OctOBER 25 is Taiwan's so-called "Retrocession Day." According to Chiang Kai-shek (
Taiwan became a Japanese colony after 1895 when Japan annexed Taiwan and adjacent islands as a reward for her military victory over China. Up to the late 1930s, major Chinese leaders such as Mao Zedong (
It is an indisputable fact that the defeat of Japan in World War II was essentially a result of the efforts of the US. It was thus the US that liberated Taiwan as well as Korea from Japanese colonial rule and helped China end a prolonged military occupation. With the withdrawal of the Japanese, the supreme commander of the allied powers in the Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur, entrusted Taiwan's post-war administration to Chiang and his government.
Japan's renouncement of sovereignty over Taiwan was officially confirmed with the signing of the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty. Even the subsequent 1952 Peace Treaty between Japan and the KMT regime in Taiwan repeated Japan's renouncement of her claim over Taiwan. Neither treaty designated a specific country as the recipient of the renounced sovereignty.
In this era of human rights, this irrefutable fact can and must be interpreted in favor of the inhabitants of Taiwan. In this light, this renounced sovereignty over Taiwan, morally as well as legally, according to UN self-determination, has fallen into the laps of the Taiwanese.
It is clear that the people of Taiwan have no reason to help celebrate this "Retrocession Day," which was introduced by the KMT, and which has come to symbolize the latest instance of Taiwan falling under alien rule -- the rule of the illegitimate KMT regime. As part of the ongoing process of ridding Taiwan of the residue of this alien regime, the celebration of "Retrocession Day" ought to be seriously reconsidered.
Chen Ching-chih is professor emeritus of history at the Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville and a member of the Los Angeles-based Institute of Taiwanese Studies.
A gap appears to be emerging between Washington’s foreign policy elites and the broader American public on how the United States should respond to China’s rise. From my vantage working at a think tank in Washington, DC, and through regular travel around the United States, I increasingly experience two distinct discussions. This divergence — between America’s elite hawkishness and public caution — may become one of the least appreciated and most consequential external factors influencing Taiwan’s security environment in the years ahead. Within the American policy community, the dominant view of China has grown unmistakably tough. Many members of Congress, as
The Hong Kong government on Monday gazetted sweeping amendments to the implementation rules of Article 43 of its National Security Law. There was no legislative debate, no public consultation and no transition period. By the time the ink dried on the gazette, the new powers were already in force. This move effectively bypassed Hong Kong’s Legislative Council. The rules were enacted by the Hong Kong chief executive, in conjunction with the Committee for Safeguarding National Security — a body shielded from judicial review and accountable only to Beijing. What is presented as “procedural refinement” is, in substance, a shift away from
Taiwan no longer wants to merely manufacture the chips that power artificial intelligence (AI). It aims to build the software, platforms and services that run on them. Ten major AI infrastructure projects, a national cloud computing center in Tainan, the sovereign language model Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine, five targeted industry verticals — from precision medicine to smart agriculture — and the goal of ranking among the world’s top five in computing power by 2040: The roadmap from “Silicon Island” to “Smart Island” is drawn. The question is whether the western plains, where population, industry and farmland are concentrated, have the water and
The shifting geopolitical tectonic plates of this year have placed Beijing in a profound strategic dilemma. As Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) prepares for a high-stakes summit with US President Donald Trump, the traditional power dynamics of the China-Japan-US triangle have been destabilized by the diplomatic success of Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in Washington. For the Chinese leadership, the anxiety is two-fold: There is a visceral fear of being encircled by a hardened security alliance, and a secondary risk of being left in a vulnerable position by a transactional deal between Washington and Tokyo that might inadvertently empower Japan
RSS