On Friday, Hong Kong civic groups placed a front-page advertisement in the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) headlined “Defend Taiwan and take back Hong Kong,” which mentions that China’s copy of the 1842 Treaty of Nanking signed between the Qing government and the British Empire ceding Hong Kong to the latter is kept at the National Palace Museum in Taipei, while the other copy is kept by the British government.
In 1997, the UK handed Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which does not hold a copy of the treaty.
This is a reminder to Taiwanese that the Republic of China (ROC) is China, although Beijing is its current representative. By calling themselves the Republic of China, Taiwan, Taiwanese are saying that they are part of China.
The advertisement also said that “in order to capture Hong Kong, the Chinese government resorted to every means possible, including the removal of Hong Kong from the UN list of Non-Self-Governing Territories, stripping Hong Kong of its right to self-determination.”
This is correct, but Hong Kong under British rule was more fortunate than Taiwan. Article 73 of the 1945 UN Charter requires member states administering non-self-governing territories to develop self-government and assist with independence.
The 1946 UN General Assembly Resolution 66 states that the UK, in line with Article 73, had pledged to provide the UN with information on its remaining colonies, including Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Swaziland (now Eswatini).
Hong Kong clearly could have become an independent nation just like Singapore and Malaysia.
Resolution 1514, passed in 1960, called for an immediate end to colonization, but Hong Kong itself expressed no such wish.
In 1971, the PRC replaced the ROC in the UN. The following year, Beijing bribed UN member states, and at the same time that UN Resolution 2908 was passed, the UN General Assembly decided that Hong Kong was a “Chinese territory.”
Ironically, the resolution also reiterated a demand in Resolution 1514 for the “Special Committee on the Situation with regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples” to propose ways to promptly bring self-determination and independence to colonies.
Hong Kong was determined as Chinese territory, and on Dec. 19, 1984, the UK, unable to reverse the decision, finally signed a joint declaration with the PRC to “restore” Hong Kong to China. Despite the irrationality, the decision now existed in writing.
Where is the document for the “restoration” of Taiwan to China? Of course, no such document exists.
At the end of World War II, Taiwan was liberated from Japan and placed under trusteeship to promote development toward self-government or independence in accordance with UN Charter articles 76 and 77.
However, in the 1946 UN yearbook, “Formosa” was listed as a Chinese territory, together with Manchuria, Jehol, Xinjiang and Tibet, although none of the 103 UN resolutions passed until the end of 1946 named either as belonging to China.
What had happened was that the KMT government in Nanjing had bought off UN member states. Thus Beijing stole Hong Kong and Nanjing stole Taiwan.
Taiwanese sovereignty belonged to Japan until Feb. 28, 1952, when the Treaty of San Francisco forced it to renounce that sovereignty. This historical fact reveals the inconvenient truth that China stole Taiwan, Manchuria, Jehol, Xinjiang and Tibet, and that each has a right to demand the restoration of their sovereignty, as does Hong Kong.
Sim Kiantek is a former associate professor of business administration at National Chung Hsing University.
Translated by Edward Jones
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