There was that period after the passage of the TRA when it took a while for things to shake out and really be done the right way.

I said, "Well, I’m sorry, but it violates the TRA." [laughs] I went back and I sent cables to key members of Congress. Congress really read the Riot Act to Holbrooke and the State Department, and that was the end of that kind of nonsense.

That night, Holbrooke and I have another head to head dust up and I said, "Look. The real issue here is whether you see this as precedent for terminating other agreements with Taiwan." Holbrooke comes back and said, "Of course. It’s consistent with our whole policy of improving relations and ...

There was media in the room and there were PRC people. I waited until they were out, and I said, "Mr. Vice President, with all due respect, that violates the TRA." Of course, he got Holbrooke, sitting right next to him, he turns and clears it with Holbrooke.

Five months later, by coincidence, I happened to be in China when Vice President Mondale was there because all of the Asian AmCham chairmen were there. Mondale announced that the US had entered into a new air transportation agreement with the PRC, and was terminating the air transportation agreement with ...

They only said that. They didn’t put it in writing, and so when we testified to Congress, we urged them to put it in writing, and they did.

Yes, he was very much trying to ingratiate himself with the PRC, and I think he did a good job of that. [laughs] He was also involved in another dust up that he and I had, that came right out of the TRA. The administration said that all of the ...

When Holbrooke passed from the scene, at first professionally, and later on, unfortunately, literally he passed away, it opened up the possibility of doing things in a more normal way.

When he moved on he ultimately wanted to become Secretary of State and would have, if Hillary Clinton had won the election in 2008, but because she didn’t, Obama did and Hillary took that job herself.

I had a conversation with Holbrooke at one point and upbraided him on that, and he came right back at me. He was a very smart guy, but very arrogant. He said, "Well, I can say that the staff or other people in the State Department were responsible for that," ...

If any one individual could be pointed to as the author of those rather onerous requirements that forbid officials from meeting one another in their offices, and required congressional delegation aircraft that came to Taiwan to take off and fly to Guam, and sit on the tarmac in Guam rather ...

One of the five people in the Carter administration who played a key role in the normalization of relations with China was the assistant secretary for Asia, Richard Holbrooke. Dick Holbrooke was no friend of Taiwan.

When the derecognition took place and the TRA was enacted, there were a number of factors that came into play, some pressure from the PRC, but a lot of it growing out of this animosity you have to call it that toward Taiwan, on the part of certain people who ...

That led to the emergence of a core of people in the State Department who were much more sympathetic toward the PRC and saw Taiwan as an obstacle to improving relations with the PRC, rather than looking at Taiwan primarily as a great American friend.

There’s further history beyond that, too, that goes all the way back to America’s policy toward China in the late ’40s, early ’50s, the so called who lost China debate in Washington, and a lot of turmoil that caused, particularly within the State Department, and led to the removal of ...

There was a lot of history behind that. In part, you could say that, certainly accurately, that the Carter administration didn’t like the TRA. They wanted something very different in the omnibus legislation that they had put forward, and that the Congress scrapped.

It was a very heartening time, and of course, it led to opportunities for us to work together and get things done on the local projects that we had here.

For the Americans who were here, it was just the opposite. The Americans in Taiwan were embraced by Taiwanese, sometimes literally embraced. [laughs] People would come up, and grab your hand on the street, and say, "We’ll always be friends, never mind Carter. Taiwan and America will always be friends."

The atmosphere in Taiwan when the derecognition announcement, as we called it, was made, was, of course, an outburst of emotion. People were hurt. They were angry, but I thought one of the fascinating aspects of it was that the mood was not anti American. It was anti Carter and ...

We proceeded to advocate the kind of position that we developed further when I testified before Congress.

What we did, starting with a couple of years before I was chairman, when "Dutch" Van Gessel was chairman of AmCham, we laid down a policy that said, "AmCham Taipei does not oppose US improving relations with the PRC, provided it’s not done at the expense of Taiwan."

You’re exactly right. The home offices had already began to have dreams of sugarplums about the opportunity of the market in China. Our AmCham members here in Taiwan were of course just the Taiwan arm of those companies, and couldn’t go off in a completely different direction.

As a result, the committee staffers who actually drafted the TRA paid attention, and went back to our written testimony, and told us, when they came at our congressional delegation later, that they had gone back and consulted AmCham’s testimony numerous times in the drafting of the TRA, certainly made ...

We were really the only ones, AmCham, addressing the practical issue faced by Americans and American business in Taiwan, and the need for a sufficient legal framework for the continuation of normal trade and investment, and other relations between the United States and Taiwan.

There were other things that worked in our favor. Carter’s bill was poorly drawn, and so it was easy for us to attack, and hard for the State Department witnesses to defend. The other witnesses on the private side tended to address issues that were strategic, or political, or academic.

He might have gotten a very different act, one that we wouldn’t have liked nearly as much. He didn’t do that, and Congress was furious. Because of their anger at Carter, they were wide open receptive to the proposals that we made for a better bill.

He didn’t. No such consultations took place. If Carter had brought in key members of Congress, powerful senators, important committee chairmen from the House, huddled with them privately, and put an arm around them, and brought them in, giving them a feeling that they were part of a historic change ...

Specifically, President Carter did us a backhanded favor by his very maladroit, poor handling of the Congress before he announced the change in relations. Three months before, Congress had passed a resolution, almost unanimously, putting the president on notice that he should not do anything to terminate the mutual defense ...

Dr. Chang makes a really important point that we sometimes overlook. That is that the enactment of legislation is not just the functioning of machinery. These are human beings. The human factor enters into it and did enter into it in a big way when it came to the TRA.

I’d like to respond to that.

I said, "Well, thank you. I’m complimented." I have to say that that term underground in my country has a little bit of a negative connotation, too. They said, "Yeah, here too."

Life went on as usual, the parties and the banquets and so on to which the American ambassador would ordinarily have been invited. Since there was no American ambassador and not yet an AIT director, they invited me. I was in conversation with some of our Taiwan friends. They said ...

It did take all my time. The nickname was partly a compliment and partly a tease. I wasn’t called the underground ambassador within AmCham. Our Taiwan friends used that moniker to talk about me. It came about first during that period when there was no embassy and the interim before ...

When we realized that those were going to be gone, completely gone, that we would have to reinvent a structure of life here in Taiwan at the same time that we were advocating for a Taiwan Relations Act in Washington that would provide the legal framework going forward that American ...

That included the Taipei American School. It included the radio station in those days called American Forces Network Taiwan, AFNT, the premises that were occupied by American institutions. All of it really rested on the foundation of the Mutual Defense Treaty and the SOFA agreement.

Specifically, the Mutual Defense Treaty and the agreement under that called the SOFA agreement, S O F A, Status of Forces Agreement, because it was really under the SOFA agreement that institutions important to Americans and American business here existed.

As a result, those of us here really had to scramble to try to put together a coherent position that we wanted to advocate to the Congress, and at the same time deal with the local institutions here that were affected by the break in relations. I think there probably ...

It came as a shock when the terms were as flatly contrary to Taiwan’s interests and the interests of American business in Taiwan as they turned out to be.

In our view, the Carter administration largely capitulated to China’s terms in doing that. We had hoped for example that the embassy here, although that was going to be going away, might be converted into a consulate, like the consulate in Hong Kong, and that there would be that element ...

I think it’s fair to say that we had certain hopes in that rather long period before the normalization with China and derecognition of Taiwan. Those of us here had hopes that the terms on which that change would take place would be more reasonable, more favorable to Taiwan than ...