Well, sort of.
Tomorrow is the seventy-fifth anniversary of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, signed by forty-nine nations on September 8, 1951. The Republic of China wasn’t one of them. Article 2(b) of the Treaty reads: “Japan renounces all right, title and claim to Formosa and the Pescadores.” So, tomorrow would be the Diamond Jubilee of Formosa’s freedom from Japanese sovereignty. As my good friend and former Examination Yuan President Yao Chia-wen (姚嘉文) voiced in these pages last year (“San Francisco treaty should be taught: adviser”, Sept. 7, 2025), the Japan peace treaty should be taught in all Taiwan schools to correct the record on the legal status of Taiwan following Japan’s surrender in the Pacific War.
After all, Taiwan was a Japanese colony, and the United Nations principles of decolonization center on the right of all peoples to self-determination and the immediate, unconditional end to colonialism. Mr. Yao, a scholar of comparative legal systems, argues that sovereignty resides in the will of the people. If an international treaty imperfectly addresses a point of sovereignty, then the default sovereignty must reside with the people of the territory in question. This, of course, was the central tenet of former president Lee Teng-hui’s (李登輝) philosophy: “Sovereignty resides in the People” (主權在民).
So, September 8th is “The Future of Taiwan Remains to be Determined” Day. Oh, happy day! At least Taiwan is not under China’s sovereignty. As Shakespeare would say, “there art thou happy!” And Taiwan is a global economic power — there art thou happy. Taiwan is Asia’s most dynamic democracy — there art thou happy.
Not that happy. Under orders from General Douglas MacArthur, a Chinese Nationalist army occupied Taiwan in October 1945 to accept Japan’s surrender. But the Nationalists’ rapacious occupation of Taiwan delegitimized Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) authority, tarnished his reputation and jeopardized democracy in the entire post-War Pacific.
After the February 28th 1947 uprisings in Taiwan, the State Department advised the US Congress that “although the transfer of sovereignty has not yet been formalized, China’s de facto control over the island is generally recognized…” In other words: “The United States does not yet recognize China’s sovereignty over Formosa.”
President Chiang understood. Years ago, Taiwan’s Academia Historica discovered a dispatch sent by the Generalissimo in Nanking to Taiwan governor Chen Cheng (陳誠) dated January 12, 1949. Chiang cautioned that “the nature of Taiwan’s legal status and sovereignty is that it is held by the ROC as a trust territory until a peace conference with Japan” (台灣法律地位與主權，在對日和會未成以前，不過為我國一托管地之性質). Moreover, Chiang was still fighting a civil war; neither Peking nor Nanking had yet fallen to the Communists. Morale must not waver, so the governor should take care in his characterization of Taiwan’s status.
These same worries perplexed Washington throughout 1949. On April 15, the State Department stated that “the determination of the final status of Formosa must await the conclusion of a peace settlement for Japan.”
On May 1, the American consul general in Taipei also told Governor Chen “that the legal status of Taiwan would not be determined until the Japanese treaty was signed.” Acting President of China Li Tsung-ren (李宗仁) told US Ambassador Leighton Stuart that President Chiang, hearing this, “decided he could not retire to a place where the sovereignty of China might be questioned.”
In 1949, all US policy papers about Formosa carried the disclaimer: “the present legal status of Taiwan is that it is a portion of the Japanese Empire awaiting final disposition by a peace settlement with Japan.”
On January 5, 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson argued with two top Republican senators in his office, during which he “pointed out that if one wanted to be legalistic, it could be argued that, in sheer legality, Formosa would not be a part and parcel of China until a stipulation to that effect had been made in the Japanese Peace Treaty.”
But there was a catch. Acheson had no peace treaty with Japan even close to ready, and any treaty with Acheson’s name on it was sure to fail in the Senate. In January 1950, Secretary Acheson was finally persuaded to pursue a formal peace treaty with Japan and he wisely recruited Republican elder statesman John Foster Dulles to get it through the Senate.
Mr. Dulles had a personal interest in the Island of Formosa. As Dulles once explained in a secret Senate hearing: “The sovereignty of Taiwan was vested in Japan I think in the year 1895. It happened that my grandfather went to Taipei and was one of those who turned over the title deeds to Japan in 1895.”
It was true. Mr. Dulles’s grandfather, John Watson Foster, personally crafted the 1895 deed of transfer of Formosa from the Manchu Empire to the sovereignty of Japan. Grandfather Foster then accompanied Viceroy Li Hung-chang’s (李鴻章) godson, by steamship, into Formosan waters off Keelung to the Japanese commander’s flagship to formalize the turnover. There, on June 2, 1895, General Foster reviewed “the instrument of transfer,” the documents were “signed and exchanged, the farewell visits of courtesy were paid, and at midnight the Chinese steamer weighed anchor and we sailed away for Shanghai.”
So it happened that sovereignty over Taiwan was conveyed to Japan in a treaty midwifed by Dulles’s own grandfather as counsel to the imperial court in Peking. Fifty-six years later, his grandson John Foster Dulles would preside over Japan’s renunciation of that same sovereignty. But this time sovereignty would not return to China.
Dulles, a devout layman of the Presbyterian Church and America’s top international lawyer, whose life’s work was in the furtherance of the rule of law among nations, maintained a profound concern for the welfare and freedom of Taiwan’s people. Dulles advised the Secretary of State on October 21, 1950, that:
“The US interest in the Formosan problem is a deep and legitimate one and the US feels it has a special responsibility in view of the close connection between the ultimate disposition of Formosa and the conclusion of a Japanese peace treaty which will formally remove Formosa from Japanese sovereignty. The US, being the chief occupying power in Japan and the one most deeply concerned in a Japanese peace settlement, naturally has great responsibility to see that any solution of the Formosan issue is a sound one which contributes to peace and stability in the Pacific area and the welfare of the people … However, the present Chinese Government on the mainland of China is not the one which was in power at the time of Cairo and Potsdam and it certainly is not clear that the people of Formosa desire to be placed in subjection to that government.”
One year later, the day the San Francisco Treaty was signed, a British delegate clarified the compromise on Taiwan’s fate:
1) the Treaty divests Japan of sovereignty over “Formosa and the Pescadores,” but
2) The treaty itself does not determine the future of these islands;
3) People’s China, an international outlaw warring against the United Nations in Korea, was not a suitable steward of former Japanese territories;
4) In due course a solution to the Formosa problem must be found, but it must be in accord with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations; and
5) The Treaty conferees “came to the conclusion that the proper treatment of Formosa was for the Treaty to provide only for the renunciation of Japanese sovereignty.”
The question of sovereignty over Taiwan on the day after September 8, 1951, was never answered.
Within a few months, Japan signed a peace treaty with the “Republic of China” limited to “territories which are now, or which may hereafter be, under the control” of the Taipei government. Japan’s prime minister Shigeru Yoshida pointed out to Senator Alexander Smith that Japan was in no position to recognize the “Republic of China’s” sovereignty over Formosa because, under the San Francisco Treaty, “she had renounced all right, title and claim to Formosa and the Pescadores, so Japan had no say about turning Formosa back to anyone.” In 1952, Taipei’s foreign minister George C.K. Yeh (葉公超) told the legislature: “Under present circumstances, Japan has no right to transfer Formosa and the Pescadores to us; nor can we accept such a transfer from Japan even if she so wishes...”
And so, the San Francisco Treaty of September 8, 1951, confirmed that Japan had abandoned Formosa and could have no more to say about the matter. All signatories agreed.
In 1951, no signatory could have foreseen seventy-five years into the future: Taiwan is the Asia-Pacific’s most dynamic democracy, the world’s 20th-largest economy, 10th-most prosperous country per capita, one of the world’s most advanced industrial nations, the world’s 12th-largest exporter, third-largest exporter to America, and third-largest holder of US dollar deposits. In short — if the communists were to take over Taiwan now, it’s curtains for the Free World.
Happy “Undetermined Day”!
John J. Tkacik, Jr. is a retired US foreign service officer who has served in Taipei and Beijing and is now director of the Future Asia Project at the International Assessment and Strategy Center. He is also on the Advisory Board of the Global Taiwan Institute.
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