DISPUTE OVER LEGAL STATUS OF ISLAND REVIVED DURING FORUM
Pro-independence and KMT speakers clash over meaning of treaties signed at end of World War II
The question of whether Taiwan’s legal status is undecided has sparked fresh debates between the two rival political camps on the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own.
The trigger for the latest controversy was a recent forum in Taipei hosted by the government-backed research institution Academia Historica, to mark the 70th anniversary of the SinoJapanese Peace Treaty.
Independence-leaning politicians and scholars at the April 23 forum supported the view that the political status of Taiwan remained undecided when Japan, which ruled the island from 1895 to 1945, surrendered at the end of World War II.
The row – going back decades – focuses on the validity of the 1943 Cairo Declaration and 1945 Potsdam Proclamation, and whether the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty signed after Japan’s surrender to the allied forces clarifies the status of Taiwan.
The Cairo Declaration was the outcome of talks between then US president Franklin Roosevelt, British prime minister Winston Churchill, and Chinese Nationalist or Kuomintang leader Chiang Kaishek in Cairo, Egypt, in November 1943, as Japan showed signs of defeat in both the second SinoJapanese war and world war.
It sought to set goals for the post-war order, including stripping Japan of all islands in the Pacific it had seized or occupied since the beginning of the First World War in 1914, and returning all territories, including Manchuria, Formosa (Taiwan) and the Pescadores (Penghu) to the Republic of China (ROC), founded in 1912 after the Qing empire was overthrown.
The Potsdam Proclamation of July 1945, two months before the second world war ended, called on the Japanese armed forces to surrender or face “prompt and utter destruction”. It also demanded that Japan adhere to the Cairo Declaration.
After Japan surrendered in September 1945, allied forces led by the US demanded that it sign the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty to reestablish peaceful ties. But it was not until September 1951 that such an agreement was signed by 49 countries in San Francisco. The San Francisco Peace Treaty took effect in April 1952 and legally ended the US-led allied occupation of Japan.
The treaty was signed without either the ROC or the People’s Republic of China – the latter newly formed after communist forces won the civil war in 1949 and drove the defeated KMT to Taiwan, where it set up an interim ROC government.
The question of which Chinese government was legitimate presented a dilemma for treaty organisers, as the US wanted to invite the ROC on Taiwan to represent China, while Britain leaned towards the government on mainland China. As a compromise, neither government was invited.
Despite objections from Beijing, Japan signed a separate peace treaty with the ROC hours before the San Francisco agreement came into effect. That treaty, signed on April 28, 1952 under pressure from the United States, brought the Sino-Japanese war to a formal end.
In September 1972, Japan established official ties with Beijing, formally recognising it as the sole representative of China. In 1980, while adjudicating a case concerning nationality, the Tokyo High Court wrote in its opinion that the Sino-Japanese treaty should lose its significance and should end as a result of the joint communique signed with Beijing.
At the Taipei forum hosted by Academia Historica two weeks ago, pro-independence speakers said that under the Treaty of San Francisco, Tokyo had merely “renounced” all rights and claims to Taiwan and Penghu.
Although Japan had signed a separate peace treaty with the Chiang government in Taipei seven months later, the San Francisco agreement should take precedence, they argued, saying the 1952 peace pact had failed to explicitly state whether Taiwan’s sovereignty belonged to Chiang’s ROC on the island or the communists on the mainland.
Also, when Japan switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taipei in 1972, it had also terminated the 1952 peace pact, they contended.
Present at the forum was parliament speaker and staunch Taiwan independence supporter Yu Shyi-kun, who said while the Cairo Declaration said Japan must return Taiwan to the ROC, and the Potsdam Proclamation also required Japan to do so, these documents merely reflected the desires of the allied powers on how to deal with Japan.
“These documents do not have any binding effect like that of the San Francisco pact,” Yu said, adding that the legal status of the areas concerned was left unresolved, to be decided later under the principles of self-determination and peaceful dispute settlement.
This argument immediately triggered an angry rebuke from the opposition KMT.
Former Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou later joined the KMT in rejecting the pro-independence camp’s theory of the undetermined status of Taiwan.
“Does that mean the Republic of China has existed illegally in Taiwan in the past 70 years?” Ma asked in an April 28 Facebook post.
He said it was absurd for the ruling independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party to deny the legitimacy of its own administration.
Ma said both the Cairo and Potsdam statements were legally binding under international law and, together with the SinoJapanese pact, it was clear that Japan was required to return Taiwan to the ROC government, meaning the ROC had sovereignty over the island.
However, at a legislative hearing on Monday, Academia Historica director Chen Yi-shen said the undetermined status theory was meant to protect Taiwan from being taken over by Beijing.
“There was a change in the situation in 1949 and this explained why there was the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the Sino-Japanese pact,” Chen said, referring to the KMT defeat and move to Taiwan to establish the ROC.
Does that mean the Republic of China has existed illegally in Taiwan in the past 70 years?
FORMER PRESIDENT MA YING-JEOU