SwiftVets.com

[BillB]

I found this especially interesting as I was stationed with MAAG, Taiwan,
from '59 to '62.

IS TAIWAN A POSSESSION OF THE UNITED STATES?
Behind The Lines
To the Point News
By Dr. Jack Wheeler
Thursday, August 11, 2005

Communist China, the People's Republic of China or PRC, never tires of
denouncing Taiwan as a "renegade province" that belongs to it, and bitterly
complaining that any attempt by any country anywhere in the world to treat
Taiwan as a sovereign independent nation is a gross interference in China's
"internal affairs."

This claim is about to be publicly exposed as baseless - for it turns out
that as a matter of international law, Taiwan is legally an overseas
possession of the United States of America.

Taiwan has been inhabited by a Malayo-Polynesian aboriginal people for
40,000 years. The Chinese never showed any interest in it nor attempted to
colonize it all the way up to the end of the Ming Dynasty in 1644 AD. The
Portuguese, the first European colonizers in Asia, made no attempt to do so
either, although they named it Formosa (Beautiful).

It was the Dutch, who had begun colonizing Java and Sumatra and creating the
Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) in the early 1600s, that established a
base there in 1624 and began to import Chinese men from Fujian across the
Formosa Straits as laborers. A Chinese pirate named Koxinga took over the
island in 1661, kicked out the Dutch and established a pirate kingdom.

In the meantime, over in China, a tribe of nomadic herders similar to the
Mongols called the Manchus had conquered northeastern China, calling their
kingdom Ching (or Qing), "Pure." In 1644, they overthrew the Ming Dynasty by
seizing Beijing, with the last Ming Emperor, Chongzhen, hanging himself on a
tree overlooking the Forbidden City.

The Manchus had to spend the next 17 years consolidating their control over
all of China. After two subsequent decades of raids on their southern coast,
they put an end to Koxinga's pirate kingdom and took over Taiwan in 1683. At
the time there were about 7,000 Han (ethnic Chinese) on the island.

Some two hundred years later, in 1894, the Ching government of China got
into a war with Japan over control of Korea, and lost. In the formal Treaty
of Shimonoseki signed in April, 1895, the Chinese government formally
recognized the independence of Korea, and legally ceded Taiwan to Japan. For
the next 50 years, Taiwan under international law was the possession of
Japan's.

The Japanese Government's control over Taiwan ceased on August 15, 1945 when
it announced its surrender in World War II. The Instrument of Surrender was
signed on the deck of the USS Missouri on September 2, which placed "all
Japanese forces wherever situated" under the command of "the Supreme
Commander of the Allied Powers," Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

That day, McArthur formed the United States Military Government with
jurisdiction over Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. General Order No. 1 of the USMG
included the directive that all Japanese commanders and forces in Taiwan
(called Formosa) "shall surrender to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek," leader
of the recognized legal government of China, the Republic of China (ROC).
These forces then surrendered to ROC commander Chen Yi on October 25, 1945.

But the Instrument of Surrender was an armistice, not a formal peace treaty.
Japan had not ceded Taiwan to the ROC. The legal authority in Taiwan
remained the United States Military Government, which had delegated -
delegated, not relinquished - the military occupation of Taiwan to the ROC.

This occupation conducted by Chen Yi proved impossibly corrupt and abusive,
resulting in a rebellion by native Taiwanese known as the 228 Incident, as
it began on February 28, 1947. Chen Yi's soldiers killed thousands of
Taiwanese and instituted a tyranny called the "White Terror."

By now, Mao Tse-tung's Communists were waging full scale war against Chiang
Kai-shek's ROC government. They succeeded in taking over China from April to
November, 1949, during which the Generalissimo, several hundred thousand of
his soldiers, and 2 million refugees crossed the Formosa Strait to Taiwan.
Chiang proclaimed that the city of Taipei was now the temporary capital of
the Republic of China, the sole legitimate government of mainland China.

It may have been the legitimate capital of China, but not of Taiwan, because
the ROC was not the legitimate government of Taiwan - the USMG was.

Japan did not sign a formal peace treaty until September 8, 1951. Known as
the Treaty of San Francisco, Article 2(b) states:

"Japan renounces all right, title and claim to Formosa and the Pescadores"
(islands in the Formosa Straits).

But - the gargantuan but -- no receiving country is specified in the treaty.
In other words, Japan renounced its sovereignty over Taiwan, but did not
turn over that sovereignty to either the PRC in Beijing or the ROC in
Taiwan. Neither the PRC nor the ROC were invited to the San Francisco treaty
conference, and neither was a signatory to the treaty.

This means that the USMG remained the sovereign legal authority in Taiwan.
Article 4(b) of the treaty states this in recognizing the authority of "the
United States Military Government in any of the areas referred to in
Articles 2 and 3," as does Article 23(a) recognizing "the United States of
America as the principal occupying Power."

This treaty is still in effect. In the opinion of a number of scholars of
international law, Taiwan is neither a province of China over which the PRC
has legitimate sovereignty, nor is Taiwan a sovereign state of itself. It
is, rather, an overseas territory of the U.S.

The practical bottom line to this is that the Communist PRC government of
China has no claim to Taiwan under international law.

Further, as Taiwan is a U.S. territorial possession, the United States
government is legally obliged to defend it.

This can only be changed by the United States Congress. As the historical
and legal facts described here sink in to Capitol Hill, expect a number of
bills to be offered in the upcoming session that will either legally turn
over sovereignty of Taiwan from the U.S. to the Taipei government, or make
it legally explicit that China's claim on Taiwan is fraudulent.

There's going to be a hot debate in Congress as it realizes it's been handed
a sizzling hot potato. America owns Taiwan. What is it going to do with it?

This article has been posted, please join discussion on this thread/ thanks, kate
http://www.swiftvets.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=156101#156101
_________________
BillB (Daytona FL)
Navy (June '44 - July '46) RM 3/c
Army (Aug. '51 - July '65) Capt.
Inactive Reserve (July '46 - Aug. '51)