This should settle the matter of Taiwan’s status once and for all. After reading this, you should be able to say with supreme confidence, “I have no clue”:
[quote]Nixon: I noticed in the Washington daily news summary, the editorial, they made it to be critical of the fact that there was no mention of the Taiwan Independence Movement.
Nixon: What in the hell is the Taiwanese Independence Movement all about?
Kissinger: It’s not a significant movement now. It’s violently opposed by both the Chinese Governments. Chiang Kai-shek had locked up the leader of the Taiwanese Independence Movement [Peng Ming-min], and he’s now in this country as an exile.
Nixon: I know.
Kissinger: . . . . But I noticed somebody must be feeding that because The New York Times, which never used to give a damn about Taiwan, had an editorial about that last week too.
Nixon: On the independence movement…
Kissinger: Yeah.
Nixon: . . . . That’s so goddamn— have you ever heard of the Taiwan Independence Movement?
Kissinger: No.
Haldeman: No. Not enough to matter.
Kissinger: I can’t speculate.
Nixon: But we haven’t, the other thing, I didn’t see anything in the State Department papers indicating that we ought to support the Taiwan Independence Movement.
Kissinger: Absolutely not.
Nixon: Did we?
Kissinger: No.
Nixon: There’s some kind of flap on it. Did [Secretary of State William P.] Rogers raise that in his—
Kissinger: No. Well, they raised it at—
Nixon: At the end?
Nixon: . . . . What did he say . . . ?
Kissinger: . . . . At the end he did raise it among 500 other nit-picks.
Nixon: What 500?
Kissinger: Well, 18, 15. But in this catalog of nit-picks there was the Taiwan Independence Movement. But our formulation doesn’t even preclude, it states it has to be settled by the Chinese themselves. Naturally the Taiwanese are Chinese.
Nixon: Are Chinese.
Kissinger: If they want to secede, that’s their business.
Nixon: Our private understanding is that—
Kissinger: That we won’t encourage it.
Nixon: We won’t encourage it, that’s all.
Kissinger: We didn’t say we will oppose it either.
Nixon: We didn’t say we will discourage it either.
Kissinger: We didn’t say we’d oppose it. We said we will give it no support. And that’s been our position. We have never given it any support.[/quote]–“Conversation Among President Nixon, his Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger), and his Chief of Staff (Haldeman),” March 13, [color=#000080]1972[/color], in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XVII, China, 1969–1972, Document 212
[quote]Chairman Mao: It’s better for it to be in your hands. And if you were to send it back to me now, I would not want it, because it’s not wantable. There are a huge bunch of counter-revolutionaries there. A hundred years hence we will want it (gesturing with his hand), and we are going to fight for it.
Secretary Kissinger: Not a hundred years.
Chairman Mao: (Gesturing with his hand, counting) It is hard to say. Five years, ten, twenty, a hundred years. It’s hard to say. (Points toward the ceiling) And when I go to heaven to see God, I’ll tell him it’s better to have Taiwan under the care of the United States now.[/quote]Conversation between Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Chairman Mao Zedong, among others, October 21, [color=#000080]1975[/color], in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XVIII, China, 1973–1976, Document 124