On the eve of the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Cairo 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 Cairo Declaration, issued by Britain, China and the United States in 1943, was of great significance in rebuilding international order after the end of World War II, experts said.

The Chinese Embassy in Egypt  marked the anniversary of the declaration.

Chinese Ambassador Song Aiguo said Saturday that the Cairo Declaration cements the legal foundation for the solution to the territorial disputes with Japan over the Diaoyu Islands.

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

"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.

"The Cairo Declaration, together with other World War II documents, provides a legal baisis for the Chinese exercise of sovereignty of Taiwan and the Diaoyu Islands. The documents  also formulated the basis for international order after the war," Li Li, a research fellow with Chinese Academy of Social Sciences was quoted by China News Agency as saying.

The People's Daily, the Party's flagship newspaper, said Sunday that Japan has been trying to deny historical facts and the spirit that the Cairo Declaration conveys as well as breaking international order.

"Japan has focused more on being a victim of two nuclear attacks and that is true. It has perhaps let the Japanese educational system focus less on aggressive militarism, aggression and the pain it inflicted in the Asia- Pacific region," said Shihoko Goto of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

On December 1, 1943, after intensive meetings in the Egyptian capital, then US President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945), British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965), and Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975) jointly vowed to continue their military actions against Japan to "restrain and punish it" until its "unconditional surrender."

The three powers agreed their purpose was that "Japan shall be stripped of all the islands in the Pacific" it had seized or occupied since the beginning of World War I, and that "all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as Manchuria, Formosa, and The Pescadores, shall be restored to the Republic of China."

The statement was published simultaneously in Washington, London and China's wartime capital Chongqing on the day it was issued.

Xinhua - Global Times

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