I originally started writing this post in response to this post on Ridingsun and never quite got around to finishing it, but now that Google has announced they are changing their designation of Taiwan from “Taiwan, province of China” to merely “Taiwan,” I figure I’ll just publish it.
The official US position is stated in the Taiwan Relations Act, passed in 1979, and has never been changed since.
Don’t forget Taiwan’s government is still known as the Republic Of China, and according to its constitution still considers itself a claimant to sovereignty over all of China, of which Taiwan is just a single province.
If you look at the actual text of the ROC constitution, Article 2 states
“The president and the vice president shall be directly elected by the entire populace of the free area of the Republic of China.”
By limiting voting to the populace of the “free area”, i.e. Taiwan and the surrounding islands, the implication is that mainland China is “unfree territory of the Republic of China.”
Article 11 also states
“Rights and obligations between the people of the Chinese mainland area and those of the free area, and the disposition of other related affairs may be specified by law.”
again, making clear that Taiwan still legally considers itself part of China (although apparently the best part).
If constitutional interpretation is too dry, you can follow the reasoning at the blog Those Who Dare.
Or simpler yet, they can just look at the vehicular traffic on Taiwan’s roads and take note of the license plates that read Taiwan Province.
Yes, the current president’s party (I hesitate to say ‘ruling party’ since they control oly a single branch of the government, all branches of which are basically stuck in deadlock due to partisan bickering) endorses formal independence from China, but unless they succeed in revising the constitution and changing the country’s official name, it’s very unrealistic to expect foreign businesses to do so.
Incidentally, I would be thrilled to see the ROC officially change its name to Republic of Taiwan, so don’t think that I’m actually in favor of reunification. Just try and realize this isn’t just a matter of Taiwan’s independence not being recognized internationally, it stil isn’t even recognized domestically.
Yeah, seriously, someone needs to tell the KMT their capital isn’t in Nanjing, and probably will never be.
And until the Legislative Yuan elections, they couldn’t even argue that it was in Taibei! hoho!