
| One Country on Each Side | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional Chinese | 一邊一國 | ||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 一边一国 | ||||||||||
| |||||||||||

One Country on Each Side is a concept articulated in theDemocratic Progressive Party government led byChen Shui-bian, the formerpresident of the Republic of China (2000–2008), regarding thepolitical status of Taiwan. It emphasizes that thePeople's Republic of China and theRepublic of China (or alternatively,Taiwan itself) are two different countries, (namely "One China, one Taiwan"), as opposed totwo separate political entities within the same country of "China". This is the position of the supporters of thePan-Green coalition.
InPeng Ming-min's 1964Declaration of Formosan Self-Salvation [zh;wikidata], it was stated that "One China, one Taiwan" had been an ironclad fact (「一個中國,一個台灣」早已是鐵一般的事實).[1][2] The same concept “One China, One Formosa” was presented inChen Lung-chu andHarold Lasswell’s book-length proposal in 1967 —Formosa, China and the United Nations: Formosa in the World Community.[3]
Chen used this phrase in an August 3, 2002, telecast to the annual conference of theWorld Federation of Taiwanese Associations meeting in Tokyo when he stated that it needs to be clear that "with Taiwan and China on each side of theTaiwan Strait, each side is a country."[4] His statements were made inTaiwanese Minnan as opposed toMandarin and drew a barrage of criticism from themainland Chinese press, which had previously shied away from the types of attacks it gave toLee Teng-hui, who promoted a similar "special state-to-state relations [zh]". The United States also expressed serious concerns over this concept, as the U.S. felt that this concept appeared to have departed from Chen's earlier pledge of "Four Noes and One Without".[5] "State-to-state relations" had originally been translated in English as “country-to-country relations” but theMainland Affairs Council got the translation changed to the less provocative option.[6]
TheTaiwan Action Party Alliance, founded on 18 August 2019, incorporated One Country on Each Side into its Chinese-language name.