China just declared the San Francisco Peace Treaty “illegal and invalid.”
But here’s the catch: the moment China rejects SFPT, the entire post-WWII map of Asia breaks — and China is the first country to lose territory.
Why?
Because SFPT isn’t just a US–Japan treaty.
It’s the document Japan used to renounce the territories it seized from China.
If SFPT is invalid, then every renunciation inside it is also invalid:
• Manchuria — Japan’s renunciation disappears
• Taiwan (Formosa) — status becomes “undetermined territory” again
• Penghu (Pescadores) — no legal transfer
• Spratlys & Paracels — Japan’s renunciation vanishes
• China loses the legal foundation of its South China Sea claim
• China can no longer argue “post-war order” against Japan
• ROC vs PRC succession problem reopens
• The 1945–1951 borders collapse into pre-war chaos
In other words:
SFPT is the only treaty that formalised Japan giving these territories up.
Reject the treaty, and you reject the surrender.
It’s geopolitical self-sabotage:
A move meant to weaken Japan actually weakens China’s own claims first.
And the irony?
China was excluded from SFPT in 1951 — but without it, China loses:
• its claim logic over Taiwan,
• its claim logic in the South China Sea,
• its ability to use “post-war order” as a diplomatic weapon,
• and even the legal closure over Manchuria.
Declaring SFPT invalid doesn’t rewrite history.
It only rewrites the map — in ways that hurt China more than anyone else.