Taiwan and China - 30 October 1971

Whichever way you look at it, and allowing for the journalist's professional itch to see an historic moment in everything that gives them a bang, the scene in the general assembly of the United Nations half an hour before midnight last Monday was historic.

Twenty six years after the Republic of China took her seat in the new League of Nations, as one of the five so-called permanent powers of the world, having the special privilege of a veto on all actions she didn’t like, she was expelled as a government in exile and an imposter.

Those were not, so far as I can recall, the terms that were used about the government of Taiwan, or Formosa, whichever you prefer. The argument of the western governments that supported Albania in banishing Taiwan was that the time had come to face reality: that the Communists in China are a government in being and hold, through the foreseeable future, the mainland and its 680 million people – a rough figure, since a child is born in China every one and a half seconds and by the time this talk is over there will be another 550 of them.

The argument of Albania, which sponsored and triumphantly carried the motion to seat Peking and expel Taiwan, was quite different and it was given a final brief fling, over the protests of the president of the assembly, on a point of order, as soon as the crushing vote was in.

At a late-night session the president of the assembly can call a recess the moment the decisive vote has been recorded. He usually then sets another session next day for everybody to explain, apologise and mollify – that is what the president was about to do, on Monday night. He had his gavel raised but the delegate of Albania was not going to be deprived of his finest minute. He strode off to the rostrum and began a speech.

The president stopped him and quietly suggested he was out of order, begged him to wait, and have his say for as long as he liked on Tuesday morning. But the communists do not take kindly to points of order not initiated by themselves. The Albanian delegate heaved a quick sigh, implied that he was holding on against great provocation and, turning towards the high bench behind him, said the president had conducted the proceedings very well so far, with wisdom, and he hoped that this wisdom would continue.

He had, he said, only one more paragraph and he turned and gave it. It contained the gist of what the whole debate was about, from the Albanian, Russian and Communist satellite point of view. And it’s worth quoting because it will be fed to the Communist millions as the only true report of what the whole shooting match was about.

Well then, the crushing vote of 76 to 35, with 17 abstentions, proved what? I am now quoting the victorious words of the delegate of Albania, which sponsored the wining resolution, "It resorted the lawful rights of the glorious Chinese people and foiled the dictate of the American imperialists. It constituted a great defeat for the United States of America" – that, that at least was true – "and vindicated the efforts of those peace-loving nations devoted to the fight for the people's freedom. It was an incarnation of the will of the peoples of the world, and a vote of confidence in the great People's Republic of China, as a bastion of socialism and justice."

The evening went along at, for the UN, remarkable speed. Admittedly, there had been a debate for several days of stunning tedium – it’s not so much that everything that can be said about the rights and wrong of having both Chinas in or out had been said, as that the attitudes of most nations big and small were frozen months ago, and few nations seem to be inclined to budge from a position already taken.

In the early days of the debate indeed, it was sad to hear one of the really few bitter exchanges was between the United States and Britain, the British saying that whether you liked it or not, the People's Republic of China... and I have to say that this what Communist China is officially called, though it plainly is not a republic or chosen by the people and if this sounds nagging I think it important, to go on nagging on the Orwellian grounds, that if people keep on saying a dictatorship is a democracy, they will get to believe it. All right, so the British said, correctly, that the Chinese Communists govern the mainland, are therefore a government in being, are an immense fact of life, are clearly the main government of China and should be seated as such. And that the government of Taiwan does not represent the majority of the people of China.

Mr Rogers, the American secretary of state replied, almost as apologetically as the late John Foster Dulles when he had to vote against Britain on Suez, Mr Rogers said the United States agreed that the Communist government ran the 687millions of China, and on the principal of universality – that everybody, whatever form of government they have, should be a member of the UN – Communist China should be let in.

But he also said the same principal of universality surely applied to the government of Taiwan, which is a government in begging and should be here to represent its 14 million people – which are more people than the separate populations of, I think, over half the United Nations members. If people were now talking so confidently about universality, it must apply to all nations big and small, no matter who likes or detests their form of government.

Well, certainly the plight of Taiwan is pitiful and it's embarrassing because it’s the first country to be kicked out of the United Nations on any grounds whatsoever. Once you accept the idea of universality it seems to me that reams of the arguments used were irrelevant, such as that Chiang Kai-shek is a dictator and has secret police just like Mao Zedong, and has transformed himself, unhappily since the second war, from that old heroic ally.

At a rough guess, I should suppose that a good third of the membered nations, since they have now swelled to 131, are run by dictatorships, not least, of course, mainland China. Which Albania, another dictatorship, hailed as a vast collection of self-governing humans fighting for freedom and justice. In other, and shorter, words there was a huge amount of buck talked on several sides which were really doing no more than rationalise a hate.

It’s instructive, in a rueful way, to look back and see what the charter of the United Nations laid down as the qualifications for membership. "The original members" – and I am quoting the charter now – "shall be the states which participated in the United Nations conference on international organisation at San Francisco in 1945 and signed its charter". That's simple. And who were they? They were the winners in the second war and such onlooking countries, a pack of them from South America, who waited to see who was going to win and jumped in our side, just in time for the German surrender.

After that, it says, "membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and their admission, will be effected by a decision of the General Assembly." Also, "a member of the United Nations which has persistently violated the principals contained in the present charter maybe expelled from the organisation by the General Assembly, upon the recommendation of the security council." Well, Taiwan has been expelled and Taiwan has violated nothing. But the assembly has decided that Peking – Communist China – is a peace-loving state which will accept the obligations of the Charter, and the universally known fact is that Peking will not come in unless Taiwan is thrown out. That was the nub.

And why should so many defer to a distaste on the part of Peking which is not permitted to any other nation? Because, I believe, there is now taking place a vast upheaval in the balance of power, a general retreat from a quarter-century's allegiance to the United States as the ranking world power.

This allegiance, or dependence would be a better word, was based on America’s military supremacy and her huge disbursements of foreign aid to all and sundry. The United States is now drastically reducing that aid, and it may begin to think of paying rather less than one-third of all contributions to the United Nations. America has her own economic troubles, and now holds the quaint notion that Europeans, for instance, should pay for their own defences.

Also, China is no longer a remote enormous exile – she has a nuclear arsenal, and is on the way up as one of the three great powers. Mr Nixon’s advance man was in Peking the night the vote was taken, probably a fatal blow to the American case. Japan, for instance, gamely seconded the United States in all the votes but she is now bound, I am sure, to start making up to China.

There is, in other words, a general reshuffle of allegiances, a sudden raid on the marriage bureau. Before the last vote, Israel and Portugal stuck with the United States, but when the Albanian resolution started rolling up the votes, they jumped on the bandwagon, to the astonishment of the Americans and the delight of countless Asian and African delegations who stood and clapped and chuckled. The member from Tanzania, actually performed a jig in the aisle. There was no doubt about it, a great company of small nations enjoyed a moment of hilarious satisfaction in seeing the mighty United States brought so low.

But I am afraid their hilarity will be as short-lived as their swelling pride in the notion that their votes can diminish the real power of the big nations.

For what happened on Monday night was an affirmation of the biblical warning about might and right. It recalls to me nothing more cheerful, or satisfying, than a sentence of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, spoken in the summer of 1918, "We may expect that the received opinion about the present war will depend a good deal upon which side wins. For truth is the majority vote of that nation that can lick all others."

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