Raining on Xi’s parade: Clarifying Taiwan’s status
Why does Britain remain silent on Taiwan's legal status?
The Investigator | No. 18/2025
Much attention has been paid to Beijing’s goose-stepping military parade on 3rd September. This, however, was only one in a series of events being held by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to commemorate the events which saw the end of the Second World War. On 25th October, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will celebrate the 80th anniversary of what it calls ‘Taiwan’s recovery from Japanese occupation’. On that day in 1945, Chen Yi, a general and politician of the Chinese nationalist Kuomintang (KMT), arrived in Taiwan, which had been part of Japan’s colonial empire since 1895, to receive the surrender of the Japanese forces there.
For Beijing, this is yet another historic event which legitimises its claim to Taiwan [1], wider acceptance of which will help to justify any unilateral action it takes across the strait, as well as to delegitimise – and undermine – any opposition to it.
The Cairo Declaration of 1943, which pledged to ‘restore [...] to the Republic of China’ Taiwan and Penghu, and the Potsdam Declaration of 1945, which promised to carry out these terms, are also cited by the CCP for the same purpose. Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the CCP, has said that these two later proclamations have ‘legal effect under international law’ and ‘affirmed China’s sovereignty over Taiwan’; ‘The historical and legal fact therein’, Xi maintains, ‘brooks no challenge’.
Except they do, at least as far as His Majesty’s (HM) Government is concerned.
The British position on Taiwan’s status was formally laid out on 4th February 1955 by Antony Eden, then Foreign Secretary. According to Eden, the Cairo Declaration was merely ‘a statement of intention’. Moreover, the takeover of Taiwan by KMT forces (at the direction of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers) ‘was not a cession, nor did it in itself involve any change of sovereignty. The arrangements made with Chiang Kai-shek [KMT general and President of the Republic of China] put him there on a basis of military occupation pending further arrangements, and did not of themselves constitute the territory Chinese.’
Finally, Eden explained that the outcome of the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco, in which Japan simply renounced its right to Taiwan and Penghu without assigning them to any particular state, ‘did not operate as a transfer to Chinese sovereignty, whether to the People’s Republic of China or to the Chinese Nationalist authorities.’
It was for these reasons that Eden concluded: ‘Formosa [Taiwan] and the Pescadores [Penghu] are therefore, in the view of Her Majesty’s Government, territory the de jure sovereignty over which is uncertain or undetermined.’
This did not change when the United Kingdom (UK) upgraded its relations with the PRC to an ambassadorial level in 1972, even though London made some concessions around its position on Taiwan. As negotiations between both countries concluded, Alec Douglas-Home, then Foreign Secretary, informed British diplomats on 9th March that: ‘We have not subscribed to Peking’s [Beijing’s] claim that Taiwan is a province of China. The statement in “acknowledging the position of the Chinese government that Taiwan is a province of the People’s Republic of China” does not imply acceptance of the Chinese claim.’
As far as Her Majesty’s Government was concerned, Home would go on to clarify: ‘…we have long held that sovereignty over Taiwan is undetermined. We have held this view since the Japanese peace treaty provided for the relinquishment of sovereignty by Japan in 1951 and believe that it remains legally correct.’
Given that HM Government stated in December 2024 that ‘the UK’s longstanding position on Taiwan, as set out in the 1972 Communiqué, has not changed’, in addition to still only ‘acknowledging’ Beijing’s claim, this presumably means that HM Government continues to believe that Taiwan’s legal status is yet to be decided, or certainly that it was not decided during the events which ended the Second World War.
If so, why not say as much?
Last month, the United States (US) called out Beijing’s motives. The American Institute in Taiwan told Reuters that ‘China intentionally mischaracterises World War Two-era documents, including the Cairo Declaration, the Potsdam Proclamation and the Treaty of San Francisco, to try to support its coercive campaign to subjugate Taiwan.’ Washington’s de facto embassy also made clear its view that: ‘Beijing’s narratives are simply false and none of these documents determined Taiwan’s ultimate political status’.
Britain is, however, in a trickier position. In 1972, in order to exchange ambassadors with the PRC, the UK tied its own tongue. As Home also explained to British diplomats: ‘we have…privately agreed with the Chinese that we shall no longer express in public the view which we have long held that sovereignty over Taiwan is undetermined’.
This should change.
For one thing, it is unbecoming for British ministers to silence themselves indefinitely, especially when Beijing’s representatives in London repeatedly – and falsely – claim that: ‘the UK government clearly recognised the Chinese government’s position that Taiwan is a province of China.’
Presumably, HM Government would not stand by and allow Russia to misrepresent the UK’s position on Ukraine’s sovereignty. Nor is it likely that London would not respond if Moscow misused historic statements or agreements, which Britain had been party to, to give succour to their expansionist claims.
Another clarification will, most likely, have to come at some point. The UK’s private assurance was the product of, as one official working on the agreement later described it, ‘fudging’. And a fudge can only last so long.
Some officials at the time may have thought that the issue would resolve itself once the PRC and Taiwan quietly unified – not an unreasonable assumption when the dictatorships on both sides of the strait resolutely believed in ‘One China’. But Taiwan is now a democracy, and one where a distinctive Taiwanese identity has flourished. No government in Taipei is going to hand over its country unless, perhaps, under extreme pressure. Will Britain only speak out when Taiwan is quarantined or blockaded, or when the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) – the PRC’s armed forces – are amassing along Fujian’s coast?
And what weight will such a last-minute intervention carry? Could a significant proportion of global opinion be swayed so late in the day as to help constrain the Chinese leadership? It seems unlikely, particularly when Beijing will have done more and more beforehand to gain legitimacy for its expansionist claims.
The UK, alongside the US, is well placed to push back against this Chinese ‘lawfare’. As a respected voice on matters of international law, and a leading member of the wartime Allies, what London says carries weight.
Beijing’s current efforts to use the events of 80 years ago to give validity to its expansionist desires mirror its ongoing efforts to distort United Nations Resolution 2758. Indeed, these efforts prompted HM Government to call out the CCP’s attempt to ‘rewrite history’ and state Britain’s own position clearly for the first time. If there was merit in clarifying the legal and political implications of this 1971 vote, then the same is surely true of the Cairo Declaration and other Second World War events and documents.
A clarification will not please Beijing, whose officials were quick to condemn the American Institute in Taiwan’s remarks. But then again, this is the same regime which, last month, performed ‘constructive kills’ against a Royal Navy frigate transiting the Taiwan Strait, and is also currently fuelling a brutal war of aggression on European soil. Bilateral relations cannot, and should not, be good.
Of course, if Chinese officials did protest about the breaking of a promise, they may want to be reminded of the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984, which was supposed to guarantee Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy until 2047. What was it that the Foreign Ministry of the PRC called this legally binding treaty? A ‘historical document’, which ‘no longer has any practical significance…’
The ‘undeniable proof’ cited by China Global Television Network, a Chinese state media outlet, is an internal KMT message sent to Chiang Kai-shek from Chen Yi on 26th October 1945, which states that Taiwan had been returned to the motherland. Wang Weinan, Executive Deputy Director at Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Centre for Taiwan Studies, claims that similar words used by Chen Yi during the ceremony also meant: ‘The Japanese surrender in Taipei on 25th October 1945 essentially functioned as a ceremony restoring China’s sovereignty over Taiwan and the Penghu Islands.’ He argues that acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration in the surrender broadcast made by Hirohito, then Emperor of Japan, on 14th August 1945, and the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, co-signed by nine countries on 2nd September 1945, ‘elevated the declaration from a one-sided declaration from the Allied forces to a legal contract accepted by both sides who participated in the war’.
Her Majesty’s Government’s view of Taiwan’s legal status in regards to the Japanese surrender was outlined in a 1955 Foreign Office research department paper. It reads (emphasis added):
The Japanese Emperor accepted the Potsdam terms and the Japanese surrender was received on September 25, 1945, by General MacArthur “for the United States, the Republic of China, the United Kingdom and the USSR and in the interests of the United Nations at war with Japan”. The Japanese forces in Formosa were then instructed to surrender to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek which they did on October 25, 1945. Japanese acceptance of the Potsdam declaration did not affect a change regarding the sovereignty over Formosa and the Pescadores, but merely constituted an advance recognition and acceptance of such steps as the Allies might eventually take for the purpose. Therefore, in law, Formosa’s special status was that of enemy territory under military occupation. Chiang Kai-shek assumed the administration of Formosa responsible to the whole body of the Allies pending the conclusion of a Peace Treaty, or if the status of Formosa was not finally settled by that treaty (which it was not), pending an eventual settlement.
Gray Sergeant is the Research Fellow in the Indo-Pacific at the Council on Geostrategy.
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