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.
In geopolitics, might makes right.
But this does look like a considerable mistake.
It appears to be intended as a threat aimed at Japan for having gone out of diplomatic bounds by defending Taiwan.
But it returns Taiwan to ‘undetermined territory’.
Below is an old map of the region prior to SFPT. ABN
American Buddhist Net 