U.S. Should Embrace Logic of One China to Question Chinese Sovereignty Over Other Lands – Chinese leaders repeatedly declare that Taiwan is part of China and demand the rest of the world follow. In 1971, U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger promised the United States would accept an ill-defined “one-China” policy that Beijing assumed meant China would exercise sovereignty over Taiwan. 

That policy and the very notion that there is “one China,” however, was always built on a lie. 

Even Mao Zedong, the founding chairman of the People’s Republic of China, once acknowledged that China and Taiwan were not synonymous. 

The History

In 1936, the American hagiographer Edgar Snow asked Mao if he intended to regain all the territory China lost to Japan. Mao responded, “It is the immediate task of China to regain all our lost territories…. This means that Manchuria must be regained.” He then added, “When we have re-established the independence of the lost territories of China, and if the Koreans wish to break away from the chains of Japanese imperialism, we will extend them our enthusiastic help in their struggle for independence. The same thing applies to Formosa,” as Taiwan was then called. 

Put clearly: At least in 1936, Mao believed there was a China of which Manchuria was a crucial part.

Taiwan, though, was like Korea or, for that matter, Japan: A foreign country that was decidedly not China.