Americans tend to judge U.S. foreign policy from the perspective of fostering American values. The United States militarily intervenes in Kosovo, Rwanda, Haiti and other spots around the globe to fight oppression and restore order. Whether from the right or left, they define foreign-policy objectives in terms of promoting democracy and human rights in regions from Latin America to East Timor to the former Soviet empire. When U.S. foreign policy undercuts American values by supporting dictatorships or seeking to overthrow elected leaders, it comes in for justified criticism.

But there is one aspect of U.S. foreign policy--now the subject of a heated debate in Congress--in which those American values seem to have been forgotten. In the South China Sea, a well-known totalitarian force threatens a fledgling democracy with talk of invasion and denies the right of the democracy to exist. The United States has an ambiguous security commitment to the fledgling democracy, carefully limiting arms sales to it to avoid offending the totalitarian power. It cautions the democracy not to assert its right to independence and self-determination too loudly and supports the totalitarian power's effort to deny the democracy international recognition. In fact, the United States itself refuses to formally recognize the democracy.

Although it may sound incomprehensible to most Americans, the paragraph above accurately describes U.S. policy toward the People's Republic of China and Taiwan, and it is a policy followed by both Republican and Democratic administrations, although Congress is now moving to change it. It runs against the most basic values of the United States to side with a totalitarian country against a vibrant democracy, but that is exactly what the United States is doing in the struggle between Beijing and Taipei.

The complex histories of China and Taiwan are part of the explanation for this anomaly in U.S. policy. The current government of Taiwan traces its roots to the Nationalists who ruled China during World War II. Shortly after the war, Mao Tse-tung's communists ousted the Nationalists from the mainland and drove them to Taiwan, where the defeated forces set up their own government. Predictably, tensions were high between Taiwan and the mainland as each claimed to be the legitimate government of China.

For some four decades, Taiwan was ruled with an iron hand by the displaced Nationalist government. Conflict and threats dominated relations between the island and the mainland, and dialogue was limited and halting, each side viewing the other with great suspicion. Staunch anti-commmunists in the United States embraced Taiwan as a friend, but many liberals saw little practical difference between the oppressive and sometimes brutal totalitarian government in Beijing and the oppressive and sometimes brutal authoritarian government in Taipei.

Eventually, in need of allies to confront the Soviet Union, President Richard M. Nixon and Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger engineered a switch, later completed by President Jimmy Carter, in which the United States recognized the People's Republic of China as the legitimate government of China and dropped formal recognition of Taiwan. During the same period, China also displaced Taiwan in many international organizations, including the United Nations. Taiwan's friends in Congress forced through a legislatively mandated lifeline of informal support to Taipei, with limited weapons sales and a security commitment against Chinese invasion, but Taiwan's status clearly was downgraded. Many expected that China would somehow absorb Taiwan, perhaps after transforming itself into a modern democratic country.

But this expectation was not fulfilled. China did economically transform itself. Yet, as the Tiananmen Square massacre and subsequent revelations about the scope of oppression on the mainland make clear, it remains perhaps the most brutally oppressive government in the world. There are some early flickers of democratization at the local level, but the Chinese Communist Party still closely controls those limited efforts.

For its part, and with little notice in the United States, Taiwan completed its own dramatic transformation. It built a first-rate economy, but it did not stop there. In the 1990s, Taiwan became a true democracy, eventually electing its president in a free election. Local elections are now hotly contested; opposition parties gain parliamentary seats and power. A kind of Taiwanese Ross Perot leads in the presidential race. Individual freedoms are protected and widely exercised. Taiwanese democracy is still new and will undoubtedly face tests, but it appears as real as democracy in Mexico.

Unfortunately, U.S. policy fails to recognize this tremendous turn of events. As President Bill Clinton chose to make painfully clear on his recent trip to China, U.S. policy still treats Taiwan as a de facto possession of China. The administration holds to the Beijing-inspired vision that Taiwan can someday be absorbed by the mainland in the same fashion as Hong Kong was. The United States continues to refuse to recognize Taipei, it is reducing its sales of weapons to Taiwan, and it refuses to support, or supports halfheartedly, Taiwan's efforts to achieve international recognition.

Even now, the pattern continues. The administration is working furiously to bring China into the World Trade Organization, while putting membership for the much more qualified Taiwan on hold.

When Taiwan's democratically elected leader, President Lee Teng-hui, demanded last summer that his country be treated as a separate state rather than as a possession of China, the United States effectively sided with Beijing, telling Taiwan's president to hold his tongue. Now the Clinton administration is encouraging business leaders to lobby Congress against new arms sales to Taiwan. The U.S. reaction to Lee's statement demonstrates that China has effectively been granted veto power over U.S. policy toward Taiwan.

Since China has such strong feelings about Taiwan's status, the United States should move cautiously in tracing new policy in this area. Certainly, no one wants war with China. Such a conflict would have grave consequences for Taiwan, China, the United States and the world. Having said that, the one-China policy is woefully out of date. Cold War realities that drove it are deep in the dust bin of history; China is no longer needed as a strategic counterweight to the Soviet Union. The main players that shaped policy after World War II, China and Taiwan, are greatly changed. The only seemingly unchanging facet of the situation is the stubborn insistence of U.S. leaders to keep their eyes tightly shut to changing reality for fear of offending Beijing.

Increasingly, U.S. policy lacks even internal coherence. For example, advocates of the status quo argue that they fear being drawn into a war with China sparked by a Chinese invasion or blockade of Taiwan to punish Taipei for its increasingly independent posture. Yet, many of these same voices support sticking to existing arms-sale policy toward Taiwan, thus effectively reducing Taiwan's ability to deter Chinese aggression and keep the risk of U.S. involvement in a war minimal. If the real objective is to maintain peace across the Taiwan Strait, what better way to achieve this objective than to allow Taiwan to defend itself. Making war between Taiwan and China unthinkable to Beijing's leaders is the surest way to ensure that U.S. lives are not lost in a war between the two Chinas.

The United States should not lightly ignore China's wishes, but it certainly should not ignore reality and its own values on Beijing's behalf. The situation in the South China Sea has changed, but U.S. policy remains frozen. As the congressional debate on this problem heats up, all Americans should take a hard look at U.S. policy on China and Taiwan and measure it against American values. If China's oppression of a few hundred students at Tiananmen Square is grounds for an outcry, how is it that China's continuing effort to suppress 23 million people on Taiwan warrants no notice? If fighting against oppression and being on the side of human rights and democracy is in U.S. interests in Kosovo, Kuwait and Rwanda, why is it not the case in Taiwan, a far truer democracy?

There is probably a limit to how far the United States should go to promote its values overseas, and maintaining a relationship with China is important, but that certainly should not mean that we turn our backs on what we believe in to appease Beijing.