United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758 (XXVI)

Based on Wikipedia: United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758 (XXVI)

On the night of October 25, 1971, something remarkable happened in the grand hall of the United Nations General Assembly. As the final vote tally was announced—seventy-six in favor, thirty-five against—delegates from several African and Asian nations broke into applause and even began dancing in the aisles. The People's Republic of China, after twenty-two years of exclusion, had just won the right to represent China at the world's most important diplomatic forum.

But winning meant someone else had to lose.

As the celebration erupted around him, Chow Shu-Kai, the Foreign Minister of the Republic of China—the government that had represented China at the UN since the organization's founding—rose to deliver what would be his final statement in that chamber. He denounced the "frenzied and irrational manners" on display, declared that the ideals of the United Nations had been "betrayed," and led his delegation out of the building. They would never return.

This single vote, now known as Resolution 2758, continues to shape global politics more than fifty years later. It sits at the heart of one of the world's most dangerous flashpoints: the question of Taiwan's place in the international order. Understanding what the resolution actually says—and what it pointedly does not say—is essential for anyone trying to make sense of the tensions that could, some analysts warn, lead to the next great power conflict.

One China, Two Governments

To understand Resolution 2758, you need to understand the peculiar situation it was meant to address. And that requires going back to 1949, when China split in two.

The Republic of China had been founded in 1912, ending thousands of years of imperial rule on the Chinese mainland. It was a founding member of the United Nations in 1945, one of the "Big Five" powers that won World War II and earned permanent seats on the Security Council—alongside the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and France. China's seat at that exclusive table came with an extraordinary power: the veto, which could single-handedly block any Security Council resolution.

But even as the Republic of China helped create the postwar international order, it was losing a civil war at home. The ruling Nationalist Party, known as the Kuomintang, had been fighting the Chinese Communist Party on and off since the 1920s. After World War II, the conflict resumed with devastating intensity. By 1949, the Communists had won. Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China in Beijing on October 1 of that year.

The Nationalists didn't surrender. They retreated—to Taiwan.

Taiwan is an island roughly the size of Maryland, sitting about a hundred miles off China's southeastern coast. Japan had ruled it as a colony from 1895 until 1945, when it was placed under the administration of the Republic of China following Japan's surrender in World War II. Now it became the Nationalists' last refuge. From Taipei, the island's capital, the Kuomintang government continued to claim authority over all of China. They insisted their retreat was temporary. They would retake the mainland.

They never did.

For the next two decades, the world faced an absurd situation. The government in Taipei, controlling an island of roughly fifteen million people, represented "China" at the United Nations. The government in Beijing, ruling over six hundred million people on the mainland, was shut out entirely. Both governments claimed to be the sole legitimate government of all of China. Neither would accept diplomatic relations with any country that recognized the other.

The Long Campaign for the China Seat

From Beijing's perspective, the situation was intolerable. The Communist government controlled virtually all Chinese territory. It governed the vast majority of the Chinese people. Yet it was treated as if it didn't exist, while what they viewed as a rump government clinging to a single island pretended to speak for the entire nation.

Every year, proposals came before the UN to address the "China question." Every year, the United States and its allies blocked them. Washington had a powerful stake in the status quo: the Republic of China was an anti-Communist ally, and keeping Beijing out of the UN was part of a broader strategy to contain Communist expansion in Asia. A procedural maneuver helped maintain this blockade. By getting the General Assembly to declare any change in China's representation an "important question" under the UN Charter, the US ensured that swapping Taipei for Beijing would require a two-thirds supermajority—a much higher bar to clear.

But the world was changing. Through the 1960s, decolonization swept across Africa and Asia. Dozens of newly independent nations joined the UN, and many of them had little interest in fighting America's Cold War battles. They saw the exclusion of the world's most populous nation as absurd, even unjust. Meanwhile, the split between the Soviet Union and China—the two Communist giants—complicated the simple Cold War narrative. Beijing was no longer Moscow's reliable ally; it was a rival with its own interests.

By the early 1970s, the math had shifted. A coalition led by Albania—then one of China's few diplomatic allies—began pushing hard for a resolution to seat Beijing and expel the Taipei government. In July 1971, seventeen nations formally requested that the "restoration of the lawful rights of the People's Republic of China" be placed on the General Assembly's agenda.

Their accompanying memorandum pulled no punches. The Republic of China, they declared, was a "myth" and a "fabrication," its authorities "unlawful" and sustained only by "the permanent presence of United States Armed Forces." No important international problem could be solved without Beijing's participation. The time had come to end this "grave injustice."

America's Last-Ditch Effort

The Nixon administration saw the writing on the wall. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had secretly visited Beijing in July 1971, beginning the process of normalizing relations between the two longtime adversaries. President Nixon himself would make his historic trip to China the following year. The US was pivoting toward engagement with Beijing.

But Washington wasn't ready to abandon Taiwan entirely. In August 1971, the United States proposed a compromise: let both governments represent China. The People's Republic would take China's seat on the Security Council, including the precious veto power, while the Republic of China would retain some form of representation in the General Assembly. This "dual representation" approach, the US argued, would reflect reality—the existence of two governments, each controlling significant territory and population.

Beijing rejected this categorically. In a blistering statement distributed to UN members, the People's Republic denounced the American proposal as a "blatant exposure of the Nixon government's scheme of creating 'two Chinas.'" There was only one China, the statement declared, and Taiwan was "an inalienable part of Chinese territory." Any arrangement suggesting otherwise was unacceptable. If the UN adopted such a scheme, the People's Republic would "have absolutely nothing to do with" the organization.

This was not a bluff. For Beijing, the Taiwan question was existential. The Chinese Civil War had never formally ended; the two sides were still technically at war. Accepting any arrangement that treated Taiwan as separate from China would legitimize the Nationalists' continued existence and undermine the Communist claim to be China's sole legitimate government.

The Vote

The General Assembly convened to debate the China question in October 1971. Over twelve sessions, seventy-three nations weighed in. The arguments crystallized around a fundamental question: what, exactly, would the proposed resolution do?

The Albanian-backed resolution called for restoring the People's Republic's "lawful rights" and expelling "the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek"—that is, the delegation sent by the government in Taipei. Algeria and others supporting the resolution argued this wasn't really about expelling a member state. Rather, it was about credentials: who had the right to represent China, which was already a member? The Taipei authorities, they argued, were merely a "dissident minority regime" that had been improperly occupying China's seat.

The United States took the opposite view. Adopting the resolution would effectively terminate the membership of a founding UN member, a government that had "earned its place" through its contributions to the Allied victory in World War II. The Republic of China delegation made essentially the same argument: their government represented "the great Chinese nation," while the Communist regime had "never had the moral consent of the Chinese people."

Several alternative proposals emerged. Saudi Arabia suggested that the people of Taiwan had a right to self-determination—essentially treating the island as a separate entity whose future should be decided by its inhabitants. Tunisia proposed that the Taipei government be represented under the name "Formosa" (the Portuguese name for Taiwan), implicitly accepting that it was something other than the government of all China. But these alternatives never gained traction.

On October 25, the voting began. First up was the American-backed motion to declare the matter an "important question" requiring a two-thirds majority. If this passed, expelling the Taipei delegation would become much harder. The motion failed, fifty-nine to fifty-five, with fifteen abstentions. The US had lost its procedural shield.

Next came a motion to delete the language expelling the Taipei representatives from the Albanian resolution. This too failed, sixty-one to fifty-one, with sixteen abstentions.

At this point, the outcome was clear. Foreign Minister Chow delivered his bitter farewell and walked out with his delegation. The Assembly then adopted the Albanian resolution by a vote of seventy-six to thirty-five, with seventeen abstentions.

Resolution 2758 was now international law.

What the Resolution Actually Says

The text of Resolution 2758 is remarkably brief. It fits in a single paragraph:

The General Assembly... decides to restore all its rights to the People's Republic of China and to recognize the representatives of its Government as the only legitimate representatives of China to the United Nations, and to expel forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek from the place which they unlawfully occupy at the United Nations and in all the organizations related to it.

Read carefully. The resolution does three things. It restores the People's Republic's rights in the UN. It recognizes Beijing's government as the only legitimate representative of "China." And it expels the representatives of "Chiang Kai-shek"—a pointed reference to the Nationalist leader, not to Taiwan or the Republic of China by name.

What the resolution does not do is equally important. It does not mention Taiwan at all. It does not state that Taiwan is part of China. It does not rule on Taiwan's legal status. It does not determine whether the people of Taiwan have any right to self-determination or separate representation.

This matters enormously.

The Battle Over Interpretation

In the decades since 1971, Beijing has consistently argued that Resolution 2758 settled the Taiwan question once and for all. In the Chinese government's reading, "China" necessarily includes Taiwan. When the resolution recognized the People's Republic as the sole legitimate representative of China, it implicitly recognized Beijing's sovereignty over Taiwan. There was no need to mention Taiwan separately because Taiwan was already encompassed within "China."

Chinese diplomats point to the resolution's language about expelling "the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek." If the matter had been solely about who governed the mainland, they argue, why would it have been necessary to expel anyone? The expulsion was required precisely because the Taipei government claimed to represent all of China, including the mainland. By choosing Beijing, the UN was necessarily rejecting Taipei's claim—including its administration of Taiwan.

Beijing also invokes the Cairo Declaration of 1943 and the Potsdam Proclamation of 1945, in which the Allied powers—including the United States—stated that Taiwan should be "restored to the Republic of China" after Japan's defeat. Since the People's Republic is the successor government to the Republic of China, the argument goes, Taiwan rightfully belongs to Beijing.

Taiwan and its allies read the resolution very differently. They note that Resolution 2758 addressed only the question of China's representation at the UN. It was a credentials fight, not a territorial settlement. Taiwan—which was never mentioned in the text—was neither admitted to nor expelled from the United Nations. The resolution simply didn't address its status.

Furthermore, they argue, the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, which formally ended World War II in Asia, explicitly did not assign Taiwan to any successor. Japan renounced all right, title, and claim to Taiwan, but the treaty did not specify who would receive it. The Cairo Declaration and Potsdam Proclamation, while expressing Allied intentions, were not binding treaties. Taiwan's ultimate status, in this reading, remains undetermined.

The United States, despite its long-standing "one China policy" acknowledging Beijing's position, has never formally accepted that Taiwan is part of the People's Republic. American diplomats carefully distinguish between "acknowledging" Beijing's view and "endorsing" it. The Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, passed by Congress when Washington switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing, commits the US to providing Taiwan with defensive weapons and maintaining the capacity to resist any resort to force that would jeopardize Taiwan's security.

Taiwan's Exclusion

Whatever the legal merits of each side's argument, the practical reality is stark. Taiwan has been shut out of the United Nations and most of its affiliated organizations for over fifty years. The UN Secretariat has adopted the position that Taiwan is a "province of China" and refuses to accept official documents from Taiwanese authorities. When Taiwan has sought to join UN agencies—the World Health Organization, the International Civil Aviation Organization, Interpol—Beijing has blocked its participation.

In 2007, Taiwan applied for UN membership under the name "Taiwan" rather than "Republic of China," hoping to sidestep the representational dispute. The application was rejected. The UN cited Resolution 2758 as acknowledging that Taiwan is part of China.

This interpretation has become increasingly contentious. In the 2020s, the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia have publicly challenged Beijing's reading of the resolution. They argue that the resolution says nothing about Taiwan's status and should not be used to exclude Taiwan from international organizations where its participation would be beneficial—such as public health forums during a global pandemic.

Taiwan itself occupies a strange liminal position in international affairs. It has its own government, its own military, its own currency, its own passport. It conducts elections that are generally considered free and fair. Its twenty-three million people live under a democratic system entirely separate from the People's Republic. Yet only a handful of small nations maintain formal diplomatic relations with it, and it belongs to almost none of the international organizations that structure global cooperation.

The Stakes Today

Resolution 2758 was passed in a different world. The Cold War was at its height. China was emerging from the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. Taiwan was an authoritarian state under martial law, ruled by the same Kuomintang party that had fled the mainland.

Much has changed. China has become the world's second-largest economy, a nuclear power, and an increasingly assertive presence on the world stage. Taiwan has democratized; martial law ended in 1987, and the island now regularly holds competitive elections between multiple parties. The Kuomintang, once the ruling party, has lost power multiple times and regained it through the ballot box. A strong Taiwanese identity has emerged, distinct from both the Nationalist dream of reunifying China and the Communist claim to sovereignty.

Beijing insists that reunification is inevitable and refuses to renounce the use of force to achieve it. Chinese military aircraft regularly probe Taiwan's air defense zone. The People's Liberation Army has practiced amphibious assault operations. American military planners increasingly warn that a conflict over Taiwan is not only possible but perhaps likely within the coming decade.

At the center of this potential conflagration sits a fifty-year-old UN resolution, written in the careful language of diplomatic compromise, now wielded as a weapon in a dispute its drafters may never have imagined. Resolution 2758 answered one question—who represents China at the United Nations—while leaving another question conspicuously unaddressed: what is Taiwan, and what should become of it?

That question remains open. Its answer may determine whether the twenty-first century sees its first great power war.