Editorial: The real meaning of Retrocession Day

Today is the 54th Retrocession Day. This used to be an occasion when Taiwanese were supposed to celebrate their return from 50 years of Japanese colonial rule to an indefinitely long period of mainland Chinese colonial rule. Hardly something to wave flags about, unless you are forced to, that is.

It is not that following Taiwan's return to the Republic of China, the island was first raped, then terrorized and finally occupied by a colonial regime far more intolerant of the Taiwanese than the Japanese had ever been, though this is of course, the essence of the island's melancholy history for the first 40 years after the end of WWII.

The real matter to ponder is that Retrocession Day is itself a lie, but until it is clearly known as such the folly of modern Taiwan paying homage to the shibboleths of its occupiers will continue and the ambiguity and ambivalence about who and what they are that defines Taiwanese identity -- much to the detriment of the island's security -- is likely to continue.

The lie of retrocession is that Taiwan was returned to mother China. The truth is that following Japan's unconditional surrender, the lands it occupied had to be run by someone. The Allies, to whom Japan had surrendered, decided that it was easier to let China run the place rather than for the Americans to do it -- though this was also a considered option. And that is what brought the KMT to Taiwan.

Forget the Cairo Declaration or the Potsdam Proclamation, which said that the Allies would give Taiwan back to China after beating Japan. This was supposed to happen when the claims of the war were settled, as they eventually were, by the Treaty of San Francisco in 1951. The only problem was that while Japan formally renounced sovereignty over Taiwan in the treaty, it was not given to either of the, by then, two claimants to be the real Chinese government. And so it has remained ever since.

What, therefore, should Retrocession Day mean to us? Maybe it should remind us that Taiwan has always been a pawn to be sacrificed for the sake of great power expediency, be it Imperial China giving it to Japan or the US tossing it to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣?階?/CHINESE>). But it can also serve to remind those who know the untruth of "retrocession" that Taiwan's status is a matter still to be decided. And the Taiwanese have a duty to make sure that, this time around, they are the ones who do the deciding.

A strange interpretation of `ethical'

George Orwell's remark that hypocrisy was the besetting sin of the English has been amply demonstrated in the past few days by the the Blair government. We recall, even if Tony Blair or his foreign secretary Robin Cook have deemed it convenient to forget, that one of the hallmarks of the incoming Labour government was to have an "ethical" foreign policy. Even at the time, most British believed that ethics to the adulterous Cook was a county in southeast England. In the last few days we have seen the proselytizers of this "ethical foreign policy" toadying to Jiang Zemin (|蕞A民), leader of one of the world's most repressive and certainly its most destabilizing regimes, by resurrecting forgotten laws to head off protests their guest might find embarrassing. If they had to make a nonsense of Britain's reputation for respecting the liberties of its citizens to make Jiang's trip more acceptable, they should never have invited him at all. But what we would like to know is just where in Britain's ethical foreign policy scheme of things does Taiwan fit? Nowhere, we expect. After all, considering what Blair is willing to do to his own people to appease Beijing, why should Taiwan matter?