It is intriguing to note that at a time characterized as "highly dangerous" by China's president, Hu Jintao, apparently because of Taiwan's stepped-up efforts to achieve independence, the United States is once again saying that the status of Taiwan remains undecided.

Such statements have not been well publicized but are nonetheless authoritative. In June, in a response to a question from an American citizen, a State Department official wrote: "We have not formally recognized Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan. In fact, we have not made any determination as to Taiwan's political status. Our consistent position remains that sovereignty of Taiwan is a question to be decided peacefully by the Chinese people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait."

More recently, on August 30, the U.S. National Security Council's senior director for Asian affairs, Dennis Wilder, when asked about a proposed referendum on whether or not Taiwan should again apply to join the United Nations, asserted: "Taiwan, or the Republic of China, is not at this point a state in the international community. The position of the United States government is that the ROC–Republic of China–is an issue undecided, and it has been left undecided, as you know, for many, many years."

Although the first sentence, declaring that Taiwan is not a state, may have gladdened the hearts of those in Beijing, the second sentence–that the status of Taiwan remains undecided–no doubt gave hope to those who seek to turn Taiwan's de facto independence into legal recognition of such by the international community.

The debate over the status of Taiwan goes back to 1950, when, as a result of the Korean War, President Harry S. Truman sent the 7th Fleet to protect Taiwan, then known as Formosa, from a pending attack by the newly established People's Republic of China. At the time, he said: "The determination of the future status of Formosa must await the restoration of security |in the Pacific, a peace settlement with Japan, or consideration by the United Nations."

Well, the Korean War ended in 1953, Japan signed a peace treaty at the conclusion of the San Francisco Peace Conference in 1951, and the United Nations decided in 1971 to "restore to the People's Republic of China all its rights and expel forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek", then president of the Republic of China government in Taipei.

And in the 1970s, the United States itself moved toward rapprochement with the Communist government in Beijing and signed a series of communiqués in which it stated its position on Taiwan. In the 1972 Shanghai Communiqué, signed by then-president Richard Nixon and then-premier Zhou Enlai, Washington declared: "The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position." This seemed to imply American acceptance of Taiwan as part of China, leaving open the question of which of them is China's legal government.

In 1979, when the United States formally recognized the People's Republic of China as "the sole legal government of China", it asserted: "The Government of the United States of America acknowledges the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China."

However, the United States did not declare its acceptance of Taiwan as part of China. It simply acknowledged that that was Beijing's position.

Similarly, the San Francisco peace treaty was ambiguous. According to the treaty: "Japan renounces all right, title and claim to Formosa and the Pescadores", without saying to whom it was turning over these territories.

The reopening of discussion on the status of Taiwan cannot be welcome to Beijing, which considers the issue settled, with Taiwan being part of "one China". It suggests that there may be people who are seeking a way out of the existing deadlock between Beijing, Taipei, and Washington.

Of course, as long as the United States says that it is up to the Chinese people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to decide the future of the island, Beijing may not worry too much. But this situation could change if increasing numbers of islanders declare themselves to be Taiwanese rather than Chinese.

By openly declaring that Taiwan's status remains undetermined, the United States does seem to be leaving the door open to the possibility that the future of Taiwan does not necessarily lie in unification with mainland China. Perhaps that is another reason why Hu told Bush in Australia that the current situation is "highly dangerous".