President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has published an op-ed article in the Washington Times harshly criticizing former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) for saying the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) belong to Japan, where they are known as the Senkaku Islands.
“Former or future presidents should not be cavalier about, or forsake, our national sovereignty,” Ma said.
The article was almost immediately attacked by Gerrit van der Wees, a senior policy adviser to the Formosan Association for Public Affairs, who called it “flabbergasting.”
“It seems President Ma is making a big issue out of the matter, as his Chinese Nationalist [Party, KMT] is in deep decline and looks set to lose the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections,” Van der Wees said in a statement.
Other Washington-based Taiwan watchers said it was “highly unusual” for a sitting president to criticize a former president in a foreign newspaper.
During a visit to Japan last month, Lee, who is 92 years old and known as Taiwan’s “father of democracy,” said that “the Diaoyutai Islands belong to Japan and are not Taiwanese territory.”
In a lengthy rebuttal, Ma said that based on strong historical evidence and international law, Japan returned the Diaoyutai Islands to the Republic of China (ROC) in 1945.
He said that between 1722 and 1872, numerous official reports confirm that the Diaoyutai Islands were regularly used by Taiwanese fishermen and effectively patrolled by the Qing Dynasty.
Ma said that on April 17, 1895, the Qing government and Japan signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which stipulated “the island of Taiwan, together with all the islands appertaining or belonging to Taiwan” were ceded to Japan.
However, during World War II, the ROC declared war on Japan and abrogated the Treaty of Shimonoseki.
Ma said that under the 1943 Cairo Declaration “all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese … shall be restored to the ROC.”
In 1945, the Potsdam Proclamation, the provisions of which Japan accepted, confirmed the Cairo Declaration.
The 1951 Treaty of San Francisco stated that Japan renounced sovereignty over Taiwan and Penghu, and sovereignty over the Diaoyutai Islands was returned to the ROC in October 1945.
“Prior to the signing of the Okinawa Reversion Agreement in June 1971 between the US and Japan, the US notified the ROC that only administrative rights over the Diaoyutai Islands were being transferred to Japan — not sovereignty — and that the agreement had no effect on the ROC’s sovereignty claim,” Ma said.
He concluded: “It is my solemn duty to protect our sovereignty and fishing rights with regard to the Diaoyutai Islands.”
Van der Wees said that “by focusing on the emotional issue of sovereignty over the small group of rocks,” Ma is stoking nationalistic fervor to regain ground for the KMT.
“Ma’s arguments regrettably do not hold water — he attempts to marshal some anecdotal evidence that the islands at some point in time may have been under Chinese rule, but does not present any direct evidence that the islands were ever administered by any of the Chinese empires,” Van der Wees said.
He added that Ma neglected to mention that Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣中正) government — as well as the Chinese government — only started to lay claim to the islands after 1971, when reports surfaced that there might be oil deposits near them.
TENSIONS: The Chinese aircraft and vessels were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a joint air and sea military exercise, the Ministry of National Defense said A relatively large number of Chinese military aircraft and vessels were detected in Taiwan’s vicinity yesterday morning, apparently en route to a Chinese military exercise in the western Pacific, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. In a statement, the ministry said 36 Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft, including J-16 fighters and nuclear-capable H-6 bombers, crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait or an extension of it, and were detected in the southern and southeastern parts of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) from 5:20am to 9:30am yesterday. They were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a
Honor guards are to stop performing changing of the guard ceremonies around a statue of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to avoid “worshiping authoritarianism,” the Ministry of Culture said yesterday. The fate of the bronze statue has long been the subject of fierce and polarizing debate in Taiwan, which has transformed from an autocracy under Chiang into one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies. The changing of the guard each hour at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei is a major tourist attraction, but starting from 9am on Monday, the ceremony is to be moved outdoors to Democracy Boulevard, outside the eponymous blue-and-white memorial
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supports peaceful unification with China, and President William Lai (賴清德) is “a bit naive” for being a “practical worker for Taiwanese independence,” former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said in an interview published yesterday. Asked about whether the KMT is on the same page as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on the issue of Taiwanese independence or unification with China, Ma told the Malaysian Chinese-language newspaper Sin Chew Daily that they are not. While the KMT supports peaceful unification and is against unification by force, the DPP opposes unification as such and
CASES SLOWING: Although weekly COVID-19 cases are rising, the growth rate has been falling, from 90 percent to 30 percent, 14 percent and 6 percent, the CDC said COVID-19 hospitalizations last week rose 6 percent to 987, while deaths soared 55 percent to 99, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, adding that the recent wave of infections would likely peak this week. People aged 65 or older accounted for 79 percent of the hospitalizations and 90 percent of the deaths, the majority of whom have or had underlying health conditions, CDC data showed. The youngest hospitalized case last week was a six-month-old, who was born preterm and was unvaccinated, CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said. The infant had a fever, coughing and a runny nose early this month, but