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The Taiwan Question and China's Reunification in the New Era (2022 white paper)

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The Taiwan Question and China’s Reunification in the New Era (2022)

PRC white paper issued by the Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) and the State Council Information Office (SCIO) on 2022-08-10 — the first joint TAO/SCIO Taiwan white paper, published 8 days after Pelosi’s visit, amid the largest-ever PLA live-fire exercises around Taiwan. Third Taiwan white paper after 1993-08 and 2000-02.

Verbatim-sourced claims (exact spans)

  • Never a state: “Taiwan has never been a state; its status as part of China is unalterable.”
  • UNGA 2758: the resolution “settled once and for all the political, legal and procedural issues of China’s representation in the UN, and it covered the whole country, including Taiwan” — see un-resolution-2758.
  • UN legal opinion: quotes the UN Secretariat Legal Office as saying “the United Nations considers Taiwan as a province of China with no separate status.”
  • 1982 Constitution: “Taiwan is part of the sacred territory of the PRC” (quoting the PRC Constitution, 1982).
  • Anti-Secession Law 2005: “the state shall never allow the Taiwan independence secessionist forces to make Taiwan secede from China under any name or by any means.”
  • One Country first: “Two Systems is subordinate to and derives from One Country.”
  • Use of force: “will not renounce the use of force, and we reserve the option of taking all necessary measures,” but force is a “last resort taken under compelling circumstances.”
  • Rejuvenation deadline: reunification tied to national rejuvenation; “should not allow this problem to be passed down from one generation to the next.”
  • Treaties: Treaty of San Francisco 1951 dismissed as “illegal and invalid”; Cairo Declaration and Potsdam Proclamation cited as binding “international legal documents.”
  • US: accused of “using Taiwan to contain China” (phrase appears ~5 times) — see taiwan-relations-act.
  • One-China consensus: as of 2022, 181 countries have ties with the PRC on a one-China basis.
  • 1978 US-China communique: the US “acknowledges the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China” — note acknowledges, not recognizes: the deliberate wording difference across the English/French/Chinese texts (the French version used “reconnait”).

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