US President George W. Bush's administration appears to have made a radical shift in its Taiwan policy. The move comes in the wake of independence-leaning Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian's persistence in wanting to hold a referendum on whether it should apply for UN membership under the name Taiwan.
Bush joined Chinese President Hu Jintao on September 6 in criticizing the move of referendum in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Sydney.
It has been longstanding US policy to very deliberately take no position on the matter of sovereignty over Taiwan but the Bush administration broke that tradition by announcing last week that the island is not a state. "Membership in the United Nations requires statehood. Taiwan, or the Republic of China, is not at this point a state in the international community," Dennis Wilder, a senior Bush aide, said ahead of his Sydney trip. The statement drew fury in Taipei where dozens of protesters burned and trampled the Stars and Stripes outside the island's US mission.
It also came as a surprise to many US experts on Taiwan, which is regarded as almost a state under US domestic law -- the Taiwan Relations Act -- that provides a security umbrella for the island. There is some US perception that the Taiwanese leader is using the referendum issue for his personal political ends but experts say this could be a misunderstanding or mere ignorance.
In fact, some experts said, the US State Department had expressed concern that Chen's referendum drive was dangerously setting the initial ground for Chinese military intervention. (Source: AFP, Sep 8, 2007).