Wed, Apr 29, 2026 page3

• Groups seek overhaul in teaching peace treaty

  HISTORY LESSONS: The San Francisco Peace Treaty should be properly taught to ensure Taiwanese can attain their right to self-governance, a professors’ association official said

  • By Chen Yu-fu and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer
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  A coalition of pro-independence groups yesterday called for Taiwanese self-determination and changing how students are taught about the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, as they marked the treaty’s 74th anniversary.

  Schools should teach students that the treaty, under which Japan ceded its claims to Taiwan, did not hand over control of Taiwan proper and the Kinmen archipelago to the Republic of China (ROC), former political exile Cheng Tzu-tsai (鄭自才) told a news conference in Taipei.

  Cheng, chairman of the Sovereign State for Formosa and Pescadores Party, is a senior figure in the Taiwanese independence movement and attempted to assassinate then-vice premier Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) in New York on April 24, 1970.

  

  Representatives from a coalition of pro-Taiwanese independence groups hold a news conference in Taipei yesterday.

  Photo: Chen Yu-fu, Taipei Times

  The curriculum should specify that the agreement left Taiwan’s status undetermined under international law, Cheng said.

  Schools should also stop teaching that the 1943 Cairo Declaration, the 1945 Potsdam Declaration and the Japanese Instrument of Surrender gave the ROC the right to rule Taiwan, he added.

  Claiming otherwise concedes to Beijing’s view that Taiwan has been ceded to the People’s Republic of China, helping the Chinese Communist Party to argue to the world that it has the right to annex Taiwan by force and that those who stand up for Taiwan’s sovereignty are meddling in “China’s internal affairs,” he said.

  Taiwan should remove all references in official documents alluding to Taiwan’s so-called “retrocession” and the handover of its control to the ROC, and instead state that the ROC armed forces accepted the surrender of Imperial Japan and occupied Taiwan under the US Joint Chiefs of Staff’s General Order No. 1, Cheng said.

  The ROC forces were to hold the territory to wait for a later, permanent political settlement that never materialized, he said.

  The government should stop describing the ROC presidential elections as an exercise of the right to self-governance to disabuse the public of “the illusion that Taiwan has become a sovereign, independent state,” he said.

  That misapprehension “is an impediment to the full realization of Taiwan’s right to self-governance,” Cheng said.

  Taiwan Association of University Professors deputy chairwoman Chen Yueh-miao (陳月妙) said that the ROC constitutional framework is the chief legal reason for Taiwan’s expulsion from the UN in 1971 and its international pariah status.

  The San Francisco Peace Treaty should be properly taught and emphasized in diplomacy to ensure Taiwanese attain their right to self-governance, she said.

  “For 80 years, Taiwanese have been living the lie of the Cairo Declaration and the ‘Glorious Retrocession of Taiwan,’” Chen said, adding that the nation had been forced to accept the narratives through brainwashing.

  Taiwanese are the sole legitimate rulers of Taiwan following Japan’s renunciation of its sovereignty over it and the lack of a legally designated successor, Taiwan Statebuilding Party Chairman Wang Hsing-huan (王興煥) said.

  His party advocates that on the anniversary of the treaty each year, he said, adding that Taiwanese should be encouraged to fight for an independent nation.

  The San Francisco Peace Treaty supersedes the declarations of intent resulting from the Allied Powers’ conferences in Cairo and Potsdam, Taiwan Hakka Society chairwoman Chen Tsai-jen (陳彩仁) said.

  That the world refers to the nation as “Taiwan” rather than the “Republic of China” is proof that Taiwanese should discard the ROC and embrace formal independence, he said.
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