The Strategic Triangle } 405
China.” The 1972 Communiqué had used the Chinese verb renshidao (literally
“acknowledge,” or see the reality of) as the predicate in the Chinese text. For
the 1978 communiqué, however, American negotiators agreed to use of the
Chinese verb chengren, which translates as “recognize.” Both the English verb
recognize and the Chinese verb chengren have among their several usages
the conferring of the legal status of sovereignty by an established member
of the community of sovereign states on an entity claiming membership in
that legal community. Chengren is, sometimes, a precise term of diplomatic
art. To “chengren/recognize” a state is to accept that entity’s legal right to
exercise sovereign control over a particular territory. Thus, the formulation
(translated into English) in the Chinese-language version, “the United States
recognizes China’s view that Taiwan is a part of China,” has significantly dif-
ferent meaning than the phrase in the US/English version, “the United States
acknowledges China’s view that Taiwan is a part of China.” This is precisely
why US negotiators in 1972 insisted on use of renshidao in the Chinese text,
and why Chinese negotiators pushed so hard for use of chengren in the 1978
Communiqué text.^8 The change of one verb in the 1978 Chinese text led to the
Chinese assertion that the United States had thereby pledged to stay out of
cross-Strait relations because the United States had “recognized that Taiwan
was a part of China.” The English version of the 1978 communiqué, which the
United States said was for it the authoritative text, continued to use the word
acknowledge.
US agreement to the use of the verb chengren in the Chinese text subse-
quently created divergent US and Chinese views of whether the United States
had “recognized that Taiwan is a part of China.” The normalization docu-
ments were in two versions, English and Chinese, and each side took the ver-
sion in its own language as the authoritative text. Thus, for China the United
States “recognized that Taiwan was part of China,” while the United States
insisted it had merely “acknowledged the Chinese position that ... Taiwan is
part of China.” Thus, in a January 1981 warning to Washington in the context
of escalating confrontation over arms sales to Taiwan, Deng, basing his com-
ments on the Chinese version of the normalization communiqué, asserted:
When China and the United States established diplomatic relations
in 1979, they settled the main question, the Taiwan question, and the
United States recognized Taiwan as a part of China. Only by settling this
question could the two countries establish new relations ... Sino-US ...
relations ... were normalized after settling the issue of recognizing
Taiwan as part of China’s territory, this remains the key issue deter-
mining whether or not Sino-US. ... relations ... will continue to advance.^9
[Emphasis added.]
The US request that China not contradict a statement of US “hope” (in
Huang Hua’s usage) or the verb “expects” (in the actual English text of the