A number of pro-independence figures criticized President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) after he said on Tuesday that the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty, also known as the Treaty of Taipei, affirmed the transfer of Taiwan’s sovereignty from Japan to the Republic of China (ROC).
Former Examination Yuan president Yao Chia-wen (姚嘉文) accused Ma of distorting the contents of the treaty.
Yao, who has written extensively on the status of Taiwan, said it was “inappropriate” to call the pact the “Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty,” and that it should be referred to as the “Treaty of Taipei” in accordance with the place where it was signed, in line with international practice.
Yao said the treaty reaffirmed the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, in which Japan renounced its claim to the territories in question (Taiwan, Penghu and the Paracel and Spratly islands), but did not name any country as the territories’ new sovereign power.
Yao said that, since at the time there was a controversy over who had the right to represent China — the ROC government in Taipei or the People’s Republic of China government in Beijing — Japan specified that it was signing the pact with the “government in Taiwan” rather than “the government of China.”
Yao said Japan later clarified that all mentions of the ROC in the treaty referred to the authorities governing those territories under ROC control — Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu — and not to the government with which Japan had previously been at war.
Japan has also said on several occasions that, since it had already renounced all claim to these territories through the Treaty of San Francisco, it no longer had any say in who should have sovereignty over them.
“That being the case, how could Japan cede the territories to the ROC in the 1952 treaty?” Yao asked.
Yao also assailed the assertion made in 2002 by Academia Historica President Lin Man-houng (林滿紅) that Japan transferred sovereignty over Taiwan to the ROC through the Treaty of Taipei, saying Ma had based his own position on Lin’s earlier statement.
Cheng Chung-mo (城仲模), President of the European Union Studies Association Taiwan, questioned what authority the ROC government, which fled from China to Taiwan in 1949, had to sign the treaty in 1952, and said that Japan abrogated the treaty in 1972.
Cheng asked why, when the Chinese have for decades relied on the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation to back up their claim of sovereignty over Taiwan, Ma should suddenly turn to the 1952 treaty.
Cheng said that former foreign affairs minister Yeh Kung-chao (葉公超), who signed the treaty on behalf of the ROC, told the legislature that the Treaty of San Francisco did not return “these islands [Taiwan and Penghu] to the [Republic of] China.”
Yao and Cheng’s criticisms were supported by Alliance of Referendum for Taiwan convener Tsai Ting-kuei (蔡丁貴) and by Roger Lin (林志昇), the plaintiff in legal proceedings against the US government asserting that Taiwan’s sovereign status is yet to be determined.
Tsai said that, according to the UN Charter, sovereignty can only be decided on through a referendum by the people residing in that territory.
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