evidence: The pre-modern Han Chinese empires knew very little about Taiwan, and had long regarded Taiwan as a "savage" island "beyond the seas." That is why when the Dutch temporarily occupied the Penghu Islands (ie, the Pescadores) in 1622, an official of the Chinese Ming Empire (1368–1662) asked the Dutch forces to withdraw from Penghu and move to Taiwan, showing clearly that the Chinese then considered Taiwan to be a remote island outside the Chinese civilization and domain. [...] Having been defeated by the Japanese, the Manchu Qing Empire signed the Peace Treaty of Shimonoseki with the Japanese Empire on April 17, 1895, and agreed to cede the island of Formosa (Taiwan) and the Pescadores (Penghu) "in perpetuity and full sovereignty" to Japan. [...] The Cairo Declaration of 1943, and the Potsdam Proclamation of 1945 were merely "non-legally binding" wartime "statements of intention," which expressed or reaffirmed, in part, the major Allied Powers’ "intention" that "Formosa [Taiwan], and the Pescadores [Penghu], be restored to the Republic of China" that, however, could not (and did not) make a cession of Taiwan from Japan to the ROC.