History of Taiwan

Who and what is Taiwan, and what is its significance to the world? Taiwan is an island at the top of the South China Sea not far from mainland China to its west, but also not far from Japan's southernmost Ryukyu Island chain to its east. Taiwan today has a population of around 24 million people, and has a very healthy economy that earns it as one of southeast Asia's "tiger" economies; As a case in point, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, headquartered on the island, has become the world's major supplier of semiconductors.

Taiwan has a healthy democracy that has only come about within the last decade or two. Prior to this, the country had a non-democratic form of government run by a single party commonly known as the Kuomintang (KMT or Nationalists), led by Chiang Kai-shek and afterwards by his son. The KMT kept Taiwan under martial law between 1947 and 1987 and was at times very brutal to the Taiwanese. It would not be until the mid-1990s that Taiwan would start holding democratic elections, at first voting mostly for the KMT. But in 2000 they voted for someone outside the KMT for president, Chen Shui-ban of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

Taiwan's significance in the world has a lot to do with mainland China under Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule. The CCP claims that Taiwan is a province of China. Today only around 15 countries diplomatically recognize Taiwan as a country due to pressure from the CCP, although many countries have recognition of Taiwan in other forms. How about Taiwanese themselves? From a recent survey [REF], almost 90% of Taiwanese, which is made up of around 95% Han Chinese, identify themselves as, Taiwanese rather than Chinese.

So why is it this way? Let's take a quick trip through twentieth century Chinese history:

The Republic of China was formed in 1912 on mainland China and was composed of multiple parties, but the two parties vying for power were the CCP and the KMT. The RoC was not actually able to control a significant portion of mainland China until the late 1920s. In the early 1930s, Chiang Kai-shek, who was effectively the head of the KMT, wanted to oust the communists from the government so he started a brutal campaign against them which in turn started a civil war. Chiang had nearly wiped out the communists by the mid-1930s but he had to divert his army to deal with Japanese incursions from Manchuria. In 1937, a full blown (Second) Sino-Japanese war began, and to help fight it, the KMT and the communists formed a "United Front" to fight the Japanese. This civil war between the KMT and the CCP would be postponed until after World War II. At the end of World War II, the civil war restarted and by 1949, the communists managed to take over much of the mainland. In October, Mao Zedong, the head of the CCP, declared the People's Republic of China. The remnant of the Republic of China, namely the KMT, fled to Taiwan and ruled from there claiming they were still the real representatives of China and vowed to retake the mainland. The CCP geared up to invade Taiwan in 1950, but was stopped when the U.S. sent a carrier group into the Taiwan Strait.

Has mainland China always ruled Taiwan? The Dutch (and to some extent the Spanish) ruled the island from around 1622 to 1662. Prior to that, no other country ruled Taiwan. During the 1640s in mainland China, the Qing Dynasty (ruled by Manchus, from Manchuria) invaded mainland China and began overthrowing the Ming Dynasty (ruled by Han Chinese). By the 1660s, the Qing conquered most of mainland China and many from the Ming Dynasty fled to Taiwan where they took it over from the Dutch. The Qing felt this remnant of the Ming could be threatening, and in 1683, they successfully ousted the Ming and took control of Taiwan. Although the Qing were in control, they didn't spend much of their resources there, leading to historical speculation that they really didn't have much of an interest in the island. Nevertheless the Qing remained in control of Taiwan until they lost it to Japan in 1895 as an outcome of their losing the first Sino-Japanese war. Japan then ruled Taiwan until the end of World War II when they surrendered it. The Allies, who had defeated Japan, had agreed to give Taiwan to the Republic of China which was the ruling government on the mainland. Taiwan today remains officially the Republic of China.

When the CCP took over mainland China in 1949, leaving the Republic of China in existence only in Taiwan, many countries starting taking positions on which of the two to recognize. Many supported the Republic of China (Taiwan) until the late 1960s when Taiwan was ousted from the United Nations, and in 1972 when a U.S. President, Richard Nixon, made a trip to mainland China for the first time since the CCP take over. Nixon's trip started the ball rolling on the U.S. officially establishing diplomatic ties with the People's Republic of China (and dropping official recognition of the Republic of China) which was completed under the Jimmy Carter administration in 1979. Nixon's trip, by the way, was done so in order to use the People's Republic of China as a lever against the Soviet Union as Mao was not happy at that time with the Soviet Union. It came at a price as Mao would not meet with Nixon until the U.S. agreed to curtail their support for Taiwan.

The U.S. however did not want to leave Taiwan hanging. In 1979, the U.S. established the Taiwan Relations Act which set up pseudo-diplomatic ties with Taiwan and support for arms sales. However neither the act, nor any administration's policies since have made it clear as to whether the U.S. would actually come to the defense of Taiwan if attacked by mainland China.

You can read more details about the history of Taiwan in my paper here.