Maintaining the “status quo” is a stop-gap measure to address international tensions and maintain stability. There is no win or lose. Maintaining the “status quo” across the Taiwan Strait is eminently preferable to China’s hegemonic expansionism, and Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) is seeking to define the “status quo” with lies, claiming that Beijing is maintaining it.
Wang talks about the “one China principle” and how “Taiwan is a part of China,” and that “despite the long-term political antagonism across the Strait, China’s national sovereignty and territory has never been separated.” This is how he defines the “status quo.”
This is just the latest version of the lie that “Taiwan has been a part of China from time immemorial,” which simply does not comport with the facts.
Hong Kong was ceded to the British, and the British transferred it back, together with documents and a handover.
Taiwan was ceded to Japan through a treaty and handover documents, but after Japan was defeated in World War II, it signed a treaty that only gave up its sovereignty of Taiwan, and from that point it had no authority to hand it over to any country. It certainly did not hand it over to China.
The Manchu’s Qing Dynasty handed over Taiwan to Japan through a treaty, and the person that recorded the process in most detail was former US secretary of state and diplomat John Foster, who was present at the proceedings as US legal counsel. Foster, the grandfather of former US secretary of state John Foster Dulles, published Diplomatic Memoirs in 1909.
Foster had served as legal adviser to Qing official Li Hongzhang (李鴻章) to negotiate the peace terms of the Treaty of Shimonoseki to end the First Sino-Japanese War. Just before Foster departed to return to the US, Li confided in Foster that he and his adopted son, Li Jingfang (李經方), were being accused of having given Taiwan up, which they had not intended to do, and that Li Jingfang had been ordered to go to Taiwan to handle the handover. Li Hongzhang asked Foster to help his son in this ignominious task.
Foster reluctantly agreed, and on May 30, 1895, boarded a ship with Li Jingfang in Shanghai, arriving in Tamsui the next day.
On their arrival, Li Jingfang felt unwell, and there was social unrest in Taiwan, so he requested that they not disembark and conduct the handover onboard instead. The Japanese representative, admiral Kabayama Sukenori, who was also governor-general of Taiwan, agreed.
The two parties finalized the terms on June 2, signing the handover documents that evening, and Li Jingfang and Foster set sail for Xiamen at midnight. They had been moored off the coast for 36 hours.
Wang’s fabrications cannot compete with the facts. Taiwan was ceded to Japan, the procedures had been completed in full, the treaty had been agreed upon and signed and the territory handed over.
After World War II, Japan gave up all rights to Taiwan, but there was no recipient country, nor had there been any handover procedures.
When the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) were founded, neither included Taiwan, and the PRC has never even governed Taiwan.
As a result, the real “status quo” is that neither Taiwan nor the PRC has any territorial claim over the other.
James Wang is a media commentator.
Translated by Paul Cooper
From the Iran war and nuclear weapons to tariffs and artificial intelligence, the agenda for this week’s Beijing summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is packed. Xi would almost certainly bring up Taiwan, if only to demonstrate his inflexibility on the matter. However, no one needs to meet with Xi face-to-face to understand his stance. A visit to the National Museum of China in Beijing — in particular, the “Road to Rejuvenation” exhibition, which chronicles the rise and rule of the Chinese Communist Party — might be even more revealing. Xi took the members
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on Friday used their legislative majority to push their version of a special defense budget bill to fund the purchase of US military equipment, with the combined spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.78 billion). The bill, which fell short of the Executive Yuan’s NT$1.25 trillion request, was passed by a 59-0 margin with 48 abstentions in the 113-seat legislature. KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), who reportedly met with TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) for a private meeting before holding a joint post-vote news conference, was said to have mobilized her
The inter-Korean relationship, long defined by national division, offers the clearest mirror within East Asia for cross-strait relations. Yet even there, reunification language is breaking down. The South Korean government disclosed on Wednesday last week that North Korea’s constitutional revision in March had deleted references to reunification and added a territorial clause defining its border with South Korea. South Korea is also seriously debating whether national reunification with North Korea is still necessary. On April 27, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung marked the eighth anniversary of the Panmunjom Declaration, the 2018 inter-Korean agreement in which the two Koreas pledged to
As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly widespread in workplaces, some people stand to benefit from the technology while others face lower wages and fewer job opportunities. However, from a longer-term perspective, as AI is applied more extensively to business operations, the personnel issue is not just about changes in job opportunities, but also about a structural mismatch between skills and demand. This is precisely the most pressing issue in the current labor market. Tai Wei-chun (戴偉峻), director-general of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence Innovation at the Institute for Information Industry, said in a recent interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times
RSS