The contemporary US framework institutionalised those tactics. The 1972 US-China Shanghai Communique famously states that the US “acknowledges” that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is one China and that Taiwan is part of China — wording that is intentionally not the same as recognising sovereignty. In 1979, Washington normalised relations with Beijing and then passed the Taiwan Relations Act, promising defensive support and maintaining the capacity to resist coercion, while still avoiding an automatic-war trigger. The 1982 communique, centred on arms sales, functioned as a recurring-friction guardrail: it did not settle Taiwan’s status, but it sought to manage the most dangerous loop in US-China relations. The point of this architecture was never maximal clarity. It was sustainable deterrence — strong enough to raise the price of force, flexible enough to prevent a slogan from becoming a fuse.
