The 65th anniversary of the Cairo Declaration (Dec. 1, 1943) approaches and I have always wondered at its rhetoric as well as how often this simple declaration is used by some to justify China’s claim to Taiwan, which was called Formosa at the time.
Let us grant that the declaration was made in wartime, and that it would require rhetorical wording to rally the troops to the righteousness of a cause. Granted, it was a statement and not a treaty. It had no legal force; there were no binding commitments. It was also made at a time when, although the darkest hour of the war was past, there was much more to come. For some, the concern that Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) might sign a private peace treaty with Japan and opt out of the war remained. Look past that, however, and focus on one simple, neglected aspect: the rhetoric involved and the problems that arose from this.
The declaration states: “The three great Allies are fighting this war to restrain and punish the aggression of Japan. They covet no gain for themselves and have no thought of territorial expansion. It is their purpose that Japan shall be stripped of all the islands in the Pacific which she has seized or occupied since the beginning of the First World War in 1914, and 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.”
A quick check reveals that Japan secured Formosa in the legitimate Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895) at the end of a war with the Qing Dynasty. It was a war that both countries entered because each wanted a controlling influence in Korea. The primary issue in 1895 was control over Korea; Formosa was given away to keep Korea free. The Republic of China was not yet formed, nor the People’s Republic of China.
Questions arise from this. Did Japan actually steal Formosa? Do all treaties represent or involve stealing? If so, who did Japan steal Formosa from? Did it steal Formosa from the Chinese or was it the Manchu Qing Dynasty that had conquered China as well as Manchuria, Tibet and parts of Formosa? Did the Chinese ever own Formosa? Who were the Chinese on Formosa?
Certainly there were Chinese people that had come to Formosa, but many of them, aside from Qing bureaucrats, came illegally to escape their lives under the Qing. In addition, no country had controlled the whole island of Taiwan before the Japanese.
The western half of Taiwan was governed by the Qing and that half became a province in 1885 — 10 years before the 1895 treaty — but the other half was Aboriginal territory. The Qing surely had designs on the lands of those “uncooked savages” and acquiring that land would clearly be stealing.
Even on the land governed by the Qing, history records a tenuous rule there with an uprising every three years and a rebellion every five. In the treaty of 1895, the Qing government was getting rid of its troublesome half of the island. The remaining land was not the Qing government’s to give. It didn’t mind Japan “stealing” it.
The Cairo Declaration has additional nebulous aspects; unfortunately in all of this no one ever asked the Taiwanese and Aborigines what they wanted. Even if one thinks that US President Franklin D. Roosevelt was trying to do the right thing, one needs only to look at the Tehran Conference immediately following, when Roosevelt agreed to let Stalin redraw the borders of Poland so that he could “steal” some Polish territory.
Wartime rhetoric yes, but more than a half century has passed. The Treaty of San Francisco never stated who Japan should give Taiwan to.
A faint ray of hope appears when you force the US government into a corner and ask what the status of Taiwan is: The answer is that it is still “undecided.” Even the “one China” mantra that the US State Department constantly trots out simply means the US acknowledges that China thinks it owns Taiwan.
But that mantra leaves unsaid that the official US position is that Taiwan’s fate is undecided.
Undecided? Isn’t it time to end this circuitous rhetoric? Here we are, some 63 years after the end of World War II, and the fate of 23 million people in a thriving, hard-won democracy is still “undecided.” Ironically, after that war, the UN charter states that all people have the right to self-determination. All, that is, except 23 million Taiwanese.
One can excuse the rhetoric of the Cairo Declaration as a result of the circumstances. But now it is time to see it for what it was and to right its results. It is a great shame for the US and the rest of the world community not to recognize Taiwan’s right to self-determination. It is also time to recognize that the real greed and threat to stability in the Taiwan Strait is from China, and not the freedom-loving people of Taiwan. It is time to give Taiwan a place in the UN — not in the kow-towing, mealy mouthed, fawning approach of the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) government, but in the simple straight-forward recognition that free people deserve the recognition of their freedom and their land.
If there is anyone that wants to steal Taiwan from its people, it is the PRC. Taiwan belongs to the Taiwanese. Taiwan is Taiwan, China is China. That is not rhetoric, that’s fact. It is time the world acknowledges this.
Jerome Keating is a writer based in Taipei.
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