The Cairo Declaration of Dec. 1, 1943, is often cited as the legal foundation for the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) and the Republic of China’s (ROC) claims to territorial sovereignty over Taiwan.
The declaration, in international law, was not a binding commitment, but a mere joint communique by then-US president Franklin Roosevelt, then-president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and then-British prime minister Winston Churchill, and was announced four days after the conclusion of the Cairo Conference on joint war plans.
The declaration was the first articulation of Allied war aims in the Pacific. It pledged “that all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as Manchuria, Formosa [Taiwan], and the Pescadores [Penghu], shall be restored to the Republic of China.”
This goal was set privately and informally without a binding commitment between Chiang and Roosevelt. Churchill’s memoirs do not mention the declaration at all.
During the conference, “without the inhibiting presence of a knowledgeable American at his side,” Roosevelt conferred with Chiang “privately about three or four times,” with Chiang’s wife Soong Mayling (宋美齡) serving as the sole interpreter, said US diplomat John Davies, who was at Cairo as US general Joseph Stilwell’s aide.
Roosevelt briefed Stilwell and Davies afterward. Stilwell knew that US strategy for the Pacific War involved a planned invasion of Taiwan in 1944 by US forces without the participation of Chiang’s Nationalist army.
However, Davies’ notes of Roosevelt’s briefing show that “FDR [Roosevelt] believed that a display of generosity, gratuitous offerings of enemy territory to the Chinese ... would persuade Chiang to stay in the war against Japan.”
“The [US] president’s liberality with other people’s real estate was also part of his show of good faith and noblesse oblige meant to sweeten the generalissimo’s dislike of foreign devils,” Davies wrote.
The declaration was a statement of intent, and Roosevelt’s successor, former US president Harry Truman, reiterated the Cairo aims on July 26, 1945, in the Potsdam Declaration without explicitly mentioning Taiwan.
After Japan surrendered, the Japanese emperor on Sept. 2, 1945, ordered his commanders in Taiwan to surrender to Republic of China forces who had arrived to occupy Taiwan “on behalf of the allies.”
The final determination of the legal status of Taiwan was to be formalized in a general peace treaty with Japan, preparations for which took several years, and were complicated in the interim by the overthrow of the ROC government and its exile to Taiwan.
At the start of the Korean War in 1950 and the PRC’s subsequent war against the UN there, then-US president Harry Truman stepped away from the Cairo pledges.
The new security situation in the Far East impelled Truman to state that “the determination of the future status of [Taiwan] must await the restoration of security in the Pacific, a peace settlement with Japan, or consideration by the United Nations.”
In a letter to the UN General Assembly, dated Sept. 20, 1950, the US, citing both the Cairo and Potsdam declarations and the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, said: “Formal transfer of Formosa to China was to await the conclusion of peace with Japan or some other appropriate formal act.”
On Dec. 8, 1950, Truman and then-British prime minister Clement Attlee were faced with a communist Chinese invasion of Korea against the UN, the US and Britain.
Attlee and Truman issued a joint statement, saying: “On the question of Formosa, we have noted that both Chinese claimants [Nationalist and Communist] have insisted upon the validity of the Cairo Declaration, and have expressed their reluctance to have the matter considered by the United Nations. We agree that the issues should be settled by peaceful means and in such a way as to safeguard the interests of the people of Formosa ... and that consideration of this question will contribute to these ends.”
At the conclusion of the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, the British delegate summarized the treaty’s disposition of Taiwan: “The treaty also provides for Japan to renounce its sovereignty over Formosa and the Pescadores Islands. The treaty itself does not determine the future of these islands.”
The two major signatories of the Cairo Declaration, the US and Britain, did not regard the declaration as the final word on Taiwan’s future.
In October 1971, then-Chinese premier Zhou Enlai (周恩來) vented his anger at the Cairo declarants to US envoy Henry Kissinger.
He criticized the treaty for failing to resolve the matter, saying: “Japan renounces its claim to the southern side of Sakhalin and the Kuriles, and the position of the Ryukyus, including Okinawa, remained open and also Taiwan and the Spratly Islands [Nansha Islands, 南沙群島], but it was not specified in the San Francisco Treaty to whom they belong. It was left to the countries. I don’t know who drew that up.”
Zhou lashed out at Chiang’s acquiescence to the ROC-Japan peace treaty of 1952,
“[Chiang] himself sits on Taiwan, but in the treaty with Japan it does not specify who Taiwan reverts to, only saying Japan gives up all claim. If I call him a traitor, I have every reason to do that,” Zhou said.
The declaration was intended only as a statement of war aims, the territorial reassignments of which had to be honored in a formal peace treaty after Japan’s surrender. As such, the declaration has negligible status in international law as a treaty.
We at the Formosan Association for Public Affairs confirmed the status of the declaration with the US National Archives on June 5, 2007.
They wrote back, saying: “The declaration was a communique and it does not have a treaty series or executive agreement series number.”
Peter Chen is president of the Washington-based Formosan Association for Public Affairs.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long been expansionist and contemptuous of international law. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the CCP regime has become more despotic, coercive and punitive. As part of its strategy to annex Taiwan, Beijing has sought to erase the island democracy’s international identity by bribing countries to sever diplomatic ties with Taipei. One by one, China has peeled away Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic partners, leaving just 12 countries (mostly small developing states) and the Vatican recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign nation. Taiwan’s formal international space has shrunk dramatically. Yet even as Beijing has scored diplomatic successes, its overreach
For Taiwan, the ongoing US and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets are a warning signal: When a major power stretches the boundaries of self-defense, smaller states feel the tremors first. Taiwan’s security rests on two pillars: US deterrence and the credibility of international law. The first deters coercion from China. The second legitimizes Taiwan’s place in the international community. One is material. The other is moral. Both are indispensable. Under the UN Charter, force is lawful only in response to an armed attack or with UN Security Council authorization. Even pre-emptive self-defense — long debated — requires a demonstrably imminent
Since being re-elected, US President Donald Trump has consistently taken concrete action to counter China and to safeguard the interests of the US and other democratic nations. The attacks on Iran, the earlier capture of deposed of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and efforts to remove Chinese influence from the Panama Canal all demonstrate that, as tensions with Beijing intensify, Washington has adopted a hardline stance aimed at weakening its power. Iran and Venezuela are important allies and major oil suppliers of China, and the US has effectively decapitated both. The US has continuously strengthened its military presence in the Philippines. Japanese Prime
After “Operation Absolute Resolve” to capture former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, the US joined Israel on Saturday last week in launching “Operation Epic Fury” to remove Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his theocratic regime leadership team. The two blitzes are widely believed to be a prelude to US President Donald Trump changing the geopolitical landscape in the Indo-Pacific region, targeting China’s rise. In the National Security Strategic report released in December last year, the Trump administration made it clear that the US would focus on “restoring American pre-eminence in the Western hemisphere,” and “competing with China economically and militarily
RSS