In a recent letter to the Taipei Times (Letters, March 8, page 8) it was stated that the Cairo Declaration cannot be used as legal backing for the Republic of China (ROC) government’s sovereignty claim over Taiwan. The Cairo Declaration aside, there are many other statements and documents which are regularly used by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government to justify its sovereignty claims.
It can be very instructive to view these statements and documents in a systematic fashion from the viewpoint of the customary law of the post-Napoleonic period.
Some people may assert that a particular document or statement has the legal power to transfer the territorial sovereignty of Taiwan to the ROC.
However, to prove such an assertion, the following data must first be collected: Several historical examples where similar documents or statements have produced such a transfer of sovereignty in other parts of the world, and whether the international community recognized the validity of that transfer.
In this manner, the Cairo Declaration (Dec. 1, 1943), the Potsdam Proclamation (July 26, 1945), the Japanese Instrument of Surrender (Sept. 2, 1945), General Order No. 1 (Sept. 2, 1945), the formal surrender of Japan in Taipei (Oct. 25, 1945) and the relocation of the ROC government to Taipei (Dec. 10, 1949) can all be shown to have had no legal effect on the transfer of Taiwanese sovereignty to a third party — for example, the ROC — whatsoever.
Most significantly perhaps, the surrender of enemy troops only served to mark the beginning of a new military occupation, and international law states that military occupation does not transfer sovereignty.
As for post-war treaty stipulations, it is important to remember that Taiwan remained Japanese territory until the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into effect on April 28, 1952.
This is the only valid interpretation of historical record, based on the study and interpretation of numerous other post-war situations and treaty arrangements.
The San Francisco Peace Treaty did not award sovereignty of Taiwan to “China,” and “China” was not a signatory of the treaty. Nevertheless, the ROC-Japan bilateral Treaty of Taipei (Aug. 5, 1952) is often cited by pro-KMT academics who say that since one party (Japan) “renounced,” it must be understood that the other party (the ROC) “received.”
However, after renouncing all “right, title and claim” to Taiwan under the San Francisco Peace Treaty, Japan would have no legal power to make any further disposition of Taiwan in later treaties.
A 1959 US court case summarized all relevant details as follows: “Formosa may be said to be a territory or an area occupied and administered by the Government of the Republic of China, but is not officially recognized as being a part of the Republic of China” (Sheng v. Rogers, D.C. Circuit, Oct. 6, 1959, http://www.taiwanbasic.com/state/usg/shengvsro.htm).
Today, the ROC on Taiwan holds the dual statuses of (1) subordinate occupying power, beginning Oct. 25, 1945, and (2) government in exile.
Neither of these statuses include a valid sovereignty claim over Taiwan.
Te Lin is director of Taiwan Civil Government in Washington.
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