Jimmy Carter and China: the former US president established diplomatic relations at the expense of Taiwan

Hong Kong
CNN
—

Former US President Jimmy Carter, who died on Sunday at the age of 100, remained famous in China for ending decades of hostility and establishing diplomatic relations with Beijing at the expense of Taiwan.

The diplomatic shift of 1979 led to profound changes in U.S.-China relations over the following decades and its implications are still felt today, as tensions flare across the Strait from Taiwan.

At the height of the Cold War, the Carter administration conducted months of secret negotiations with Chinese officials to normalize relations, which had been broken since the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949.

For decades, Washington recognized the Republic of China in Taipei as China's sole legal government, after the Kuomintang was defeated by communists in the civil war and fled the Chinese mainland to the island of Taiwan.

A rapprochement with the People's Republic of China began under the presidency of Richard Nixon, who made a decisive visit to Beijing in 1972. But it was Carter who oversaw the formal transfer of Washington's diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing.

On December 15, 1978, Carter announced that in early 1979, the United States would terminate diplomatic relations with the Republic of China at Taipei and recognize the People's Republic of China at Beijing as the sole legal government of China.

Although celebrated in Beijing, the announcement came as a shock to many in Taiwan, followed by anger and a bitter sense of abandonment and betrayal, even leading to violent anti-US protests in Taipei. The United States also ended its mutual defense treaty with Taiwan and withdrew its military personnel from the island.

On January 1, 1979, the United States and the People's Republic of China formally established diplomatic relations, opening embassies in the respective capitals of both countries. At the end of the month, Carter hosted China's supreme leader, Deng Xiaoping, on the South Lawn of the White House, in the first visit by a Chinese communist leader to the United States.

We hope that normalization will help us move forward together towards a world of diversity and peace, Carter said during the welcoming ceremony. For too long, our two peoples have been cut off from each other. We now share the prospect of a new flow of commerce, ideas and people, which will benefit both our countries.

In response, Deng praised Carter's far-sighted decision, which played a key role in ending the 30-year period of unpleasantness between us.

Bilateral relations flourished in the following years, from trade and investment to academic and cultural exchanges. One area of ​​engagement Carter facilitated was student exchange. During negotiations to normalize relations, Deng raised the question of whether Chinese students would be allowed to continue their studies in the United States.

When asked this question, my advisor, Dr. Frank Press, thought it was important enough to call me at 3 a.m. in Washington to find out, Carter wrote in a letter to the Chinese Embassy in Washington and the US State Department in 2019.

Deng asked me if China could send 5,000 students, and I said China could send 100,000, Carter wrote.

Promoter of commitment and democracy

As bilateral relations have deteriorated in recent years, some critics in the United States have questioned the strategy of engagement with China.

Under Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Beijing has taken a radical authoritarian turn domestically and become increasingly assertive abroad, dashing once widely held hopes that China would evolve toward a more liberal political model following to economic growth and its integration into the world.

Amid escalating tensions and calls for decoupling, Carter remained a calm voice and strong supporter of continued engagement.

On the eve of the 40th anniversary of the normalization of relations between the United States and China, Carter warned in the Washington Post that the critical relationship between the two nations was in danger and that a modern Cold War between our two nations would It was not inconceivable if the deep distrust persisted.

At this sensitive moment, misperceptions, miscalculations and failure to follow carefully defined rules of engagement in areas such as the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea could escalate into military conflict, creating a global catastrophe , he wrote.

After leaving the presidency, Carter remained a key figure in U.S.-China relations. He visited China several times and was received by successive Chinese leaders, from Jiang Zemin who called him an old friend of the Chinese people for XI.

In 2019, at the height of a bruising trade war with China, former U.S. President Donald Trump sought the Carters' advice in a rare phone call to discuss ongoing trade negotiations with Beijing.

But Carter's experience with China long predates his presidency. It was his visit to China's shores in 1949 as a young U.S. Navy submarine officer that sparked his interest in China, according to an interview Carter gave to the Council on Foreign Relations.

As the civil war raged in China, the submarine Carter operated in and out of Chinese seaports, from Shanghai to Qingdao.

And so, I was able to see the transformation in China between the Chinese nationalist forces who occupied just a few seaports and the communist forces whose campfires could be seen on the hillsides, he said.

A few months after Carter left China, nationalists fled the mainland to take refuge in Taiwan. So I saw the birth of China, which, by the way, was born on my birthday, October 1, 1949. And I think that precipitated my intense interest in China ever since, he said. declared.

In China, Carter remains a well-respected figure, despite difficult relations in recent years.

In reporting on his death, Chinese state media highlighted Carter's legacy on U.S.-China relations. On Chinese social media, many users hailed him as the good old man.

The Chinese government and state media, however, have made less mention of Carter's role in promoting religious freedom and popular democracy in China.

At a banquet he hosted for the Chinese delegation in 1979, Carter obtained Deng's agreement to allow unrestricted worship and distribution of Bibles in China. (Under Xi Jinping, Christians have experienced significant repression).

The Carter Center has supported and monitored village elections in rural China for more than a decade, since the late 1990s. Carter himself traveled to a village in eastern China to monitor one such election in 2001, seeing villagers vote and greet local elected officials on stage.

This type of engagement is almost unthinkable in today's China, where the Chinese Communist Party repeatedly attacks Western values ​​and views foreign nonprofits, especially those that promote democracy, with deep suspicion. , the rule of law and the defense of rights.

In Taiwan, Carter's legacy is more complicated.

When Carter made his first visit to Taiwan in 1999, he still faced many questions and criticism following his abrupt announcement to sever diplomatic ties with Taipei 20 years ago.

During a speech in Taipei, Carter was confronted by veteran Taiwanese opposition politician Annette Lu, who accused him of delaying Taiwan's democratization process and demanded an apology from him to the Taiwanese people. .

Carter refused to apologize, insisting his decision was the right one.

In a guest lecture at a university in Atlanta in 2018, Carter said he had a big argument with Deng over Taiwan's status during the 1978 negotiations.

China always wanted us to declare Taiwan a Chinese province, and they wanted us to break our treaty with Taiwan and stop all our military assistance, he said. I insisted that we should only break our treaty with Taiwan in accordance with our treaty, which required one year's notice. I also insisted that we continue to provide defensive assistance to Taiwan and that disputes between China and Taiwan be resolved peacefully.

Following the diplomatic shift, the US Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which allows Washington to maintain close informal ties with Taipei, facilitating commercial, cultural and other exchanges through the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto American embassy in Taipei.

The legislation also requires the United States to provide Taiwan with defensive weapons to maintain sufficient self-defense capability, although it does not specify how the United States would respond in the event of a Chinese invasion of the island. known as a policy of strategic ambiguity.

As relations between China and the United States have collapsed in recent years, the Taiwan issue has become a major source of tension between the two countries.