When ‘One China’ Becomes a Script

Taiwan's national flag is raised during an early morning flag-raising ceremony following China's People's Liberation Army saying it would conduct live-fire drills in five designated maritime and airspace areas around Taiwan, in Taipei on Dec. 30, 2025. Cheng Yu-chen/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

Two diplomats can say the words “one China” in the same meeting and mean entirely different things. One is asserting a non‑negotiable claim of sovereignty. The other is preserving ambiguity to avoid endorsing that claim. On paper, the distinction holds. In practice, it is disappearing.

That erosion is not accidental.

The Distinction Beijing Needs the World to Forget

At the center of today’s tensions over Taiwan is a deliberate conflation: Beijing’s “one China principle” versus other countries’ “one China” policies.

Beijing’s principle is categorical. It asserts that Taiwan is an inseparable part of China and that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the sole legitimate government representing that China—a position embedded in official doctrine and repeatedly affirmed in state policy documents.

By contrast, the United States’ “one China” policy acknowledges Beijing’s position but does not endorse it. Washington maintains unofficial relations with Taiwan under the Taiwan Relations Act, leaving sovereignty unresolved. Analysts consistently emphasize that this ambiguity is intentionally designed to preserve stability, not to settle sovereignty. The CCP’s objective has been to collapse that ambiguity—not by rewriting others’ policies, but by reshaping their behavior.

Gaslighting as a System

What has emerged is not a semantic dispute but a strategy for enforcing one interpretation without formally resolving it. This strategy does not require convincing governments that Taiwan lacks legitimacy. It relies on conditioning institutions to act as if that question has already been settled. Repetition, procedural reinforcement, and bureaucratic habit gradually transform a contested claim into an operational assumption.

At the center of this effort is the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758. The resolution addressed a narrow issue: which government represents China at the U.N. It did not determine Taiwan’s sovereignty or define its political status, as is widely acknowledged in legal and policy analysis. However, Beijing has advanced a broader interpretation and worked to embed it into credentialing rules, participation standards, and diplomatic norms. This is how ambiguity becomes enforcement.

From Ambiguity to Enforcement

The collapse of the principle‑policy distinction has become a visible trait in institutional behavior. International organizations often treat Taiwan’s participation as a “technical” issue. In practice, this reflects a broader pattern: bureaucratic processes drive inappropriate exclusions from global bodies, including those governing health and aviation.

In early 2024, during preparations for the World Health Assembly, the World Health Organization Secretariat cited Resolution 2758 as justification for excluding Taiwan from observer participation, despite the resolution containing no language about Taiwan’s status. Multiple governments, including the United States and Japan, formally objected, arguing that the Secretariat had effectively adopted Beijing’s interpretation rather than the organization’s own legal mandate. Reuters reporting documented these objections and the growing pushback against the misuse of 2758.

This incident demonstrates how China leverages institutional habit and how governments are beginning to push back against these actions. The “one China” framework is not grounded in binding international law but operates as a contested political norm enforced through practice. And when each individual decision appears procedural, they produce a consistent outcome: Taiwan’s marginalization.

The Emerging Break in the Pattern

What is changing is not the underlying dispute, but the willingness of governments to contest how it is being implemented. More recent policy discussions and legislative actions have increasingly emphasized that Resolution 2758 does not settle Taiwan’s sovereignty and should not be used to exclude it from international participation. This reflects a growing recognition that the CCP has distorted long‑standing ambiguity and operationalized it for Beijing’s political goals.

Even within U.S. policy discourse, officials and analysts have reiterated that the “one China” policy is distinct from Beijing’s principle and does not take a position on sovereignty. This shift matters because it targets the mechanism, not just the rhetoric. Gaslighting depends on repetition and passive compliance. It weakens when institutions publicly and precisely clarify the limits of the claims China wants enforced.

The Counterpoint: Why Ambiguity Still Has Defenders

A persistent argument holds that preserving ambiguity is essential to stability. The concern is that explicitly challenging Beijing’s interpretation risks escalation and undermines diplomatic engagement—“we can’t upset China.”

This logic is rooted in the original design of the “one China” policy, which allowed governments to recognize Beijing diplomatically while maintaining unofficial ties with Taiwan and avoiding a definitive position on sovereignty.

But this logic assumes that ambiguity remains mutually bounded. In practice, one side has systematically weaponized its interpretation while the other has declined to respond. Ambiguity ceases to stabilize when it becomes an asymmetric approach to political end-states.

What Comes Next

The question is no longer whether Beijing will continue asserting its “one China principle.” It will. The question is whether states and institutions will continue to operationalize that principle as if it were their own policy.

Reasserting the distinction requires more than rhetorical clarity. It requires institutional discipline—ensuring that procedures reflect what governments have actually agreed to, not what has been asserted through pressure and repetition.

We don’t have to abandon existing diplomatic frameworks; we only need to enforce their limits.

Because the real risk is not that Beijing’s position is stated. The risk is that it is enacted—quietly, routinely, and without acknowledgment. That is how a contested claim becomes reality.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.