Cable No. 2630, Ambassador Yoshida to the Foreign Minister, 'Prime Minister's Visit to China (Ohira – Deng Meeting)'

Number (TA) RO9869 3 5166

Primary: Asia and China

Sent:  China, December 06, 1979, 21:55

Received: MOFA, December 06, 1979, 23:09

To: The Foreign Minister  

From: Ambassador Yoshida

Prime Minister's Visit to China (Ohira – Deng Meeting)

Number 2630 Secret Top Urgent

(Limited Distribution)

Concerning Outgoing Telegram No. 2629

In the meeting, the part concerning Taiwan was as follows:

1. Prime Minister Ohira, who prefaced his remark by saying that it was a somewhat delicate problem, spoke as follows:

At the time of the normalizing of relations, our side hoped for the continuation of working relations under way at that time between Japan and Taiwan. The Chinese side consented to it. The agreement was that the Chinese side would not recognize our country actively developing relations between Japan and Taiwan, nor would Japan deliberately develop them. However, following the progress in this world, there is ziranzeng (Chinese for "natural growth"), with growth in people coming and going and in trade. We are taking care for there to be no distrust between our countries. We would like to have the understanding of the Chinese side on this point.

2.  In response, Deng stated as follows:

There is no change on Taiwan policy. Our goal is Taiwan's return to the motherland, but we are fully aware of reality in order to achieve this goal. Even after Taiwan's return to the motherland, there will be no need to change its political system, way of life or such. In addition, it is fine if various countries continue their investments in Taiwan as they are. There is only one condition: Taiwan is a part of China, a local government. There is no problem in Japan having working relations with Taiwan on a non-governmental level, provided that relations between Japan and Taiwan are not inter-governmental relations. We would like you to pay close attention at least to this point.  (Deng Xiaoping later returned two or three times to this issue and repeated what he had said.) (He wanted to warn us in advance that, no matter what, relations with Taiwan were an important problem.) Our hope, rather, is that many Japanese visit Taiwan. We would like to have you cooperate in our nation's reunification. In this aspect, I think that we could have the cooperation of Japan and that of the United States as well.

Apart from the aviation problem, we have not given our opinion much on relations between Japan and Taiwan. The United States supplies weapons to Taiwan, and we have an opinion on that, but Japan does not do that.

3. Prime Minister Ohira said that there was no policy or intent to further expand relations between Japan and Taiwan.  We simply would like China to understand that there is ziranzeng. When he said that relations between Japan and Taiwan would remain hereafter on a non-governmental basis, with relations on a governmental basis limited to those with the People's Republic of China, Deng nodded and said, "That's good."

(Furthermore, after the meeting, Ding Min, director of the Japanese Affairs Division in the MOFA Asian Affairs Department said to the chief of our China Division, "That's good. China will not object to non-governmental ziranzeng henceforth in relations between Japan and Taiwan.)

(End)