FOCUS: Taiwan president celebrates controversial 1952 treaty with Japan+

TAIPEI, April 28 Kyodo -
Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou celebrated Tuesday a controversial 1952 treaty
with Japan, an agreement that Ma said underscores the island's sovereignty and
friendship with Japan, which for its part views the treaty as null and void.
''Today marks a milestone, for 57 years ago today the Republic of China-Japan
Peace Treaty was inked here,'' Ma said in an anniversary ceremony at the site
of the original signing, the Taipei Guesthouse.
A stately mansion typically used for hosting foreign dignitaries, the
guesthouse dates back to Taiwan's Japanese colonial era.
Japan ruled Taiwan from 1895-1945, ceding the island to the Chinese
Nationalists, or Kuomintang, after it was defeated in World War II.
In 1952, Japan signed ''The Treaty of Peace Between the Republic of China and
Japan'' with the Kuomintang government, which by that time had retreated to
Taiwan -- officially called the Republic of China, or ROC -- after losing a
civil war to the Chinese Communists in 1949.
In effect, the treaty yielded the island to the Kuomintang government, stating
that ''The disposition of (the) property of Japan in Taiwan...shall be the
subject of special arrangements between the Government of the Republic of China
and the Government of Japan.''
For the Kuomintang, Taiwan's ruling party since Ma took office last year, the
treaty legitimizes the sovereignty of Taiwan as the ROC, which has only 23
mostly impoverished allies in Africa, Central and South America, and the South
Pacific.
By contrast, China, which claims the self-ruled island as its own, has
diplomatic ties with 170 countries.
The treaty's significance, Ma said, included ''reaffirming the transfer of
sovereignty to the Republic of China.''
He added, ''At the same time, it marked the start of our friendship with
Japan'' before unveiling statues depicting officials signing the treaty.
But even amid the celebratory mood, Japan's representative to Taiwan, though
present, kept a low profile. Masaki Saito, who directs Japan's Interchange
Association, did not sit with Ma, offer remarks or participate in a guesthouse
tour.
The association serves as Japan's de facto embassy in Taipei in the absence of
official ties.
''We have a different view of the treaty (than President Ma),'' Saito told
Kyodo News on the ceremony's sidelines.
''The Sino-Japanese treaty led to our abandoning the ROC-Japan peace treaty,''
he added, referring to Tokyo's 1972 switch of recognition from Taipei to
Beijing -- a shift that, in Japan's view, negated the 1952 treaty it had signed
with the Kuomintang government.
The ceremony also drew the ire of local pundits who identify with Taiwan's
localization movement, which rejects the notion of the Republic of China and
seeks to assert the island's political and cultural independence from mainland
China.
''Japan gave up claims over Taiwan...in the 1951 San Francisco treaty, so a
second treaty -- namely, the ROC-Japan peace treaty of 1952 -- has had no
legitimacy regarding territorial claims over Taiwan,'' said Luo Fu-chuan, a
former top representative to Japan, referring to the postwar treaty in which
Japan officially ceded its colonial possessions, including Taiwan.
However, the San Francisco treaty, in Taiwan's case, makes no mention as to
which party sovereignty over the island should go.
Luo served in the pro-sovereignty administration of former President Chen
Shui-bian (2000-2008) who, like Chen's ideologically similar predecessor Lee
Teng-hui, skirted the issue of the 1952 treaty in bids to forge a new Taiwanese
identity separate from the ROC.
''In 1952, Japan couldn't take a second position regarding Taiwan...territorial
claims over which Tokyo had already given up,'' Luo added.
For his part, Ma refuted the negation of the 1952 treaty by Japan's switch of
diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing, citing the treaty's declaration
of cessation of hostilities.
''Peace treaties,'' he said, ''are penal in nature. As such, they can't be
changed.''
For Lo Chih-cheng, chairman of the political science department at Taipei's
Soochow University, Ma's clinging to a bilateral treaty with Japan that Tokyo
declared null and void in 1972 may have more to do with Taiwan's relations with
Beijing than its relations with Tokyo.
The Kuomintang, Lo said, is using the 1952 treaty as a tool to curry favor with
Beijing, which typically fumes over Taiwan's pro-independence movement but
shows willingness to engage those political elements that identify in some way
with China.
''Observing the signing of the 1952 treaty,'' Lo said, ''is one way to show
China that this Kuomintang administration isn't interested in establishing an
independent state of Taiwan, but in a concept of a greater China, of some kind
of unification.''
The Kuomintang officially supports eventual unification with the mainland, a
notion underpinning the ROC Constitution. Under Ma, who has ratcheted down
Taipei's pro-localization message since taking office, the island's relations
have warmed dramatically with China.
==Kyodo