The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday called Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) claim that China historically has sovereignty over Taiwan “deceptive” and “contrary to the facts.”
In an article published on Wednesday in the Russian state-run Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Xi said that this year not only marks 80 years since the end of World War II and the founding of the UN, but also “Taiwan’s restoration to China.”
“A series of instruments with legal effect under international law, including the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Declaration have affirmed China’s sovereignty over Taiwan,” Xi wrote.
Photo: Reuters
“The historical and legal fact” of these documents, as well as that of UN Resolution 2758, “brooks no challenge,” he said.
The ministry called the article a “fallacy” that “confused right and wrong and is contrary to the facts.”
At the time of the Cairo Declaration in 1943 and the Potsdam Declaration in 1945, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) did not exist, it said.
Photo: Lo Pei-de, Taipei Times
Rather, the status of Taiwan and affiliated islands after World War II was resolved by those documents and others, including the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, the Treaty of San Francisco in 1951 and the Treaty of Taipei (the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty) in 1952, it said.
All of the documents followed a practice set down in the Cairo Declaration, that Taiwan and its affiliated islands, including the contested Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台列嶼), should be returned to the Republic of China (ROC), the ministry said.
As for UN Resolution 2758, the resolution’s text does not mention Taiwan or state that Taiwan is a part of the PRC, it said.
In legal terms, it does not authorize the PRC to represent Taiwan in the UN or its agencies, it added.
Approved in 1971, UN Resolution 2758 recognized the PRC as the only legitimate government of China, and expelled the representatives of then-ROC leader Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石).
Beijing’s attempts to distort history and mislead the international community with its “one China principle” are intended to “legally eliminate the fact that the ROC (Taiwan) is a sovereign state,” along with its right to participate in the UN system.
Xi’s article, entitled “Learning from history to build together a brighter future,” was published ahead of his planned attendance at Victory in Europe (V-E) Day celebrations in Moscow today.
Russia celebrates V-E Day on May 9 because it was after midnight in Moscow when the ceasefire ending the war came into force in Berlin, where it was just after 11pm on May 8, 1945.
Taiwan yesterday commemorated V-E Day for the first time at a reception in Taipei attended by President William Lai (賴清德).
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