Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) insists that the lawsuit he lodged against the US government was justified because its purpose was not only to deny the legitimacy of the Republic of China (ROC) but also clarify Taiwan’s sovereign status and related issues through international law.
If this was Chen’s real purpose, then his lawsuit against Washington was unnecessary and even wrong.
After the Republic of China and the US severed ties, the ROC embassy in Washington was renamed the Coordination Council for North American Affairs, and the US embassy in Taipei was renamed the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT). So the US government has for a long time clearly denied the legitimacy of the ROC, making that aspect of the lawsuit unnecessary.
In filing the lawsuit Chen claimed to have been the representative of the US Military Government in order to deny the ROC’s de jure sovereignty over Taiwan. This argument has considerable ramifications. In claiming that the US or the Allied Powers of World War II have jurisdiction over Taiwan, Chen denied the widely accepted view that Taiwan is an independent state whose sovereignty belongs to its people. This runs contrary to the pro-Taiwan independence platform of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), and could weaken conditions for de jure Taiwan independence.
Chen emphasized that his lawsuit would serve to test or highlight the theory that Taiwan’s status is unresolved but this was also unnecessary. Apart from the spirit of the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the Treaty of Peace between the ROC and Japan, which suggest that Taiwan’s status is unresolved, the following three key points also support this position:
First, the US, Japan, Canada, and other leading powers did not recognize the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) claim over Taiwan in their communiques on establishing diplomatic relations with Beijing, which they signed at the same time as severing ties with Taipei.
Second, while Section 4 of the US Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) states “No requirement, whether expressed or implied, under the laws of the US with respect to maintenance of diplomatic relations or recognition shall be applicable with respect to Taiwan,” the act also says that “Whenever the laws of the US refer or relate to foreign countries, nations, states, governments, or similar entities, such terms shall include and such laws shall apply with such respect to Taiwan.”
Third, when in 2007 UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon claimed, based on UN Resolution 2758, that Taiwan was part of China, the US demanded he correct his remark immediately after Taiwan’s then representative to Washington Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) expressed strong objections.
Although President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) denies that anyone in the international community still thinks Taiwan’s status is unresolved, the above proves that the international community to this day still accepts that idea, albeit without saying so. Controversial remarks made not long ago by Japan’s representative to Taipei let the cat out of the bag. What deserves our attention is that, before the 1970s, the international community talked about the claim in public and the US, France, and some other countries even hoped that Taiwan could end its unresolved status through a referendum.
Nowadays various countries reveal through their actions their acceptance that Taiwan’s status is unresolved, but they do not say so even when pressed. They call for maintaining the status quo across the Taiwan Strait, which means neither unification nor independence. In other words, they don’t want Taiwan to depart from its unresolved status. So Chen’s attempt through his lawsuit to prove Taiwan’s undecided status was again unnecessary. The idea that other countries could be persuaded to support a referendum on Taiwan’s sovereignty on the grounds that its status is unresolved was also unrealistic.
This does not mean, however, that there is no room for Taiwan to pursue de jure independence in accordance with international law. Former US president Bill Clinton’s restoration of official visits between Taiwan and the US in 1994 and the AIT’s resumption of consular functions effectively made Taiwan-US relations semi-official, breaking with the framework of the TRA that strictly defines them as unofficial. Taiwan has to manage such breakthroughs cautiously. We should keep working hard to repair diplomatic relations rather than acting impulsively.
Lin Cho-shui is a former legislator of the Democratic Progressive Party.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs