Dear Honorable Secretary of State Madam Clinton:

Taiwan as a free independent country would be of great strategic importance in the Pacific. If the USA lets the Republic Of China (ROC) Chinese Kuomintang Party, succeed in their plot to sell out Taiwan to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Chinese Communist Party, it will endanger the security and stability of the entire Western Pacific region, including Japan.

 In September of 1951, Japan signed a Peace Treaty in San Francisco,₂ renouncing all its rights and claims to Taiwan and effectively handing Taiwan over to the Allied forces, with USA as the principal occupying power. Taiwanese people are supposed to be legally protected by the USA Constitution. Instead, they have been abandoned as stateless people and forced at gunpoint to accept the foreign Chinese nationality of the ROC, which as the losing side of the Chinese civil war, has become an international pariah non-state, without a country.

 It’s time to recognize the legal status of Taiwan remains that of a USA protectorate, and end the long suffering of the Taiwanese people, who are still trapped as political orphans, abandoned as though they were shameful leftovers, of unfinished USA responsibilities from the second world war.

 The USA still has the opportunity, the moral obligation, and the legal authority under international law, to establish a strong buffer to Chinese aggression in the Pacific, by freeing the Taiwanese people after 63 years of illegal occupation and oppression by the ROC Chinese Kuomintang Party.

  The USA should conduct an open referendum in Taiwan on the Independence of Taiwan. This referendum should be conducted entirely by the USA and directly under the military protection of the USA. After the referendum, the USA can then, with a clear conscience, grant the Taiwanese people the true independence they deserve, and empower them to contribute positively to world peace and prosperity as a friendly partner of the USA.

 

A condensed Taiwan Political History for your reference:

 Taiwan has never in recorded history ever been a part of China. The Chinese have less legal right to claim Taiwan as a province of China than claiming California as a province.  After all, there are more Chinese living in California than in Taiwan.

 The Taiwanese native people do not even have a DNA relationship with the Chinese people. In fact, native Formosan seafarers traveled as far away as New Zealand, Hawaii and Easter Island. New Language Phylogenies research from the University of Auckland, places the origin of the Austonesian language in Taiwan, approximately 5230 years ago. The New Zealand native Maori people have a direct DNA match with today’s Taiwanese/Formosans, but not the Chinese. _5,6,7

 Over the past 400 years, many countries established colonies in Taiwan. The first to come were the Dutch, who in 1624 established a fortress, named “Zeelandia” on a peninsula in the south called Tayouan, meaning Terrace Bay. This later evolved into the pronunciation of Taiwan, which then came to be known as the name for the whole island.

 In the north, the Spanish also established settlements with English and other Asian trading people.

 The Dutch brought in Minnan and Hakka people resided in southeast part of today’s China₈ as migrant workers for their sugar plantations and rice fields. They usually came for a few years (without family) and then returned to China. Eventually, more and more settled in Taiwan, and married aborigine wives. Thus, a new race was born: the Taiwanese.₉

 In 1662, the Dutch in Tayouan were defeated by a Chinese pirate, Koxinga, who was on the run from the newly established Manchu Empire in China. He in turn was driven out in 1683. The Dutch and others then returned to Tayouan, although not as a ruling entity.₁₀

 In the 1870's, after pirates operating from bases in Taiwan, had captured a number of American, Japanese and French ships passing the island, their respective governments protested to Peking, but the Manchu emperor of China at that time officially stated: "Those people in Taiwan are beyond our territory."

 In fact, the French got so upset by the recurring attacks on their ships, and the Manchu’s disavowal of any Chinese territorial rights in Taiwan, that The French sent a naval fleet to the island, and for nine months in 1884-85, the northern part of Taiwan was subjected to France’s control. France offered Taiwan to Japan, in exchange for assistance in its war against the Manchu.

 It wasn't until 1885, that the Manchu Imperial authorities decided to try and unilaterally declare Taiwan to be a "province" of their Empire.  They wanted to outmaneuver the Japanese, who were expanding their influence south to Taiwan. Liu Ming Chuan was named as the “Governor of Taiwan Province”. At this time, Taiwan was made up of hundreds of tribes, dozens of foreign settlements, without any collective governing body. When Liu tried to exert some authority, a series of armed uprisings broke out. In 1891 Liu was replaced by Shao Youlian who was in turn replaced by Tang Jinsong. By any measure, at no time were the Chinese able to annex or even exert any control over Taiwan.

 The brief 10 year farce, of Taiwan being declared a province of China, officially ended on April 17, 1895, when Japan signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki₁ with China. In Article 2 of the Treaty, it states that China cedes to Japan in perpetuity and full sovereignty the island of Formosa, together with all islands appertaining or belonging to the said island of Formosa. China recalled Tang, and on May 8, 1895, aboard a Japanese warship_3, a formal transfer to Japan took place, of whatever self-proclaimed authority China ever had in Taiwan.

 However, the Taiwanese didn't like the idea of being Unilaterally incorporated into Japan, any more than the aborted attempt by the Manchu, to make them part of China. Consequently, on 25 May 1895, they established the Taiwan Republic as the first independent republic in Asia. A few days later, the Japanese invaded Northern Taiwan with a military force of over 12,000 soldiers.  On 21 October 1895, more Japanese soldiers invaded Tainan, the southern capital of the nascent Taiwan Republic, thus ending its short life.₉

 The Japanese occupation of Taiwan was harsh and the Japanese set out to convert the people of Taiwan to the Japanese way of life. The Taiwanese educational system was modeled on Japan’s, with Japanese as the primary language. The infrastructure including railways, roads, ports and industry were extensively developed to Japanese specifications. In the 1930’s, the east and south-east part of Taiwan was made accessible by road and rail which enabled Japanese forces to finally suppress the still rebellious native Taiwanese aboriginal tribes in these areas.

 Japan colonized Taiwan for 50 years until the end of World War II. Six years after the war ended, In September of 1951, Japan signed a Peace Treaty in San Francisco,₂ renouncing all its rights and claims to Formosa/Taiwan and effectively handing Taiwan over to the Allied forces with USA as the principal occupying power. Neither of the opposing sides in the Chinese Civil War, the ROC, “Republic of China” (right-wing extremist Chinese Kuomintang Party) or the PRC, “Peoples Republic of China” (left-wing extremist Chinese Communist Party) were invited to be a signatory of this Peace Treaty.

 The ROC dictator, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek had tried to grab Taiwan as Chinese war booty at the end of the WWII.  However, General MacArthur only specified that Japanese forces within China (excluding Manchuria), Formosa and French Indo-China north of 16 north latitude shall surrender to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, as a commander acting on behalf of the Allied Powers. In fact, the Japanese on Taiwan initially surrendered to the American forces, who along with other allied forces began landing in Taiwan. Forty six days after the surrender, a Chinese air force Col. become the first ROC official to set foot on Taiwan. At No point was the ROC ever granted any territorial Rights to Taiwan. The ROC finally sent some 1,000 Chinese gendarmes , who were ferried across the Formosa Strait in United States commandeered Japanese ships to “help” the American forces in the Japanese surrender process._3,4

 However, the Kuomintang ROC was soon very preoccupied with the Chinese Civil War raging between them and the Communist PRC. The PRC began to win the war and were confining the ROC to a smaller and smaller area of China. To avoid complete capitulation, Generalissimo Chang Kai-shek launched a full-scale invasion of Taiwan and over two million Chinese ROC soldiers and over one million elitist Chinese ROC supporters fled from China to Taiwan.

 The USA was caught in a quandary, they had already granted Korea, which Japan had occupied for 40 years, its independence. Taiwan was even more deserving of its independence from Japan with nearly 7 million ethnic Taiwanese people.  However, the Chinese ROC was now brutally occupying Taiwan with the USA and other allied military forces in Taiwan doing little or nothing to constrain the raping and pillaging by the Chinese ROC soldiers. In order to suppress public demonstrations and dissent by the protesting Taiwanese, the Chinese ROC soldiers massacred over 30,000 innocent unarmed Taiwanese and imprisoned another 200,000. (The infamous February 28, 1947, “2-28 Massacre” is just one horrific example of brutality perpetrated throughout Taiwan by the invading Chinese ROC forces.)

 Without any basis in international law, the ROC then claimed that Taiwan was now a province of China and that the ROC remained the true government of all China, that the ROC was just temporarily operating from the self-declared “New” province of Taiwan, until they could expel the PRC Communists and return to China.

 The USA not wanting to recognize the PRC Communist government in China, turned a blind eye to the ROC’s rape of the Taiwanese people and accepted for the sake of expediency, the ROC’s military occupation of Taiwan. Although the USA continued to maintain a substantial military presence in Taiwan, the USA never officially transferred to the ROC, any of the rights and claims to Taiwan, that under international law were legally ceded to USA by Japan, in the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty.

 However, the brutal military dictatorship of the ROC finally turned the USA’s stomach.  Concurrent with the USA recognition of the PRC in 1979, the USA closed their military bases in Taiwan, pulled almost all of the USA forces out of Taiwan, and informed the ROC, that the USA would no longer be able to recognize the ROC as the government of China. Furthermore, the USA would not continue to protect the ROC from their PRC countrymen unless they discontinued Martial Law in Taiwan and cut back on the violent repression being waged against Taiwanese dissidents by the son of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, who had become President after his father’s death.

 As the ROC Kuomintang elite became rich from their plunder of the Taiwanese people, most of them emigrated to the USA, Canada and Europe. Untold Billions of dollars were transferred out of Taiwan and secreted abroad by these people and the ROC Kuomintang Party apparatchiks.

 Today, Taiwan has a population of 23 million, of which, less than 2 million are Chinese remnants of the ROC invaders.

 After the son of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek died and with the relaxation of Martial Law, the Taiwanese people finally succeed in getting a Taiwanese President elected. The Chinese Communist PRC threatened the Taiwanese President that if he tried to hold a referendum on Taiwanese Independence they would attack, and to backup their threats, the PRC actually fired guided missiles into the sea near the capital city Taipei. Unprepared for the venomous threats and outrageous show of force by the Chinese, the USA also warned the Taiwanese President against holding a referendum and declaring independence. The USA indicated it would likely suspend sales of defensive arms and might not be able to honor its agreement to defend Taiwan against a Chinese Communist invasion.

 The ROC Kuomintang Party was secretly entrenched and buried in all sections of the government.  Financed by billions in party funds hidden overseas, they undermined and undercut the Taiwanese President’s administration and falsely played on the fears of the Taiwanese people, until finally the Kuomintang Party could “buy” a new election and officially retake their control of the government.

 Today, the Kuomintang Party is not secretly assassinating dissidents in Taiwan and the USA as they used to. Instead, they are using their control of the media, the police, the bureaucracy and the courts to not only wrongfully imprison our Taiwanese Ex-President and other members of his administration, but also bury Taiwanese independence supporters and activists, in a legal morass of capricious and discriminatory regulations and rulings.

 Now, the ROC Chinese Kuomintang Party no longer dreams of taking back control of China from the PRC. Instead, they now conspire with the PRC to sell out Taiwan for even more wealth and privileges in their Chinese motherland, to be granted them as a reward by the PRC, than they have previously stolen from Taiwan.

 The growing alignment between the Chinese PRC and the Chinese ROC must be stopped before Taiwan is irretrievably lost as a democratic country. Please, Hold a free referendum and free the Taiwanese people from Chinese expansion and oppression.

Respectfully,
Corinne Ong

 

Reference Materials:

1. Treaty of Shimonoseki; http://www.taiwandocuments.org/shimonoseki01.htm

2. Treaty of Peace with Japan http://www.taiwandocuments.org/sanfrancisco01.htm - Article 2

3. Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, General Order no. One
http://www.taiwandocuments.org/surrender05.htm - MILITARY AND NAVAL

4. The Surrender of Japanese Forces in China, Indochina, and Formosa
http://www.taiwandocuments.org/japansurrender.htm - Formosa

5. Diamond, J.M., Taiwan’s Gift to the World , Nature, v. 403, pp. 709-710, 2000
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v403/n6771/full/403709a0.html

6. Pacific people spread from Taiwan. The University of Auckland, 23 January 2009
http://www.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/home/template/news_item.jsp?cid=24590

7. Maori Origins (27/03/2003); http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s823810.htm

8. The origin of Minnan and Hakka, the so-called "Taiwanese", inferred by HLA study.
Tissue Antigens. 2001 Mar;57(3):192-9. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11285126

9. Taiwan's 400 years of history, http://www.taiwandc.org/hst-1624.htm

10. The Formosan Encounter - Notes on Formosan’s Aboriginal Society: A Selection of Documents from Dutch Archival Sources” Volume I, II and III. Edited by Leonard Blusse & Natalie Everts.