By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Yet evidence shows that the Qing emperors made no effort to administer Taiwan, so by the time Japan acquired the island in 1895 after the Sino-Japanese war, the map they first drew defined that region – about half the island – as unadministered tribal territory. Fifty years of Japanese rule created the sinews of modern Taiwan, with improved agriculture, education, railways, and urban development, all having a Japanese feel that prevails today. Although facing initial resistance, the Japanese treated Taiwan gently compared to Korea, and a legacy of goodwill remains.

After the Japanese defeat, the Taiwanese yearned not for independence but autonomy from a chaotic mainland in the grip of the civil war between Chiang Kai-shek’s KMT government and the Communists. But such Taiwanese thoughts of independence were brutally suppressed by February 28, 1947. In the following days, 5,000 to 10,000 Taiwanese, including many local leaders, were shot by Chiang’s forces, and Taiwan’s identity was suppressed.

KMT domination was massively reinforced by Chiang’s retreat to the island in 1949, supposedly as the base from which to reclaim the mainland. About one million KMT loyalists fled to Taiwan in 1949, becoming about 15 percent of the population and controlling all the levers of state, with martial law continuing until 1987.

That Taiwan moderately prospered over the following decades was less due to KMT rule than to the combination of the education and modernization instilled by Japan and by the capital and markets that the US offered. Refugee capital and expertise from the mainland also played a role. Growing prosperity and the death of Chiang Kai-shek gradually saw the emergence of a more liberal state. After Taiwanese Lee Teng-hui became vice-president in 1984 and president in 1988, the decline of mainlander influence and the rise of the overly pro-Taiwan autonomy Democratic Progressive Party.

That brings us to today with a DPP president Tsai Ing-Wen and mainly challenged by a KMT which differs on approach to the mainland but not on the importance of the status quo and Taiwan’s de facto existence as an open and well-ordered state which has no desire to come under the Chinese Communist Party.

Taiwan may be culturally Chinese, but its history is different; its years under mainland Han rule were relatively brief. The fact that most of its population is of Han Chinese origin is of no relevance – Singapore is majority Han Chinese too.

 

 

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