Zhou Enlai Research Articles

Editor's Note

Editor's Note

The Emergence of Environmental Policy in China: Multiple Streams and the Shaping of a Technocratic Bias

Was it a result of domestic political changes or of developments in international environmental politics? While the decision to introduce comprehensive modern environmental policies in China has had arguably a long-term impact on environmental governance, few studies have scrutinised the early decision-making process. This article attempts to address the void in scholarship. Adopting the multiple streams framework, the authors argue that the origins of environmental policy in China arose from the confluence of three streams—problem identification, political tensions and policy choices—under Premier Zhou Enlai's sponsorship. The new ecological perspective arising from the environmental policy emphasises scientific principles and technocratic solutions, lending a contrast to an ideological approach that had characterised the previous decades. This process was accompanied by the new political role of an environmentalist group consisting primarily of bureaucrats and scientists who mobilised international experience to identify appropriate technological solutions. This article analytically traces the historical context, problem identification, policy entrepreneurship and key policy instruments that characterised the first phase of Chinese environmental policies. The authors discuss the extent to which key elements of China's environmental policies today may still be shaped by the technocratic approach in the initial phase.

A Study on the Theory of Ethical Literary Criticism

A Study on the Theory of Ethical Literary Criticism

The Process and Logic of China’s Socialist Market Economy from Mechanism to System

ABSTRACT Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, state leaders including Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping have all made important statements on the fundamental economic system of socialism. Reviewing and analyzing the history of the formulations in important Chinese documents on the fundamental economic system, this paper highlights China’s exploration of theoretical innovation as promoted by innovation in practice. The paper contends that in dealing with the relationships between planning and market and between government and market, and while defending the fundamental role played by the market in resource allocation, we should consistently stress the superiority of socialism and point to the active roles of the party and government, while emphasizing the attribute of “socialist.” In discussing how to combine the socialist economic system with the market economy, the paper stresses the superiority of socialism as a fundamental system, and contends that public ownership must be retained as the mainstay of the economy, so that the general character of the market economy can be transformed and endowed with a socialist character. The paper also discusses how the market economy should be combined with the fundamental economic system of socialism from the perspective of political economy.

Pakistan China relations in the Emerging Dynamics of Power in South Asia

This research paper highlights and review the strategic relationship amongst Pakistan and China as emerging economic states and power balanced countries in South Asia. The region has always been in the news since many decades, starting from “Khyber Pass” which was a route to conquer the “Golden Bird”, to the Union Jack, needs to trade for their economic resilience. The existence of Pakistan changes the dynamics of this region, as Pakistan is known as its strategic location which further helps the world in trade. The routes are key factual economic indicators for many countries, as sea routes for traders are enjoyed by the middle Eastern countries like United Arab Emirates, and Iran they mark accomplishments, not only in trade but in foreign relations also. Their strategic alliance and visionary leadership had made them the strongest country amongst all. Despite, they were dwelled in many tribal fights, which by the time made them learned to have their existence as United Republic of China. The main purpose of this research is to highlight and bring strategically importance geopolitical stance exercised by both the countries. We use qualitative research model to explore the reason of ties and through reviewed papers draft the conclusions to understand the value in this regard. The study found mutual benefit for both the countries and reveals the footprints of Sino-British relations amongst China and East India Company in midst of 1600 – 1640. Mao Zedong and Zhou En-Lai were the brains behind the revolution and strategic routes were devised to bring the economic stability for the Republic of China.

Kwame Nkrumah’s Suits: Sartorial Politics in Ghana at Independence

This paper examines the wardrobe of the first prime minister and president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, to show how he created a set of “suits” or “looks” to mirror his overlapping traditional, modern, pan-African, Ghanaian, and Socialist political identities. It expands research on dandy culture to indicate how an African sensibility, mixed with inspiration from Asia, provided a wider repertoire of looks for postcolonial dressers beyond strictly Western or traditional African options. The paper begins with an overview of early discourse in the Gold Coast Colony (now Ghana) on the pros and cons of wearing cloth wrappers to show Ghanaian elites’ longstanding ambivalence toward wearing unsewn garments. While Kwame Nkrumah became famous for intricate kente cloths draped like togas, he also invested in custom-made British suits. In addition, Kwame Nkrumah wore fluttering batakari tops of hand-woven cloth to rouse the country at independence. By the early 1960s, he transitioned to wearing dark long-sleeved suit jackets in a style that came to be known in Ghana as “Zhou Enlai.” This research on Nkrumah’s fashion legacy shows how a business “suit” can be more than just a Western-style garment. It also complicates discourses surrounding cultural appropriation and intellectual property rights in textiles.

China’s foreign aid architecture in a transitional period, 1964–1976

ABSTRACT This paper reviews China’s foreign aid architecture in a transitional period, from 1964 to 1976. After Zhou Enlai’s 1964 trip to Africa and Asia, China’s foreign aid architecture was increasingly used as an important diplomatic tool, echoing with the shift of China’s foreign policy from the export of revolution to the export of peaceful development. In these years before Chairman Mao Zedong died in 1976, both a “Maoist pragmatism” in foreign policy and a “Chinese modernism” in architectural design matured in relation to each other. This paper examines the evolution of China’s foreign policy, foreign aid architecture, and the associated multidirectional knowledge exchange between China and other countries in this period. Tanzania-Zambia Railway (TAZARA) Terminus in Dar es Salaam built in 1976 is selected for an in-depth case study to demonstrate the presence of a Chinese modernism in architecture as an alternative approach to the Western post-war modernist trends.

Of Amnesty, Pendulums, and Peremptory Norms

For much of the first four decades of its history as an independent State, Sierra Leone was in a situation of great turmoil if not full-blown civil war. The final years of the century were characterized by a conflict of unspeakable brutality. But the country has now been at peace for about twenty years. The beginning of this modern period was marked by various initiatives of what is usually referred to as transitional justice, devoted to accountability for past atrocities and building a strong rule of law framework that would diminish the likelihood of recurrence. Who can take the credit for this incredible accomplishment? Does Sierra Leone furnish proof that an international criminal tribunal targeted at a very small number of leading individuals (“those who bear the greatest responsibility,”1 to use the words of the Statute of the Special Court for Sierra Leone) makes a decisive contribution to permanent peace? Or do some or even most of the kudos belong to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, with its broad approach that included analysis of such issues as economic and social rights, women’s equality and capital and corporal punishments? Or is the real explanation to be found in the terms of the 1999 Lome Agreement? The price it paid for an end to the conflict was a broad amnesty. But maybe the amnesty was the key to a peaceful future, diminished only in its totality by the dozen or so prosecutions of the Special Court? Or is it all of these factors, or none of them? The story is surely apocryphal, like most good ones. But it is said that when Charles de Gaulle asked Chou Enlai whether he thought the French Revolution had been a success, the Chinese premier replied, “It’s too early to tell.” Perhaps that is also the case with assessments of the effectiveness of the post-conflict mechanisms in Sierra Leone. [...]

"Pinyin Tzimu Project" — a Landmark Event in the History of Chinese Civilization Initiated and Supported by the CPC

The Creation of the Alphabet and words spelling of Chinese Mandarin (Pinyin tsimu project) is a landmark event in the history of Chinese civilization. It breathes new life into ancient Chinese characters. Great "dumb" − the Chinese character − for the first time since 1958 has become known to the whole world by sounds of Beijing speech. Today the two types of writing − Chinese Mandarin traditional ideographic and innovative phonographic writing, in their unity, provide the linguocultural unity of the Chinese society and the progress of science and technology of China. Millions of people in China and beyond are studying the Chinese language based on the sound letter standard of the words of Chinese Putonghua. Letter orthogramms of Chinese words provide tele- and Internet communication of hundreds of millions of Chinese. In the 20 century the first Latinized alphabet for the Chinese language was created with the leading participation of one of the founders and leaders of the CPC, Qu Qiubo, (included in the official list of "100 Greatest Figures of New China") under the influence of the experience of creating alphabets for the peoples of the USSR in 1921-26. Chinese alphabet, based on Latin letters and letter-spelling forms of Putonghua words are a huge scientific achievement of Chinese linguists. Outstanding contribution to the creation of the alphabet and letter words of Chinese Mandarin was made by a brilliant Chinese linguist Zhou Youguang (1906-2011), called the «father of pinyin zimu» or Chinese alphabet in China. The top leaders of the Communist Party of China, Mao Tsedong, Zhou Enlai, Chen Yi led the creation of the "pinyin" alphabet. The political will and wisdom of the CPC's senior leadership, combined with the creative genius of Chinese linguists, ensured the creation of a letter writing for the people of China, which was "an epochal event in the history of the development of Chinese civilization".

The Vital Center for United States-China Relations in the 1950s

On June 21, 1972, Zhou Enlai, Premier of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), sat with U.S. President Richard Nixon’s national security adviser Henry Kissinger at the Grand Hall of People in Beijing. Zhou began the conversation by broaching a name familiar to Kissinger: “You saw John Fairbank this afternoon?” A born diplomat, Kissinger instantly noticed that this unusual opening remark was not just an icebreaker. Indeed, throughout their four-day meeting, the premier frequently brought out the name of this Harvard professor who visited China at his invitation. At first, Kissinger tried to fend Zhou off. Fairbank was “a very single-minded man,” said Kissinger, whose only concern was to bring some talented Chinese students to Harvard. The evasion did not work. Zhou returned, time and again, to Fairbank and other “American friends.” “You probably know,” he said to Kissinger, “the majority I met were in support of Senator [George] McGovern.”...

Un-Masking the Mask: Developing the Sociology of Facial Politics in Pandemic Times and After

The story goes that, when he was asked what he thought were the consequences of the French Revolution, the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai replied that it was still too early to tell. The same can be said of the Covid-19 pandemic. No-one knows yet how the pandemic and its multiple and complicated effects will alter the textures of all aspects of life, human and non-human, across the planet in the coming years and decades. But it is clear that, sociologically speaking, some of the consequences are already obvious in general terms. Existing social inequalities and power imbalances have been variously reinforced, extended, and worsened. This is so in terms of all the major sociological axes: class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, age, location, legal status, and suchlike. Meanwhile, new inequities are being forged. Conversely, potential novel forms of solidarity and positive social transformation may be in the making, including in terms of modes and forms of citizenship. This is the terrain that a new sociology of masks, masking and facial politics will now have to grapple with. In the normative terms of critical sociology, both negative and positive processes are currently at play, even if the former seem likely to outweigh the latter. This is certainly the case in one of the most striking phenomena of what could be called Covid-19 times, namely the sudden appearance across most parts of the globe of facemasks, worn as protection against infection. Although such masks have been common in many parts of East Asia for a considerable period of time, especially in the wake of the SARS crisis of 2003 (Syed et al 2003), mass masking has not been a central feature of social life in most other world regions until Covid-19 struck. And just as the disease most likely came from East Asia and spread across the planet, so too has mass masking seemed to spread from there too, following in the wake of the virus. Covid-19 and its attendant masking practices are twin and inseparable elements of a certain kind of Asianification of the world (Park, 2019). Of course, the sociologist must be vigilant in making such claims: that apparently neutral statement is itself a kind of observation which right-wing political actors may choose to reframe and promote for their own purposes.

Historical review of the epidemic situation, prevention and control of epidemic cerebrospinal meningitis during 1966 to 1967

During the winter and spring of 1966 to 1967, the nationwide revolution networking not only exerted great pressure on food, housing and transportation, but also triggered the most serious nationwide epidemic cerebrospinal meningitis outbreak in history. The students of the revolution networking were the disseminators of the disease and the first group of patients. The unprecedented scale and scope of the epidemic, the destroyed medical and health order and other factors exacerbated the epidemic situation. Zhou Enlai restarted the " prevention and treatment by masses " mode to gradually control the epidemic. Fifty years later, looking back on the history of the epidemic situation and prevention and control of epidemic cerebrospinal meningitis, many problems are worth pondering deeply.

Hong Kong's Last English Bishop: The Life and Times of John Gilbert Hindley Baker by Philip L. Wickeri (review)

Reviewed by: Hong Kong's Last English Bishop: The Life and Times of John Gilbert Hindley Baker by Philip L. Wickeri Rob York (bio) Philip L. Wickeri. Hong Kong's Last English Bishop: The Life and Times of John Gilbert Hindley Baker, vol. 6. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2021. 212 pp. $62.00, isbn 9789888528714. Philip L. Wickeri had a unique story to tell with the life of John Gilbert Hindley Baker, the last English priest to head the Diocese of Hong Kong and Macau. Sandwiched between his venerable predecessor, Ronald Hall, and the first Chinese bishop of the territory, Peter Kwong, Baker was not considered as towering a figure as the former—nor did he have as long a tenure—and his time was perhaps less transformative than the latter, who oversaw the diocese's transition to the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui. However, Baker's journey was noteworthy, which is why the efficient-to-a-fault treatment he receives in Wickeri's Hong Kong's Last English Bishop: The Life and Times of John Gilbert Hindley Baker is so frustrating. Wickeri ultimately seems content—or perhaps was only permitted—to summarize Baker's life story and provide little deeper [End Page 229] analysis or grappling with the deeper themes of that story, ultimately producing a book of little interest to people other than those with an inherent interest in related subjects. Chapter 1 begins the book with Baker's early life from 1910–1934, including his upbringing in the Anglican Church and his family's interest in missionary work, sparked by missionary literature and an aunt's work in India, plus his pastoral training before his recruitment for work in China. Chapter 2 describes this work across the Middle Kingdom from 1934 to 1951, working against factors such shallow church penetration in some areas, complacent church members elsewhere, but also the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 and China's fall to communism in 1949. Here, the book reveals that Baker, through his personal writings, had sympathy for the communists and their revolution despite his commitment to the church and the Communist Party's denunciation of missionaries. Chapter 3 discusses his time outside China, including pastoring at an Episcopal Church in Connecticut and authoring the study booklet The Church Faces Communism, designed to provide a nuanced take on the phenomenon amid the Red Scare. He then moved back to the United Kingdom to take up new responsibilities, including overseeing missionary strategy. The chapter ends with his return to Hong Kong, with what seemed, at the time, to be an interim position. But in Chapter 4 readers learns that Bishop Ronald Hall was preparing to step down—he was seventy at that point, and had been a bishop for more than three decades. Hall favored other candidates as his replacement and negatively assessed Baker's leadership potential (Wickeri notes that Hall's stated reasons were vague). Yet these nominations fell through for assorted reasons, and Gilbert was eventually chosen due to the support of Chinese-speaking priests with memories of Gilbert's earlier service on the mainland. This chapter is truly the meat of the book, as it depicts Gilbert promptly going to work at his surprising new ministry, usually quietly, but sometime impactfully, such as through the ordination of women priests. While successful, Gilbert's time was tumultuous, coming amid the riots of 1967, and Gilbert, sympathetic to calls for equitable distribution, spoke out for managers to treat laborers fairly as Hong Kong's economy expanded—along with its inequalities. Chapters 5 and 6 continue with his time as bishop, with the former noting his interest in addressing the territory's problems with drug abuse, with documenting church history, and dealing with an influx of Vietnamese refugees following the fall of Saigon. In the latter, the book notes the death of Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, with whom Baker and other priests had struck up a relationship and saw as a stabilizing figure during the Cultural Revolution, leading to a surprisingly reverential eulogy from Baker. It also notes the suicide of Baker's wife Patty, who had been living with constant pain for several...

The Decolonising Camera: Street Photography and the Bandung Myth

This article examines the visual archive of the 1955 Asian-African Conference held in Bandung, Indonesia. Better known as the Bandung Conference or simply Bandung, this diplomatic meeting hosted 29 delegations from countries in Africa and Asia to address questions of sovereignty and development facing the emergent postcolonial world. A number of well-known leaders attended, including Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Zhou Enlai of China, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, and Sukarno of the host country, Indonesia. Given its importance, the meeting was documented extensively by photojournalists. The argument of this article is that the visual archive that resulted has contributed to the enduring symbolism and mythology of Bandung as a moment of Third World solidarity. More specifically, the street photography style of many images - with leaders walking down the streets of Bandung surrounded by adoring crowds - depicted an informality and intimacy that conveyed an accessible, anti-hierarchical view of the leaders who were present. These qualities of conviviality and optimism can also be seen in images of conference dinners, airport arrivals, delegate speeches, and working groups. Drawing upon the critical work of scholars of southern Africa and Southeast Asia, this article summarily positions the concept of the 'decolonising camera' to describe both the act of documenting political decolonisation as well as the ways in which visual archives produced during decolonisation can contribute to new iconographies of the political, which are both factual and mythic at once.

냉전시기 조선일보의 주은래 외교 활동에 대한 인식

냉전시기 조선일보의 주은래 외교 활동에 대한 인식

From Liverpool to Beijing and Chongqing: William Band’s Adventure in Wartime China

Trained at University of Liverpool in both theoretical and experimental physics, William Band accepted in 1929 an appointment at Christian Yenching University in Beijing, China, where he established his career through the 1930s, heading the physics department and nurturing dozens of distinguished Chinese researchers in its MSc program. Despite the Japanese occupation of Beijing in summer 1937, Band continued his work at Yenching—an American property and an oasis of freedom for Chinese students in North China. In the wake of Pearl Harbor, Band joined a breathtaking and successful escape from Yenching, just before the Japanese raid reached the campus. He sought refuge in Communist guerrilla bases in North China, where he taught calculus, college physics, and radio theory to radio technicians of guerrilla forces. After trekking one thousand miles through Japanese occupied areas, escorted by Communist guerrillas, Band arrived first in Yan’an, the Chinese Communist headquarters, where he met and conversed with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, and then in Chongqing, China’s wartime capital, where he served in the Sino-British Science Cooperation Office to help war-ridden Chinese scientists until his departure for Britain in December 1944. Band’s adventure provides a unique and useful lens to explore uncharted aspects of science in Republican China.

Zhou Enlai’s Political Activity Studies in Russian and Chinese Historiography

Zhou Enlai’s Political Activity Studies in Russian and Chinese Historiography

Hearing the Second Sino-Japanese War: Musical Nationalism and Internationalism in Xian Xinghai’s Yellow River Cantata

ABSTRACTThe Chinese choral work The Yellow River Cantata, by Xian Xinghai, is a product of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). It sets a text by poet Guang Weiren, who encountered the river while traveling during wartime with his anti-Japanese drama troupe, from central China to the Chinese Communist base camp in Yan’an. The cantata’s early performances were reported to have mobilized hundreds of thousands to join the fight and were highly regarded by Ma Zedong and Zhou Enlai, who were present at some of these performances. Even though the Cantata’s affective textual-musical treatments were conceived to rally national resistance, they also instigated nationalism through musical means: namely the musical portrayal of the Yellow River, the use of folk music and allusion to local genres, and the effective use of instrumentation, particularly percussion instruments.

Zhou Enlai: The Enigma Behind Chairman Mao by Michael Dillon

Reviewed by: Zhou Enlai: The Enigma Behind Chairman Mao by Michael Dillon Yafeng Xia (bio) Michael Dillon. Zhou Enlai: The Enigma Behind Chairman Mao. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2020. xi, 302 pp. Paperback $29.95, isbn 978-178-831-930-0. Among several books in English on the late Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai (who served from 1949 to 1976), two stand out. The first, by Barbara Barnouin and Yu Changgen, “explores the nature of” Zhou’s political behavior and assesses how such behavior affected twentieth-century Chinese history.1 The second, by former senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) historian Gao Wenqian, which is based on classified party documents and personal interviews with high-level party officials, provides a revisionist account of Zhou Enlai. This volume is an abridged English translation of Gao’s Wannian Zhou Enlai (Zhou Enlai’s Later Years), which, having been adapted for Western readers, includes the stories of Zhou’s earlier years prior to the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) and elaborates the political context of the Cultural Revolution and the behavior of other actors (chapters 2–7, pp. 21–104).2 Relying primarily on Chinese sources supplemented with writings by Western journalists who visited CCP bases during the War of Resistance against Japan and foreign diplomats stationed in Beijing in the 1950s and the 1960s, Michael Dillon presents a sympathetic account of Zhou’s life from his birth in 1898 to his death in 1976 in twenty-three chapters. This is a standard biography of Zhou, covering his childhood, education, upbringing, personality, political activism, and revolutionary activities, presenting a thorough picture of Zhou the diplomat and statesman. Dillon argues, “This private side of Zhou Enlai is one [End Page 263] of the reasons why he became the world’s favorite Chinese Communist, but Zhou’s character was complex” (p. viii). According to Dillon, Zhou “was a statesman rather than simply a political operator and achieved much on the international stage” (p. ix). But scholars on Zhou Enlai and the history of the CCP will not be pleased, as the book does not add much to what they have already known about Zhou. To correctly understand and evaluate Zhou’s historical role in the Chinese Communist movement and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), it is crucial that we correctly understand Zhou’s relationship with Mao Zedong, the CCP Chairman and China’s paramount leader from 1949 to 1976. The reviewer cannot agree with several of Dillon’s major assertions, such as, “Zhou had remained personally close to Mao, never criticized him in public, and was himself never criticized openly :: : . Eventually he was attacked, viciously but covertly, by Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing” (p. 264). I feel that the author is unfamiliar with some of the new findings on Zhou Enlai that have been revealed in the last two decades. In the following paragraphs, I try to set the record straight. The relationship between Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong has attracted much scholarly attention, and it is a key issue in our understanding of Chinese politics in the late 1960s and early 1970s. There are three popular models of the relationship: Zhou was a faithful follower of Mao; Zhou was a puppet of Mao; and Zhou was a moderating force on Mao, which is the version the official Chinese Communist historiography promotes.3 Dillon falls into the third model, as he writes, “During the Great Leap and particularly the Cultural Revolution, Zhou was in an impossible position. To survive, he said and did things he would have preferred not to. By surviving, he ensured a degree of damage limitation and protected many friends and colleagues” (p. 270). For years, Zhou was “the Beloved People’s Premier,” a sensitive and effective administrator and a moderating force in the PRC’s politics. He was good-looking, urbane, brilliant, and a master diplomat. He always valued the nation’s needs above his own. He managed to save hundreds of purged officials during the Cultural Revolution. But Gao Wenqian turns the tables on Zhou. According to Gao, Zhou was a tragic backroom schemer, a puppet of his master Mao, and a man who so rigorously observed a...

The Taiwan Relations Act: Past, Present, Future

The Taiwan Relations Act:Past, Present, Future Shelley Rigger (bio) When the United States normalized relations with the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1979, it agreed to derecognize Taiwan (officially named the Republic of China, or ROC). Beijing made derecognition a precondition for establishing diplomatic ties in an effort to overcome what it saw as a long-standing wrong: the separation of Taiwan from the Chinese mainland. Then, as now, Beijing wanted to incorporate Taiwan into the PRC, and it wanted the United States to get out of its way. Taiwan had been detached from China since 1895, when it became a Japanese colony, but at the end of World War II it was handed over to the Chinese government—at that time, Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist-led ROC, which had ruled China since 1912. In 1949, Communist forces drove the Nationalist government off the mainland, but they were unable to capture its stronghold, Taiwan. The ROC hung on thanks to its outsized armed forces, its military alliance with the United States, and one hundred miles of choppy water. The architects of U.S.-PRC normalization understood that without U.S. support, Taiwan would be hard-pressed to withstand Beijing's efforts to absorb it. They did not anticipate that the ROC would last long as a separate, self-governing entity once the United States shifted its recognition to the PRC, and they were willing to accept that outcome. President Richard Nixon's national security adviser Henry Kissinger said as much in a 1971 exchange with Zhou Enlai recounted by Nancy Bernkopf Tucker: Zhou Enlai asserted to Kissinger without hesitation that "the U.S. must recognize that the PRC is the sole legitimate government in China and that Taiwan Province is an inalienable part of Chinese territory which must be restored to the motherland." Kissinger replied, "As a student of history, one's prediction would have to be that the political evolution is likely to be in the direction which Prime Minister Zhou Enlai indicated to me." Kissinger continued by assuring Zhou, "We will not stand in the way of basic evolution."1 [End Page 11] By the time the normalization process was reaching its final stage under President Jimmy Carter, the United States was committed to derecognizing Taiwan and ending the mutual defense treaty. Fortunately for Taiwan, however, the White House did not have the last word. As the process neared completion, there still was one more actor waiting to speak: the U.S. Congress. Congress could not reverse the decision on normalization, but it did what it could to soften the blow. Congress's gift to Taipei was the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA). The TRA satisfies no one. Beijing sees the ongoing attention to Taiwan's security that is required by U.S. law as a betrayal of U.S. commitments, while Taiwan would much prefer to be treated as a full state. Many Americans, too, wish the United States could take a stronger position one way or the other than the TRA allows. I will argue, however, that the TRA's ambiguity is a virtue, not a vice. Coming up with an alternative that improves on the TRA enough to justify the inevitable backlash from Beijing (which would be directed at Taipei more than Washington) is considerably harder than one might imagine. The Significance of the TRA The TRA created an innovative framework in U.S. law and policy that allows the United States to interact with an unrecognized state. Legally, the ROC is dead to the United States; in practice, it is very much alive. The law gives Taiwan a unique legal and political position, with the country being neither formally recognized nor entirely abandoned. Recently, some advocates for a more robust U.S. policy toward Taiwan have been asking how much longer this limbo should continue. They wonder whether the United States should do more to strengthen the island's position in the face of growing pressure from the PRC.2 The TRA defines its goals as "to help maintain peace, security, and stability in the Western Pacific and to promote the foreign policy of the United States by authorizing the continuation...