China boycotts conference attended by Taiwan

"Since the San Francisco side did not handle the issue properly, the mayors from China decided not to take part in this event."

Pro-Taiwan and pro-China forces have long battled in San Francisco's Chinatown. Brawls erupted between the two sides at Bay Area celebrations of China's National Day during the 1970s and '80s. Both sides still keep track of which flag the different Chinatown associations fly.

Infighting over this issue has threatened to tear apart the Six Companies in Chinatown, founded in 1862 to assist Chinese arriving in California and still an organization that local politicians court. The Six Companies squabbled and both sides filed lawsuits last year over the bimonthly ceremony in which the group's president pledges allegiance to Taiwan and sings its national anthem.

China's hard line against Taiwan regarding the U.N. conference is no surprise, said Marlon Hom, chair of the Asian American studies department at San Francisco State University.

"The fact that Beijing pulls out instead of forcing Taiwan to withdraw, as done in previous events, also indicates Beijing's level of interest in environmental crises," he said.

When communists won the civil war in China in 1949, the Nationalist government fled to Taiwan. Beijing has never recognized Taiwan, regarding it as a renegade province.

For decades, most countries backed the government on Taiwan as the true China. But following former President Richard Nixon's 1972 trip to the mainland, most countries dropped Taiwan in favor of diplomatic relations with China.

The withdrawal of five officials from China -- now undergoing rapid industrialization and economic growth -- is a blow to the environmental conference, which started Wednesday and ends Sunday.

"We regret that they did not come. This is a meeting for all the cities of the world," said Lin Yin Tso, political director of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in San Francisco. "This is about environmental issues, but they're trying to make it political. That's not right."

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who is hosting the conference, said Thursday he regrets the showdown.

"I'm obviously disappointed, and I think it's a big gap in terms of this conference, and I obviously am concerned about it," Newsom said. "I didn't want to get involved in federal governments. It's about mayors, not politics. Unfortunately, there's been a lot of politics."

Jared Blumenfeld, director of San Francisco's Department of the Environment and a conference organizer, said he has been dealing with Chinese consular officials for weeks, trying to ease concerns.

Blumenfeld offered to remove any national designation from the roster for the Taiwanese mayors, and even wrote a letter accepting the "one-China policy" Beijing advocates, he said. But Blumenfeld said he and Newsom weren't willing to list China as the country Taipei's and Tainan's mayors represent.

"Then the Taiwan delegation wouldn't have come," Blumenfeld said. "This conference is about cities, and we really don't want to be in the middle of a dispute like this."