Military drills by the People’s Republic of China around self-ruled Taiwan are larger and more frequent than ever. Chinese warplanes, drones, balloons, and naval ships now enter Taiwan’s airspace and waters on a daily basis. At the United Nations and other international venues, Chinese authorities never overlook an opportunity to reiterate their message: Taiwan belongs to the PRC. In this installment of our occasional speaker series, “Taiwan Legal,” we ask what PRC law says about the status of Taiwan, and how the Chinese party-state bases its claim in history and international law. Professor Bing Ling of University of Sydney will explain why Taiwan is so important to the PRC that China might risk a costly war to retake it.      

Taiwan’s status as a state is often challenged not because it fails to meet the criteria for statehood, but because of its ambiguous legal relationship with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). We continue our “Taiwan Legal” speaker series by asking how Taiwan, functioning as the Republic of China (ROC), defines its relationship with the PRC in legal terms. Yu-Jie Chen, an assistant research professor at the Institutum Iurisprudentiae of Academia Sinica, will explain what the ROC Constitution says and how Taiwan engages with and distinguishes itself from the PRC.

We continue our “Taiwan Legal” speaker series by examining the United Nations’ position on the legal status of Taiwan. In 1971, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 2758 declaring that the “representatives of the Government of the People’s Republic of China are the only lawful representatives of China to the United Nations,” displacing the Republic of China, which had held the “China” seat since the UN was founded. Jacques deLisle, a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania, will explain the background and legal effect of the resolution, how the PRC reads--and misreads-- it and why this 54-year-old resolution matters today.   

What is the status of Taiwan under international law? In the second of our speaker series “Taiwan Legal,” Peter Dutton, senior research scholar at the Paul Tsai China Center of Yale Law School, will unpack arguments about who has sovereignty over the island of Taiwan and adjoining small islands that its government controls. If Taiwan’s status is unsettled, does international law still recognize its government’s right of self-defense and the right of its friends to defend it?

The U.S.-Asia Law Institute begins a series of guest talks called Taiwan Legal to address questions about the status of Taiwan in international and domestic law. The first speaker will be Richard Bush, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan. He will explain the genesis and meaning of the Taiwan Relations Act, a 1979 US law that is frequently referenced but apparently not often read. Bush frequently talks about the TRA, which was enacted 45 years ago. In his account, the TRA is not the functional equivalent of a defense treaty but has great significance despite saying “less than meets the eye.” Read more.