The Strategic Triangle } 423
Beijing’s initial move was to assert to the newly installed Reagan admin-
istration officials that the Carter administration had committed the United
States to an end of arms sales to Taiwan. Upon checking the National Security
Council archives, Washington found no such undertaking in the record.^49
Beijing then succeeded in persuading Haig that agreement to end arms sales
to Taiwan was necessary to preserve broader triangular cooperation against
the Soviet Union. Haig presented a draft memorandum to President Reagan,
but Reagan rejected it and ordered another drafted without a specific cut-
off date.^50 Reagan later dictated a one-page presidential statement, initialed
by a new Secretary of State, George Shultz, and Secretary of Defense Caspar
Weinberger, stipulating:
The talks leading up to the signing of the [August 1982] communiqué
[with Beijing] were premised on the clear understanding that any reduc-
tion of such arms sales depends upon peace in the Taiwan Strait and the
continuity of China’s declared ‘fundamental policy’ of seeking a peaceful
resolution of the Taiwan issue. ... the U.S. willingness to reduce its arms
sales to Taiwan is conditioned absolutely upon the continued commit-
ment of China to the peaceful solution of the Taiwan–PRC differences.^51
As the negotiations entered their final stage in August 1982, the United
States asked that its commitment to solve the arms sales issue should be
explicitly connected to China’s policy of striving for a peaceful solution of
the Taiwan question. Beijing refused.^52 Washington succeeded, however, in
indirectly asserting this linkage. The final communiqué of August 17 read:
The United States Government understands and appreciates the
Chinese policy of striving for a peaceful resolution of the Taiwan ques-
tion ... The new situation which has emerged with regard to the Taiwan
question also provides favorable conditions for the settlement of United
States-China differences over the question of United States arms sales
to Ta iw a n.
Having in mind the foregoing statements of both sides, the United
States Government states that it does not seek to carry out a long-term
policy of arms sales to Taiwan ... and that it intends to reduce gradually
its sales of arms to Taiwan, leading over a period of time to a final resolu-
tion.^53 (Emphasis added.)
Subsequently, Beijing treated the phrases italicized above in the August
1982 communiqué as the core element of the 1982 compromise. From the
standpoint of China’s media, domestic and international, this was virtually
the only significant aspect of the 1982 communiqué, rendering US insistence
on continued arms sales a clear and blatant violation—yet another—of sol-
emn agreements with China. Beijing’s propaganda would reiterate this sen-
tence again and again, ignoring the context implied by the opening phrase of