At the heart of the government's bid to join the UN using the name "Taiwan" is the issue of the nation's sovereignty, a divisive question even among independence activists.
For many who consider Taiwan independent, the bid for UN membership is a clear-cut case of demanding one's basic right to representation. However, some independence activists contend that the nation must seek de jure independence before applying to join the international body, as UN membership requires nationhood.
But some historians and politicians argue that independence is already clear, because Taiwan has been independent from China since 1895, when the latter ceded Taiwan and the Penghu islands in perpetuity to Japan.
In addition, some say the nation's title is technically still the "Republic of Formosa," founded by a Taiwanese government in 1895 -- a government that lasted only 184 days.
Others argue that the question of nationhood is unclear as the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty following World War II, which rescinded Japanese colonial control over Taiwan and the Penghu islands, did not specify any new government in place of the Japanese.
This has also led to the claim that the US has disposition rights over Taiwan, as some claim the US was the occupying power of the island during World War II and has never formally ended US Military Government control over Taiwan.
On July 19, President Chen Shui-bian (
The letter was submitted with the sponsorship of two of the nation's diplomatic allies -- Swaziland and the Solomon Islands. The UN Office of Legal Affairs, however, rejected the letter, citing UN Resolution 2758 as its reason.
The 1971 resolution replaced the ROC with the People's Republic of China (PRC) as the sole representative of China in the international body. It did not address the question of who represented Taiwan's population in the body.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has proposed to hold a referendum on whether to join the UN using the name "Taiwan" in conjunction with next year's legislative election. The referendum would aid the administration in its UN bid, the party has argued.
The proposal was first rejected by the Executive Yuan's Referendum Review Committee, controlled by the pan-blue camp, but it was later upheld by the Appeal Committee, also under the Executive Yuan.
With the Appeal Committee's support, the DPP is poised to proceed with a second-stage petition once the Central Election Commission has verified the authenticity of 90,000 signatures collected in the first stage of its application to hold a referendum.
Chen Lung-chu (
There is no doubt Taiwan is a nation, because it meets all four of the conventional criteria for nationhood: a population, a territory, a government and the supreme authority over affairs within its borders, he said.
Yet Taiwan is not a normalized country, he said, adding that UN membership is pivotal not only to the nation's dignity and security, but also to peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region.
"Excluding Taiwan from the United Nations is a political apartheid, something worse than racial apartheid," he said.
Robert Chen (陳荔彤), an international law professor at National Ocean University, argued that Taiwan had been independent from China since 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek's (
Because of pressure from China, Taiwan has never declared independence, but there are many ways to do so, he said.
Holding a referendum on the UN bid is one of them and writing a new constitution and changing the nation's name is another, he said.
Robert Chen said that the government must enact a temporary decree stating the consequences of a yes or no vote for nationhood.
He criticized Ban as "illiterate" on matters of international laws, adding that the UN could decide only on Taiwan's representation in the organization, but not on the nation's sovereignty.
He said that the US only "acknowledges" China's assertion that Taiwan is a part of China, which is not the same as agreeing with it.
Hsu Ching-hsiung (
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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