Talk:Pescadores Islands
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This article is part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Taiwanese counties.
Political Development of the Pescadores
It is clear from this memo that prior to the Korean War, the US accepted Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan.
But the fighting that broke out in the Korean peninsula in June 1950 changed the US attitude.
Seeing Taiwan's value as an 'unsinkable aircraft carrier', a famous characterisation by General Douglas MacArthur, the US began to say that 'the status of Taiwan was undetermined'.
To give legal basis to this claim, the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty with Japan merely committed the latter to surrendering Taiwan but did not specify to whom the island was to be returned.
This amounted to a repudiation of US treaty obligation as spelt out in the Cairo and Potsdam instruments.
Despite this deliberate attempt to deny Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan, former US President Richard Nixon pledged to China in no uncertain terms:
'Principle One: There is one China, and Taiwan is part of China.
'There will be no more statements made to the effect that the status of Taiwan is undetermined.'
This declaration is there in the declassified documents of his historic trip to Beijing in 1972.
However, American words were not matched by deeds.
Despite the Nixon pledge, the 1979 Joint Communique establishing formal diplomatic relations was crafted in a way to give the US room for backpedalling.
In that document, the US said that 'it acknowledges the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is a part of China'.
The US Congress later elaborated on this in the Taiwan Enabling Act Report, March 1, 1979.
It said that 'the Administration acknowledged the Chinese position that Taiwan is part of China, but the US has not itself agreed to this position'.
Thus, from the Chinese point of view, the USCC report calling for an end to the 'one-China policy' is but another attempt to deny Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan.
While Beijing has refrained thus far from public criticism of the report, no one should be under any illusion that it will sit on its hands while Washington tinkers with the one-China policy.
Name Origin
The article gives "pesacadores" as the Portugese word for "fishermen"; I know that that is true in Spanish as well. It makes enough sense that a colonial power would have named an island like this, but I just wanted to make sure we know that it's Portugal and not Spain. --BDD 17:41, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
