ABSTRACT
Half a century after the Cairo Conference, the relationship between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan remains the most obvious case of post-World War II unfinished business. In Taiwan's case, however, neither does the island have the generally recognized status of a sovereign state, nor is the nature of its ultimate relationship with the PRC at all defined. From Taiwan's perspective, the most fundamental change in its place in the international system came with the announcement of the normalization of US-PRC relations in 1978. Successive administrations have said relatively little publicly about Taiwan and its relationship to the PRC, yet the words enunciated are significant. The initiatives begun by Chiang Ching-kuo and continued by Lee Teng-hui-democratization on the island, the opening of cross-Strait relations, and incremental expansion of the civilian international role-in theory posed no fundamental problem for US policy.
