Schedium

Taiwan democratic elections (photo by Luuva ) On February 19 Henry Zuber , member of the Mississippi House of Representatives, posted on his Facebook page a letter that he had received from the Consulate General of the People's Republic of China in Houston. The letter urged him to stop supporting Taiwan and engaging in activities that could threaten Sino-US relations.  Every year Zuber co-signs resolutions regarding Taiwan and meets the Taiwanese Delegation. As he explains: "I hold dear that every man has the God-given right to live under the freedoms of religion/speech regardless of national origin etc." The Chinese government obviously did not like Zuber's engagement. The letter that the Consulate General sent was politely worded, but it put forward in strong terms the core of Beijing's one-China policy . The letter states:

In the 1960s the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC) had no diplomatic relations. Washington continued to recognise the Republic of China on Taiwan as the sole legitimate government of the whole of China. The unstable situation in East Asia contributed to the maintenance of this situation. The Korean War and the Vietnam War caused frictions between the US and the PRC, as the Beijing regime felt threatened by the West. At times war between the two powers seemed a real possibility. This favoured Chiang Kai-shek 's Guomindang regime on Taiwan. The Americans needed the island as a military base for the war in Vietnam and as a resting place for soldiers on leave ( Davison 2003 , Chapter 6).  However, in the late 1960s Washington and Beijing began to realise they could use each other to contain the Soviet Union. Under Leonid Brezhnev 's leadership Moscow pursued an aggressive foreign policy in Asia, Africa and South America that deeply unsettled b...