1992 Consensus
The "1992 Consensus", also known as the "Consensus of 1992" or the "One China" Consensus, is a political term coined by Kuomintang politician Su Chi, referring to the outcome of a meeting in 1992 between the semiofficial representatives of the People's Republic of China of mainland China and the Republic of China of Taiwan.
Whether such a Consensus exists is under dispute in Taiwan. The Kuomintang claims that such consensus exists with different meanings of China, while the Democratic Progressive Party and the President of ROC in 1992, Lee Teng-hui, denied the existence of the 1992 consensus.
The term itself was brought up on April 2000 by Kuomintang politician Su Chi, who later in 2006 stated that he made up the term. The term, as described by some observers, means that, on the subject of the "One China principle", both sides recognize there is only one "China": both mainland China and Taiwan belong to the same China, but both sides agree to interpret the meaning of that one China according to their own definition.
Critics of the term, including Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party, point out that because there was no agreement on the definition and mutual understanding of China and which government, ROC or PRC, represents "China", it was not a "consensus" at all. They also criticize the term on the basis that it was not created contemporaneously within the timeframe of the meeting: according to former National Security Council secretary-general Su Chi, he invented the term in 2000, eight years after the 1992 meetings.
The PRC's position is that there is one, undivided sovereignty of China, and that the PRC is the sole legitimate representative of that sovereignty of One China Principle. The ROC's Kuomintang's position is that there is one, undivided sovereignty of China, and that the ROC is the sole legitimate representative of that sovereignty. The ROC's Democratic Progressive Party position is that it recognizes the PRC as a country after Martial law in Taiwan was lifted and therefore there is now one country on each side, and each is a sovereign nation. In essence, it was the concept of an undivided China, regardless of political ideologies and governments that forms the basis of a continuous dialog between each side, or there would be no such common ground for the attempt of dialog to take place, which would thus further entrench the ROC's international isolation and alienation from PRC's international influence in the United Nations Security Council. The PRC objects to different interpretations of the One China Policy by the Kuomintang, stressing that the 1992 consensus is a prelude to the ultimate incorporation of Taiwan into the PRC, whether by peaceful means or military conquest.
Historic background of the term
The 1992 Consensus was the outcome of a November 1992 meeting in British Hong Kong between the mainland China-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait and the Taiwan-based Straits Exchange Foundation. Three months before the meeting, the Taiwan side published the following statement in respect of its interpretation of the meaning of "One China":The above statement was published in the Mainland Affairs Council, Executive Yuan, ROC, “Consensus Formed at the National Development Conference on Cross-Strait Relations,” February 1997. “The Meaning of ‘One China’” was adopted by the ROC's National Unification Council.
With respect to the actual "1992 Consensus" reached by the two sides in Hong Kong in 1992, the following statement from the Taiwan SEF side is relevant:
The above statement was contained in a Press release made by the SEF in Taipei on November 3, 1992. There appears to be no written record of what the SEF verbally stated at that time in respect of the meaning of "One China" but, given that it was effectively an agent of the ROC Government, it undoubtedly stuck to the ROC's official position at the time with respect to the meaning of "One China".
With respect to the actual "1992 Consensus" reached by the two sides in Hong Kong in 1992, the following statement from the Mainland ARATS side is relevant:
The conclusion they reached was intended as a means of side-stepping the conflict over the political status of Taiwan. At the time of the meeting, Hong Kong was under British rule and therefore considered neutral territory by both sides.
As a result of the 1992 meeting, ARATS Chairman Wang Daohan and SEF Chairman Koo Chen-fu met in Singapore on April 27, 1993, in what became known as the "Wang-Koo summit". They concluded agreements on document authentication, postal transfers, and a schedule for future ARATS-SEF meetings. Talks were delayed as tensions rose in the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, but in October 1998 a second round of Wang-Koo summit were held in Shanghai. Wang and Koo agreed to meet again in Taiwan in the autumn of 1999, but the meeting was called off by the PRC side when then President Lee Teng-hui proposed his 'Two-states Theory' whereby each side would treat the other as separate state. PRC officials indicated that this position was unacceptable.
The KMT-led ROC government had expressed the 1992 meeting's outcome as "one China with different interpretations": that both sides agreed that there was one China, but indirectly recognized and respected that both sides had different interpretations of that concept. By contrast, the Communist Party of China led PRC government has consistently emphasized that the 1992 meeting reached an understanding that there is "one China" without further nuance. ROC's main opposition party, Democratic Progressive Party, however, did not see the 1992 meeting as reaching any consensus on there being only "one China". Instead, it saw the outcome of the meeting as establishing that the two sides had different interpretations of the status quo.
The election of the DPP to the ROC government in 2000 prompted former SEF official Su Chi to coin the term "1992 Consensus" as an ambiguous replacement for the previous terms in order to capture the broadest consensus between the different parties over the outcome of the 1992 meeting. Some who dispute the existence of a "1992 Consensus" claim that if there is a "1992 Consensus", it is that there's only one China; and both sides are free to define what "one China" is;
Also, supporters of the pan-Green coalition led by the DPP remained insistent that the meetings in 1992 did not come to any consensus over the one China principle. In support of this view, they point out that both Hsu Huei-yu and Koo Chen-fu, who participated in the 1992 meeting as SEF delegates, have publicly affirmed that the meeting did not result in any consensus on the "one China" issue. Instead, they claim, both sides agreed to proceed with future meetings on the basis of equality and mutual respect. Koo stated in his biography that, "Both sides across the strait have different interpretations of the 1992 Hong Kong meeting. Rather than using 'consensus,' the term of art should be 'understanding' or 'accord' to better reflect the fact, thus avoiding untruthful application."
The Chief of the ROC Mainland Affairs Council also indicated that no consensus was reached as a result of the 1992 meeting and that the term 1992 Consensus was only introduced by the mass media in 1995. Some Taiwan independence supporters, such as former President Lee Teng-hui, point to a lack of documentation to argue that the consensus has never existed. However, it is also the case that as of 1992, the government of the ROC still formally adhered to a 'one China' position, one which it only moved away from in the late-1990s.
According to Raymond Burghardt, the chair of the American Institute in Taiwan, the United States representative office in Taiwan:
Burghardt is thought to be the only US official to have expressed a position on the existence of the 1992 Consensus.
The 1992 Consensus has been described by Lee Teng-hui, the ROC president between 1988 and 2000, as a consensus without a consensus
on the definition of 'One China.'
21st-century developments
The PRC has stated that any group in Taiwan with which it has formal talks must support the 1992 Consensus.In a speech on 10 October 2004, then-president Chen Shui-bian expressed his willingness to initiate dialog with PRC leaders on "the basis of the 1992 meeting in Hong Kong." This formulation however presumed that no agreement on one China was made in the 1992 meeting; thus, Chen's speech was widely seen as an effort to establish a basis for negotiations with the PRC without accepting the one China principle. The PRC did not respond to his speech favorably; thus, subsequently, no dialogs were initiated.
The 1992 Consensus was invoked again the following year, when KMT chairman Lien Chan and People First Party chairman James Soong made separate trips to Mainland China to begin party-to-party dialog both between the CCP and KMT and between the CCP and PFP. Both leaders explicitly endorsed the 1992 Consensus.
During the debates between then-KMT-candidate Ma Ying-jeou and DPP candidate Frank Hsieh in the lead-up to the 2008 presidential election, Ma said the 1992 Consensus undoubtedly existed, and that while the DPP were entitled to disagree with it, they could not deny its existence. Furthermore, he stated that the agreements reached in the 2005 Pan-Blue visits to mainland China, which occurred on the basis of the 1992 Consensus, could, if it was beneficial to the people, be developed into policy and thence into law, and put into practice.
The election of the KMT to the ROC government saw both sides of the Taiwan strait moving closer to a common interpretation of the Consensus. In March, PRC's state news agency Xinhua in its English website reported a telephone discussion between US president George W. Bush and his PRC counterpart Hu Jintao. The agency reported that it is PRC's "consistent stand that the Chinese Mainland and Taiwan should restore consultation and talks on the basis of the 1992 Consensus, which sees both sides recognize there is only one China, but agree to differ on its definition". However, Xinhua's Chinese version of the report only stated that the resumption of the talks should be on the basis of the 1992 Consensus without expanding into the meaning of the Consensus.
In his inauguration speech on 20 May 2008, ROC president Ma Ying-jeou stated that in 1992 the two sides of the strait reached a consensus which saw "one China with different interpretations" and the ROC would resume talks with the PRC as soon as possible based on the 1992 Consensus.
On 28 May 2008, KMT Chairman Wu Po-hsiung met Hu Jintao as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China in Beijing at Hu and the CPC's invitation to engage in an intraparty dialog. In the meeting, the parties expressed that both sides across the strait will lay aside disputes, and work for a win-win situation on the basis of the 1992 Consensus. As well as the party-to-party channel, the semi-governmental dialog channel via the SEF and the ARATS is scheduled to re-open in June 2008 on the basis of the 1992 Consensus, with the first meeting held in Beijing. The first priority for the SEF-ARATS meeting will be the establishments of the three links, especially direct flights between mainland China and Taiwan.
Weekend direct chartered flights between mainland China and Taiwan commenced on 4 July 2008 subsequent to the successful cross-strait talks in June 2008.
On 2 September 2008, the ROC President Ma Ying-jeou was interviewed by the Mexico-based newspaper El Sol de México. He was asked about his views on the subject of "two Chinas" and if there is a solution for the sovereignty issues between the two. The ROC President replied that the relations are neither between two Chinas nor two states. It is a special relationship. Further, he stated that the sovereignty issues between the two cannot be resolved at present, but he quoted the 1992 Consensus, currently accepted by both sides according to Ma, as a temporary measure until a solution becomes available. The spokesman for the ROC Presidential Office Wang Yu-chi later clarified the President's statement and said that the relations are between two regions of one country, based on the ROC Constitutional position, the Act Governing Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area and the 1992 Consensus.
On 12 January 2011, Xinhua news agency reiterated Beijing's position on this issue by defining the 1992 Consensus as saying that "under which both sides adhere to the One-China Principle".
On 2 January 2019, Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping marked the 40th Anniversary message to Taiwan compatriots with a long speech calling for the adherence to the 1992 Consensus and vigorously opposing Taiwanese independence. He said the political resolution of the Taiwan issue will be the formula used in Hong Kong and Macau, the one country, two systems. The ROC President, Tsai Ing-wen responded to Xi's speech the same day. She stated that "the Beijing authorities' definition of the '1992 Consensus' is 'one China' and 'one country, two systems'", and that "we have never accepted the '1992 Consensus.'" Nevertheless, Tsai called for the PRC to conduct negotiations with the Taiwanese government to resolve the political status of Taiwan rather than engage in political consultations with Taiwanese political parties to advance their reunification goals. A January 2020 piece in The Diplomat noted that the CCP, KMT, and DPP were all currently challenging their own conceptions of the 1992 consensus. A task force convened by the Kuomintang's reform committee issued new guidelines on cross-strait relations in June 2020. The task force found that public trust in the consensus had declined due to the actions of the Democratic Progressive Party and Beijing. The consensus was described as "a historical description of past cross-strait interaction," and the task force proposed that the consensus be replaced with a commitment to "upholding the Republic of China’s national sovereignty; safeguarding freedom, democracy and human rights; prioritizing the safety of Taiwan; and creating win-win cross-strait relations."