Goodbye, Confucius

In one of the oddest administrative tricks in its history, the United Nations Secretariat disclosed last week that it was excising all references to Taiwan and the Nationalist Chinese government of Chiang Kai-shek from U.N. documents, including statistical works.

The man behind the decision was Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, who apparently caved in to Chinese pressure on the eve of his visit to Peking last week. The Chinese argued that last year's General Assembly resolution expelling Taiwan had automatically applied to all branches of the U.N., including the Statistical Office. The argument was nonsense, since U.N. reference works have always included data about non-members--including China before it was admitted--and disputed territories. Nonetheless, the Chinese were adamant and won their battle.

On top of that, a bronze plaque bearing the words "Gift of the Republic of China" was removed from a green marble slab outside the delegates' lounge. The marble slab, which the Nationalist Chinese had given to the U.N. in 1968, bore a quotation from Confucius envisioning "a world commonwealth in which mutual confidence and neighborliness prevail."

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