Taiwan’s reaction to Henry Kissinger’s death last Wednesday has been muted, illustrating the ambivalence toward the larger-than-life American diplomat in the island democracy that he himself never saw as distinct from China.
Lawmaker Lo Chih-cheng of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, an international relations scholar, told reporters on Thursday that the former United States secretary of state and national security adviser played a key role in the development of U.S.-China relations, but did not comment on how Kissinger impacted Taiwan.
Comments from the main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT) — which ruled Taiwan as a military dictatorship when Kissinger began his overture to Beijing in the 1970s — have been more revealing. Lawmaker Chen I-hsin, a diplomatic expert, said that Kissinger’s determination to establish a relationship with Beijing led to Washington’s eventual derecognition of Taipei. However, he also added that the late diplomat’s focus on achieving world peace would be “an inspiration to Taiwan” given the current U.S.-China rivalry.
On its official X account, the KMT expressed its condolences to Kissinger’s family and said: “We recognize Kissinger's efforts to bring about peace and prosperity in the Indo Pacific throughout his career in and outside government.”
Compare that anodyne statement to the high-profile mourning for Beijing’s “old friend” in Chinese state media. Chinese leader Xi Jinping himself issued a statement that was read on the national prime-time news show "Xinwen Lianbo": “Half a century ago, (Kissinger) made a historic contribution to the normalization of China-U.S. relations with brilliant strategic vision, benefiting both countries as well as changing the world.”
From 1971 to 2023, Kissinger reportedly visited China more than 100 times, meeting with every paramount Chinese leader.
Yet he never visited Taiwan — which may strike some observers as ironic given his willingness to dispense advice to its people. Most famously, at the Asia Society in New York in 2007, he said that Taiwan should start working on a political solution with its giant neighbor because “China will not wait forever.”
Because of the secrecy that enshrouds Kissinger and former President Richard Nixon’s early visits to China, it is difficult to know exactly how much they conceded to leader Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai on Taiwan to secure Chinese support for a peace settlement with North Vietnam — the American priority at the time. However, American journalist James Mann noted in the Los Angeles Times in February 2022 that Kissinger ultimately backed away from the longstanding official U.S. position that Taiwan’s status was “undetermined,” as stated by President Harry Truman in 1950. Instead, Kissinger and Nixon told Zhou that they would oppose Taiwanese independence.
Crucially, Kissinger agreed to language that eventually became part of the 1972 Shanghai Communique — and thus a foundation of the U.S.-China relationship — that states: “The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China.”
This statement gave no agency to the Taiwanese, even if it was acceptable at the time to both the KMT government ruling Taiwan and the Chinese Communist Party regime that controlled the mainland. Over the years, as Taiwan transitioned to representative democracy, it became a straitjacket that prevented any deviation from a China-centric path.
At the same time, Kissinger’s unflagging faith in the paramountcy of maintaining amicable ties with China became a sort of gospel truth in American officialdom that endured until the second half of President Barack Obama’s administration in the 2010s. And since Taiwan was the most sensitive aspect of the bilateral relationship, Washington more often than not downplayed its ties with Taipei to avoid upsetting Beijing.
A generous reading of what came to be known as the United States’ “One China” policy might say that Kissinger intended to create the conditions that would allow for a peaceful resolution of the differences between the two sides separated by the Taiwan Strait. It was not unreasonable for him to imagine such a resolution would occur once the U.S. broke ties with Taipei.
In a less charitable reading, the American diplomat saw Taiwan as expendable. He made too many concessions that were harmful to both the island’s and American interests in the long-run, while getting little in return from China — especially as Beijing did not play the role that Kissinger and Nixon hoped it would in Vietnam.
Toward the end of his life, Kissinger began to express concern publicly that the deterioration of the cross-strait and U.S.-China relationships could lead to catastrophic conflict. In a June interview with Bloomberg, he said that “on the current trajectory of relations, I think some military conflict is probable,” when asked if China was likely to invade Taiwan. “But I also think the current trajectory of relations must be altered,” he added.
While the U.S., China and Taiwan would probably all agree with Kissinger, the framework he created for dealing with Taiwan within the context of Sino-American relations is increasingly archaic and detached from the island’s political reality. Only 2.5% of the population identifies as exclusively Chinese and support for unification stands at less than 10%, according to long-running studies by National Chengchi University in Taipei that have tracked Taiwanese identity and political beliefs since 1992.
Meanwhile, Taiwan will hold a presidential election in January that to a large extent will play out as a choice between continuing to keep China at arm’s length while prioritizing ties with the U.S., or taking the initiative to reach out to Beijing to dial down tensions — and agreeing to a variation on its “one China” paradigm.
We know which path Kissinger would advise, but only time will tell whether Taiwanese voters see that as in their best interest.