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Ma’s sovereignty
stance risks nation, TSU lawmaker says
MISTREATMENT: TSU Legislator Hsu Chung-hsin said
Ma’s stance of Japan’s WWII surrender returning Taiwan to the ROC is the view
espoused by Beijing
By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
Taiwan’s sovereign status was determined by the Treaty of San Francisco on Sept.
8, 1951, not the Cairo Declaration in 1943, nor the Potsdam Declaration of 1945,
Taiwan Solidarity Union Legislator Hsu Chung-hsin (許忠信) said on Friday, ahead of
the 62nd anniversary of the treaty’s signing.
“Only the Treaty of San Francisco — not the two declarations made during World
War II — is recognized as a legitimate international law. The Chinese
Nationalist Party [KMT] has been cheating Taiwanese by claiming that Taiwan was
returned to the Republic of China [ROC] government,” Hsu, a former Academia
Historica president, told a news conference.
Article 2 of the San Francisco Treaty, signed between Japan and most of the
Allied powers, states that “Japan renounces all right, title and claim to
Formosa and the Pescadores (澎湖),” while the Treaty of Taipei — the peace treaty
signed between the ROC and Japan on April 28, 1952 — declares Japan’s
“renouncement to all right, title and claim to Taiwan (Formosa) and Penghu (the
Pescadores) as well as the Spratly Islands [Nansha Islands, 南沙群島] and the
Paracel Islands [Xisha Islands, 西沙群島],” Hsu said.
Japan has never said which country Taiwan belonged to and “the only sure thing
was that Taiwan’s sovereignty has been separated from that of China,” he said.
President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) claim that sovereignty over Taiwan was returned
to the ROC with Tokyo’s surrender is a distortion of history because the
surrender is not a transfer of sovereignty, the lawmaker said.
Even more dangerous is that Ma’s position echoes that of Beijing’s, which means
that China could use this as a base from which to claim Taiwan as its territory,
Hsu said.
In addition, KMT officials would not have been able to arrive in Taiwan after
World War II without the help of US naval vessels and Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石)
accepted the surrender of Japanese troops in Taiwan after Allied Forces General
Douglas MacArthur assigned him to do so, said Chang Yen-hsien (張炎憲), another
former Academia Historica president.
“Chiang’s military occupation of Taiwan does not mean that the KMT regime
obtained sovereignty over it,” Chang said.
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