By  Charles Onunaiju

There is almost no other country whose bilateral relation with China was graphically defined on an explicit framework of strict adherence to the one China Principle which clearly recognizes there is only one China in the world and Taiwan is inalienable part of China as with the United States of America. In the banquet Hall of the Jin Jiang Hotel on the 27th February 1972,  the then, U.S  president Richard Nixon and Chinese premier, Zhou Enlai signed the pivotal Shanghai Communiqué, which is both a joint statement of the two countries foreign policy views, forming the fulcrum and a core fundamental of the Sino – U.S bilateral relations.

President Nixon has said on the occasion, then that “this was the week that changed the world as what we have said in that communiqué is not nearly as important as what we will do in the years ahead to build a bridge across 16,000 miles and 22 years of hostilities which have divided us in the past. And what we have said today is that we shall build the bridge”. In the communiqué, the U.S side “acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintains there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States recgonizesTaiwan is a part of China.

The United States government does not challenge that position”, and further reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves”. This was clearly the core pillar, which the United States freely agreed as the foundation to the road map on which former President Richard Nixon committed to “build the bridge” of the two countries bilateral cooperation. However, despite this explicit commitment at the highest level of U.S government and which has remained the defining framework of the bilateral cooperation between Beijing and Washington, the question that has persisted and become even more pertinent in recent times, is why have the U.S politicians turned the Taiwan question, a definitive and clear matter of China’s internal affairs into a political card played with utter recklessness without any demonstration of sensitivity to the genuine concerns of an important partner. Despite that modern China was founded against the will of the American and other Western political establishment, reality however dawned on Washington and the West generally when the United Nations General Assembly through its iconic resolution 2758 with a landslide majority restored all lawful rights of the People’s Republic of China, recognizing the government of the People’s Republic of China as “the only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations” on the 25th October, 1975.

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The United Nations resolution 2758 became not only a cardinal International document but evolved into a tradition of International practice, mainstreamed into the foreign policy orientations, outlook and practice of nearly all the countries in the world.However, despite that the United States of America through the Shanghai Communique contributed to the universal practice of One China Policy, Washington and its elites avails itself the reckless leisure of occasionally provoking storms and instigating disruptions by playing the Taiwan card as a cynical ploy to contain and constrain China’s trajectory of development.

With China’s inclusive and sustainable development and a growth in international stature as reliable and trust worthy partner of some many countries, Washington through the lens of zero sum game, considers China’s global reach and influence as negatively consequential to its global hegemony. Despite China has repeatedly said and demonstrated that her development is peaceful and would never seek hegemony, let alone aspiring to supplant any hegemonic power, Washington’s paranoid concerns about China, drives her ruling elites to extremities including playing the dangerous Taiwan card of trying to validate a small ambitious clique of Taiwan officials who seeks a doomed path of “Taiwan Independence”. The extremist ideological faction of the Washington elite, could not reconcile itself to the historical fact that having led the Chinese people in a long drawn revolutionary struggle to found a New China in which the Chinese people took their destiny in their own hands and not only “stood up” but are now prosperous, strong and on the cusp of national rejuvenation, the Communist party of China is even more confident to deliver “a strong democratic, civilized and modern Socialist country”.

The fact of history and its verdict as it evolves showed that the Washington’s panic and concern of a “China hegemonic order” is mere reflection of itself in the mirror and the actual challenge for Washington is to drop the mirror and see her most important global partner in her real form. In playing the Taiwan card, the U.S undermines her prestige as a major country whose commitment should be ordinarily taken as bankable. The Chinese people across the Taiwan straits are capable of finding a solution to their national question and the “1992 consensus” is a home grown road map to the aspirations of all the Chinese people for complete national re – unification.

Onunaiju, foreign affairs researcher writes  from the FCT, Abuja