Beijing has never tired of claiming that Taiwan is part of China, despite the fact that Taiwan is by most standards an independent, sovereign state and the fact that the great majority of the people of Taiwan do not wish to live under communist rule. More importantly, China has nearly 500 missiles targeting Taiwan and has repeatedly threatened to take the island by force if it does not willingly become part of China.
China's ambition to annex Taiwan is real. The design to annex Taiwan, in more ways than one, resembles Meiji Japan's scheme to annex Korea about
a century ago. It is, therefore, essential that we understand the route Japan took to annex Korea, which it then ruled until 1945 when Korea was liberated at the end of World War II. The Japanese case should serve as a lesson not only for Taiwan but also for the US and China.
Japan formally annexed Korea through 1910's Treaty of Annexation. Prior to this, it was mainly by resorting to war and diplomacy that Japan had increasingly brought Korea into its sphere of influence. As Asia's sole emerging, modern military power, Japan fought two wars over control of Korea. In the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 to 1895, Japan decisively defeated China and forced it to sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki, in May 1895.
In addition to ceding Taiwan and Penghu, China agreed to relinquish its suzerainty over Korea. Japan was thus able to gradually bring Korea under its imperial wing. However, Japan still did not have a free hand over Korea on account of the fact that imperial Russia, likewise, had territorial designs over Korea as well as Manchuria. In the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 to 1905, Japan defeated Russia and
compelled it to acknowledge its
"paramount political, military and economical interests" in Korea, according to the Portsmouth Peace Treaty of Sept. 5, 1905.
However, to complete its dominance over Korea, Japan had to seek the diplomatic support of other major powers. In early 1902, through the Anglo-Japanese Naval Alliance, Japan secured Britain's acceptance of its interests in Korea, in return for acknowledging Britain's interests in China and later India.
Of equal importance to Japan, however, was US acknowledgement that Japan would enjoy dominance over Korea in return for recognizing US interests in the Philippines. US Secretary of War William Taft reached an agreement on the matter with Prime Minister Katsura Taro in July 1905. US President Theodore Roosevelt subsequently confirmed the agreement.
With the major powers' explicit support, Japan imposed a protectorate on Korea through the Protectorate Treaty of November 1905. Objecting to this development, the Korean royal family dispatched envoys to the Hague Peace Conference in 1907, but the conference refused to consider the protest. Failure of the international community to come to Korea's aid ultimately emboldened Japan to force a treaty upon Korea in August 1910 providing for complete annexation.
Western countries, including the UK, the US and Russia, supported Japan's annexation of Korea as a policy that would help stabilize East Asia, which was seen as beneficial to all the major powers involved.
Japanese colonialists and imperialists believed that Korea and Japan had deep historical and cultural ties and that a big-brother relationship existed between Korea and Japan to justify the annexation. Koreans, however, did not approve; they resisted Japanese colonial rule by various means. Resistance culminated in a large-scale, anti-Japanese demonstration on March 1, 1919. Japan's brutal response resulted in the deaths of thousands of demonstrators. Clearly, the Koreans were hoping that the demonstration would be seen to have been inspired by the principle of self-determination, which US president Woodrow Wilson announced in 1918, and which therefore might win international support.
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