US should recognize its true ally - TW

[dArKeR]

By Chen Ching-chih???

"Mr. Hu Jintao (???), dump your `one China' principle!" It would be fitting for US President George W. Bush to thus echo his predecessor in office, the late president Ronald Reagan, who in 1987 told the Soviet Union's Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. For China to end its "one China" principle is the only way to ensure genuine and long-lasting peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.

Beijing's principle that "there is only one China and Taiwan is a part of that China" is a fiction. Taiwan has never been a part of the People's Republic of China, which was established in 1949. In 1895, China ceded Taiwan to Japan in a peace treaty signed by the two countries. For the next half-century Taiwan was a Japanese colony. After Japan's defeat in 1945 it renounced sovereignty over Taiwan. This renouncement of sovereignty was officially confirmed in the 1951 San Francisco peace treaty signed by Japan and over 50 allied nations. Even the subsequent 1952 treaty between Japan and Chiang Kai-shek's (???) Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government only repeated Japan's renunciation of its claim to Taiwan. Neither treaty designated a specific country as the recipient of the renounced sovereignty. Therefore, Taiwan has been an independent country for the past half-century.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2004/06/28/2003176874