406 { China’s Quest
final communiqué) seemed to be resolved on November 25, when acting for-
eign minister Han Nianlong (standing in for Huang Hua, who was ill) in-
formed Woodcock that if the US side made a statement expressing “hope” for
a peaceful solution of the Taiwan issue, the Chinese side would not contra-
dict it.^10 The matter was handled in two parallel unilateral statements, one by
the United States and one by the PRC, issued simultaneously with the Joint
Communiqué announcing establishment of diplomatic relations. This too
was a modest US concession; a unilateral statement is less authoritative than
a statement included in a bilateral statement. Sovereign states are bound only
by their own agreements, and Beijing could argue that a unilateral US state-
ment did not embody Chinese agreement. In the 1972 communiqué, the US
statement of “its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by
the Chinese themselves” had been in the body of the joint communiqué. The
unilateral US declaration of December 1978 said:
The United States is confident that the people of Taiwan face a peaceful
and prosperous future. The United States continues to have an interest in
the peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue and expects that the Taiwan
issue will be settled peacefully by the Chinese themselves.^11 (Emphasis
added).
In line with Han Nianlong’s statement, the PRC unilateral declaration
did not directly assert China’s right to use force to “solve the Taiwan ques-
tion.” The indirect import was clear, however. Beijing’s unilateral statement
in 1978 read:
Taiwan is a part of China. The question of Taiwan ... has now been
resolved between the two countries in the spirit of the Shanghai
Communiqué. ... As for the way of bringing Taiwan back to the embrace
of the motherland and reunifying the country, it is entirely China’s in-
ternal affair.^12
US agreement to use of the Chinese verb chengren in the Chinese text and
to moving the US statement of its “interest in” and “expectation of ” peaceful
resolution from the joint communiqué to a unilateral US declaration con-
stituted small but significant US concessions to Beijing. This established the
precedent for China to subsequently press US leaders to deliver to Beijing
on important occasions small Taiwan-related tokens of Washington’s sin-
cere commitment to Sino-American friendship. Beijing would subsequently
push hard to continue this precedent. Nearly twenty years later, in 1996–1997,
when representatives of the Jiang Zemin and William Clinton administra-
tions were negotiating terms of a renormalization of relations, Beijing pressed
for a “fourth communiqué” which would contain further “advances” re-
garding Taiwan. Eventually, American negotiators recognized this for what
it was: salami tactics, in which individual demands are so small as to appear