What if the most revealing evidence about Nixon's position on Taiwan was never published in the 1972 Shanghai Communique?

A TOP SECRET White House briefing prepared for his historic China visit contained language far more explicit than the carefully negotiated public statement.

It said Washington would not claim Taiwan's status was undetermined. It would not encourage other countries to make that claim either.

And then there was a handwritten note:
"Taiwan will be settled."

I examined this document at the Nixon Presidential Library about a decade ago.

Now, let's uncover what this remarkable document reveals about one of the most consequential diplomatic agreements of the Cold War.

On February 28, 1972, as President Richard Nixon's historic visit to China drew to a close, Washington and Beijing issued the Shanghai Communique, the first of the three foundational joint communiques that would come to define China-US relations.

Without question, the most important part of the communique was its language on Taiwan.

The US side declared: The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position.

When I was studying US foreign policy at Cornell, I discussed this particular wording with two of my instructors. Both interpreted it as meaning that the United States had been committed to the One China principle and that Taiwan was part of China.

Yet many of Washington's subsequent actions appeared inconsistent with the language of the communique. So they viewed this as a failure by the United States to honor its commitments.

Later, however, while studying at Stanford, I heard a strikingly different interpretation from another professor. She was also a renowned fellow at Hoover and a longtime China specialist who had been reading the People's Daily (人民日报) consistently since the 1970s. And she spent most of her career researching in DC.

She pointed out that Washington's diplomats were often far more deliberate in their choice of words than most people might imagine.

And the key, she explained, lay in just two English words: Acknowledge and Recognize.

In everyday English, acknowledge can mean admitting that something is true, but it can also simply mean being aware of, taking note of, or recognizing the existence of a particular position.

In diplomatic language, however, recognize often carries a stronger implication of formal recognition.

This is why some diplomats in DC confidently claim that the United States has never broken its promises. Their argument is that acknowledge does not go as far as recognize. In their interpretation, Washington merely "heard" that the Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait maintained there was one China and that Taiwan was part of China, without formally endorsing that position as its own.

What did the White House really think about Taiwan behind closed doors? Let's take a closer look at this memo.
-- Neither of us should allow the Taiwan issue to color unduly our developing relationship. There are many areas in which cooperation between our two countries would be to our mutual benefit, and the absence of diplomatic relations due to Taiwan ought not to prevent such cooperation.

In the Legal Status of Taiwan part, A section headed "Your Position" explicitly laid out the stance President Nixon was advised to take on Taiwan.
-- You hope that the assurances which you have already given regarding our policy not to support "two Chinas," "one China, one Taiwan," or the Taiwan independence movement will convince the Chinese of your good intentions.

-- Regarding the status of Taiwan, you have noticed that Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait agree that there is only one China and that Taiwan is a part of it. In this sense we do not maintain that the status of Taiwan is undetermined. There will be no statements from US officials about Taiwan's status being undetermined. Nor will we encourage other countries to take such a position. (Note: This is the approach which the British - completely independently and coincidentally - are taking in their efforts to upgrade their Peking diplomatic mission from Charge to Embassy.)

This was far more specific than the language the United States publicly used in the 1972 Shanghai Communique. It also makes clear that the theory of Taiwan’s "undetermined status," which certain irresponsible scholars have enthusiastically promoted in recent years, was not supported by the White House.

Those commitments that had already been articulated behind closed doors, only to disappear between the lines of the final Shanghai Communique.

When Nixon had already expressed certain principles so explicitly in private, it seems to me that, interpreting "acknowledge" as merely "I hear you" is far less than a tenable reading.

Public diplomatic language is crafted for the entire world to hear. But those few words in top-secret memo may offer a far more revealing glimpse into what the White House truly believed.

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