Beautiful Imperialist: China Perceives America, 1972–1992 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991);Google ScholarWarren, I., America's Response to China: An Interpretive History of Sino-American Relations (New York:John WileySons, 3rd ed., 1990);Google ScholarHarry, Harding and Yuan, Ming (eds.), Sino-American Relations, 1945–1955 (Wilmington:Scholarly Resources, 1989);Google Scholar Michel Oksenberg, “A decade of Sino-American relations,” Foreign Affairs, Autumn 1982, pp. 175–195; David Shambaugh, “Patterns of interaction in Sino-American relations,” in Thomas W. Robinson and David Shambaugh (eds.), Chinese Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 199–223; Samuel S. Kim (ed.), China and the World: Chinese Foreign Relations in the Post-Cold War Era (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 3rd ed., 1994), chapter by Steven Levine; and Harry Harding, “China's American dilemma,” in Allen Whiting S.(ed.), China's Foreign Relations (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, for The Annals, 1992), pp. 12–25.

3 On the cross-Strait relationship, see Ralph Clough, Reaching Across the Taiwan Straits (Boulder, CO:Westview Press, 1993); relevant chapters in Gerrit Gong and Lin Bih-jaw (eds.), Sino-American Relations at a Time of Change (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1994) and in Lin Bih-jaw and James T. Myers (eds.), Forces for Change in Contemporary China (Taipei: Institute of International Relations, 1992); Hungdah Chiu, Koo- Wang Talks and the Prospect of Building Constructive and Stable Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (Baltimore: University of Maryland School of Law, reprint series in contemporary Asian studies, no. 119, 1993); and John F. Copper, Words Across the Taiwan Strait (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1995). Jiang Zemin's proposal for “solving” the Taiwan question was in Renmin ribao (People's Daily), 31 January 1995, and Lee Teng-hui's six-point response was in Free China Journal, 14 April 1995.Google Scholar

4 Chang Parris H. and Martin L. Lasater (eds.), If China Crosses the Taiwan Straits: The International Response (Lanham, MD:University Press of America, 1993); Chen Langping, August 1995, T-Day: China's Violent Invasion of Taiwan (Taipei: Commerce Weekly, 1994); and Thomas W. Robinson, China's Potential Military Threat to Asian-Pacific Security in the 1990s, part 3, “China's military threat to Taiwan” (Arlington, VA: American Asian Research Enterprises, 1995).Google Scholar

5 The PLA was capable of defeating the Taiwan military, so long as it was willing to tolerate a very high rate of losses and so long as United States did not intervene. That remained true in the mid- 1990s. What would change after the year 2000 stemmed from the increasingly rapid acquisition of current generation military systems by Beijing and the growth in mainland military budgets (realistically expressed), eventually swamping Taiwan's efforts. For details, see Robinson, China's Potential Military Threat. During the remainder of the 1990s, Taiwan would be relatively safe from attack, so long as these conditions obtained and so long as the island continued a high rate of acquisition of modern military systems. Although the mainland was understandably reluctant to pronounce openly on the subject, see the neibu (for internal use only) book Can China's Armed Forces Win the Next War? (no author given; Chongqing: Southwest Normal University Publishing House, 1993; excerpts, with analysis by Ross Munro and others, in Orbis, summer 1994).

6 In a very large literature on American-Taiwan relations, almost no work deals with this subject. Instead, most deal with American policy and Taiwan's changing diplomatic status There was, of course, study of the so-called China lobby (for example, Ross Y.Koen, The China Lobby in American Politics (New York:HarperRow, 1974) and Stanley D. Bachrack, The Committee of One Million (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973)). But Taiwan's efforts were not adequately covered even there and, in any case, this literature mostly died out after American normalization with China. See, however, I. Yuan, “Tyranny of the status quo: the Taiwan lobby's impact on U.S.-Taiwan relations,” paper presented to the 24th Sino-American Conference on Contemporary China, Washington, D.C., June 1995, which assumes the existence of a Taiwan lobby and concentrates on Taiwan's Congressional efforts. In the face of the near-total absence of written documentation, the author had to rely on interviews with professional colleagues and his own experience. As of mid-1996, one American dissertation, to the author's knowledge, was being produced, by Zhang Dahong at the Pennsylvania State University.Google Scholar

7 See Tucker, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States, 1945–1992, chs. 7 and 8 for details, and Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER), 10 November 1994, pp. 22–24. The former needs considerable augmentation of detail. The latter is a case study of the support base of a New Jersey congressman built up by the resident Chinese community and funded by Taiwan. See also The New York Times, 12 April 1996, p. A12, for other examplesGoogle Scholar

8 This included, over seven administrations since 1972, all chairpersons of the House and Senate committees on foreign policy and defence, as well as part leaderships on both sides. At least one President, Ronald Reagan, ran successfully for office in 1980 on an explicitly pro-Taiwan platform, and all post-Nixon American Presidents visited Taiwan before or after their terms in office. President Bill Clinton visited Taiwan four times before his election but, as of early 1997, has never been to mainland China.

9 Author's survey of Free China Journal (formerly Free China Weekly), 1989–95

10 Information furnished by TECRO.

11 These included the law firms of O'Conner and Hannan, and Crowell and Moring, in Washington, D.C., as well as other groups with contracts for public relations, lobbying and “U.S. policy consultation.” These latter included the NILM Associates in Chambersberg, PA, and Halpern Associates, Gavron International, the Hannaford Company and Jefferson-Waterman International, all of Washington, D.C. Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Foreign Agents Registration Office.

12 The Washington Post, 22 October 1995. Interestingly, both Cassidy and Rosenblatt, as lobbyists, gave of their own funds to the Democratic Party far more than to the Republican Party (The Washington Post, 7 May 1996).

13 The unfolding story of the Lee visit can be traced, on a nearly daily basis, in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Shijie ribao, and the Daily Report: China (Washington, D.C.: Foreign Broadcast Information Service), as well as the FEER for the first half of 1995Google Scholar

14 The Washington Post, 23 October 1995, p. C4

15 Author's survey of The New York Times and The Washington Post, Sunday arts sections, and the “Goings on about town” section of The New Yorker, 1989–95, as well as information for 1995 furnished by TECRO. In spring 1996, Taipei sent an exhibition of Chinese art from the Palace Museum to several museums in the United States. This was the first time any of the pieces - culled from the world's most important Chinese art collection - travelled outside any province of China. It engendered enormous controversy and protests in Taiwan. See Andrew Solomon, “Don't mess with our cultural patrimony!” The New York Times Magazine, 17 March 1996, pp. 30–37.

16 TECRO refused to supply a list of Taiwan films shown in the United States, Taiwan-sponsored television programmes, and American professional, cultural and sports groups invited to Taiwan. But perusal of various American newspapers and journals over many years, as the author has, established the fact.

17 According to the USA-ROC Economic Council, about 500,000 Americans visited Taiwan annually in the 1985–95 period, while about one million annually visited mainland China.

18 Some colleges and universities at which professorships were set up or partially funded included University of California (Berkeley), Claremont College, Columbia, George Washington, Georgetown, Miami, Michigan, Ohio State, Pennsylvania State, Rhodes College, Stanford and Washington. Research institutes with substantial Taiwan money included The Heritage Foundation, Hoover Institution, Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the American Enterprise Institute. For an early report, see Jim Mann, “Donations add to influence in U.S.; Taiwan a big contributor to think tanks,” The Los Angeles Times, 5 September 1988, p. 23. Taiwan saw to the establishment, in 1958, of the American Association of Chinese Studies and continues to fund its annual meetings and other activities, including its journal, the American Journal of Chinese Studies, founded in 1992. China/Taiwan conferences, particularly the annual Sino-American Conference on [Communist/ Mainland] China, were funded at most of the above-named academic and research institutions, as well as The Brookings Institution.

19 These included the Government Information Office, the Institute of International Relations, the Institute for National Policy Research, the Pacific Cultural Foundation, newspapers such as the Lian hua bao (UnitedDaily News), and many others, from individuals to private foundations. The latter were often channels for government funds. See Tucker, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States, 1945–1992

20 At least partially because of this near monopoly of funding, Taiwan increasingly began to require programmes and results consonant with its own policy. Thus university programmes were closely scrutinized for “political correctness” and when they, or individual grantees, departed from Taiwan's favour, strong pressure for rectification was applied or funds abruptly withdrawn. The cases of the University of Michigan (wherein Taiwan asked for return of a three-year grant of $450,000), Columbia University (Taiwan asked for return of a three-year $440,000 grant), and Harvard University (return of $40,000 for interference in its administration) were but a few of many instances of attempts to guide the direction of American China-related research and teaching. See The New York Times, 9 April 1996, p. A12. The same was true of American research institutes. Almost all were offered, and most accepted, annual grants from Taiwan. When, however, they strayed too far from Taipei's political line, they were threatened with cut-off of funding or removal of offending programme officials. In an era of funding stringency, many acquiesced in such interference, and several such institutions had political agendas hardly different from that of Taiwan. But, as the present author well knows, when agendas or conclusions departed from Taipei's wishes, retribution was swift and decisive:programmes were summarily shut down or became entirely Taiwan-oriented. After 1992, new programmes almost always carried a mandatory Taiwan orientation. The Chiang Ching-kuo Foundations, established in 1988, soon funded c. $7 million per year in studies, dissertations, and conferences, mostly in the United States, and thus dominated the field. The “standard” American foundations in the China field (Carnegie, Ford, Guggenheim, Luce, Mellon and Rockefeller) gradually decreased their China-related funding, sometimes to the null point, and even the “right wing” foundations (Bradley, Coors, Richardson, Scaife and others) also largely left the field. See the annual reports of these entities as well as Terrill E. Lautz, “Financing contemporary China studies” and Thomas W. Robinson, “The private sector China specialists,” chs. 15 and 10 respectively of David Shambaugh(ed.), American Studies of Contemporary China (Armonk, NY:M. E. Sharpe for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1993). The American government, traditionally a heavy funder of China-related studies, also drastically cut its funding in the 1990s, so that many universities and individual scholars, together with government-sponsored Federal Contract Research Centers (RAND, Center for Naval Analysis, and Institute for Defense Analysis are examples) and for-profit research corporations (Science Applications International Corporation and Stanford Research Institute, for instance) found themselves with substantially less funding than before or grants that severely restricted China-related content. The field was thus left, largely, to Taiwan.Google Scholar

21 Trade volume in 1992 was over $39 billion, with a balance in favour of Taiwan of $7.8 billion; in 1993, the corresponding figures were over $40 billion and $6.8 billion; in 1994, $42 billion and $6.3 billion; and in 1995, $47 billion and $8.4 billion. Source: TECRO and USA-ROC Trade Council. It should be noted that Taipei's drive to move production facilities to the mainland, Hong Kong and South-East Asia resulted in a Taiwan-American trade balance less large than otherwise, and a correspondingly larger balance in favour of these other areas. See Nicholas Lardy, China in the World Economy (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1994), pp. 73–78.Google Scholar

22 U.S. Department of Commerce, International Trade Administration, U.S. Foreign Trade Highlights, 1994

23 The United States increasingly felt it necessary to raise the temperature of its economic policy towards Taiwan not only as the trade surplus mounted but as evidence accumulated of counterfeit goods imported from Taiwan and violations of American copyright laws. Taiwan was soon placed on the list of nations threatened with “Section 301 sanctions” of the trade law. See David Laux, “Taiwan's economy and economic and trade relations with the United States, Hong Kong, and China,” in Thomas W. Robinson and Madelyn C. Ross (eds.), American Economic Relations with Greater China: Challenges for the 1990s (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute and U.S.-China Business Council, 1992);Google Scholar and Erland Heginbotham, “Taiwan's economic role in East Asian development,” in Robert G. Sutter and William R. Johnson (eds.), Taiwan in World Affairs (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), pp. 23–72. In the early 1990s, American pressure mounted as the U.S. Office of the Trade Representative sent delegations - including the Trade Representative herself, Carla Hills, in 1992 - to negotiate, successfully, amelioration of the situation.

24 Information supplied by U.S. Department of Justice, Foreign Agents Registration Office; Sister Cities International, Alexandria, VA; USA-ROC Trade Council, Washington, D.C.; and American Institute on Taiwan, Arlington, VA.

25 While the language of the 1982 communiqué is so broad that the F-16 sale could be justified within its bounds, all those on the American side who wrote the communiqué regarded the sale as a violation. On the other hand, the communiqué, like those of 1972 and 1978, was no more than a policy statement, and the United States, like China, was free at any time to change its policy. But at no time did Washington argue such. On the contrary, it averred that its sale was within the spirit if not the letter of the communique′. The “U.S.-China Joint Communique, 18 August 1982,” para. 6: “ … the United States government states that it does not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan, that its arms sales to Taiwan will not exceed, either in quantity or in qualitative terms, the level of these supplied in recent years … , and that it intends to reduce its sales of arms to Taiwan, leading over a period of time to a final resolution….” The phrases or words “long-term,” “quantitative,” “qualitative,” “level,” “recent years,” “gradually,” “period of time” and “final resolution” are all elastic and were not further defined. But surrounding testimony to Congress, other Administration statements and subsequent actions all made clear that the initial level against which funding reductions would be measured was quite high, the slope of declining funding would be very gradual, the quantitative/qualitative trade-off had no particular meaning and inflation would be written into the dollar amounts of yearly sales. Finally, the Taiwan Relations Act, as a domestic American law, was regarded by Congress and successive Presidents as superior to this (or any other) Executive Agreement. Hence, the objective of keeping the military balance and peace in the Taiwan Strait would take precedence over details of military sales. For further details, see Gilbert and Carpenter, American and Island China: A Documentary History, pp. 305–355.

26 Dennis Van Vranken Hickey, United States-Taiwan Security Ties: From Cold War to Beyond Containment (Westport, CT:Praeger, 1994), especially ch. 4. Since the late 1980s, the exact amount and kind of military transfers has no longer been available from American government sources. Estimates could be made, however, by following such sources as Free China Journal, Defense News, Aviation Week and Space Technology, The Military Balance, and the various volumes of Jane's. Given extrapolation of the presumed declination, from 1982, of c. $20 million per year but corrected for inflation, the United States under the communiqué could have sold Taiwan close to $700 million of military equipment in 1992. The estimated $1.5 billion F-16 sale obviously was far beyond that amount.Google Scholar

27 The Military Balance(London: International Institute for Strategic Studies) for 1989–90 to 1995–96 provides details.

28 Every analysis of Chinese military strength concluded that China would not have the military wherewithal to conduct a successful military assault against Taiwan for the rest of the decade. In a small but growing literature, see John Caldwell, An Assessment of China's Conventional Military Capabilities (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1994); Kenneth W. Allen et al, China's Air Force Enters the 21st Century (Santa Monica: The Rand Corporation, 1995); Robinson, China's Potential Military Threat; Joseph E. Kelly et al., Impact of China's Military Modernization in the Pacific Region (Washington, D.C.: General Accounting Office, 1995); Alfred D. Wilhelm, Jr., China 2010 (Alexandria, VA: Center for Naval Analyses, 1995); Richard A. Bitzinger and Bates Gill, Gearing Up For High-Tech Warfare? Chinese and Taiwanese Defense Modernization and Implications for Military Confrontation Across the Taiwan Strait, 1995–2005 (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 1996); Christopher D. Yung, People's War at Sea: Chinese Naval Power in the Twenty First Century (Alexandria, VA: Center for Naval Analyses, 1996); Paul H. B. Godwin, “Technology, strategy, and operations: the PLA's continuing dilemma,” draft paper, 1995; papers delivered at the seven Staunton Hill Conferences on the People's Liberation Army, 1990–96 (various sponsorships, convened by Col. (USA, retired) Dennison Lane, L2D2 Associates, Washington, D.C.); and David Shambaugh, “China's military: real or paper tiger?” The Washington Quarterly, Spring 1996, pp. 19–36.Google Scholar

29 Such statistics can be traced conveniently in various publications of the World Bank; Statistical Yearbook of China(Beijing: Statistical Publishing House, annually); World Economic Output (Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund, annually); various bank newsletters (for instance, China Briefing, from the Hong Kong Bank); The China Business Review; U.S. and Asia Statistical Handbook (Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation, annually); and FEER.

30 For an elaboration of this argument, see the author's “Chinese foreign policy, from the 1940s to the 1990s,” in Robinson and Shambaugh, Chinese Foreign Policy, pp. 565–602 and his China's Foreign Policy Post-Tiananmen (Arlington, VA: American Asian Research Enterprises, 1994).

31 Most analyses did not address the mainland-Taiwan military equation much beyond the year 2000, perhaps because of the uncertainty of the mainland's military acquisition policies. But most did assert the high likelihood of China's continued annual economic growth at between 5 and 10%. If so, and presuming the official military budget of c. 3% of gross national product understated actual spending by at least three times (some say as much as 14 times), actual Chinese spending in 1994 was on the order of $45 billion. It was therefore not unreasonable to conclude that, as China's gross national product would probably double every six years or so, so would actual military spending. That would put actual mainland military spending to around $100 billion in constant mid-1990s dollars by the year 2000 and c. $200 billion by the end of the first decade thereafter. While not all of the resultant military hardware would necessarily be pointed at Taiwan and while China by then may have acquired or re-acquired several military opponents and so need to divide its forces accordingly, mere was no way Taiwan could match the volume of such military spending through its own efforts. Therefore, its security position, other things being equal, would of necessity steadily decline

32 These developments are traced in a number of sources, including Tucker, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States, 1945–1992, pp. 181–85; Denis Fred Simon and Michael Ying-mao Kao (eds.), Taiwan: Beyond the Economic Miracle (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1992), pp. 3–100; and the annual January articles on Taiwan in Asian Survey and the September article in Current History. See also papers delivered at a conference, “Democratization in Taiwan: Chinese Political Culture, the Multiparty System, and Cross-Straits Relations,” at The George Washington University, April 1994.Google Scholar

33 Among other places where this policy was set forth or analysed are: Fredrick F. Chien, Opportunity and Challenge (Tempe:Arizona Historical Foundation, 1995), and papers delivered at the 13th International Conference on Asian Affairs, “The Republic of China's Pragmatic Diplomacy and United Nations Drive,” at St. John's University, Queens, New York, 9–10 September 1995.Google Scholar

34 As it has advanced in popular standing in the post-1986 period, the DPP has taken stands on international questions, especially the UN membership issue, that serve to pressure the Taipei government to adopt increasingly advanced foreign policy positions. See, for instance, Taiwan International Review (Washington, D.C.: Democratic Progressive Party, monthly from summer 1995), and Taiwan, China, and the World (Taipei: Taiwan International Alliance, 1995).

35 Compare the rather dour and defensive tones, c. 1988, of the Shijie ribao (World Journal) and Free China Journal (Weekly) with the brighter and more confident outlook in 1995, as well as the increasingly optimistic feeling of authors of the relevant chapters on Taiwan in Thomas W. Robinson (ed.), Democracy and Development in East Asia: Taiwan, South Korea, and the Philippines and Zhiling Lin and Thomas W. Robinson (eds.), The Chinese and Their Future: Beijing, Taipei, and Hong Kong (both Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1991 and 1994, respectively.Google Scholar

36 That the American Asian policy of engagement and maintenance of its “hub and spokes” alliance and bases policy was not well grounded in post-Cold War American opinion was seen in the attacks against it and the need for official response. See, for instance, the exchange in Foreign Affairs between Joseph S. Nye, Jr. (then Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs) and Chalmers Johnson and E. B. Keehn, July/August 1995, pp. 90–115. See also Harry Harding, “Asia policy to the brink,” Foreign Policy, Fall 1994, pp. 57–74, and the author's “Post-Cold War security in the Asia-Pacific region,” in Lin and Robinson, The Chinese and Their Future, pp. 386–417.

37 Two polls clearly established American popular reluctance to come to Taiwan's military assistance directly. In 1991, 63% of those polled opposed such aid (China Post, 12 April), while in 1995,78% were against direct American participation in a mainland-Taiwan conflict (Free China Journal, 11 and 18 August). It was this disjunction between Taiwanese presumption and American popular reluctance that was so alarming, in two regards. It gave the mainland the idea that, despite verbal American Congressional support of Taiwan, when the chips were down America would back away from military confrontation with China over Taiwan. And both the KMT and the DPP appeared to presume, despite these polls and the vague wording of the preamble to the Taiwan Relations Act, that America could always be counted on if Taipei called for help. It may or may not be that America would respond positively to Taiwan's plea, choose Taiwan over China, and mortage its entire China policy for another few decades. But confronting a strong China was different: Americans neither seemed to wish to war against a nation that has always been “special” to them, nor wished the instant start-up of a new Cold War, nor wanted their China policy to be made anywhere but in Washington. The dispatch of two American aircraft carrier task forces to waters east of Taiwan during the March 1996 crisis probably did not alter these opinions.

38 The New York Times, 9 April 1996, p. A12

39 DPP statements that its coming to office would not change Taiwan's international status, since Taipei had already achieved de facto independence from the mainland and thus need not declare it to be so, obviously did not sit well with Beijing. See Parris H. Chang, “Remarks prepared for delivery at the inauguration of the Taiwan Democratic Progressive Party mission in Washington, D.C., April 6,1995,” versus the steady escalation of warnings after Lee Teng-hui's Cornell visit, as reported from Xinhua (New China News Agency) in Daily Report: China from 19 May 1995 to mid-March 1996.

40 In the immediate aftermath of the March 1996 elections, Taipei sent at least six delegations to the United States to argue these points to audiences in Washington and throughout the country. Moreover, the lobbying resources referred to earlier were mobilized to approach the Congress directly.

41 FEER, 14September 1995,pp.20–23;FreeChinaJoumal, 15and22September 1995; and Xinhua, 19–21 September as reported in Daily Report: China, 20–22 September 1995. On 12 September, Taipei issued a White Paper, “The Republic of China and the United Nations,” spelling out its case.

42 Statements by visiting Taiwan officials during meetings in Washington, D.C., April 1996, at the National Endowment for Democracy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, The Atlantic Council, and Georgetown University.

43 David N. Laux (President, USA-ROC Economic Council), “Testimony” to Banking and Financial Services Committee, U.S. House of Representatives, 20 March 1996, and conversations with Council staff.

44 In the immediate aftermath of the 23 March election, many Taiwan spokesmen made this point in visits to the United States. They included Shaw Yu-ming, Institute of International Relations; Hung Mao-tien, Institute for National Policy Research; Lin Bih-jaw, National Security Council; and Wei Yung, Vanguard Institute for Policy Studies.

45 Relevant literature includes Ilpyong Kim J. and Shen Qurong (eds.), United States-China Relations Conference, University of Bridgeport, 16–18 April 1993 (Washington, D.C.: Washington Institute Press, 1993); Ding Xinghao and Thomas W. Robinson (eds.), New Ideas and Concepts in Sino-American Relations (Shanghai and Washington, D.C.: Shanghai Institute of International Studies and American Enterprise Institute, 1993 (Chinese edition: Zhong-Mei guanxi xin zixiang yu xin gainian)); Atlantic Council and National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, United States and China Relations at a Cross-Roads (Washington, D.C. and New York, February, 1993); Gerrit W. Gong and Lin Bih-jaw (eds.), Sino-American Relations at a Time of Change (Washington, D.C. and Taipei: Center for Strategic and International Studies and Institute of International Relations, 1994); the annual (September) Current History articles by Steven Levine (1992), David Zweig (1993), Joseph Fewsmith (1994), David Shambaugh (1995) and James Shinn (1996); and Lin Zhiling, A Chronology of Major Developments in U.S.-China Relations, 1979–1995 (Arlington, VA: American Asian Research Enterprises, 1995).Google Scholar

46 The case of inevitable confrontation and the need for containment was made by Dennis Roy, “Hegemon on the horizon: China's threat to East Asian security,” International Security, Summer 1994, pp. 149–168. Winston Lord, American Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, was the spokesman for the co-operation thesis. See his various official statements, including: “Building a Pacific community,” address to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, 12 January 1995; “U.S. policy toward China: security and military considerations,” testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Asia and Pacific Sub-committee, 11 October 1995, and “A sweet and sour relationship,” Current History, September 1995, pp. 248–251. Co-operation versus containment was a false dichotomy: each must include, at times, elements of the other. For this, see the author's New Asian-Pacific Security Arrangements in the 1990s and Beyond (Arlington, VA: American Research Enterprises, 1995).

47 Since at least 1985, Washington and Beijing co-operated in holding back the North Koreans, while China - at least temporarily - drew back from its advanced claims to the Spratly Islands and the South China Sea. These were the only other issues where the two nations could come to blows, unless one postulated nuclear-missile confrontation, American support of Japanese claims to the Senkaku Islands, India against an invading China, or Vietnam-ASEAN-India against Chinese military involvement in Burma. To list these was to indicate how unlikely American-Chinese military confrontation was other than over Taiwan.

48 These include: a fourth communiqué in which China would assert its commitment to peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue in exchange for an American commitement not to encourage, or recognize, Taiwanese independence; a mainland-Taiwan agreement fostered and underwritten, in terms of implementation, by Japan and the United States (and perhaps Russia); and American pressure on China and Taiwan to come to agreement, using American military sales (Taiwan) and trade (China) as leverage. All such solutions to, or agreed postponement of, the Taiwan question would put the United States squarely back into the middle of the problem and signal the end of the post-1972 era in which Washington sought to stand at most at the periphery of the cross-Strait relationship.

49 See the sources in nn. 3, 4, 31, as well as FEER for 1993: 7, 14 and 21 January, 18 and 25 March, 1 and 29 April, 6 and 13 May, 10 June, 1 July, 5 August, 16 September, 7 and 28 October, and 25 November; for 1994: 6 and 27 January, 18 February, 3,10 and 31 March, 18 and 24 April, 5 May, 2 June, 21 July, 18 August, 1,15 and 22 September, 6 and 13 October, and 1 December; for 1995: 5 January, 16 February, 13 and 20 April, 25 May, 1, 8, 15 and 22 June, 6 and 20 July, 3, 10 and 24 August, 7 and 14 September, 19 and 26 October, 2, 9 and 16 November; and in 1996 to early May: 11 and 15 January, 1, 8, 15 and 22 February, 7, 14, 21 and 28 March, 4 and 18 April, and 2 May.

50 This includes not only the Qiandao Lake incident of 31 March 1994 (in which 24 Taiwanese tourists were murdered and the Chinese government attempted to conceal the facts) but also Taiwan investment pull-back from the mainland, the 1995 Chinese missile “tests” in the Taiwan Strait and the consequent war-scare and stock market plunge in Taipei, and the general reaction of Taiwan tourists to the mainland as an interesting place to visit but whose culture (to say nothing of politics) has become sufficiently different as to continue to turn Taiwan outward to join global culture.

51 This was an important component of the growth/resurgence of Chinese nationalism, replacing Marxism-Leninism as China's dominant ideology. See, inter alia, Lin Bih-jaw and James T. Myers (eds.), Forces for Change in Contemporary China (Taipei:Institute ofInternational Relations, 1992);Arthur Lewis Rosenbaum(ed.), State and Society in China:The Consequences of Reform (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992);Harumi Befu(ed.), Cultural Nationalism in East Asia: Representation and Identity (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1993); Lowell Dittmer and Samuel S. Kim (eds.), China's Quest for National Identity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993); and Allen S. Whiting, “Chinese nationalism and foreign policy after Deng,” The China Quarterly, No.142 (June 1995), pp. 295–316.Google Scholar