History of Taiwan

The following history of Taiwan is written, in mind, with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations general assembly on December 10, 1948.

In the history,  the former name of Taiwan, Formosa is used to refer to the beautiful island between China and Japan that now a day we know as Taiwan. Situated between the big powers, and in strategic position for trades, many countries and powers have fought over Taiwan (Formosa) over the years. Those entities or countries include the Dutch, the Spanish, Ming nation’s remnant force and Qing (Chin) empire from the China property, the Japanese then lastly the ROC (China-in-exile). These foreign entities all tried to colonize Taiwan Formosa and change the identity of the Taiwanese Formosan aborigines, more or less, to their own.  For details on the name of Taiwan and its people, please refer to https://ltl-taiwan.com/isla-formosa/ . In fact, the information provided by this link about the history of the name of Taiwan/Formosa

may not be entirely correct. However, when people talk about Taiwan, the history and the origin of the name “China” would be involved as well. Therefore, we are providing with the readers two links here for your references.

https://www.worldhistory.org/china/#:~:text=Ancient%20China%20produced%20what%20has,trade%20along%20the%20Silk%20Road,  and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_China

Let us shift our topic to the issues and history concerning the sovereignty of Formosa Taiwan.  Formosa’s territorial sovereignty was settled with an international treaty under the Shimonoseki Treaty in 1895, and it was permanently ceded to Japan from Qing Empire (Qin Empire colonized Taiwan from 1683 to 1895).  Then, the Japanese Empire legally colonized Taiwan from 1895 to 1952 for 57 years. On August 10, 1945, Japan was defeated by the U.S. military in the US-Japan Pacific War and emperor Showa of Japan formally offered the surrender to the U.S. On April 28, 1952, the San Francisco Peace Treaty (SFPT) came into effect and Japan officially abandoned its sovereignty over Taiwan and Pescadores (Penghu islands) to no one but under the U.S. military occupation. The U.S. and the allies subsequently placed Formosa under the ROC military occupation by yielding to the request in a meeting in Cairo, Egypt earlier in 1943. In that meeting, Chiang Kai-sek of the ROC insisted that Formosa was stolen from the Qing (Chin) Empire, which was replaced by the ROC. They produced a news release called “Cairo Declaration” as a record of the conversations.  Yet, the U.S. and the allies omitted the fact that Qing Empire gave up its “sovereignty” over Formosa Taiwan long before that. And, Taiwan was not “stolen” but “signed” away by Qing Empire (a foreign country  occupying China for more than 2 centuries) to the Japanese Empire. Today, a “Cairo Declaration”, used by the ROC authority to claim the sovereignty of Taiwan conveniently, is nothing but a communique. 

As the matter of the fact, no one recognizes that piece of news release as an international treaty as none of the attendees of that meeting signed that paper. It seems to be a piece of news release that determined the fate of the people of Taiwan Formosa for 75 years or more. On the other hand, the Chinese-in-exile government, the ROC loves to celebrate the surrender of the Japanese force to the ROC officials in Taipei and “return” Taiwan to the ROC on October 25, 1945. Unfortunately, that was just a cease fire ceremony instead of a transfer of the sovereignty of Formosa Taiwan to the ROC. https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2017/10/28/2003681173

Since the U.S. was the sole power that placed Taiwan under the military occupation and administration of the ROC on Taiwan by error in 1945. Now is the time to rectify the mistake. The U.S. has the legal rights to help the Taiwanese remove the system of the ROC from Taiwan. The USA also carries the moral obligation to compensate for the crimes that ROC leaders, Chiang Kai-Shek, his son and their KMT cohorts, have committed against the Taiwanese. (Reference: Formosa Betrayed by George Kerr; First published in Great Britain 1966 by Eyre & Spottiswoode Ltd; Second edition in 1992 published by Taiwan Publishing Co.;  Available on https://www.amazon.com/

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvNGBH3qKHg

( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Bruce_Jacobs )

https://youtu.be/O3tyHyT0M00

( https://research.monash.edu/en/persons/bruce-jacobs )

http://www.taiwannation.com.tw/english.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Taiwan