Mon, Oct 06, 2003 page3

• Taiwan treaties offer cold comfort

  • By Melody Chen / STAFF REPORTER
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  While Taiwan is looking for an answer to its sovereignty problem, academics doubted that international treaties could provide a solid base for Taiwan's independent status.

  "Big powers speak louder than international law," said Ho Szu-shen (何思慎), an associate professor in the department of Japanese at Fu Jen Catholic University.

  Many recent debates on Taiwan's sovereignty have referred to the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty.

  Although the government is firm in its belief that Taiwan is a sovereign country, it has yet to convince much of the international community of the claim.

  The San Francisco Peace Treaty, Ho said, can provide Taiwan with a legal and historical foundation for seeking justification of its sovereignty.

  But the foundation, admitted Ho and other academics and officials, is not without cracks.

  Moreover, Ho said, in the current international arena, national powers speak louder than international law.

  If the San Francisco Peace Treaty does reveal anything significant about Taiwan's sovereignty, opinions of big countries like China and the US will still dominate the issue more than the treaty can, according to Ho.

  On Sept. 5, 1951, under the leadership of countries such as the US and the UK, the allied nations of the World War IIconvened in San Francisco for a peace conference with Japan.

  Lin Cheng-jung (林呈蓉), deputy professor at Tamkang University's Department of History, recounts in an academic paper how China's changes in political power in the late 1940s affected the signing of the treaty.

  "Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), leader of the Chinese military region, had been the Supreme Allied Commander in the Asia Region during the war," wrote Lin in her paper The San Francisco Peace Treaty and the Lack of Conclusions on Taiwan's International Status.

  On Oct. 25, 1945, Chiang sent representatives to Taiwan and represented the allies at the ceremony accepting Japan's surrender of "the Chinese Theater's Taiwan Province," and temporarily took over control of Taiwan and the Penghu region after the departure of the Japanese Taiwan Governor's Office, Lin wrote.

  However, partly due to the military conflicts between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that broke out after World War II and the CCP's founding ceremony of the People's Republic of China in 1949, "Chinese representatives were excluded from the San Francisco Peace Conference," Lin said.

  The KMT regime led by Chiang retreated from China and ended up in exile in Taiwan and Penghu, "a region where its legal status had not been decided," said Lin, adding, "The outcome of the civil war in China resulted in a lack of consensus among the allies as to which region was the legitimate representative of China."

  The US and other members of the allies bickered among one another over which government of China ought to sign a peace treaty with Japan, Lin wrote.

  While Japan eventually chose to sign the treaty with Chiang's regime, "the treaty did not really view the Nationalist government as representing the only legitimate government of China," Lin wrote.

  Concerning the question of Taiwan's status and jurisdiction, Article 2 of the San Francisco Peace Treaty stipulates that "Japan renounces all right, title and claim to Formosa and the Pescadores."

  "Foreshadowed here is the fact that the final question of whom Taiwan belongs to remains undefined," Lin said.

  Lin Man-houng (林滿紅), a researcher at the Academia Sinica, said the 1952 Treaty of Peace between the Republic of China and Japan (also known as the Treaty of Taipei) signed by the Nationalist government and Japan had fully assured Taiwan's sovereignty belongs to "the Republic of China."

  However, Lin Chien-jung said the Treaty of Taipei, signed in accordance with the stipulations of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, did not move significantly beyond the latter in terms of its content about Taiwan's sovereignty.

  Article 2 of the Treaty of Taipei says: "Japan has renounced all right, title and claim to Taiwan (Formosa) and Penghu (the Pescadores) as well as the Spratley Islands and the Pacracel Islands."

  The treaty does not grant sovereignty over those areas to the ROC, nor could it have done since Japan had already renounced sovereignty over Taiwan the previous year.

  "So the question of whose jurisdiction Taiwan ultimately comes under is still not touched upon in the content of the Treaty of Taipei," Lin Chien-jung said.

  Most people think of the contents of the 1943 Cairo Declaration or the 1945 Potsdam Declaration when discussing the issue of the jurisdiction of Taiwan after World War II, Lin Chien-jung added.

  The Cairo Declaration says that "all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as Manchuria, Formosa and the Pescadores, shall be restored to the Republic of China."

  The Potsdam Declaration demanded that Japan surrender unconditionally and noted: "The terms of the Cairo Declaration shall be carried out."

  "However, these `declarations' only state positions and wishes during the war, and although the functions of the declarations remain, they do not have any legal potency," Lin Chien-jung said.

  In a speech delivered in July, former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) echoed Lin's argument about the lack of legal potency contained in the Cairo Declaration. He also said that the San Francisco Peace Treaty cannot fundamentally resolve Taiwan's sovereignty problem.

  "People in Taiwan should think and try to find out the answer to Taiwan's sovereignty problem," Lee said at that time.
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