The World Food Summit: five years later has gained attention from all over the world and all countries have attached great importance to the event, expecting from it achievements of fruitful results. And yet, the Vice Prime Minister of Guatemala used this Summit as an opportunity to interfere in China's internal affairs.

There is but one China in the world and Taiwan has been a part of China's territory since antiquity. Both the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation have affirmed in unequivocal terms China's sovereignty over Taiwan in international law. To date, more than 160 countries in the world have diplomatic relations with China. It is, therefore, an indisputable objectivity and legal fact widely acknowledged by the international community that there is only one China in the world, Taiwan is an inseparable part of China's territory, and the Government of the People's Republic of China is the sole legal Government representing the whole of China.

In 1971, at its Twenty-sixth Session, the United Nations General Assembly adopted, by an overwhelming majority, the historic Resolution 2758(XXVI), which has solved once and for all, in political, legal and procedural terms, the issue of China's representation in the United Nations. As of the day when the legitimate rights of the People's Republic of China were restored in the United Nations, the Government of the People's Republic of China rightfully represents all Chinese, including our compatriots in Taiwan, in the United Nations and its subsidiary bodies. This has fully safeguarded the Organization's principle of universality. There is simply no such issue as the so-called «Taiwan's Representation at the United Nations.»

The United Nations is an intergovernmental international organization composed of sovereign states. As a part of China, Taiwan is not eligible to participate, in whatever name and under whatever pretext, in the work or activities of the United Nations or its Specialized Agencies. The General Committees of the successive sessions of the General Assembly since 1993 have all flatly refused to include in the agenda of the General Assembly the so-called issue of Taiwan's «participation» in the United Nations. This fully demonstrates that to raise in whatever form the so-called issue of Taiwan's «participation» in the United Nations will constitute a serious violation of the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations as well as General Assembly Resolution 2758(XXVI). Therefore, to raise the so-called issue of Taiwan's «participation» in FAO, a Specialized Agency of the United Nations, is an obvious violation and defiance of FAO's Constitution, as well as the Charter of the United Nations.

The question of Taiwan is purely an internal matter of China, and a question for the Chinese people themselves to solve. It brooks no interference from outside.

This is to request that this letter be circulated as an official document of the World Food Summit: five years later.