HONOLULU -- The "one-China" principle that has been the mainstay of relations between the United States and China for 30 years is steadily fading. Curiously, a critical chapter in the fate of the principle is being played out now on the tiny mid-Pacific nation of Kiribati.
The one-China principle "is no longer by itself an adequate device for containing the emerging new tensions" between China and Taiwan, said the International Crisis Group in a recent report. The nonprofit research organization concluded that one-China had become so worn that it is "on the point of final fragmentation."
One-China was fashioned by U.S. national security adviser Henry Kissinger and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in the Shanghai Communique in 1972, which began normalizing relations between Washington and Beijing.