Taiwan Retrocession Day is observed on Oct. 25 every year. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government removed it from the list of annual holidays immediately following the first successful transition of power in 2000, but the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-led opposition reinstated it this year. For ideological reasons, it has been something of a political football in the democratic era.
This year, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) designated yesterday as “Commemoration Day of Taiwan’s Restoration,” turning the event into a conceptual staging post for its “restoration” to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The Mainland Affairs Council on Friday criticized the CCP for its distortions, clarifying Taiwan’s position that “Taiwan Retrocession Day commemorates Oct. 25, 1945, when representatives of the Republic of China (ROC), on behalf of the Allied powers, accepted the surrender of Japanese forces in Taiwan.”
The name of the day itself is problematic. Oxford Languages defines “retrocession” as “the action of ceding territory back to a country or government,” but which country or government was Taiwan ceded back to?
Taiwan was ceded to the Japanese in 1895, during the Qing Dynasty. Leaving aside the question of whether the Qing can be equated with China, being a Manchu empire of which China was only one part, the Qing Dynasty itself had ceased to exist long before 1945, having been overthrown by the ROC in 1911. It is historically inaccurate to say that Taiwan was “ceded back to” either the then-defunct Qing, a China that the Qing did not fully equate to, the ROC that had never controlled Taiwan or the PRC that had yet to exist.
The idea that Taiwan was “ceded” at all in 1945 is historically problematic, too, as the ROC representatives only accepted the Japanese surrender on the Allies’ behalf to be interim guardians of the former Japanese colony until such time as its status could be determined through a formal treaty.
The genius of the name of the commemoration is that it circumvents the prickly question of who the recipient was. Strictly speaking, it simply marks the day that the Japanese left.
The CCP says that the Japanese leaving the colony ceded to it by the Qing Dynasty is a return of Taiwan to the Chinese, another level of complexity.
The majority of people living in Taiwan today are ethnically Han Chinese, but the Han Chinese population derives from waves of immigration stretching back several centuries onto an island already inhabited by Austronesian indigenous peoples.
“Chinese” does not refer only to an ethnicity: It also refers to a nationality. The PRC in China and the ROC on Taiwan are separate countries, neither subordinate to the other. The vast majority of PRC citizens can call themselves Chinese in terms of both nationality and ethnicity. In Taiwan, it is possible for ethnically Han Chinese to call themselves “Chinese” and “Taiwanese,” but not a “Taiwanese citizen”: They are ROC citizens. A person might identify themselves as Taiwanese foremost and Chinese second, but by saying “Chinese” they would not be referring to their nationality, and even if they consider themselves primarily Chinese, that does not mean they want to be governed by the authoritarian PRC. When KMT chairwoman-elect Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) said “in the future, all Taiwanese will proudly and confidently say ‘I am Chinese.’ This is what the KMT must achieve,” how was she defining Chinese? She must know that the CCP has a very specific understanding of what it is to be Chinese. If she does not, she can ask Uighurs, Tibetans and formerly free people of Hong Kong.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long been expansionist and contemptuous of international law. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the CCP regime has become more despotic, coercive and punitive. As part of its strategy to annex Taiwan, Beijing has sought to erase the island democracy’s international identity by bribing countries to sever diplomatic ties with Taipei. One by one, China has peeled away Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic partners, leaving just 12 countries (mostly small developing states) and the Vatican recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign nation. Taiwan’s formal international space has shrunk dramatically. Yet even as Beijing has scored diplomatic successes, its overreach
In her article in Foreign Affairs, “A Perfect Storm for Taiwan in 2026?,” Yun Sun (孫韻), director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington, said that the US has grown indifferent to Taiwan, contending that, since it has long been the fear of US intervention — and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) inability to prevail against US forces — that has deterred China from using force against Taiwan, this perceived indifference from the US could lead China to conclude that a window of opportunity for a Taiwan invasion has opened this year. Most notably, she observes that
For Taiwan, the ongoing US and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets are a warning signal: When a major power stretches the boundaries of self-defense, smaller states feel the tremors first. Taiwan’s security rests on two pillars: US deterrence and the credibility of international law. The first deters coercion from China. The second legitimizes Taiwan’s place in the international community. One is material. The other is moral. Both are indispensable. Under the UN Charter, force is lawful only in response to an armed attack or with UN Security Council authorization. Even pre-emptive self-defense — long debated — requires a demonstrably imminent
Since being re-elected, US President Donald Trump has consistently taken concrete action to counter China and to safeguard the interests of the US and other democratic nations. The attacks on Iran, the earlier capture of deposed of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and efforts to remove Chinese influence from the Panama Canal all demonstrate that, as tensions with Beijing intensify, Washington has adopted a hardline stance aimed at weakening its power. Iran and Venezuela are important allies and major oil suppliers of China, and the US has effectively decapitated both. The US has continuously strengthened its military presence in the Philippines. Japanese Prime
RSS