China Questions U.S. Leaders’ Conflicting Views on Taiwan

After Vice President Al Gore and House Speaker Newt Gingrich played good cop-bad cop for China’s leadership in successive visits here, a government spokesman Thursday chided the United States for speaking with “two voices” regarding the sensitive issue of Taiwan.

“We have discovered the talk of some leaders on the U.S. side, including leaders of Congress, is contradictory,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Shen Guofang said during a regularly scheduled news briefing here.

Gingrich rattled the Chinese leadership when he deviated from the standard diplomatic line Sunday, the last day of a three-day visit, by bluntly announcing that the United States would come to Taiwan’s rescue if the island--considered by Beijing to be a renegade province--were invaded by the mainland.

“We will defend Taiwan. Period,” Gingrich said he told top leaders, including President Jiang Zemin and Premier Li Peng. The Georgia Republican repeated the statement this week in Taipei, the Taiwanese capital, where he concluded a swing through East Asia with 11 members of Congress in tow.

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In contrast, Gore, who concluded his five-day visit here just as Gingrich was arriving last week, was much more circumspect in his dealings with the top leadership. Gore, the most senior administration official to visit the capital in eight years, stuck closely to the “one China” policy established by President Richard Nixon.

Under that policy, the U.S. recognizes Taiwan as part of China. Although it is generally understood that the U.S. would come to Taiwan’s military aid if the island were attacked, diplomats generally steer clear of stating so publicly.

Last spring, when China conducted military exercises off the coast of Taiwan in an effort to influence the island’s presidential elections, Washington responded by dispatching two aircraft-carrier task forces into the region.

Former college history professor Gingrich, meanwhile, cut a wider swath in his sortie into the People’s Republic, taking every opportunity to deliver lectures and civics lessons to all who would listen about the virtues and freedoms of American society. At one point he urged students at the Beijing Foreign Affairs College, a graduate school for aspiring diplomats, to engage him in open debate on U.S. policy.

“You may not agree with everything I say,” Gingrich told the students. “In fact, I guarantee you probably won’t agree with everything I say. . . . But any stable and enduring relationship depends upon an honest dialogue.”

The students mostly demurred from engaging Gingrich in debate. But China’s government made it clear Thursday that it found the multi-voice American political system confusing.

“We really don’t hope to see each branch of the U.S. government advancing different foreign policies,” Shen said. “If so . . . I’m afraid this would be extremely laughable.”