Taiwan's Radical Alternative
HUDSON, G. F.
TURNING TO MOSCOW Taiwan's Radical Alternative BY G. F. HUDSON IT WAS inevitable that President Nixon's decision to visit Peking would be a blow to the Nationalist regime in Taiwan, which the...
...The situation, however, is not quite so simple: If Taiwan were abandoned by the United States, it still might obtain protection from another quarter...
...its incapacity to establish strong central control in the various regions and provinces assured the Soviets that there would be no cause for alarm in the resurgence of China after the defeat of Japan...
...The younger Chiang is in a good position to take Taiwan along a new road should President Nixon deem it expedient to rid himself of America's commitment...
...In 1945 his father sent him to Moscow with a request for Soviet mediation between the Kuomintang and the Communists...
...Thus despite Moscow's probable misgivings—the new China was so much bigger and more powerful than any of the Communist states in Eastern Europe?Sino-Soviet relations were good enough for the first decade of the People's Republic...
...So far there has been no indication that the Sino-Americaa rapprochement has in any way helped Peking's relations with Moscow?just the reverse...
...Yet given the course of Sino-Soviet relations over the years, it is reasonable to assume the Kremlin's enthusiasm about the triumph of Communism in China has always been qualified...
...This claim is far from convincing, though, for it is difficult to see how the U.S...
...The "significant concessions" must certainly be at Taiwan's expense, and even if Nixon is reluctant to make them, Peking is probably hoping that the American public's desire to disengage from Asia and accommodate the emerging Chinese superpower will bring irresistible pressure to bear on the President in an election year...
...Indeed, the Soviet Union no longer recognizes China as a Communist country at all...
...The Kremlin was only too willing to leave that thankless task to General George Marshall and declined to intervene, but Chiang Ching-kuo was apparently made to feel welcome and there is no reason to suspect a later falling out...
...Stalin's intentions remain wrapped in mystery, making any estimate of them largely speculative...
...If Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai had to choose between having the Americans or the Russians on Taiwan, they would undoubtedly prefer the former...
...can benefit from its new approach to Peking unless it is willing to yield by stages on the subject of Taipei...
...in any event, it would be no gain for them to have the Soviets replace the Americans...
...in his new post of Vice Premier, he chairs two committees that direct the island's economic affairs...
...While Moscow has no official relations with Taipei, it is widely believed in Formosa that informal contacts have never ceased to exist...
...is now committed...
...As Minister of National Defense, he controlled the Armed Forces for several years...
...What the People's Republic wants, of course, is to be accepted by both the U.S...
...In other words, Moscow valued its Chinese comrades more for contributing to their country's disunity than for their ideology...
...No other non-Communist politician of importance alive today has had so long and intimate an experience there...
...A price would have to be paid for Soviet protection, of course, but rather than curbing Taiwan's flourishing capitalist economy, it would be primarily strategic...
...It was in the Soviet interest to promote this division and simultaneously obtain influence over the residual Kuomintang after it had been abandoned by the Americans...
...During the last Party Congress, Leonid Brehznev declared that the Thought of Mao Tse-tung was "incompatible with Marxism-Leninism," and on an occasion of such great solemnity these words were not lightly spoken...
...still recognizes diplomatically as the government of the Republic of China and protects under a military alliance...
...At present Yen Chia-kan is both Vice President and Premier, and upon the death of Chiang Kai-shek he is expected to succeed to the Presidency, leaving the office of Premier to Chiang Ching-kuo...
...if the Kuomintang could hold out there, the mainland would continue to be divided...
...Conversely, it would threaten Peking far more than the U.S...
...In fact, it has already joined in a pact with India that is applicable against both Pakistan and China, and the "Moscow-Delhi Axis" is now a factor in both Asian and global politics...
...TURNING TO MOSCOW Taiwan's Radical Alternative BY G. F. HUDSON IT WAS inevitable that President Nixon's decision to visit Peking would be a blow to the Nationalist regime in Taiwan, which the U.S...
...The Russians had to make the best of the situation confronting them once the Communists consolidated their hold on the entire mainland...
...Why, therefore, should the protecting arm of the Soviet Union not be extended also to Taiwan if it is left in the lurch by its present ally...
...If, indeed, all the major powers were to recognize Peking as the only lawful authority in China and refuse to aid or defend Taipei, it would be only a matter of time before the far stronger Armed Forces of the People's Republic succeeded in destroying the "rebel" regime on the other side of the Taiwan Strait...
...Washington has insisted that the "normalization" of relations with the Chinese People's Republic would not eclipse existing obligations, and that the U.S...
...and the UN as the sole legal government of China...
...Technically, then, it would not be a breach of Communist solidarity if the USSR were to conclude an alliance against China with a non-Communist government...
...Their hopes of completely isolating Formosa thus depend on securing an agreement to that end with both the U.S...
...well be playing a role in their policy deliberations...
...Returning from a week of talks with Communist Chinese officials, the Canadian Opposition leader, Robert Stanfield, reported: "It was emphasized that President Nixon would be welcome to visit Peking, but unless he is prepared to make significant concessions there would hardly be any beneficial results...
...When Nanking —the official capital of China under the Nationalists—was captured by the Communists, the American and British embassies remained, but the Soviet ambassador followed Chiang Kai-shek's government to Canton...
...It may be that Peking could reach an understanding with Moscow that would exclude any future Russian support for Taipei, but only at a price that the present Communist Chinese leadership would be unwilling to pay...
...would strive to prevent Formosa's expulsion from the UN while supporting the admission of mainland China...
...Though never mentioned publicly by any of the governments involved, this possibility may G. F. HUDSON, formerly Director of Far Eastern Studies at Saint Antony's College, Oxford, where he is now a Fellow Emeritus, often analyzes Asian affairs in these pages...
...The Soviet Union has maintained diplomatic relations with the People's Republic ever since its founding in 1949...
...Chiang Kai-shek has carefully prepared his son to assume the supreme leadership of Taiwan after his death...
...As long as the USSR aspires to be the world's second naval power and remains at odds with the People's Republic, the use of sea and air bases on an island approximately halfway between Vladivostok and Singapore and 100 miles from the coast of South China would certainly be an attractive proposition...
...The Kuomintang, admittedly a bourgeois party tied to Western capitalism, had the great virtue of weakness...
...Thus the world was presented with the strange spectacle of a Communist power showing more consideration for an anti-Communist regime in adversity than the two Western powers accused of using the Kuomintang as an instrument of imperialist control...
...As matters stand now, the continuing tension between the People's Republic and the Soviet Union makes Taiwan's position stronger than may appear at first sight...
...presence in the area, for it would complete the encirclement of China by a power that already presses on her land borders to the north and west—a power that shows no sign of adopting in Asia the "low profile" policy to which the U.S...
...AS IT turned out, the Nationalists were too weak to offer any effective resistance in South China...
...Soviet attitudes toward China during the five years immediately following World War II are more difficult to determine than those of the U.S...
...and the USSR...
...It not only doubted the Communists' ability to subdue and govern the entire mainland, but saw the undesirable consequences a powerful, united China would have for the USSR, whatever its form of government...
...Formosa would then fall under the jurisdiction of the mainland, becoming in effect a rebellious province with whose forcible subjection no other nation would have any right to interfere...
...But since their break in 1960, the fraternal solidarity that might be expected of two countries both professing the faith of Marxism-Leninism has not been restored...
...There is a unique go-between in the person of Chiang Ching-kuo, son of Chiang Kai-shek and currently Vice Premier of the Nationalist government...
...For in the case of American policy—or the lack of one—it is at least possible to arrive at some firm conclusions from a mass of published official documents plus the private memoirs of statesmen and journalists...
...The Kremlin's major response was to send off Andrei Gro-myko to Delhi to conclude a treaty with India...
...And the Chinese Nationalists can certainly be expected to play their hand with some political skill, knowing that they have more than one option in their foreign policy...
...He lived in the USSR from 1925-37...
...Nonetheless, before the Chinese Communists completed their conquest of the mainland, Moscow displayed a degree of favor toward the Kuomintang beyond what might be considered due a regime obviously losing a civil war...
...This would explain the Soviet ambassador's remarkable move to Canton with the defeated Nationalists when the American and British representatives were directed to leave the sinking ship: There was a chance that the Communists, whose main strength at that time lay in the North—where they had gained control of large areas during the War by infiltrating behind the Japanese lines—would not be strong enough to subdue South China...
Vol. 54 • September 1971 • No. 18
