Former American Institute in Taiwan director William Stanton yesterday questioned China’s use of the Cairo Declaration to claim sovereignty over Taiwan, saying that he believes the communique was intended to return Taiwan to the Republic of China.
“To me, the communique’s intention that Taiwan should be given to the Republic of China [ROC] is very clear,” Stanton said during a speech at the International Conference on the 70th Anniversary of the Cairo Declaration in Taipei.
The declaration was signed by then-ROC president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), then-US president Franklin Roosevelt and then-British prime minister Winston Churchill on Dec. 1, 1943, following a conference in the Egyptian capital.
Photo: CNA
It required that Taiwan, the Pescadores Islands (Penghu) and Manchuria — which were seized by Japan from China — be “restored to the Republic of China.”
“I find Mainland [Chinese] arguments that the Cairo Communique justifies its claims of sovereignty over Taiwan unpersuasive,” Stanton said. “It’s clear to me that, had the People’s Republic of China [PRC] existed in 1943, the US would not have wanted Taiwan to be part of that.”
However, he said that the phrasing of the declaration could have been better because the ROC, Taiwan’s official name, did not exist in 1895 when Taiwan was ceded to Japan after the first Sino-Japanese War. The ROC was established in 1912.
China has argued that the Cairo Declaration includes Taiwan as a part of Chinese territory and therefore belongs to the PRC, which was founded in 1949 after the Chinese Civil War. After the Chinese Civil War. The ROC government retreated to Taiwan after that war.
Yesterday’s conference, hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, National Chengchi University and Academia Historica, was attended by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), several local and foreign academics as well as former politicians who discussed the impact of the 1943 declaration.
Ma said at the opening of the conference that the declaration has had a “far-reaching” influence in East Asia.
The declaration restricted Japanese territories to four main islands and helped South Korea become an independent nation. It also helped the ROC recover lost territories from Japan, Ma said, adding that the declaration was an “epoch-making event” which helped shape the international order in East Asia after World War II.
It is a “very big mistake” to think that the Cairo Declaration was only a press communique. Both the US and Japan have included the Cairo Declaration, the 1945 Potsdam Declaration and the 1945 Japanese Instrument of Surrender in their official collection of treaties, Ma said, adding that all three documents are legally binding.
Meanwhile, Emma Mary Soames, a granddaughter of Churchill, shared her memories of the British leader at the conference.
She said she knew Churchill not as a great politician, but as a “revered head” of their family, while recounting her childhood interactions with her grandparents.
“The trip to Taipei, learning more about the Cairo conference, is important to my understanding of the influence Churchill had” beyond Europe, the 64-year-old said.
She also paid personal tribute to the many thousands of ROC soldiers who fought alongside the Allied forces during the war.
An exhibition on the summit of the three Allied leaders is also being held at the Academia Historica to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Cairo Declaration. Featuring an array of historic documents and artifacts related to the declaration, it is scheduled to run through Jan. 25 next year.
Soames will wrap up her four-day visit to Taiwan today, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
COMMITMENT: The world’s biggest contract chipmaker said that its new 2nm chips, as well as next-generation, cutting-edge 1.4nm chips, will be produced in Taiwan Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said that the majority of its most advanced chips would continue to be manufactured in Taiwan and that it is boosting advanced chip packaging capacity to catch up with fast-growing demand driven by generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications like ChatGPT. Deeply rooted in Taiwan, TSMC is expanding production capacity for its most advanced 3-nanometer (nm) chips at its Tainan fab and is building new plants to produce new 2-nanometer chips in Hsinchu and Taichung in 2025. The chipmaker also plans to produce next-generation, cutting-edge 1.4-nanometer chips, which are currently under development, at home, it
PASSAGE DISPUTE: A US and Canadian transit was a provocation and an attempt to ‘exercise hegemony of navigation,’ China’s defense ministry told a forum in Singapore The Ministry of National Defense yesterday urged the Chinese Communist Party to avoid provocative behavior after a Chinese navy ship crossed the paths of a US destroyer and Canadian frigate transiting the Taiwan Strait. A Chinese ship on Saturday “executed maneuvers in an unsafe manner in the vicinity of [the USS] Chung-Hoon,” an American destroyer, the US Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement. The vessel “overtook Chung-Hoon on their port side and crossed their bow at 150 yards [137m]. Chung-Hoon maintained course and slowed to 10 [knots, 18.5kph] to avoid a collision,” the statement said. It then “crossed Chung-Hoon’s bow a second time
HARD-WON FREEDOM: Beijing’s 1989 crackdown on protesters has not been and should not be forgotten, as China tightens its grip on Hong Kong, Lai said Taiwanese enjoy democracy and freedom and have multiple ways to express their creativity, and hopefully young people in China would also one day have the freedom to sing and express themselves, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday, commemorating the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Yesterday was the 34th anniversary of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s bloody crackdown on student-led protests in Beijing in 1989, also known as the June Fourth Incident. Tsai posted a photograph taken in March in a subway station in Guizhou, China, where hundreds of young people gathered to sing People With No Ideals Don’t Get Hurt (沒有理想的人不傷心), saying that they
GUILTY AS CHARGED: Chen Hsueh-sheng repeatedly pressed his belly against a DPP lawmaker and made derogatory remarks when confronted over his behavior The Taipei District Court yesterday upheld a verdict against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chen Hsueh-sheng (陳雪生), finding him liable for sexually harassing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Fan Yun (范雲) during a physical altercation on the legislative floor in 2020. The DPP lawmaker accused Chen of pressing his belly against her back three times in a sexually suggestive manner during a scuffle between lawmakers from both parties. Chen must pay Fan NT$80,000 in damages as stipulated by a summary ruling of the district court at the first trial, the court said in a news release. The verdict is final as the
RSS