John J. Tkacik On Taiwan: 1964: France Breaks with the United States on Taiwan – Taipei Times

The Paris Olympics are over and the five-ringed views of the Louvre, Invalides, Eiffel and Versailles just memories. As a diplomatic historian, my thoughts naturally turn to France! The Olympian of world affairs, the creators of “diplomacy,” Cardinal Richelieu and Prince Talleyrand. But sixty years ago, at the 1964 diplomatic games, Team China bested Team France in a battle of wits in “free-style negotiations” over Taiwan. Paris never recovered.

To be fair, in Europe of 1963-1964, France was besieged. She had been ousted from her Asian dominions. She had begun her first nuclear weapons tests just as the United States and the Soviet Union signed treaties to ban them. France joined Communist China in refusing to join the treaties and sought comfort in Peking’s embrace. She felt marginalized by the United States. France (in fact, her president General Charles de Gaulle) saw rapprochement with China as a lever to enhance her global influence. The fact that the United States was still dead against China a decade after the Korean War made Peking even more attractive to him.

In October 1963, de Gaulle sent his personal envoy Edgar Faure to probe China’s premier Zhou Enlai (周恩來) on the matter of Sino-French normalization. Faure told Zhou, “as far as France was concerned, breaking all relations with Taiwan presented difficulties because a de facto government exists on the island.” Faure added, “General de Gaulle cannot forget that during the War, he and Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) stood on the same side, and therefore he does not wish abruptly to terminate relations.” Given de Gaulle’s ostensible hesitance, Faure suggested that a first step in diplomatic relations might include official trade offices. “If such a move were to take place tomorrow, Taiwan could take the initiative to break relations with France, that would be the simplest way to resolve the problem.” But, Faure asked, perhaps France “might keep just one person in Taiwan” as “a lowering of status?”

Premier Zhou, an infinitely more capable diplomat than Faure, parried the Frenchman with his favorite “let the foreigner believe what he wants to believe” tactic. He explained Peking’s objections. Before the Korean War, Zhou recalled, London recognized Peking as the sole legal government of China and “allowed no Chiang Kai-shek representative in Britain.” Yet, “Britain continued to support Chiang Kai-shek in the United Nations and even retained a consulate in Tamsui.” This, said Zhou, “created a situation of ‘semi-establishment of relations’ (半建交狀況).” Zhou prophetically cautioned, “if France adopts this same way of doing things, it will be unhappy for both sides.”

Faure wasn’t listening. Faure thought Peking would have “no objection to the presence on Taiwan” of a French consul. But, as he looked at his notes later, he found that if France recognized “le gouvernement de la Chine — qui est a Pekin — en laissant, sur la territoire insulaire de Formose (Taiwan) un echelon reduit a la gestion consulaire qui lui appartient’: Zhou would only accept a French consul in Taiwan “answerable” to a French ambassador in Peking. Awkward!

Nonetheless, on December 16, 1963, de Gaulle personally assured American Secretary of State Dean Rusk that “France had no intention of recognizing Communist China in the near future.” (“Near future,” apparently, is French for “one month.”)

According to US archives, between January 15 and 17, 1964, France’s ambassador in Washington informed several senior State Department officials, including Secretary Rusk himself, that although “France was going to recognize Communist China, France would not accept conditions from Peiping.” On January 15, the ambassador told Rusk’s deputy Averell Harriman: “France will not break relations with Taiwan” and that “French relations with Taiwan will remain unchanged unless Taiwan chooses to break relations.” The ambassador “emphasized Paris had not ‘yielded to any demand from Peiping’.” Harriman warned the ambassador of the consequences. America remained embittered by Communist China’s three-year bloodbath in Korea a decade before.

In secret, the Americans plotted their own counter-diplomacy. On January 15, White House security adviser McGeorge Bundy spoke with US President Lyndon B. Johnson. The transcript reads:

“The one chance that we can frustrate de Gaulle is to get Chiang to stand still for a week or so. If he would not break his relations with the French … this would put the monkey right back on Peking’s back, because [China] have maintained a position that they can’t recognize anybody who recognizes Formosa. What the French hope is that Chiang will break relations right away, and that is probably what he’ll do. We want to advise him to stand still for a week.”

President Johnson approved, no doubt, with a hearty laugh. The next day, Johnson signed a personal message to President Chiang who saw the irony of “appearing to accept a ‘two China’ situation” for a few days just to teach de Gaulle a lesson. As President Johnson put it, Chiang’s “patience will cause Mao Tse-tung the greatest possible embarrassment.” And if de Gaulle himself was embarrassed, LBJ judged, all the better.

As it happened, France’s recognition of Communist China took place on January 27. The world’s newspapers were incredulous. Really? Peking “did not stipulate that de Gaulle’s government break-off relations with the nationalist government on Taiwan”? The New York Times reported January 20, “US Urging Taipei to Keep Paris Tie in Peking Dispute.” On January 23, the Times editorialized, “If Peking is at last ready to abandon its claim to mastery of Taiwan and ready to recognize that island as an independent republic,” peace was at hand, but “We cannot betray our friends in Taiwan by consenting to let them go under the despotism of Peking.” Ten days later, newspapers still reported “Taipei Protests; Does Not Cut Tie.”

Panic-stricken, “an official French spokesman denied … that France would end diplomatic ties with Nationalist China.” On February 2, France messaged the West German government that recognition of Peking did not imply that France took any position on “the problem of the two Chinas, which has no reality either political or juridical.”

Taipei’s embassy in Paris was hanging on by its fingernails. On February 5, the embassy denied that it had transferred title to Taipei’s diplomatic properties in Paris to its United Nations delegation. By day twelve, France began to buckle. Frantic, the Quai d’Orsay emphasized “that their Government’s position is that that there is only one China” but “refused to speculate whether this position implied French acceptance of China’s claims to sovereignty over Taiwan.” Days passed, yet the Taipei embassy was still in Paris. “Stand By Taipei Worries France,” was the headline in The New York Times. On February 9, The Times editorialized on de Gaulle’s perfidy: “It is difficult to conceive of anything more distasteful than his choice — a choice between failure and open admission of deceit.”

In Taipei that day, the French charge d’affaires brusquely informed Taipei’s foreign minister Shen Ch’ang-huan (沈昌煥) that “as soon as the charge from Peking arrives in Paris, [France] would consider him to be the representative of China and, consequently, the [Taipei] diplomatic mission ‘will have lost its raison d’etre’.” It was, the charge confirmed, formal de-recognition. De Gaulle’s policy, alas, was both a “failure” and “an admission of deceit.” Taipei’s embassy in Paris was shuttered and its personnel withdrawn from French soil by March.

There was one ray of hope, however. On April 23, French Premier (later president) Georges Pompidou addressed Taiwan’s future at a luncheon given for him by the France-Japan Press Association in Paris. The long-term status of Taiwan was unclear, he said, and “this is a question which must be decided one of these days, taking the wishes of the Formosa population into consideration.” France continued for thirty more years to demur on Peking’s claims to sovereignty over Taiwan … until 1994.

Here we must jump ahead three decades. In the early 1990s, France approved multibillion-dollar sales of naval frigates and fighter-bombers to Taiwan. In retaliation, China cancelled some billion-dollar French projects — a subway system and a nuclear plant — and closed a French consulate.

Then, China demanded France formally affirm that Taiwan belonged to China.

This a secret French envoy did in a January 1994 communique: “France recognizes the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China and Taiwan as an integral part of the Chinese territory.” Amusingly, French President Francois Mitterrand didn’t hear about it for several weeks. Paris’s leading investigative newspaper reported that the President “had a rather tense conversation” with foreign minister Edouard Balladur on January 14. Monsieur le President was vexed because the communique contained “acknowledgment by Paris that Taiwan belongs to Communist China.” Enraged, Mitterrand railed that “Paris literally lay down in front of the Chinese, accepting all the demands that the Americans rejected. This does not prevent them [the Americans] from trading with Beijing while still maintaining economic relations with Taiwan.” So true. But France was not America.

Versailles and the Louvre still shine. Richelieu and Talleyrand are still honored by historians as diplomatic Olympians. But in the 1964 Taiwan competition, China won gold, the scheming US silver, and Taiwan (ever the good sport) bronze. In the end, France was in a worse position than when she started.

John J. Tkacik, Jr. is a retired US foreign service officer who has served in Taipei and Beijing and is now director of the Future Asia Project at the International Assessment and Strategy Center.