Members of the US Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees have begun to forcefully point out the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) decades-long misuse, misinterpretation and misleading analysis regarding UN Resolution 2758.
According to the view of PRC officialdom, beginning 50 years ago, on Oct. 25, 1971, the resolution clearly recognized that Taiwan is a part of China, and China is in charge of representing Taiwan before the UN, in accordance with the PRC’s “one China” principle.
In fact, Resolution 2758 has no such content. Indeed, the word Taiwan is not even mentioned therein.
Here in late October 2021, other members of the US House of Representatives have also made similar charges against PRC officials’ incorrect interpretation of this important resolution.
While US Congress members’ long-overdue attention to this matter is certainly praiseworthy, it is unfortunately true that the Chinese have a history of misuse, misinterpretation and misleading analysis regarding other important documents and events that go back even further than 50 years. The Japanese surrender ceremonies in Taiwan, held 75 years ago on Oct. 25, 1945, are one prominent example.
In the view of the PRC, along with many blue-camp supporters in Taiwan, an immediate transfer of Taiwan’s territorial sovereignty to China took place based on the Cairo Declaration of Dec. 1, 1943, the Potsdam Proclamation of July 26, 1945, and the ceremonies themselves.
Granted, during the pre-Napoleonic period, such territory was commonly considered to be “annexed” as soon as an overwhelming number of foreign military forces arrived on the scene. However, international law changed in the late 1700s to the early to mid-1800s.
In the 20th century, such an annexation interpretation directly contradicts the 1907 Hague Conventions and accompanying Hague Regulations. HR 42 specifically states that territory under the authority of foreign (i.e. hostile) military forces is considered to be under military occupation.
Scholars in laws of war confirm that “military occupation does not transfer sovereignty.”
Importantly, the validity of the Hague Conventions in dealing with laws of war was recognized by the Republic of China in May 1917.
Such evidence strongly suggests that there was no “Taiwan Retrocession Day.” Oct. 25, 1945, was merely the beginning of the military occupation of Taiwan.
Notably, in the Foreign Relations of the US series, the US Department of State has many entries confirming that there was no transfer of Taiwan’s territorial sovereignty to China in Oct. 1945.
An entry from January 1951 regarding Formosa states: “As one of the victor powers we have residual rights there until a Japanese peace treaty has been made. The Cairo declaration manifested our intention. It did not itself constitute a cession of territory.”
If this knowledge could be more widely disseminated in the global community, perhaps the question of whether Taiwan is truly a part of China could be resolved once and for all.
Tom Chang is secretary-general of the Taiwan Autonomy Foundation.
The image was oddly quiet. No speeches, no flags, no dramatic announcements — just a Chinese cargo ship cutting through arctic ice and arriving in Britain in October. The Istanbul Bridge completed a journey that once existed only in theory, shaving weeks off traditional shipping routes. On paper, it was a story about efficiency. In strategic terms, it was about timing. Much like politics, arriving early matters. Especially when the route, the rules and the traffic are still undefined. For years, global politics has trained us to watch the loud moments: warships in the Taiwan Strait, sanctions announced at news conferences, leaders trading
The saga of Sarah Dzafce, the disgraced former Miss Finland, is far more significant than a mere beauty pageant controversy. It serves as a potent and painful contemporary lesson in global cultural ethics and the absolute necessity of racial respect. Her public career was instantly pulverized not by a lapse in judgement, but by a deliberate act of racial hostility, the flames of which swiftly encircled the globe. The offensive action was simple, yet profoundly provocative: a 15-second video in which Dzafce performed the infamous “slanted eyes” gesture — a crude, historically loaded caricature of East Asian features used in Western
Is a new foreign partner for Taiwan emerging in the Middle East? Last week, Taiwanese media reported that Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) secretly visited Israel, a country with whom Taiwan has long shared unofficial relations but which has approached those relations cautiously. In the wake of China’s implicit but clear support for Hamas and Iran in the wake of the October 2023 assault on Israel, Jerusalem’s calculus may be changing. Both small countries facing literal existential threats, Israel and Taiwan have much to gain from closer ties. In his recent op-ed for the Washington Post, President William
A stabbing attack inside and near two busy Taipei MRT stations on Friday evening shocked the nation and made headlines in many foreign and local news media, as such indiscriminate attacks are rare in Taiwan. Four people died, including the 27-year-old suspect, and 11 people sustained injuries. At Taipei Main Station, the suspect threw smoke grenades near two exits and fatally stabbed one person who tried to stop him. He later made his way to Eslite Spectrum Nanxi department store near Zhongshan MRT Station, where he threw more smoke grenades and fatally stabbed a person on a scooter by the roadside.
RSS