Taiwan observers have been watching the daily WikiLeaks releases of U.S. diplomatic cables for documents in a large cache of messages from the American Institute in Taiwan, the defacto embassy of the United States. The United States has never recognized the sovereignty of the Republic of China in-exile over Taiwan, thus no embassy.
The United States is the “principal occupying Power” of Taiwan under the San Francisco Peace Treaty that officially ended World War II with Japan. At the end of the war the United States installed the embattled Republic of China as the occupation government to control the former Japanese territory. Six decades of “strategic ambiguity” have left the island under control by the Chinese Nationalist government, barred from the United Nations, and under threat of invasion from the People’s Republic of China.
