The Kinmen and Matsu Question and Challenge

Wednesday, July 10, by Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

In 2010, while speaking to a Taiwanese group in California, I was asked in a question-and-answer session: “What do you think of Confucius Institutes?”

Confucius Institutes had been gaining in popularity at the time but despite that, my answer was quick and to the point. “Beware of them, they are Trojan horses.”

Few grasped the implications, yet now more than a decade later, the US Government Accountabil-ity Office has finally woken up to the dangers they pose. There are barely five institutes left at US universities and colleges where once there were more than 100.

A few years later, in a different discussion with Pavel Suian, former Romanian foreign policy advi-sor and a past colleague of mine at Taipei Medical University, he asked: “Why do you keep trying to make a case for Taiwan in the UN? It was expelled long ago.”

Once again, I spoke directly: “Read the actual wording of UN Resolution 2758, it never mentions Taiwan, it states that the followers of Chiang Kai-shek are expelled. There is nothing there about Taiwan or Taiwanese.”

Thus today, more than a decade later, it is not surprising to finally find that various governments are at last talking about the nuances of Resolution 2758 and how that resolution does not exclude Taiwan from the UN.

Why bring these examples up?

The reason is simple. The Peoples Republic of China (PRC) in addition to its efforts to dominate the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait has now upped its game. It has created laws to justify “executing” those that it judges have defended the de facto independence of Taiwan.

As the PRC ratchets up its rhetoric on how to punish these “splittists,” a new or shall we say, “un-recognized” rabbit hole in Taiwan-China relations is being exposed, one that all sides hesitate to plumb.

That hole and so challenge is the strange status of Kinmen and Matsu, two islands, which are completely separate from Taiwan and Penghu and yet are entwined with them and the 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty and Resolution 2758.

To be sure, way back in 1949 Mao Zedong had sent his troops to invade Kinmen where in what is know as the Battle of Gunmingtou they were defeated.

There was also the First Taiwan Strait Crisis from 1954 to 1955 where Mao’s Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) prepared to invade Kinmen, and the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis 1958 where the PLA bombarded Kinmen.

Recently there have been regular Chinese vessel incursions into Kinmen waters. Yet for two islands in such close proximity to China, the PRC’s behavior towards them has been relatively subdued for many decades.

Why? What makes Kinmen and Matsu different? What keeps the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from pushing the envelope there? In their way, these islands challenge all sides with their labyrinthian rabbit hole depths.

Kinmen and Matsu were not part of the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed between the Manchu-led Qing Dynasty, and the Empire of Japan, and which ceded Taiwan and Penghu to the latter. This treaty made Taiwan and Penghu colonies of Japan, long before the WuChang uprising in 1911, which led to the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty and the subsequent power struggles, wars, and developments that would create the current CCP and PRC..

Therefore, the islands of Kinmen and Matsu were not part of the subsequent 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty, by which Japan “renounced” all right, title and claim to Taiwan and Penghu

However, the treaty did not specify which entity Taiwan’s sovereignty would be transferred to.

In other words, Kinmen and Matsu were always part of the ‘China” that emerged from the 20th Century wars in Asia and to which the San Francisco Peace Treaty did not apply.

Thus, while the CCP drove Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government into exile on Taiwan and Penghu in 1949, that government was not in exile on Kinmen and Matsu. That is an important distinction.

However, ironically, or perhaps not, Kinmen and Matsu were also never included in the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty that was in effect from 1955 to 1980, by which the US pledged to defend Taiwan and Penghu.

Why so? That answer again can be found in the US nebulous position on the question of Taiwan’s sovereignty, which to this day is that it is “undecided.” Also the US has never clearly stated its offi-cial position on Kinmen and Matsu.

Why then does the PRC not claim these islands on separate grounds? If it did, it would have to separate that claim from its desire and claim to possess Taiwan and Penghu.

Further. as a former Japanese colony, Taiwan and Penghu could also be granted the right of self-determination by the 1945 UN Charter, while Kinmen and Matsu would not. Which nation wants to separate and untie that knot?

If the CCP claims that Kinmen and Matsu belong to it by being part of the Manchu-led Qing Dynas-ty, which later became China, then it must treat Taiwan differently because unlike Kinmen and Ma-tsu, the Qing Dynasty ceded the sovereignty of Taiwan and Penghu to Japan.

Regarding Kinmen and Matsu, the US also has its issues. As the chief victor over Japan in World War II and the determinant of colonial Taiwan’s status it has played a different role as regards Kinmen and Matsu. The US could not claim to be “undecided” on the sovereignty status of these islands as it is on Taiwan.

As the US officially recognized the CCP as the “sole legitimate government of China” from 1979 onwards, does that not implicitly recognize that the PRC also has jurisdiction over Kinmen and Ma-tsu?

Would the US be willing to trade Kinmen and Matsu for the PRC’s recognition of Taiwan’s already de facto independence?

What about the people on Kinmen and Matsu? Would they not face similar problems? Would they wish to remain as citizens of the PRC or would they relocate to Taiwan?

Such a migration would not be as great as that experienced when India and Pakistan’s borders were established in 1947, but it would still be disruptive.

Also if these islands remained as part of “China,” the citizens of Kinmen and Matsu would also have to face all that happened to Hong Kongers after the Hong Kong handover to China in 1997.

A final and somewhat facetious note: What about those KMT members who fought the CCP? Does Kinmen and Matsu’s status mean that the KMT did not completely lose the Chinese Civil War and could claim to continue it from Kinmen and Matsu? Or would this be something from which they could formulate a new and revised so-called “1992 consensus”?

The status of Kinmen and Matsu remains an important question, one which by no means has been fully addressed. If faced now, would certainly force all sides to clarify, explain, and justify their posi-tions. Taiwan, Kinmen, and Matsu? Who is up to the challenge?