Cairo Conference and Cairo Declaration

The Conference

From 22 to 26 November 1943 President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Chiang Kai-shek, Chairman of the Nationalist Government of the Republic of China, met in Cairo under the code name "Sextant," at the Mena House Hotel at the foot of the Pyramids of Giza. According to the American log, Chiang and Soong Mei-ling and Churchill's party all arrived on 21 November, and Roosevelt on the 22nd. It was the only wartime Allied summit Chiang attended; former ROC President Ma Ying-jeou has called it the first time the Republic of China took part in an international conference as one of the four major powers.

The conference was mainly concerned with the war against Japan; the American record states that the military missions agreed on future operations against Japan. During the conference Roosevelt also met General Joseph Stilwell, the senior American commander in China; their discussion reportedly covered Stilwell's difficulties with Chiang and War Minister He Yingqin, Lend-Lease to China and the Ledo Road.

The Roosevelt–Chiang Talks

On the evening of 23 November Roosevelt hosted Chiang and Soong Mei-ling at dinner. No official American record of the conversation was made; in 1956 the ROC ambassador in Washington, Hollington Tong, supplied a Chinese summary record, later published in Foreign Relations of the United States. According to that record, Roosevelt said China should take its place as one of the Big Four with an equal role in all decisions; Chiang said the future of the Japanese imperial institution should be left to the Japanese people after the war; and the two agreed that Manchuria, Taiwan and the Penghu Islands, taken by Japan by force, must be restored to China, including the Liaodong Peninsula with Lüshun and Dalian. Roosevelt asked more than once whether China wanted the Ryukyu Islands; Chiang replied that China would agree to joint Sino-American occupation and eventual joint administration under international trusteeship. Roosevelt also raised Hong Kong, and Chiang suggested he first discuss it with the British.

The Cairo Declaration

The text of a press communiqué was agreed on 26 November and released by the White House on 1 December — the document generally known as the Cairo Declaration. It stated that the three Allies were fighting "to restrain and punish the aggression of Japan," that they "covet no gain for themselves and have no thought of territorial expansion," that Japan would be stripped of all Pacific islands seized since 1914, 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," and that "in due course Korea shall become free and independent."

Article 8 of the Potsdam Proclamation of July 1945 stated that "the terms of the Cairo Declaration shall be carried out," and in the Instrument of Surrender signed that September Japan undertook to carry out the provisions of the Potsdam Proclamation.

Disputes over the Declaration's Force

After the war the legal force of the Cairo Declaration and its bearing on Taiwan's status became contested. The PRC Foreign Ministry holds that the Cairo Declaration, the Potsdam Proclamation and the Instrument of Surrender are "documents with international legal effect" that "clearly confirm China's sovereignty over Taiwan." In 2013 ROC President Ma Ying-jeou, at a conference marking the declaration's 70th anniversary, rejected the description of it as a mere press release, noting that the United States and Japan both include it in their official treaty collections. In 2025 ROC Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung said instead that the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco was the instrument with real legal force after the war, that it had superseded non-binding political documents such as the Cairo Declaration, and that it did not assign Taiwan to the People's Republic of China.

In September 2025 a spokesperson for the American Institute in Taiwan said Beijing's narratives were "simply false" and that "none of these documents determined Taiwan's ultimate political status"; the PRC Foreign Ministry accused the United States of hyping the "fallacy" of Taiwan's undetermined status. In 2025 Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae said that Japan had renounced all rights under the San Francisco Treaty and could not determine Taiwan's legal status; on 1 December, the 82nd anniversary of the Cairo Declaration, a PRC Foreign Ministry spokesperson criticised Japan for avoiding any mention of the Cairo Declaration and related documents.