NOTE: Some of the information below, betrayed by the blue ink, is taken from various Wikipedia articles about the history of Taiwan, its political history and the history of the Kuomintang.
The most recent news about Taiwan to hit Canadian headlines was President Ma Ying-jeou’s first (at least publicly acknowledged) meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Singapore. We heard and read many comments in Western media about the possibly positive aspect of this signalling improving relations between the two nations. Note, I still said nations: China does not really even accept that Taiwan is an independent nation. Calling this positive reflects the West’s short term view of Taiwan’s history, at least when it comes to politics and international affairs.
For the West, Taiwan’s relevant history in these matters begins after World War II. Their ally in Asia, then President of the Republic of China formed back in 1911, was Chiang Kai-shek, as he is known here, of the ruling Kuomintang (KMT), or Chinese Nationalist Party. He, his army and supporters were running from the Communists and needed someplace to go. Japan, which had ruled Taiwan since 1895, had been defeated and expelled from Taiwan. Since there seemed to be a vacuum in Taiwan when it came to government, and there was some history of connection to China, our wise leaders at the time offered it to the Nationalists. Ever since, the West (read mainly the US) has supported this government as part of its defence against Communist China.
The history before 1895 can be summarized as follows. Taiwan was first inhabited by aborigines of which there were a number of tribes. The West began to appear on the island during their days of imperialism. Portuguese sailors, passing Taiwan in 1544, first named the island Ilha Formosa, meaning "Beautiful Island". The island was first colonized by the Dutch in the 17th century, followed by an influx of Han Chinese including Hakka immigrants from areas of Fujian/Fuchien and Guangdong/Canton of mainland China. Most of these were single men trying to escape from the brutality of warlord afflicted China and many ended up marrying local women.The Spanish also built a settlement in the North for a brief period, but were driven out by the Dutch in 1642.
In 1662, Koxinga, a loyalist of the Ming dynasty, which had lost control of mainland China in 1644, defeated the Dutch and established a base of operations on the island. His forces were defeated by the Qing dynasty in 1683, and parts of Taiwan became increasingly integrated into the Qing empire. Prior to the Japanese expansionist moves in the 19th century, China still was not that interested inTaiwan. The Chinese on the mainland had little regard for it and its inhabitants. They even tried to get the Chinese who had moved there to return to China. However, when skirmishes began with the Japanese, China began to bolster the defences in Taiwan and administer it as a province from 1885 onward. Following the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895, the Qing ceded the island to the Empire of Japan. By this time there were over 2 million Chinese on the island and some 200,000 aboriginals.
When it became apparent that Taiwan would become the haven of the Nationalist Party/KMT, Chiang began to send his soldiers in to subject the local population to their rule. In 1949 the KMT established the remnant of the Republic of China on Taiwanese soil and began a reign of terror over the local Chinese and aboriginals. Of course, revisionist history does not recount that. Instead, the previous immigrants, whom we hall subsequently refer to as Taiwanese, and the natives were taught the history of mainland China.
For the next 4 decades the ruling KMT and their supporters, whom we can refer to as ‘mainlanders,’ as the Taiwanese do, blustered on about returning to the mainland and regaining what they saw as their legitimate place as the rulers of China versus the Communists. They took over all the utilities and businesses, the public and civic places. All of this in spite of the fact that they only number about 15% of the population.
The Taiwanese who, in spite of the harshness of Japanese rule, came to appreciate many aspects of it and the increasing accoutrements of civilization the it afforded. Many went to be further educated in Japan and others fought for Japan in World War II. Indeed, when the Nationalists began pouring in, many of whom were single men from backward areas of China, their lack of decorum and civility was quite abhorrent to the Taiwanese.
The resentment of the Taiwanese against their KMT overlords and the martial law under which they ruled continued to grow as they became further educated abroad and imbued with ideas of democracy and freedom. They still remembered events such as the infamous 22-8 massacre and other cruelties inflicted on them by the KMT, who put any who opposed them in prison, often exiled offshore to remote Green Island, if they were not outrightly executed. This, coupled with relaxation of KMT control in the last decades of the 20th century led in 2000 to the election of the first non-KMT government. This government of the Democratic people’s party favoured independence from China with recognition of Taiwan as a nation by that name. However, the KMT, campaigning against alleged corruption of the DPP (the KMT should talk…), regained power in 2008. Better relations with China had been part of their platform now. Indeed, instead of maintaining their half-century-old stance of someday reconquering China the government under Ma Ying-jeou began to pass measure after measure to ‘improve’ relations to China. It began to look as though the erstwhile enemies of the Communist People’s Republic of China were preparing to simply hand Taiwan over to the Mainland under the right terms.
Many of the real Taiwanese (and we can include Hakka and other groups such as the aborigines here for the sake of simplicity), having no ‘history’ of their link to China, do not see why they should be sacrificed to a Communist country just because their homesick mainlander overlords want to reconnect. Their feelings about this were exemplified by how many chose to emigrate to places like Canada when there were worries about Taiwan being next when China reclaimed Hong Kong in 1997. Of course, many mainlanders also emigrated because of their fears of China.
I see a parallel here between what happened between Europe and North America. Europeans came and took over North America from the aboriginals here, just like the Chinese did to their counterparts in Taiwan. But we, the US and then Canada, and indeed all of he Americas except for a few islands in the Caribbean, gained our independence from our colonial sources. That is exactly what the Taiwanese aspire to. They are no happier with the flood of Chinese investors, ill-behaved tourists and immigrants to their island because of the opening up of relations between the two governments than many of us are with the wave of mainland Chinese immigration here.
Yet, the West continues to think reunification is a good thing. They just want to see one less reason for armed conflict in the region spilling over to include themselves and Japan if war did break out between China and Taiwan. There have been conflicts in the past, most notably in the ;ate 1950s when Taiwan and China were shelling each other over offshore islands held by the Republic of China near coastal Xiamen, one of Richmond’s twin cities. To that end, it seems the poor Taiwanese are again going to be sacrificed forth presumed benefit of the West. How many of us want to become part of the UK again, or France? I don’t think so. So why do we think it’s OK to let this happen to Taiwan?
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