international legal-terms
Are &quot;de facto independence&quot; and &quot;de jure independence&quot; really international law terms?
<p>I have seen a certain factions of Taiwan independence supporters claiming that Taiwan's current status is "de facto independence" and only needs to formally declare independence to make its status "de jure independence".</p>

<p>I looked up <em>Oppenheim's International Law</em> (Chinese version) and could not find the two terms. But a search on Google did get some results talking about the two terms.</p>

<p>Are "de facto independence" and "de jure independence" really international law terms?</p>

<p>"De Jure" and "De Facto" are Latin adjectives to describe a situation that legally might be different than how everyone actually practices it.   In the case of independence, Taiwan is "De Facto" independent as it's highest level of government is not answerable to any other government (in this case, the government of mainland China) but it would not be "De Jure" independent because it's not a recognized independent nation (because doing so causes problems with main land China).</p>

<p>By Law, Taiwan is territory governered by the same government as Mainland China, but because of the actual situation of Taiwan having powerful friends that China does not want to go to war with and those friends don't want to start a war with China either, it is not De Facto territory of China.</p>

<p>De Jure means "in law" while De Facto means "in fact" </p>
