1992 Consensus

The 1992 Consensus is a political term referring to the alleged outcome of a meeting in 1992 between the semiofficial representatives of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-led People's Republic of China (PRC) in mainland China and the Kuomintang (KMT)-led Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan. They are often credited as creating a diplomatic basis for semi-official cross-strait exchanges which began in the early 1990s and is a precondition set by the PRC for engaging in cross-strait dialogue.^[1][2]

Whether the meetings truly resulted in a consensus is disputed in the ROC. The KMT understanding of the consensus is "one China, different interpretations" (一中各表, 一個中國各自表述), i.e. that the ROC and PRC "agree" that there is One China, but disagree about what "China" means (i.e. ROC vs. PRC). The PRC's position is that there is one China (including Taiwan), of which PRC is the sole legitimate representative of China.^[3] This discrepancy has been criticized by Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) who is now in power in ROC politics. The DPP has never acknowledged the existence of the 1992 Consensus ever achieved by the semi-official meetings,^[4] and also rejects any claim that both sides of the Taiwan Strait are "One China".^[5]

Critics have also stated that the term was not used contemporaneously during the meeting: the term was invented in April 2000 by former National Security Council secretary-general Su Chi, eight years after the 1992 meetings.^[6] The President of ROC in 1992, Lee Teng-hui, denied the existence of the 1992 Consensus in 2006.^[7] The 1992 Consensus was rejected by then-incumbent ROC president, Tsai Ing-wen, who associated it with one country, two systems in a 2019 speech.^[8][9]

On 1 August 1992, the ROC's National Unification Council passed the "Definition of One China Resolution," stating: "The two sides of the Taiwan Strait uphold the One China principle, but the interpretations of the two sides are different ... Our side believes that one China should mean the Republic of China, established in 1912 and existing today, and its sovereignty extends throughout China, but its current governing authority is only over Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matzu. Admittedly, Taiwan is part of China, but the mainland is also a part of China."^[10]: 229 This resolution provided the basis for a series of talks between the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) of the Republic of China (ROC).^[10]: 229

In November 1992, a meeting between ARATS and SEF occurred in British Hong Kong. On 1 November 1992, SEF issued a press release stating that "each side expresses its own interpretation verbally in order to solve this sticky problem of [One China] and thereby reaffirmed the August 1st NUC resolution as SEF's interpretation of One China."^[10]: 229

ARATS telephoned SEF and stated that it "fully respected and accepted" Taipei's proposal to use verbal declarations for each side's position on this issue.^[10]: 229 On 16 November, ARATS sent a letter to SEF formally confirming that position and stating, "both sides of the strait uphold the principle of one China, and actively seek national unification, but the political interpretation of the one China will not be referred to in the cross-strait negotiations on functional issues."^{[10]: 229–230}

The conclusion they reached was intended as a means of side-stepping the conflict over the political status of Taiwan.^{[citation needed]} At the time of the meeting, Hong Kong was under British rule and therefore considered neutral territory by both sides.^{[citation needed]} In the KMT's view, the consensus is about "one China, respective interpretations."^[10]: 230

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 of "special state-to-state relations".^[10]: 230

After Lee began a more independence-oriented policy in the mid-1990s, the PRC began describing "one China, respective interpretations" as a "deliberate distortion" used by independence advocates as a "disguise" for either "two Chinas" or Taiwan's formal separation.^[10]: 230

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.^[7] President Chen Shui-bian initially expressed some willingness to accept the 1992 Consensus, a precondition set by the PRC for dialogue, but backed down after backlash within his own party.^[11]

In a speech on 10 October 2004,^[12] then-president Chen Shui-bian expressed his willingness to initiate dialogue with PRC leaders on "the basis of the 1992 meeting in Hong Kong." This formulation did not imply that an 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.^{[citation needed]} The PRC did not respond to his speech favorably; thus, subsequently, no dialogs were initiated.^{[citation needed]}

The 1992 Consensus was invoked again the following year, when KMT chairman Lien Chan and People First Party (PFP) chairman James Soong made separate trips to mainland China to begin party-to-party dialog both between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and KMT and between the CCP and PFP. Both leaders explicitly endorsed the 1992 Consensus.^{[citation needed]}

During debates in the 2008 Taiwanese presidential election between KMT candidate Ma Ying-jeou and DPP candidate Frank Hsieh, 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.^{[citation needed]}

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 2008, 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. According to Chinese and American sources, Hu said 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".^[13][14][15] On the other hand, 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.^[16]

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.^[17]

On 28 May 2008, KMT Chairman Wu Po-hsiung met Hu Jintao as CCP general secretary in Beijing at the CCP'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.^[18] As well as the party-to-party channel, the semi-governmental dialog channel via the SEF and the ARATS was 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 would 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.^[19] 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.^[20]

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".^[21]

The 1992 Consensus was stressed by both Ma and Xi during the 2015 Ma-Xi meeting.^[22] During the meetings, Ma brought up the "different interpretations" of "one China".^[23]

In her 2016 campaign, Tsai Ing-wen did not challenge the 1992 consensus, but did not explicitly accept it either, referring instead to "existing realities and political foundations".^[24][25]

After Tsai's victory in the presidential election of Taiwan, Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping stated on 12 March 2016, that the 1992 Consensus was "the greatest common denominator and political bottom line for the peaceful development of cross-strait relations".^[26]: 13

On 2 January 2019, 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.^[27] He said the political resolution of the Taiwan issue will be the formula used in Hong Kong and Macau, the one country, two systems.^[27] 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.'"^[28] Tsai later 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 individual Taiwanese political parties to advance their reunification goals.^[29] 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.^[30] 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 Beijing and DPP. 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."^[31]

Following the landslide defeat of the KMT in the 2020 Taiwanese presidential election, some commentators speculated that the KMT would remove the 1992 Consensus from the party platform due to its associations with "one country, two systems".^[2] However, KMT chairman Johnny Chiang ultimately kept the 1992 Consensus. However, he rejected the "one country, two systems" as a feasible model for Taiwan.^[32] In 2021, the Taiwan Affairs Office stated that the meaning of the 1992 consensus is "both sides of the strait belong to one China, and work together to strive for national unification".^[33] The KMT platform under newly elected chairman Eric Chu also continued to include the 1992 consensus while rejecting "one country, two systems".^[34] In 2022, Chu called the 1992 Consensus a "'no consensus' consensus."^[35]

The KMT has defined the 1992 Consensus as "one China with different interpretations", i.e. that both sides agreed that there was only a single China, but indirectly recognized and respected that both sides had different interpretations of that concept.^{[10]: 229–230} The ambiguity of the 1992 Consensus allows the PRC to claim that both sides of the strait uphold the integrity of one China. On the other side, the same ambiguity allows the ROC to emphasize that it is the only China to which both the mainland and Taiwan belong.^[10]: 230 This facilitated the development of cross-strait relations in the early 1990s.^[10]: 230

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), however, does not conceive the 1992 meeting as consensus-producing. It argues that the concept of 1992 Consensus strengthens the PRC's claim over the sovereignty of Taiwan and does no better to the security of Taiwan than the situation before the meeting.^{[citation needed]}

Some pro-independence supporters, such as former President Lee Teng-hui, point to a lack of documentation to argue that the consensus has never existed.^[36]

According to Raymond Burghardt, the chair of the American Institute in Taiwan, the United States representative office in Taiwan:

"[There was] some language [in the faxes] that overlapped and some language that differed." Then Taiwan and China agreed to conduct dialog based on their statements written in those faxes. "That's what happened. Nothing more or nothing less," Burghardt said, adding that the KMT called this the '1992 Consensus', which was to some extent "confusing and misleading. To me, I'm not sure why you could call that a consensus."^[37]

In 2018, academics conducted a survey in Taiwan to assess Taiwanese understanding of the 1992 Consensus. They gave respondents four possible meanings of the consensus:

Historic: On international affairs, both ROC and PRC claim to represent the whole Chinese people including both mainland and Taiwan.

KMT definition: ROC represents Taiwan, PRC represents the mainland, the two governments belong to the same country waiting for unification.

Incorrect: ROC represents Taiwan, PRC represents the mainland, the two governments belong to two different countries.

PRC definition: PRC represents the whole Chinese people including both mainland and Taiwan, and ROC is the local government.

They found that 34% chose the KMT's definition (which was acceptable to 48%), 33% chose the incorrect definition (acceptable to 75%), 17% chose the historic relationship (acceptable to 40%), and 5% chose the PRC definition (acceptable to 10%), and 11% did not respond.^[38][39]

A 2020 poll conducted by the Duke University Program in Asian Security Studies that asked "Some people argue that Taiwan and China should live under a policy of “One China, Two Rule” with ongoing exchanges. Do you support this statement?" found that 51.0% of respondents agreed and 39.5% of respondents disagreed.^[39]

• Taiwan consensus
• Act Governing Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area
• Mutual non-recognition of sovereignty and mutual non-denial of authority to govern