Alfred Tsai offered a good summary of Taiwan's situation (Letters, Nov. 6, page 8) when he said: "Both the pan-blue and pan-green camps are misleading people when they declare that Taiwan is part of China or that Taiwan is an independent, sovereign nation."
In the book The Creation of States in International Law (2nd edition), author James Crawford, speaking of the Cairo and Potsdam Declarations and the San Francisco Peace Treaty, wrote: "The cession of territory at the end of a war must await the peace treaty ... the problem was that, in 1951, there was no agreement between the signatories as to which government represented that State (`China'). Until 1952, the position of the Republic of China [ROC] in Taiwan was that of a belligerent occupant and, after 1949, government-in-exile of China."
The analysis underlines the fact that there was no transfer of the sovereignty of Taiwan to the ROC upon the Oct. 25, 1945, surrender of Japanese troops on the island.
Furthermore, since international law does not recognize any methods or procedures by which a "government-in-exile" can become the lawfully recognized government of its current locality of residence, it is clear that all actions aimed at gaining more international diplomatic recognition for the ROC in the international community are doomed to fail.
In summary, Taiwan is a "country without a government" that is being occupied and run by a "government without a country." As such, it does not fulfill the Montevideo Convention's criteria for statehood. Until the ROC is dissolved and Taiwanese create a new and proper Taiwanese civil government, "Taiwan" can neither be a normal country nor can join the UN.
Taiwan's efforts at "self-determination" should begin with the recognition that US military government jurisdiction over Taiwan is still active. If a consensus on this point (clearly stipulated in Article 4b of the San Francisco Peace Treaty) can be reached, then the members of the US Congress can assume jurisdiction over Taiwan based on the territorial clause of the US Constitution.
Certainly one of the Congress' first acts will be to rectify the name of Taiwan to "Taiwan," and to discard, once and for all, the inappropriate label of "Republic of China" into the dustbin of history.
Roger C.S. Lin
President William Lai (賴清德) recently attended an event in Taipei marking the end of World War II in Europe, emphasizing in his speech: “Using force to invade another country is an unjust act and will ultimately fail.” In just a few words, he captured the core values of the postwar international order and reminded us again: History is not just for reflection, but serves as a warning for the present. From a broad historical perspective, his statement carries weight. For centuries, international relations operated under the law of the jungle — where the strong dominated and the weak were constrained. That
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international
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