Experts say Cairo Declaration establishes post-war int'l order

BEIJING (Xinhua) - The Cairo Declaration, issued by Britain, China and the United States in 1943, is of great significance in rebuilding the international order after the end of World War II, experts said.

On the eve of the 70th anniversary of the signing of the declaration, which stated that all the territories Japan had stolen from the Chinese should be restored to China, experts at home and abroad called on the international community to jointly safeguard the established international order.

The most important significance of the Cairo Declaration is that major territories seized by Japan since 1895 should be restored, said Michael Schaller, a regents professor of the University of Arizona.

He said the declaration included a determination that Japan should "give up virtually all the territory it had acquired by force since 1895 and 1914, including northeast China, the island of Taiwan and nearby islands ... and Pescadores."

"When Japan accepted the Potsdam Declaration ... as part of its agreement to surrender, it acknowledged that in doing so it was also accepting the terms of the Cairo Declaration ..." added Schaller, who is also a member of the Society for the Historians of American Foreign Relations.

"I don't think there was any ambiguity or confusion about the fact that Japan would need to surrender all territories it had seized on the Asian mainland and Taiwan. I don't think that even today's strident Japanese nationalists question that," he said.

Dan Plesch, director of the Center for International Studies and Diplomacy at SOAS University of London, said the Cairo Declaration was the culmination of a success for China during World War II.

"This in turn was only made possible because of the heroic resistance of the Chinese people to Japanese aggression," he said.

In regard to the role played by the declaration in post-war reconstruction and today's world order, Plesch said the document was an important agreement that led to the end of World War II.

"Its content, particularly with respect to Japan, was part of the settlement which enabled the war to come to an end with the Japanese surrender," he said.

Plesch said that as the declaration stipulated the solution to territorial and border issues, any defiant moves are "potentially highly destabilizing with respect to international order."

Huang Dahui, director of the Center for East Asian Studies at Renmin University in Beijing, said that in face of Japan's flagrant defiance of the post-war order set up by the Cairo Declaration and other documents of international law, the international community should have a better understanding of the declaration to ensure obedience to relevant terms.

The Cairo Declaration stated in explicit terms that "all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as Manchuria, Formosa (Taiwan), and Pescadores" shall be restored to the Chinese, he said, adding that the Diaoyu Islands, then administrated by Taiwan, should be included in the returned territories.

The Japanese government, however, took a unilateral action to "nationalize" the Diaoyu Islands in a move not only to severely infringe upon China's territorial sovereignty, but also to publicly challenge the outcome of the world anti-fascist war and the post-war international order, Huang said.

The three signatories of the Cairo Declaration - Britain, China and the United States - should work together to ensure the implementation of the document and safeguard the fruits of the victory, he said.