What was Taiwans legal status after WWII?
The people who established the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as a country were the Chinese citizens in mainland China, and these same people were indeed the original citizens of the Republic of China (ROC). The final period of the civil war in Mainland China saw the saw the founding of the PRC on Oct. 1, 1949, with the KMT/ROC government officials fleeing to Taiwan in December of that year. Hence, effectively speaking, the ROC was put out of existence when the PRC was founded on Oct. 1, 1949, and the PRC drafted a new constitution for China. Under international law this is significant, because it means that the PRC has succeeded the ROC, and therefore the PRC government gains the rights to all assets that the ROC government had. The “successor government theory” began to be applied in the late 1940’s in regard to the domestic Chinese political situation. Obviously, more and more people accepted the legitimacy of this theory when the ROC was expelled from the United Nations in Octobe
