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Mr. Dennis Wilder
Washington, August 31st 2007
National Security
Council
The White House
Dear Mr. Wilder,
As an organization
of Taiwanese-Americans with 56 chapters around the United States, we
would like to react to your statement yesterday regarding Taiwan’s
UN referendum and that country’s quest to become a new member of the
United Nations.
You state that
membership in the United Nations requires statehood, and then add:
“Taiwan, or the Republic of China, is not at this point a state in
the international community”, and you say that “…Taiwan is
not going to be able to join the United Nations under current
circumstances.”
This point is based
on a widespread misperception: one has to distinguish between “being
a state” and “recognition by other nations.” Let me elaborate:
The most
authoritative – and internationally-accepted -- definition of being
a nation state is given in the 1933 Montevideo Convention on Rights
and Duties of States (to which the US is a signatory), which gives
the following qualification for recognition as a nation state: 1) a
defined territory, 2) a permanent population, 3) a government
capable of entering into relations with other nations. Taiwan
fulfills all these requirements: it is thus a
nation-state. Indeed it has diplomatic ties with 24 – albeit small
– nations.
Recognition by
other nations is not a pre-condition: if you go back into the
history of the United States, you will find that for the first
couple of years of its existence, the US was not recognized by any
nation, and it only attained the number of 24 diplomatic ties in
1848 – some 72 years after the Declaration of Independence. Was the
US therefore not a nation–state during that time?
In the case of
Taiwan, the issue is also “recognized as what?”: until only 15 years
ago, the Kuomintang authorities still claimed recognition as
government of China. That claim was indeed not recognized
by the international community.
However, after its
remarkable transition to democracy in the early 1990s, there is now
a free and democratic Taiwan, which only claims to represent
itself. We should not let its future be held hostage to either the
unsavory legacy of the former repressive Chinese Nationalist rulers
on the island, or the dictates of the present Chinese Communist
rulers of the PRC.
Taiwan is a
full-fledged democracy of world citizens, who want their country to
be a full and equal member of the international community. If we
are serious about supporting democracy around the world, then we
need to nurture the island’s fragile democracy, and support its
desire to join international organizations such as the UN and WHO.
Taiwan can join the UN, if the United States and other
Western nations have the political will to stand up for their basic
principles of human rights and democracy.
Thank you for your
consideration, and we look forward to hearing from you,
Prof. Wen-yen Chen
Executive Director, Formosan Association
for Public Affairs
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