In August 1943, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt discussed the reconstruction of the post-war international order at the Quebec Conference in Canada. Later, Roosevelt planned to convene a summit meeting between China, britain, the Soviet Union and the United States. However, the Soviet Union and Japan entered into a Soviet-Japanese non-aggression pact (signed on April 13, 1941, and finally the Soviet Union unilaterally declared its abolition on April 5, 1945, and sent troops to attack the Japanese Kwantung Army in August), indicating that Stalin would not participate in the international conference attended by Chiang Kai-shek. In the end, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to divide the four-nation conference into two parts. The first part was the Cairo Conference held in Egypt by the United States, Britain, and China without Stalin's participation; the second part was the Tehran Conference in Iran by Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union without Chiang Kai-shek's participation.
From November 22 to 27, the heads of government of China, the United States and the United Kingdom met in Cairo, egypt, and in order to seek Stalin's opinion, the press communiqué drawn up by the Cairo conference was not immediately signed, and on the 30th day after the Cairo conference, Roosevelt and Churchill immediately went to Tehran to meet with Stalin. When Churchill asked Stalin if he had read the communiqué drawn up at the Cairo Conference, Stalin replied that he was "totally" in favour of the communiqué and its entire contents, and made it clear that the decision was "correct" and that "Korea should be independent and that the islands of Manchuria, Taiwan, and Penghu should be returned to China." The next day (1 December), the United States, the United States and Britain issued a "press communiqué", commonly known as the Cairo Declaration.
The cairo declaration reads as follows:
President Roosevelt, Chairman Chiang Kai-shek and Prime Minister Churchill, together with their military and diplomatic advisers, have completed a meeting in North Africa, and I hereby make the following statement:
The military personnel of the three countries have reached unanimous agreement on the future operational plan against Japan, and our three major allies are determined to exert unflinching pressure on the brutal enemy from all aspects of the sea, land and air, and this pressure is already growing.
The purpose of the war waged by our three great allies is to stop and punish Japan's aggression, and the three countries have no intention of making profits for themselves or expanding their territory.
The purpose of the Three Kingdoms is to deprive Japan of all the islands seized or occupied in the Pacific ocean since the beginning of the First World War in 1914; to return to the Republic of China the territories that Japan has stolen from China, such as the four northeastern provinces, Taiwan, and the Penghu Islands; to expel Japan from the country of other lands seized by Force or Greed; and our three allies, aware of the slave treatment of the Korean people, have decided to make Korea free and independent for a considerable period of time.
On the basis of the objectives identified above, and consistent with other United Nations objectives in the war against Japan, our three allies will persevere in their major and protracted wars in order to obtain Japan's unconditional surrender.
The Cairo Declaration clearly states that: First, China, Britain, and the United States will persist in fighting against Japan until Japan's unconditional surrender; second, Japan will return all the islands occupied in the Pacific region since World War I; and third, all territories acquired by Japan since Chinese, such as Manchuria, Taiwan, and the Penghu Islands, should be returned to the Republic of China. Other lands seized by Japan by force or greed must also be expelled from Japan.
Hopkins, the special assistant to the President of the United States, drafted a draft "communiqué" based on the triumvirate talks, in which the first draft made it clear that "territories stolen by the Japanese in Chinese, such as Manchuria and Taiwan, should be returned to the Republic of China as a matter of course." However, when the British representative, Sir Judgan, participated in the revision proposal to change the "return to the Republic of China" in the draft to "of course it must be abandoned by Japan", the two sides entered the discussion on whether to revise the original text.
To this end, the Chinese representative Wang Pethui had a fierce debate with the British side.
Wang Pethui, graduated in 1900 (Guangxu 26th year) with the first place in the law department, and obtained the first examination certificate of Qin Zi, the first person in China to obtain a diploma from a domestic university (or college or college preparatory), and is a well-known legal master at home and abroad. At the same time, he was not only a veteran of the League, but also participated in the anti-Qing revolutionary movement. After the Republic of China, he successively served as the chief of foreign affairs, the chief of justice, the premier of the state, the acting president of the Executive Yuan, and the first president of the judicial court of the Republic of China.
Wang's arguments were finally supported by the representative of the United States, and the draft communiqué was later stated as follows: "The territory stolen by Japan from the Republic of China, especially Manchuria and Taiwan, shall be returned to the Republic of China." This text deletes the more pronounced phrases "perfidy" and "reasonableness" in the US text.
At that time, after difficult consultations, Wang reached an agreement with the representatives of the United States, and in the fourth paragraph of the Cairo Declaration, it was clearly stipulated that after the war, "Manchuria, Taiwan, and Penghu will of course return to China." During the discussion of the draft Declaration, the British representative said that the other areas occupied by Japan were mentioned in the draft as "to be deprived", except for Manchuria, Taiwan and Penghu, which stated that they should be "returned to the Republic of China". He suggested that, for the sake of consistency, the areas should also be changed to "must be abandoned by Japan."
When reviewing it, Wang Found that this was refuted: the Cairo Declaration does not explicitly declare the return of Manchuria, Taiwan, and Penghu to China, and uses vague wording, and the whole world will be puzzled. "Such a revision only says that Japan should give up and does not say which country it should belong to, then the people of Chinese and even the people of the world are deeply confused... If the wording were so vague, the communiqué would be meaningless and would lose its value. "The British cannot find a reason to refute it, it is in line with the principles of public international law, and they realize that this move is deeply related to China's major rights and interests, and the Chinese side has made it clear that there is no room for concessions."
At the same time, Wang Made clever use of the delicate international relations between the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union at that time, and finally, with the support of the United States, forced the British to make a compromise, stipulating: "Manchuria, Taiwan, and Penghu will of course return to China." "The Cairo Declaration was finally successfully adopted.
The New York Times, the British Times and the JoongAng Daily, published from 1 to 3 December 1943, all published the contents of the Cairo Declaration. The Cairo Declaration solemnly declares that the purpose of the Three Kingdoms is to deprive Japan of all the islands it has seized or occupied in the Pacific since the beginning of the First World War in 1914, and to return to the Republic of China the territories that Japan has stolen from China, such as Manchuria, Taiwan, and the Penghu Islands.
The results of this debate played a very crucial role in safeguarding china's territorial rights and interests and laying the foundation for the post-war Far East. Because this diplomatic victory is not only as simple as recovering the territory of Japan, but its more far-reaching significance is to completely seal the backdoors of the United States and the Soviet Union, and even Britain's occupation of Taiwan and the three eastern provinces after the war, so that it will forever lose its legal basis. Therefore, China has never had a two-German issue, and today and even in the future, when the two sides of the Taiwan Strait talk about reunification, the basis of international law must be found in the Cairo Conference.