Are you referring to the one third that then and now constitutes most of Taiwan's population and essentially all of its coastline? No, I admit I did not know this, but it makes no real difference whether they actively controlled the mountains or not. All of it was incorporated into China.
Basically, most of the western plain was under Qing control, but the mountains and most of the east coast (except Ilan) were outside of Chinese control. How can you incorporate territory into your country that you don't even control? Even the Japanese saw the absurdness of this as early as the 1870s in an exchange of diplomatic notes between their foreign ministery and the Zongli Yamen.
This one sure as hell does. It was signed, ratified, and executed without question and it was clearly legitimate. Consider the situation of Sakhalin. Nowhere did Japan transfer sovereignty in any peace agreement because it doesn't even have a peace agreement with Russia. Yet no one considers the status of any part of Sakhalin to be disputed. None of the other territories are disputed even though none were mentioned in the peace treaties as being transferred to another country. That is because the Allies all considered the matter legally settled with the surrender terms to which Japan agreed. Whatever they called it, the Japanese Instrument of Surrender was a treaty that did transfer sovereignty over those respective territories to China.
It was signed, but most certainly was NOT ratified. There were no instruments of ratification exchanged amongst the signatory parties. There was no vote in the U.S. Senate to ratify it on behalf of the United States nor did any other signatory ratify the instrument of surrender. There was NO ratification. Also, as for the southern part of Sakhalin (known to the Japanese as Karafuto) you are wrong as the Japanese DO NOT recognize Russian sovereignty over the southern half of the island precisely because there was no treaty signed between the two. If you look at a JAPANESE map of the region, that along with most of the Kurile Islands (known as Chishima Islands in Japanese) show up as white -- meaning their status is legally untermined. The only exception to this is the four small islands at the southern end of the Kurile/Chishima chain which Japan still claims as their own.
To suggest it wasn't a treaty would require you to declare the entire surrender of Japan illegitimate. You would have to argue that the Allies illegally occupied Japan, illegally took administrative control of Japan, and illegally took territories of Japan. It was a treaty, this much is settled history and law. Taiwan has no legal claim to independence.
It is legal to occupy pending a peace treaty. There are countless examples of this in the history of international state to state relations. This should be obvious to you. It is known as belligerant occupation and has occurred at end of a large number of wars pending the final peace treaty. In fact, the instrument of surrender amounts to little more than an armistice, much like was signed at the end of World War I. Between the signing of an armistice and the ratification of a peace treaty, occupation by the victor (at least partial) is quite legal.
The problem is you just misrepresent the facts to justify your own personal bias.
This coming from someone who claims a document to be a treaty that clearly is not. I have already pointed to examples where it is clear that a treaty specifically indicated a transfer of sovereignty of territory from one state to another state even when the territory was occupied and furthermore noted an examples of a treaty that, although the victor already occupied the territory, sovereignty was NOT granted. Not only have you ignored those examples, you have also declined to present counter-examples to make your point.
No doubt when it became clear that the government they didn't like would be in control of China. Any claims disputing Taiwan's status as a territory of China outside Taiwan are either the result of misunderstandings of the law or deliberate obfuscation in advancement of a political agenda.
It was all political. We all know that. However, that does not change the legal standing of Taiwan vis a vis China and the other allies. There was no transfer of sovereignty. Your claim that the Instrument of Surrender being a treaty (when it CLEARLY was not) notwithstanding.
The U.S. clearly does recognize Taiwan as part of China. There is certainly no ambiguity with regards to Japan:
No, it does not. It ACKNOWLEDGES the claim. I interviewed officials at the State Department about this as a grad student. Same with Japan. Japan's foreign ministery says that it has no say in who has sovereign control over Taiwan and that it surrendered control over the island in the Peace Treaty of San Francisco which was ratified and went into force in 1952. This was according to a Foreign Ministry official I interviewed at the Japanese embassy in Washington and has been repeated (rather controversally according to the current KMT government, but quite correctly) by the then-Japanese de facto representative to Taiwan just a few months ago.
Such a position could not be any clearer. Japan accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration in the Instrument of Surrender and reiterated that it supports that decision. The declaration clearly establishes that Taiwan is a part of China.
Then why doesn't the Japanese Foreign Ministry accept that position today?
Recognition is clearly a legal act and it certainly is true. Had the ROC remained in control there is no question as to the result for Taiwan. Only when a government they opposed was poised for control did they ever question this mater.
Recognition is purely political, not legal. Ask nearly any scholar of international law. It is clearly political, not legal. No state has the legal right or authority to compromise the legal rights of any other state or people.
My position is not about China, but about accepting the rule of law. Japan agreed to a treaty that clearly recognized Taiwan as part of China, period. That Taiwan was transferred to China is indisputable. China taking control of Taiwan was the realization of the Cairo Declaration terms that Taiwan be restored to China. To interpret this any other way is to challenge the legitimacy of the surrender in its entirety.
Again, you are giving the status of treaty to somethign that is not a treaty. Frankly, I would love to see the ICJ rule on it, but the chicken leaders in Beijing object to it presumably because they know deep down that in accordance with the law, their case is exceeding weak and is getting weaker all the time in accordance with the effective control doctrine that the ICJ has used in recent decades in several territorial dispute cases.
I have not ignored anything. You think I have not noted such a treaty because it would seem you insist the Japanese Instrument of Surrender was not a treaty based off some spurious claims that have no legitimacy under international law in any way shape or form.
It simply is not a treaty and you have neither shown that it is nor have you countered the examples where treaties were required to confirmed territorial transfers even in cases where effective control was already established nor have you answered the point of the cited case where effective control WAS established but sovereignty was not transferred because not done so in the ratified post-war treaty.
In other words, you to this point have an epic FAIL to your arguments because you have left so many matters of precedence, a vital source of international law, unanswered.