What Did Nixon Promise China About Taiwan?

Just over 50 years ago, on February 28, 1972, U.S. President Richard Nixon concluded his week-long visit to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) – the first ever by a U.S. president. In a seminal Joint Communique, the two sides committed to “concrete consultations to further the normalization of relations between the two countries,” declaring that diplomatic normalization “is not only in the interest of the Chinese and American peoples but also contributes to the relaxation of tension in Asia and the world.”

Normalization, however, had to overcome one massive obstacle: The United States’ relationship with the Republic of China (ROC) government of Chiang Kai-shek, which had been based on Taiwan since being ousted from the mainland by Mao Zedong’s communist forces in 1949.

The 1972 Joint Communique is a case study in agreeing to disagree. Both China and the United States separately expressed their positions on different issues, including Taiwan. China declared its position that “the Government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government of China; Taiwan is a province of China which has long been returned to the motherland; the liberation of Taiwan is China’s internal affair in which no other country has the right to interfere; and all US forces and military installations must be withdrawn from Taiwan.”

The U.S. position, by contrast, does not affirm or agree with the “one China” definition, but merely “acknowledges” it. “The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position,” the Joint Communique says. The U.S. then “reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves.” The key word here, of course, is “peaceful” – implying, although not stating outright, that it is against U.S. interests to see the issue of Taiwan’s status decided by force.

U.S. analysts have long pointed to the language of the Joint Communique to differentiate the U.S. “one China policy” from China’s “one China principle.” But Nixon was far less ambiguous in his private conversations with Premier Zhou Enlai, then China’s number two and the primary interlocutor for both Nixon and Nixon’s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, on his prior trip.

The president himself was well aware that he was going farther than the Joint Communique. In fact, Nixon – unsurprisingly, given his reputation for secrecy – seemed rather paranoid about his candid conversations with Zhou becoming common knowledge. He griped to Zhou that any concessions on Taiwan would face opposition from “the very unholy alliance of the far right, the pro-Soviet left, and pro-Indian left.”

“Our problem is to be clever enough to find language which will meet your need yet does not stir up the animals so much that they gang up on Taiwan and thereby torpedo our initiative,” Nixon told Zhou.

It’s easy to see, based on this alone, why Chinese leaders tend to read more into the Joint Communique than is explicitly stated. After all, Nixon himself, while being careful to insist that he could not make a “secret deal” with Zhou, all but pledged that the “Taiwan issue” would be solved with a little patience, pending his re-election campaign’s success in the fall of 1972.

“[I]n the formulation of the Taiwan question we are going to work out [in the Joint Communique], each side states its own position, but if one has profound understanding one can see that there is common ground between our two countries toward this question,” as Zhou told Nixon during talks on February 24.

Most importantly, Nixon went much further than the communique by explicitly stating “There is one China, and Taiwan is a part of China” in a February 22 conversation with Zhou. While the communique itself did not embrace Beijing’s “one China principle” – something commenters in the United States frequently point out – Nixon certainly did.

Nixon further pledged that the United States had “not and will not support any Taiwanese independence movement.” He added that “we will support any peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue that can be worked out” – but notably, in expanding on that, he stressed the need to restrain Taiwanese aggression against the mainland, not the other way around. “[W]e will not support any military attempts by the Government on Taiwan to resort to a military return to the Mainland,” Nixon pledged. He did not mention the potential for the PRC to use force to bring Taiwan under Beijing’s control, nor make any serious attempt to dissuade against it.

Overall, Nixon seemed willing to make any concession on Taiwan that he could justify to voters in the United States. “[M]y goal is normalization [of diplomatic relations] with the People’s Republic. I realize that solving the Taiwan problem is indispensable to achieving that goal,” he told Zhou on February 24. But Nixon warned that a potential political backlash from pro-Taiwan groups in the U.S. could torpedo normalization: “...[W]hat we say about achieving that goal will directly affect whether I can achieve it.”

In Nixon’s eyes, then, the Taiwan issue was essentially one of political management. “We have differences on Taiwan, not in my opinion so significant over the long run but difficult in the short run,” he told Zhou. The Chinese premier agreed: “The Taiwan question can be discussed rather easily… We have already waited over twenty years – I am very frank here – and can wait a few more years.”

What is perhaps most striking about these private discussions, in that context, is that neither the U.S. nor the Chinese delegations seemed to think the ROC government would last more than a decade – if we interpret numerous references to the problem being solvable in the “short run” to mean both sides thought Taiwan would soon be integrated into the PRC. Based on the transcripts of these discussions, both Nixon and Zhou would have been stunned to learn that, 50 years later, the issue of Taiwan continued to bedevil China-U.S. relations.

Zhou certainly would have been shocked; he told Nixon that “it is our hope, it would be good if the liberation of Taiwan could be realized in your next term of office,” meaning by 1976.

Kissinger, meanwhile, suggested that that it would take 10 years to solve the problem. Zhou made clear “that would be too long… I can’t wait 10 years.”

“We are not asking you to remove Chiang Kai-shek,” Zhou added. “We will take care of that ourselves.”

“Peacefully,” Nixon interjected, to which Zhou responded, “Yes, we have self-confidence.”

In a lengthy conversation on February 24, Zhou summarized what he understood as Nixon’s (and, by extension, the United States’) position to be on Taiwan: “Firstly, you hope for and will not hinder a peaceful liberation,” the PRC euphemism at the time for unifying Taiwan with the mainland. Zhou also understood Nixon to be saying that “you would not support or allow a Taiwan Independence Movement, nor encourage it, either in the U.S. or Taiwan.”

Here, Kissinger stepped in to clarify something: Saying the U.S. would not “allow” a Taiwan Independence Movement in Taiwan “is beyond our capability.” Zhou then modified his wording to “discourage,” with Nixon’s confirmation.

“What we cannot do,” Kissinger further elaborated, “is to use our forces to suppress the [independence] movement on Taiwan if it develops without our support.”

“That is true,” Zhou replied. “Chiang Kai-shek will do that. That he has the strength to do.”

And with that comment, it becomes clear why China’s hopes for the unification of Taiwan by 1976, and Kissinger’s expectation that it would happen by 1982, did not pan out. Chiang Kai-shek, the dictator who had kept tight control of Taiwan since decamping there in 1949, died in 1975. With him died Chiang’s wildly unrealistic dreams of one day retaking the mainland – which, ironically, had for years being working in the PRC’s favor by keeping the mantra of “one China” alive in Taiwan.

As Zhou himself told Nixon, “Chiang Kai-shek still believes in one China. That’s a good point which we can make use of. That’s why we can say that this question can be settled comparatively easily.” Without Chiang’s iron-fisted insistence on “one China,” the Taiwan “question” was no longer “comparatively easy” to solve.

Meanwhile, the burgeoning democracy movement on Taiwan gained strength under Chiang Ching-kuo, Chiang Kai-shek’s son and successor. By 1986, Taiwan’s transition to a full-fledged democracy was well underway – and with it came a shift toward embracing Taiwanese identity, which provided a major boost to the Taiwan independence movement Zhou so feared (and China’s leaders still fear today).

The easy assumptions of both Nixon and Zhou that Taiwan would inevitably, even easily, revert to Beijing’s control were based heavily on the assumption that Chiang, and perhaps his successors as well, would continue to insist upon “one China” and suppress any notion of Taiwanese independence. In fact, one major flashpoint in ROC-U.S. relations in the early 1970s was that the United States had granted a visa to Peng Ming-min, a prominent activist seeking Taiwanese democracy and the scrapping of the ROC government (which, at that point, was synonymous with Chiang’s dictatorship). Chiang was incredibly displeased when Peng escaped from house arrest and made his way to asylum in the United States (via Sweden). Anger over Peng’s U.S. residency united both the ROC and PRC governments at the time; after all, Taiwanese independence was their common enemy.

That is no longer the case. In fact, polls consistently show that the majority of Taiwanese would embrace independence in an as-yet imaginary world where Beijing would not immediately retaliate. Barring that, most Taiwanese accept the status quo – which, as current President Tsai Ing-wen has said, is fundamentally a state of de facto independence. “We don't have a need to declare ourselves an independent state,” she told the BBC in 2020, shortly after her re-election. “We are an independent country already and we call ourselves the Republic of China (Taiwan).”

Despite this seminal shift in the underlying reality, both the United States and China continue to cling to the Taiwan policies outlined in the 1972 Joint Communique. It is no longer accurate to say, as the U.S. did then, that “all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain… that Taiwan is a part of China” (and it must be noted that statement was always problematic, as it intentionally erased any non-Chinese residents of Taiwan, including the island’s Indigenous peoples). A growing majority of people in Taiwan no longer identify as “Chinese” at all, much less “maintain that Taiwan is a part of China.”

Meanwhile, China continues to hold firm on its stance, but even in 1972 there were stirrings of concern about what a strong Taiwanese identity would mean for Beijing. Responding to the stated U.S. preference for Taiwan’s status to be resolved peacefully, Zhou said, “[W]e will strive for peaceful liberation.” But, he added, “It is a matter for both sides. We want this [unification]. What will we do if they don’t want it?”

Fifty years later, that is exactly the question plaguing the Taiwan Strait.