Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

A high level conference on Chinese defense and security issues was told on Thursday that if the US fails to sell advanced F16C/D fighter aircraft to Taiwan it will send a signal to Beijing that Washington is no longer fully committed to defending Taiwan.

“If we allow the F16 decision to just lapse, to never happen — and there will never be a good time to do it — we are at risk of appearing to downgrade the Taiwan Relations Act and to upgrade the Chinese interpretation of the Third Communique,” former US National Security Council (NSC) member Michael Green said.

Taiwan observers have been watching the daily WikiLeaks releases of U.S. diplomatic cables for documents in a large cache of messages from the American Institute in Taiwan, the defacto embassy of the United States. The United States has never recognized the sovereignty of the Republic of China in-exile over Taiwan, thus no embassy.

The United States is the “principal occupying Power” of Taiwan under the San Francisco Peace Treaty that officially ended World War II with Japan.  At the end of the war the United States installed the embattled Republic of China as the occupation government to control the former Japanese territory.  Six decades of “strategic ambiguity” have left the island under control by the Chinese Nationalist government, barred from the United Nations, and under threat of invasion from the People’s Republic of China.