Shortly after the new government ascended to power in May 2008, President Ma Ying-jeou appointed Lin Man-houng, who was a senior research fellow at the Academia Sinica's Institute of Modern History, to the nation's highest post for an historian: the presidency of the Academia Historica. Lin earned doctorates in history at National Taiwan Normal University and Harvard University. For more than 30 years she has been researching Taiwanese history, Qing history, East Asian economic history, and the history of political and economic thought. Recent books of hers include Historical Contemplations on Relations between Taiwan and the Chinese Mainland and A New Historical Perspective of Taiwan's Legal Status, which clearly and comprehensively lay out her thoughts about Taiwan's international status.

After assuming her post, Lin discovered to her surprise that the Academia Historica's official summary of its own history only begins with its reestablishment in Taiwan in 1957. The period from 1912 (when it was founded at the start of the ROC) to 1949 (when the ROC government relocated to Taiwan) was entirely ignored. Historians should deal with historical facts, and upon assuming her post Lin emphasized the following: Taiwan's "national history" must be defined within the context of the history of the Republic of China, and the ROC's current authority over the areas of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu was defined by the 1952 Treaty of Peace between the Republic of China and Japan-better known as the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty or the Treaty of Taipei.

As World War II raged in 1943, the leaders (from left) of China, the United States, and Britain met at the Cairo Conference. There they issued the Cairo Declaration, which proclaimed that Taiwan and Penghu would be restored to the Republic of China after the war. The declaration, however, is not as legally binding a document as the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty.

Changing sovereignty

Lin points out that the incidents and international agreements that have affected sovereignty over Taiwan include the following:

(1) At the end of the first Sino-Japanese War in 1895 the Treaty of Shimonoseki ceded sovereignty over Taiwan and Penghu to Japan "in perpetuity."

(2) In 1911 nationalist revolutionaries overthrew the Qing Dynasty, establishing the Republic of China. Consequently, the ROC inherited Qing territories, including Kinmen and Matsu.

(3) When World War II ended in 1945, Japan, as an Axis nation, surrendered, and the ROC "received" Taiwan and Penghu as one of the allied powers. Until the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty of 1952, Taiwan and Penghu were ruled under "military occupation" with an unresolved international status.

(4) In 1949 the Chinese communists established the People's Republic of China and took over mainland China from the ROC, whose government decamped to Taiwan.

(5) Under the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty of 1952, Japan renounced its rights to Taiwan and Penghu that it had gained under the Treaty of Shimonoseki. The ROC, as the other signatory, thus acquired sovereignty over Taiwan and Penghu in addition to its preexisting sovereignty over Kinmen and Matsu.

Lin explains that the ROC's authority over Taiwan and Penghu as a "military occupation" was by no means unique. South Korea was under control of the allied military from 1945 to 1948, and it wasn't until the San Francisco Treaty of 1952 that it attained a "legally independent" status.

Article 10 of the treaty states that new and old Taiwanese were thenceforth citizens of the ROC.

Revisiting the Treaty of Taipei

The Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty, which deals with sovereignty over Taiwan and is often called the Treaty of Taipei, was signed on April 28, 1952 in what is known today as the Taipei Guest House. It is a subsidiary treaty of the Treaty of San Francisco.

Japan was one of the defeated nations of WWII, and after the war 48 allied nations signed the Treaty of San Francisco in 1951. The treaty reads: "Japan renounces all right, title and claim to Formosa [Taiwan] and the Pescadores [Penghu]." As a result of the standoff between the Kuomintang and the Chinese communists, neither the ROC nor the People's Republic of China, which was established in 1949, was invited to sign. But under Article 4 of the treaty, Japan was required to make "special arrangements" with "such authorities" as were governing the various areas that it was renouncing. Lin points out that as far as Taiwan and Penghu are concerned, those "special arrangements" noted in the treaty were agreed upon in the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty, which was signed seven hours before the Treaty of San Francisco went into effect.

For a transfer of territory due to international war, a signed agreement between the ceding and receiving nations is required in order for the victor to obtain legally binding rule. Focusing on this point, Lin notes that the signatory nation the Republic of China, which was founded in 1912, had engaged in eight years of bitter war with Japan, the other signatory. Therefore, when organizing the history of Taiwan, an historian should certainly not overlook the history of the ROC since its founding, Lin argues. Moreover, when the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty went into effect on August 5, 1952, it marked a legal change of sovereignty over Taiwan and Penghu and the establishment of the ROC's sovereignty over Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu. Lin then goes a step farther to point out that without the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty, it would be hard to answer a basic question of national status and belonging: "Who are the Taiwanese?"

When ROC foreign minister Yeh Kung-chao (far left) and Shiroshiji Kimura (second from left), Japan's overseas affairs representative in Taipei, signed and exchanged copies of the instruments of ratification of the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty on August 5, 1952, the ROC formally accepted sovereignty over Taiwan from Japan.

Ceding territory... to no party?

As a subsidiary treaty of the Treaty of San Francisco, the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty clearly noted: "Japan has renounced all right, title, and claim to Taiwan (Formosa) and Penghu (the Pescadores) as well as the Spratly Islands and the Paracel Islands." The choice of the word "renounced" led to much debate regarding the political status of Taiwan. It now serves as the starting point for Lin, amid the claims made by the unification and independence camps, to call for a "return to historical reality."

Those who assert that "Taiwan's political status is still unresolved," including senior members of the independence movement such as Peng Ming-min and Huang Chao-tang, as well as former education minister Tu Cheng-sheng, argue that the phrasing, "renounced... right, title and claim" doesn't mean that Japan was "returning" the territories of Taiwan and Penghu, and it doesn't mean that the ROC "possesses" sovereignty over Taiwan and Penghu.

Based on this reading, when the Democratic Progressive Party was in power, the phrase "unresolved sovereignty" was put into textbooks to describe Taiwan's international legal status. Beginning in 2006, the Ministry of Education made "the history of Taiwan" separate from the "history of China"-with different textbooks for each. Many of the privately published textbooks first started to discuss in detail the change in sovereignty over Taiwan following WWII. Nevertheless, most of them rejected the idea that the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty had returned sovereignty over Taiwan to the Republic of China, and instead went the route of arguing that sovereignty over Taiwan was "still undetermined."

With regard to doubts about the choice of "renounced," Lin notes that various verbs are used in international treaties to describe the transfer of territory, including "cede," "annex," "renounce," and "restore." But in light of the historical background of the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty, "renounced" was the best choice: "The Treaty of Shimonoseki ceded sovereignty over Taiwan and Penghu 'in perpetuity' to Japan. Consequently, there was no need to use the term 'restore.' It was an altogether different situation from the 'leased territory' of Hong Kong or the Chinese territory 'under Portuguese administration' of Macao being returned to China."

With regard to the debate about whether Taiwan and Penghu were being transferred to the ROC, Lin believes that one must return to Article 10 of the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty. Simply put, that article states that when the treaty goes into effect, "nationals of the Republic of China shall be deemed to include": (1) the residents of Taiwan and Penghu (the "old Taiwanese," such as former ROC president Lee Teng-hui) and their descendants; and (2) those with "Chinese nationality" who decamped to Taiwan from the mainland in 1949 (the "new Taiwanese," such as former President Chiang Ching-kuo) and their descendants.

Lin emphasizes that under international law, "territory" not only refers to land but also to "natural persons" (living, breathing people) and "juridical persons" (institutions and organizations). The Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895 gave sovereignty over Taiwan and Penghu to Japan, so that the Taiwanese of that era became Japanese citizens. When the Treaty of Taipei renounced Japanese sovereignty over Taiwan and Penghu, the Japanese citizenship of the people of Taiwan and Penghu was likewise revoked.

"If Taiwan and Penghu weren't being transferred to the Republic of China, then the Taiwanese people, who became Japanese citizens under the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895, wouldn't have become citizens of the Republic of China under Article 10 of the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty." Along these lines, she also notes that the party accepting Japan's renunciation of sovereignty was the Republic of China. Furthermore, she points to the first exchange of notes that followed the treaty, which reads: "... the terms of the present Treaty shall, in respect of the Republic of China, be applicable to all the territories which are now, or which may hereafter be, under the control of its Government."

In contrast to most of the textbooks written in 2006, which described sovereignty over Taiwan as being "undetermined," when the KMT was in power in 1999, the National Institute for Compilation and Translation published an official textbook that stressed that sovereignty over Taiwan had been settled during the war at the Cairo Conference in 1943. There, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, US president Franklin Roosevelt, and British prime minister Winston Churchill signed the Cairo Declaration, which stated that the Republic of China would have sovereignty over Taiwan after the war. Lin emphasizes that the "Cairo Declaration" was specifically a "wartime declaration." First you have wartime declarations, she notes, and then you have peace treaties after hostilities have ceased. Hence, the relationship between a "declaration" and a "treaty" is like that between a grading report and a diploma. Even if the grading report holds some legal bearing, it is a long way from the diploma in its conclusiveness as a legal document.

Nestled in the hills of the Taipei suburb of Hsintien, the Academia Historica is tasked with compiling works on the history of the ROC-including both its decades on the mainland and its current incarnation with sovereignty over Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu-as well as the history of Taiwan since the appearance of the Aboriginal peoples on the island.

The ROC goes native

In 1952, the scope of the Republic of China's effective territorial control became limited to Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu. Lin believes that it was at that point that the ROC began to abandon the "perfect begonia leaf" of mainland China and undergo a process of "localization." Unfortunately, back during the long period when the KMT held one-party rule of the nation, it couldn't see this historical reality. The party was intoxicated with the idea of "Greater China" and had to a great extent to be dragged into "localization" by the DPP, which rose from the grassroots. "If the KMT still doesn't understand the historical mistakes it made, then it will have no chance of redeeming itself in history!" she says with heartfelt sincerity.

Lin believes that those in support of a Republic of Taiwan have-perhaps as a result of the wounds of the February 28 Incident-long been embroiled in a political delusion that "recognizing the Republic of China" is equivalent to "accepting KMT rule" and have consequently rejected the reality of ROC sovereignty over Taiwan. At the same time she points to what she describes as a blind spot over "self-determination": "When Taiwan was a colony of Japan, it accepted Japanese rule and didn't push for effective self-determination. What eventually ended Japanese rule of Taiwan was none other than the ROC government, which was victorious over the Japanese in war. It may have been a government from "outside" but it wasn't a "colonial" government, and with territory limited to Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu, it was already localized."

Founded in 1945, the United Nations is the most important international arena for any country to demonstrate its sovereignty, but when the ROC was kicked off the UN Security Council in favor of the PRC in 1971, the ROC withdrew from the UN in anger. Lin notes that the UN Charter still lists the Republic of China as a member nation; the name hasn't been erased. She recommends reapplying for UN membership under the name of the Republic of China as defined territorially by the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty. Such an application would not only not challenge the PRC's authority over mainland China, but would also "reaffirm" to the international community the Republic of China's rights to Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu.

With respect to determining the territorial limits of nations, Lin emphasizes that international agreements and international law "trump" constitutional law. Consequently, even if the nation's constitution expressly states that "the territory of the Republic of China within its existing national boundaries shall not be altered except by a resolution of the National Assembly," the ROC could campaign to return to the United Nations based on the more limited territorial sovereignty granted by the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty, and also based on the UN Charter's continued inclusion of the "Republic of China" as a member state.

Revisionist history

Since 2000, the ruling party of the ROC has changed twice, and as a consequence there have been subtle changes to the laws governing how the Academia Historica functions. A 2001 amendment to the Organic Statute of the Academia Historica mandated the establishment of the Taiwan Historica under the Academia Historica, to "strengthen research into Taiwanese history." The Academia Historica during this period produced some excellent and lively work on Taiwanese history, including its Tiger Shrimp Kingdom series, says Lin, but the history of the ROC from 1912 to 1949 was largely neglected.

During that period of DPP rule, studies about the February 28 Incident after WWII, during which large numbers of native Taiwanese were treated savagely by the newly installed KMT government, as well as histories of the "White Terror" period of political oppression that followed, abounded. "Whether intentionally or not, the KMT took on much of the color of a foreign colonizer in these histories; it was much like how the Japanese colonial rulers were portrayed."

In contrast to the "party history" and "greater China" perspective of the Academia Historica during the long period of one-party KMT rule and the emphasis on historical studies on the February 28 Incident and White Terror during the DPP's rule, the Academia Historica under Lin's leadership has established a dual-track emphasis on "the history of the Republic of China" and the "history of Taiwan." The former includes the history of the ROC on the mainland from 1911 to 1949, and the latter includes the full scope of Taiwanese history. The key point of intersection of these two lines of political history is the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty-because its signing was the moment when the Republic of China, which was founded in 1912, was recognized in an international treaty as extending its sovereignty to Taiwan and Penghu after previously being reduced by the Chinese Civil War to holding only Kinmen and Matsu.

Objective history

Previous Academia Historica phrasing that distinguished the "rule of Ming loyalist Zheng Chenggong" and "Qing rule" from the "Dutch occupation" and "Japanese occupation" suggested that "only Chinese rule of Taiwan was proper, and that non-Chinese rule was illegitimate or nonexistent." Lin has continued the practice introduced when the DPP was in power of describing the governing authority of each and every era as a rule: "Dutch rule" "Zheng rule," "Japanese rule" and so forth. "By putting aside the subjective positions of those writing history, it represents a turn toward basing descriptions on historical realities." She has proposed using "Min [people's] rule" for the period after 1945 since the Chinese character min is part of the name "Republic of China" (minguo, the Chinese word for "republic," is a combination of min-"people"- and guo-"state"). The choice will also serve as a reminder that during this period there will always be "the possibility of a change of ruling party."

She also emphasizes that national history shouldn't be written as if the nation were sealed off from the rest of the world. To the contrary, it should take world history into account. As an example, she cites the international background of the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty. It was created in the shadow of the Korean War (1950-53) and the Cold War, when the ROC-consisting of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu-was regarded a buffer state between communist nations and America, Japan and other anti-communist states. "But such connections between world history and national history are not yet found in high-school textbooks."

As part of its effort to connect national history with world history, "The Academia Historica is largely using Western dates, although it does provide notes with the reign periods traditionally used in Chinese history. The practice will help foreign readers gain understanding about our nation's history, and it will remind all those researching and writing ROC and Taiwanese history that one needs to make connections between these histories and world history."

As the first woman president of the Academia Historica in the 95 years since its founding, Lin wants to designate the "national history" as the history of the ROC. She also hopes that the government will make August 5, the anniversary of the entry into force of the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty, a national holiday-so as to commemorate when Taiwan gained a legal basis for shaking off Japanese rule and becoming part of the Republic of China. She hopes that commemorating that event will help to forge a consensus about the nation's status.