From Cairo to Taipei

For the Chinese delegation that flew into Cairo in November 1943, Taiwan was one of the things the trip was meant to bring home. Chiang Kai-shek attended with Soong Mei-ling and Wang Chung-hui, secretary-general of the Supreme National Defense Council, and the diaries kept by that party record a process of drafting word by word: the Chinese side insisted that "Taiwan and the Pescadores" be named in the document rather than folded into vague talk of a postwar settlement. The Cairo Declaration, released on December 1, stated that the territories Japan had stolen from China, "such as Manchuria, Formosa, and the Pescadores, shall be restored to the Republic of China"; Article 8 of the Potsdam Proclamation of July 26, 1945 confirmed that the Cairo terms would be carried out. As Chungking and then Nanking understood it, the legal question was settled there. What remained was the mechanics of the handover. General Order No. 1, issued by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers on September 2, 1945, designated Chiang Kai-shek to receive the surrender of Japanese forces in Taiwan, the Pescadores, and the China theater; on October 25 Chen Yi presided over the surrender ceremony at the Taipei Public Hall, and that same day the Administrative Executive Office proclaimed Taiwan's retrocession, a date kept as a holiday every year thereafter. For this government, October 25 was not the beginning of an occupation but the completion of a return — which is why every later claim that Taiwan's status was "undetermined" would sound to it not merely like a legal argument but like a denial of its standing as a victor.