I-Cheng Loh

I-cheng “Gene” Loh, Taiwan’s veteran diplomat, journalist and author, died of pneumonia in Taipei on February 26, 2016. He would have been 92 in August.

Loh served as minister-counselor for information at the Republic of China’s Embassy in Washington and director of the Chinese Information Service in New York, for almost 16 years, until President Carter switched US recognition from Taipei to Beijing on 15 December 1978. He liked to say that he had the dubious honor of being the only Taiwanese diplomat forced by the State Department to leave the US with only one week’s notice.

Ostensibly the reason for his expulsion was an Op Ed page article he wrote for The New York Daily News on 26 December 1978, entitled “Taiwan: ‘We’ll Fight, We’ll Die for Freedom.” It was voluntarily reprinted, without Loh’s knowledge or permission, by dozens of newspapers across the US in days that followed, including The Washington Star on 10 January 1979.

On 15 January 1979, Roger Sullivan, then deputy assistant secretary for the Far East, summoned S.K. Hu, who was in charge of the embassy after its official closure, to the State Department. Minister Hu was told that Loh’s article had broken the norms of diplomatic conduct, and that the US would be forced to take “necessary measures” if he were not recalled by Taipei within one week. The government of Taiwan complied in accordance with the Vienna convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961.

The hushed-up story broke into news a week after Loh’s departure, when the Washington Post reported “Taiwan Recalls Diplomat Who Scored US Policy” in a 2-column story on 30 January 1979. The New York Times printed an article “US Reportedly Expels A Taiwanese Diplomat” the next day. A Daily News editorial on February 2 was simply entitled “Shabby”. The Wall Street Journal said in its editorial “Ugly Americanism” on 6 February 1979 that: “Those who know ‘Gene Loh’ recognize that his real offense was being too eloquent a spokesman for the State Department bureaucrats to tolerate”.

The real reason for State’s drastic action, Loh wrote in his memoir, was not his Op Ed page article, but that negotiation between Washington and Taipei aimed at establishing a framework for future relations had reached an impasse by then. With Congress about to reconvene after the holidays, and China’s Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping arriving for his first official visit on January 30, the US was using his expulsion to signal to Taipei that it had better accept the fiction of “people to people” relations, or face worse consequences. Taiwan got the message, which led to the establishment of the American institute in Taiwan, termed “the white glove” by Taiwanese media. Taiwan’s office in the US had an even fuzzier name, the “Coordinating Council on North American Affairs”.

Loh was subsequently sent to Austria as Taiwan’s unofficial representative, and official observer to the IAEA. He became ambassador to Guatemala in 1981, and ambassador to South Africa in 1990 until Pretoria, under PRC pressure, broke relations with Taiwan in 1998. Returning home after an absence of 35 years, he was made ambassador-at-large until 2000, when he resigned, choosing not to serve under the new DPP administration.

An energetic writer and respected commentator, Loh spent his retirement years writing Op Ed page articles for the United Daily News and The China Times, two leading Chinese language papers of Taiwan. Frequently appearing on TV and radio talk shows, he became better known and more highly regarded in Taiwan than in earlier days when he represented the country abroad. He has published four books in Chinese and edited an English-Chinese dictionary in the last five years, in addition to contributing chapters to two books published in the US.

Born on the Chinese mainland, Loh received his BA in diplomacy from National Chengchi University in Nanking, and an MS in journalism from Columbia University, after serving in a civilian capacity with UN forces in Korea from 1951-53. From his work interrogating North Korean and Chinese prisoners of war, he was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Eisenhower in 1954. In his journalistic career, he was reporter and Shanghai bureau chief of Ta Kang Pao of Nanking, city editor of the English-language China News and assistant managing editor of the Chinese-language China Daily News, both of Taipei.

In his memoir “wei chen wu li ke hui tian (微臣無力可回天)”, roughly translatable as “No Way to Turn Back the Tide”, Loh detailed the inside story of the three major diplomatic setbacks suffered by Taiwan – the loss of its UN seat in 1971, US “normalization of relations” with the PRC in 1979, and South Africa’s switch to Beijing in 1998. The 453-page book was published by the Commonwealth Publishing House (天下文化出版公司) of Taipei in 2002.

Presenting an honest, first person account of what really happened in all three episodes, Loh minced no words and revealed many interesting details. The chapters on Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s last US speaking tour of 1964-65 (he was her press officer), on how the “China lobby” functioned in the 60’s and 70’s and its American advocates, on Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo as he personally knew them, on the 1972 attempt on Chiang Ching-kuo’s life, and on the tug of war between pro-ROC and pro-PRC groups before 1978, should be of interest to China scholars everywhere.

Contrary to popular belief, Loh documented in his memoir that just before the crucial UN vote of 1971 on the issue of “Chinese representation”, Chiang Kai-shek had reluctantly accepted the US proposal of “dual representation”, i.e. giving the Security Council seat to Beijing while keeping Taiwan in the General Assembly. It was only because of a series of unforeseen circumstances on 25 October 1971 in the General Assembly hall that brought total defeat for the Taiwanese as well as the US delegation, headed then by President George H.W. Brush.

One fascinating footnote to history took place after Loh’s transfer to Vienna. Because the State Department had requested his departure, he was on the US “black list” for a time. Just before Christmas 1979, he was visited by an old friend from his New York days, FBI agent Roland Kearns, who brought along an assistant FBI director, Edward O’Malley. They asked Loh if he wished to rejoin his family remaining in the US, dangling as bait a job and permanent resident status, if he would only give them the names of which US senator or congressman he had bribed during his 16-year stint in Washington and New York.

It took Loh several hours to convince them that he did nothing of the sort, because that would be counterproductive. Two months later, the “Arabscam” broke into the news. Senator Harrison Williams of New Jersey, as well as Congressmen Frank Thompson and John M. Murphy, were implicated and went to jail. Loh surmised that since they were all Democrats, the FBI probably wanted some Republican names to balance its cases based on entrapment, and that was why Kearns had flown out to Austria to see him.

When his memoirs were published in 2002, Mrs. Loh was furious with him for a while, because she was also harassed in New York by agent Kearns, who had visited her at her place of work as well as her home. The funny thing was that neither husband nor wife thought of telling the other what happened then, and had to wait 23 years to realize what took place when they were a continent apart.

When he was accredited to Guatemala, Loh learned to speak Spanish fluently before he turned 60. In 1981, Taiwan maintained official ties with only five of the seven countries that make up Central America. Though his efforts, Loh was instrumental in bringing Belize and Nicaragua back to the fold. Today the Central American bloc, small as it is, remains the solid diplomatic anchor on which Taiwan depends for its claim as a sovereign, independent country.

Loh was transferred to South Africa when the white-dominated government wanted to break out of international isolation, and toying with the idea of establishing relations with the People’s Republic of China. He quickly established personal rapport with both Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk, and delayed the inevitable for seven long years. Persuaded by Loh, Mandela actually attempted to have good relations with both Taiwan and China, but had to yield under relentless pressure from Beijing, as well as from the South African Communist party, which was in alliance with the African National Congress.

South Africa announced in November 1996 that it would establish relations with the PRC by 1 January 1998, giving Taiwan 13 months to negotiate a framework of bilateral relations after the break. Loh was told by Thabo Mbeki, then vice president and Mandela’s designated successor, that “we have no quarrel with Taiwan”. He left Pretoria as the dean of the 100-strong diplomatic corps on Christmas day, 1997.

Loh’s memoir ended upon his return to Taiwan after 35 years of continuous diplomatic service abroad. His other books in Chinese were: “If These Were the United States – a Retired Diplomat Looks at Taiwan” of 2001 (如果這是美國 - 一位退休外交官看臺灣), “Oranges, Apples and Others – Taiwan’s Old Problems in the New Century” (橘子、蘋果與其它 - 新世紀看台灣舊問題) of 2003, and “Taiwan’s New Political Conscience – An Outsider’s View of the 2004 Election” (台灣的新政治意識 - 局外人對二OO四年大選的觀察), all published by San Min Publishing House (三民書局) of Taipei. A fifth book, 吵吵鬧鬧紛紛亂亂 - 徘徊難決的台灣走向,was published in 2005.

I-cheng Loh is survived by his two children, Willie and Philip, and five grandchildren, Rachel, Maxine, Theodore, Thomas and Nathan. He was preceded in death by his wife, Jane, and his daughter, Suzette.