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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 July 2018
This article revisits the issue of the offshore islands in the Taiwan Strait during the Cold War. Benefitting from archival materials only recently made available, specifically Chiang Kai-shek's personal diaries, CIA declassified materials, Taiwanese Foreign Ministry files, and rare publications from the Contemporary Taiwan Collection at the Library of the Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo, this research examines the cloud of suspicion surrounding the secret contacts between Taipei and Beijing leading up to and during the 1958 offshore islands crisis, elucidating how such a political tête-à-tête, and the resultant tacit consensus over the status of the islands, gradually brought about an end to the conflict between Taiwan and Communist China. In hindsight, the crises over the offshore islands along China's southeast coast momentarily brought the United States closer to war with Communist China, while putting the relationship between Taipei and Washington to a serious test. The end result, however, was that, while these isles were technically embedded in the unfinished civil war between the Chinese Nationalists and Communists, they provided, ironically, an opportunity for secret communications and, ultimately, a kind of détente between the two supposedly deadly enemies across the Taiwan Strait. A close examination of the details of these crises, along with their attendant military, political, and diplomatic complexities, reveals an amazing amount of political intrigue at both the local and international levels that has not been fully realized until now.
*Our thanks go to the two anonymous readers and Professor Joya Chatterji, editor-in-chief of Modern Asian Studies, for their useful comments, criticism, suggestions, and encouragement. We also express our deep appreciations to the Yintai Foundation and its research initiative on the Chiang family and modern Chinese history for its support and encouragement. Special thanks also go to staff in the following libraries and archives for their assistance: the Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University (California), British National Archives (London), Library of the Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo (Tokyo), Archives of the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica (Taipei), and Academia Historica (Taipei).
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17 CKSD, 3 December 1954, Box 51.
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19 Tucker, The China Threat, pp. 76–78; Soman, Double-Edged Sword, pp. 130–131.
20 CKSD, 20, 21 and 22 January 1955, Box 51.
21 Accinelli, Crisis and Commitment, pp. 190–194.
22 CKSD, 29, 30 and 31 January 1955, Box 51.
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24 Robertson to Dulles, top secret, 25 April 1955, in Robert E. Lester (ed.), President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Office Files, 1953–1961, Part II (hereafter Eisenhower 1953–1961) (Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America, 1990), microfilm, reel 6.
25 Ibid..; CKSD, 25 and 27 April 1955, Box 51.
26 CKSD, 27 April 1955, Box 51.
27 Robertson to Dulles, top secret, 25 April 1955, in Eisenhower 1953–1961, reel 6; CKSD, 25, 26, 27 and 31 April 1955, Box 51.
28 Memorandum from President Eisenhower to Dulles, top secret, 26 April 1955, in Eisenhower 1953–1961, reel 6.
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33 ‘Peking-Taipei Contacts’, pp. 6–12; Department of General Political Warfare, ROC Ministry of National Defence, ‘The CCP war guidelines and strategies for peace’, issued in May 1956, Contemporary Taiwan Collection, Library of the Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo (Tokyo) (hereafter CTC), no. C125:437; Report from ROC Embassy in Washington D.C. to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2 February 1957, Archives of the ROC Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Archives of Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica (hereafter AMFA), 0046/405.1/2; Ministry of Foreign Affairs to ROC Embassy in the United States, 19 March 1957, ibid.
34 CKSD, 8, 10, 20, 31 January 1956 and 4 February 1956, Box 65.
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52 Kaufman, Confronting Communism, pp.133–135; Taylor, The Generalissimo, pp. 493–494.
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63 Ibid., pp. 17–18; Tang Zong, ‘Report on the party affairs at the ninth KMT National Congress’, 12 November 1963, pp. 39–41, CTC, no. CD6:1679.
64 The KMT Central Committee (ed.), ‘A bloody lesson’, CTC.
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67 ‘Peking-Taipei Contacts’, pp. 17–18. Accounts given by Cao Juren's family suggest that Chiang Ching-kuo was in fact pressured by the CIA, whose agents had been keeping an eye on the ongoing secret cross-Strait communications, into reluctantly handing over all the secret letters to the Americans. See Zheng, Guogong Xiangjiang Diezhan, p. 154.
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76 J. Graham Parsons (Assistant Secretary of State) to Christian Herter (Secretary of State), top secret, 20 June 1960, no. 793.00/6-2060, ibid., reel 2; Drumright to State Department, top secret, 14 July 1960, no. 793.5/7-1460, ibid., reel 11.
77 State Department memorandum entitled ‘Review of Offshore Island Problem and United States Policy Relating Thereto’, top secret, 5 August 1960, ibid., reel 11.
78 Tong, Fengyu Sishinian, Vol. 2, p. 276.
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80 Memorandum from George C. McGhee to Dean Rusk, 10 March 1961, FRUS 1961–1963, Vol. 22: Northeast Asia, pp. 27–28; Memorandum from A. E. Steeves to Rusk, 15 April 1961, ibid., pp. 48–49.
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82 ‘Highlights of discussion at Secretary of State Rusk's planning meeting’, 13 July 1961, ibid., pp. 93–94.
83 Memorandum from McGhee to Bundy entitled ‘The Offshore Island—Alternative Courses and Probable Consequences’, 25 August 1961, in Robert E. Lester (ed.), John F. Kennedy National Security Files: Asia and the Pacific, 1961–1963 (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1987), microfilm, reel 1.
84 Such rationales were revealed by Cao Juren to the Chinese Nationalists as early as the spring of 1960, again through his secret channel with Taipei. See Li, Cao Juren zhuan, pp. 368–369; ‘Peking-Taipei Contacts’, pp. 23–24.