A tightrope between Taiwan and China

Press, 21 August 1982, Page 14

A tightrope between Taiwan and China

This is the third and last in a series of articles by BRUCE ROSCOE, the Tokyo correspondent of “The Press," who visited China recently at the invitation of the All-China Journalists Association. The invitation was to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between New Zealand and the People’s Republic of China.

Michael Barltrop. aged 25. a member of the Manukau Golf Club on a handicap of two, started • playing golf in 1970. Last year he was selected as a member of a New Zealand team to Taiwan. He never reached Taipei-. The team's visit, according to Air New Zealand, was cancelled for “political reasons.” For the July-August-Septem-ber quarter of last year, according to a Taiwanese Government publication, New Zealand sold a record SUSI 9.7 million worth of goods to Taiwan.

In 1980, New Zealand exports to Taiwan totalled as much as SUS66.B million, a big rise over the SUS44.B million it sold the year before. Obviously, an export drive is on, so why could Mr Barltrop not drive golf balls off Taipei tees? When New Zealand gave official recognition to Mao Tsetung's Communist-ruled mainland China on December 22, 1972, it “acknowledged the position of the Chinese Government that Taiwan is a province of the People’s Republic of China and an inalienable part of its territory,” according to a New Zealand Government document. On the same day, the New Zealand Foreign Affairs Ministry said diplomatic relations with Taiwan had been terminated. The Taiwanese ambassador to New Zealand would leave by the end of the following month. In Peking, both Government officials and foreign diplomats say that no issue is as sensitive as the Taiwan question.

With the.recent Dutch sale of two submarines to the Kuomintang Nationalist Chinese regime on Taiwan, and the immediate prospect of more United States’ sales of FSE jet fighters to Taiwan, Peking is calling the issue a time bomb. A Western ambassador to Peking says the “explosion could come at any minute." When the tension is so high, and when so much is at stake, even for a small country like New Zealand — for any country, in fact, thqt has pledged.to Peking that the people’s republic is the sole China — foreign governments dealing with Peking must know that the ice under their feet can carry their weight. About 20 foreign governments recognise Taiwan as the one China, and Taipei likes to hoist its Nationalist flag abroad whenever it can. Peking maintains firmly that nations which -recognise the People's Republic and at the same time deal officially with Taipei are “interfering in China’s internal affairs.”

The key word is "official.” This puts New Zealand in a precarious position because some of New Zealand’s Taiwan connections are neither official nor unofficial.

In trade, for example, the New Zealand Wool and Dairy Boards make extensive sales to Taiwan. These boards, by Acts of Parliament, are semi- ■ official.

The Meat Board also supervises sales to Taiwan, and among the board’s directors is an official of the Ministry of

Agriculture and Fisheries. New Zealand could well be seen by Peking to be “playing the double China game.”

Officials of both the Chinese Foreign Ministry and the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade make the point that any nation recognising Peking is absolutely free to export to Taiwan (or send sports teams) in a non-govern-mental capacity. Nevertheless a senior Chinese Foreign Ministry official warns that Taiwan “plays tricks" in its dealings with foreign countries by converting an obstensibly unofficial visit-' from abroad into an official occasion once the guests arrive. He also cautions that Taiwanese businessmen making private visits to client countries soon introduce themselves as an “official of the Nationalist government.” The scenario was experienced recently by Japan, which, in an effort to correct a large trade imbalance in Japan’s favour, despatched to Taipei a trade mission from the ruling Liberal-Democratic Party. Tokyo called the mis-

sion “economic." Taipei viewed it as the “start of closer JapanTaiwan relations."

Japan, however, is eased off the hook' slightly by the Tokyo Government not using the word “acknowledge” in its communique of recognition. Instead, ever expedient, it employs the phrase “understands and respects" in regard to the republic's position on Taiwan.

In a series of interviews, no Chinese Goverment officials insisted that private New Zealand concerns should not become involved with Taiwan, but even mention of the word “Taiwan” to such officials is visibly upsetting. It also makes them tense. For them, the issue seems as much emotional and psychological as it does political. It is also a matter of face.

Peking’s position on the Taiwan problem in 1982 differs little, if at all, from the view it held in 1949.

Within that space of 32 years, the Chinese Nationalists who fled the mainland after being defeated by Mao’s forces have seen their population grow to a prosperous 18

million. Taiwan Chinese have more freedom and more money than their Communist relations, and freeze at the mere thought of succumbing to Communist rule. Their economy is vibrant, and the Western’ world these days is calling Taiwan a newly industrialising country. Some observers compare Peking’s stand with the Argentine view of the Falklands, arguing that Argentina’s belief that it could take and hold the' islands by using force indicated that its military regime was living and thinking in the past. Peking is at least more pragmatic in its approach. It has spurned an offer from Lisbon for the return of Por-tuguese-held Macao, apparently out of fear that such reversion would scare foreign investors in Hong Kong. An economically healthy Hong Kong, the British colony whose lease from China , expires in just 15 years, is vital to China's modernisation programmes. Hong Kong is, along with Japan. China’s biggest export market, last year buying some SUSS.2 billion worth of mainland Chinese goods, and accounting for some 40 per cent of China's foreign exchange earnings. Any attempt by Peking to take Taiwan by force would frighten business concerns with stakes in Hong Kong a great deal more than would a peaceful, negotiated reversion of Macao.

The People’s Republic itself trades indirectly (by way of Hong Kong) with Taiwan (on

Hong Kong figures, the twoway China-Taiwan trade was worth about SUSBOO million last year) and first-quarter figures for this year suggest Peking has launched a considerable export campaign to sell more to the island.

China’s answer to the Dutch submarine sales was to downgrade The Hague's diplomatic representation at Peking to charge d'affaires, which in June coincided with the expulsion from Peking of a Dutch journalist for “inappropriate behaviour." The charges against the journalist were never spelt out, but Peking must have seen an unhappy combination in his known contacts with Chinese dissidents, and the fac.t that he was married to a Taiwan Chinese.

A foreign information officer in Peking who reports to a major Western government, told me that after the expulsion certain Chinese publications propagated stories that the journalist had also "left many illegitimate children throughout China."

China’s response to further United States’ arms sales to Taiwan has been to threaten a severance of relations with Washington. No-one in Peking wishes to imagine what repercussions such a retaliation would effect.

New Zealand must proceed with extreme prudence. Maintaining such relations as it does with Taiwan is akin to tightrope walking from an unknown height. The acrobat cannot know what damage a fall would cause.