The government is planning to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Cairo Declaration, issued on Dec. 1, 1943, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said over the weekend. Describing the declaration as “amazing,” Ma said it had been tailor-made to meet the Republic of China’s (ROC) demands.
The declaration was the outcome of the Cairo Conference held in Cairo, Egypt, from Nov. 23 to Nov. 27, 1943, which was attended by then-US president Franklin Roosevelt, then-British prime minister Winston Churchill and ROC leader Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石).
One of the main points of the declaration states that all the territories that Japan had “stolen,” such as Manchuria (Dongbei), Formosa (Taiwan) and the Pescadores (Penghu), should be restored to the Republic of China.
“The Cairo Declaration clearly states that Taiwan was to be returned to the embrace of our nation,” Ma said.
Ma recalled how he once disputed former minister of education Tu Cheng-sheng’s (杜正勝) claim that the Cairo Declaration was nothing more than a non-binding joint press communique.
“I told him that he was wrong because the US treats all wartime documents as treaties,” Ma said. “The Cairo Declaration has the legal status of a treaty because it is a commitment made by three heads of state in their official capacities.”
The president cited as a proof a collection of treaties published by the US government in 1969 that includes the Cairo Declaration.
Referring to a recent dispute between China and Japan over World War II history, Ma said that “the Chinese mainland should not deny the validity of the 1952 Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty [also known as the Treaty of Taipei],” which affirmed the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty.
The treaty, signed at Taipei’s Zhongshan Hall, stated that the Japanese government would renounce all claims to Taiwan, Penghu, the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島) and the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島). Ma said the 1952 treaty asserted that the legal successor government of the territories was the ROC.
He added that it was the only legal basis for abolishing the 1895 Treaty of Maguan (also known as the Treaty of Shimonoseki), which Chinese intellectuals have seen as a national shame for more than a century. Under the treaty, Qing Dynasty China ceded full sovereignty over the Penghu island group, Taiwan and Manchuria to Japan.
Separately, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday confirmed that it is planning celebration activities to mark the 70th anniversary later this year.
Ministry spokesperson Anna Kao (高安) said that the Cairo Declaration highlights the ROC’s sovereign status.
She said the ministry plans to collaborate with National Chengchi University and Academia Historica to organize an exhibition of historical documents and items related to the declaration, including the original version and a high-definition video reproduction of the document.
The exhibition is to be held at Zhongshan Hall, where the ROC government accepted Japan’s surrender of Taiwan in 1945, Kao said.
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 7pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter of the temblor was at sea, about 69.9km south of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 30.9km, it said. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County’s Changbin Township (長濱), where it measured 5 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 4 in Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Yunlin, Changhua and Miaoli counties, as well as
Credit departments of farmers’ and fishers’ associations blocked a total of more than NT$180 million (US$6.01 million) from being lost to scams last year, National Police Agency (NPA) data showed. The Agricultural Finance Agency (AFA) said last week that staff of farmers’ and fishers’ associations’ credit departments are required to implement fraud prevention measures when they serve clients at the counter. They would ask clients about personal financial management activities whenever they suspect there might be a fraud situation, and would immediately report the incident to local authorities, which would send police officers to the site to help, it said. NPA data showed
ENERGY RESILIENCE: Although Alaska is open for investments, Taiwan is sourcing its gas from the Middle East, and the sea routes carry risks, Ho Cheng-hui said US government officials’ high-profile reception of a Taiwanese representative at the Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference indicated the emergence of an Indo-Pacific energy resilience alliance, an academic said. Presidential Office Secretary-General Pan Men-an (潘孟安) attended the conference in Alaska on Thursday last week at the invitation of the US government. Pan visited oil and gas facilities with senior US officials, including US Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy and US Senator Daniel Sullivan. Pan attending the conference on behalf of President William Lai (賴清德) shows a significant elevation in diplomatic representation,
The Taipei City Reserve Command yesterday initiated its first-ever 14-day recall of some of the city’s civilian service reservists, who are to undergo additional training on top of refresher courses. The command said that it rented sites in Neihu District (內湖), including the Taipei Tennis Center, for the duration of the camp to optimize tactical positioning and accommodate the size of the battalion of reservists. A battalion is made up of four companies of more than 200 reservists each, it said. Aside from shooting drills at a range in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口), the remainder of the training would be at
RSS