April 19, 2010

Geographic oddities and mysteries: is Taiwan actually part of the United States?

The eyes of the world this past week were (at least partly) on Poland, given the chilling news of the presidential aircraft’s crash in Smolensk en route to Katyń. Many of the news stories also noted that a second Polish president perished in the crash: Ryszard Kaczorowski, who was the country’s last president-in-exile in London in 1989, before he transferred precious state insignia (and the mantle of legitimacy) to a free Poland. Governments-in-Exile rarely manage to maintain more than a shadowy existence from a faraway (and often shabby) office suite, and few actually manage to return to power. Poland’s assertions were more successful than most. Today’s Polish government websites appropriately list the presidents of the London exile government as its actual (and legal) chiefs of state from 1945 to 1990.

Which brings us to other twists of history which are still unfolding. Is it really possible, as a former Taiwanese president now asserts, that Taiwan is part of the United States? It’s a bizarre story to be sure, and former ROC President Chen Shui-bian is trying to extricate himself from serving a life sentence for corruption and new charges of treason.

According to the Formosa Nation Legal Strategy Association, the San Francisco Peace Treaty that came into force in 1952 and later agreements did not return Taiwan to Chinese sovereignty. They claim that Taiwan is a kind of Asian Puerto Rico, originally under US occupation and ultimately still under US sovereignty. Members of the Association have apparently applied for US passports (since they feel they are “US nationals”), and Mr Chen has tried to sue for his freedom in the US courts.

This theory does seem to get a dash of support from the statements of the late Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who noted on the record: “Japan has merely renounced sovereignty over Taiwan which… the peace treaty… [has] not ceded to anyone.”

Still, it all seems a bit of a stretch, and Washington is hardly looking for more disputed places to fly the Stars and Stripes. The political heirs of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, now back in power in Taipei, have sensibly returned the government back to its quiet official position that it is the rightful government of China — something, paradoxically, that the folks in Beijing are quite happy with.