GIVEN THAT THERE ARE AT LEAST FIVE:

Time to Dump the 'One-China' Policy? (Richard Halloran, 11/04/07, Real Clear Politics)

If you are puzzled by what is known as the "one-China" policy, please take a number-a very high number-and go stand in a long, long line. Put another way, if you were to put five people in a room and ask them to define the "one-China" policy, when they came out you would get eight different answers.

As the Congressional Research Service (CRS), which is respected for its non-partisan, even-handed assessments, said in a recent report, the "one-China" policy remains "somewhat ambiguous and subject to different interpretations."

At issue is China's claim that the island of Taiwan should come under Chinese control and Taiwan's increasingly strident insistence that it is a sovereign, independent nation. In the middle is the United States, which has vacillated since the Truman Administration over the status of Taiwan and what the US would do if other than a peaceful resolution loomed.

If there were one China what would the point of our recent honor to the Dalai Lama have been?

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 4, 2007 3:27 PM