Since March 1, 1950, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), separated by the Taiwan Strait, have been competing with each other to win the right to represent China in the international community. Both sides have regarded themselves as the only legitimate representative of China.
It was not until Oct. 25, 1971, when UN Resolution No. 2758 was passed, that the issue was resolved.
The resolution states that "[the UN decides] to expel forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek (
Today, the international community recognizes the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) as the only legitimate government of China. As a result, the government of the Republic of China (ROC) has lost the legitimacy and legal right to act as the government of China.
This does not mean, however, that the PRC can can assert sovereignty over the ROC's territory. The reasons for this are two-fold.
First, the ROC refers to the Chiang regime, which had no legal claim to sovereignty over Taiwan's territory.
Second, after the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty on Sept. 8, 1951, Taiwan's sovereignty automatically passed to the Taiwanese people, but the Chiang regime deprived them of that right until the 10 Additional Articles of the Constitution were promulgated on May 1, 1991, during the administration of former president Lee Teng-hui (
Through that amendment, the ROC government handed back sovereignty over Taiwan to the Taiwanese people and Taiwan legally speaking became a new state.
In other words, Taiwan is a de jure independent nation.
Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States, which was written in 1933, stipulates that a state as an international legal entity should possess the following qualifications: a permanent population, a defined territory, a government and the capacity to enter into relations with other states.
Taiwan obviously meets all four qualifications. Today, the nation's government is no longer a government-in-exile, but a legal government completely of and for this nation.
Furthermore, Article 3 of the Montevideo Convention also stipulates that "the political existence of the state is independent of recognition by the other states."
Therefore, even if Taiwan is not recognized by the international community, Taiwanese still have the right to safeguard the sovereignty of their nation and the integrity of their territory.
Those who do not identify with the nation of Taiwan should be allowed to leave for another country.
In short, the government of Taiwan is not the "Chinese government" that Chiang's regime falsely made itself out to be, but a political community with effective jurisdiction over Taiwan, the Pescadores, Kinmen and Matsu.
No other state has the right to claim sovereignty over the territory under the effective control of this political community.
According to British barrister Ian Brownlie, the PRC claims that "Taiwan is a part of China" and that "the `mainland' and Taiwan belong to the same China" do not deprive Taiwan of statehood.
The reason is that based on the Montevideo Convention, Taiwan is already a democratic nation with de jure independence.
Wilson Chen is an honorary professor at the Graduate Institute of National Development at National Taiwan University.
Translated by Lin Ya-ti
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
RSS