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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Serie: China Today
- Sprache: Englisch
Relations between Taiwan and the People�s Republic of China have oscillated between outright hostility and wary detente ever since the Archipelago seceded from the Communist mainland over six decades ago. While the mainland has long coveted the island, Taiwan has resisted - aided by the United States which continues to play a decisive role in cross-strait relations today.
In this comprehensive analysis, noted China specialist Steven Goldstein shows that although relations between Taiwan and its larger neighbor have softened, underlying tensions remain unresolved. These embers of conflict could burst into flames at any point, engulfing the whole region and potentially dragging the United States into a dangerous confrontation with the PRC
Guiding readers expertly through the historical background to the complexities of this fragile peace, Goldstein discusses the shifting economic, political and security terrain, and examines the pivotal role played by the United States in providing weapons and diplomatic support to Taiwan whilst managing a complex relationship with an increasingly powerful China. Drawing on a wealth of newly declassified material, this compelling and insightful book is an invaluable guide to one of the world�s riskiest, long-running conflicts.
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Seitenzahl: 365
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
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Table of Contents
Series page
Title page
Copyright page
Map
Chronology
Abbreviations
Epigraph
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1: An Island of Unsettled Status
The International Dimension: An Unsettled Status
Conclusion: The Significance of History
Notes
2: The Cold War in Asia and After
The Taiwan Strait: Hot and Cold War, 1950–1971
Crisis in the Taiwan Strait
After the Crises: Fruitless Talks and Important Readjustments
Rapprochement with Beijing and the Intractable Taiwan Issue
Cross-Strait Politics without Cross-Strait Relations
Notes
3: Normalization and New Problems
Normalization: The Carter Administration Breaks the Deadlock
Taiwan Copes, Congress Rebels
Ronald Reagan, Taiwan, and the Shaky Legacy of Normalization
Conclusion: An Uncertain Legacy
Notes
4: The Challenges of a Democratic Taiwan
Taiwan: A Political System Transformed
Democratizing Taiwan and Cross-Strait Relations
Managing Cross-Strait Relations under Democratic Conditions
Taiwan's Democratization: The Mainland Observes
The United States and China: The Taiwan Issue Redux
Uneasy Calm in the Strait: 1996–2000
Conclusion: The More Things Change…
Notes
5: Period of High Danger
Chen Overplays his Hand – China and the United States React, 2000–2003
Beijing – Sceptical at Best
The Bush Administration: How to Lose a Guardian Angel
Chen Plays the Identity Card, 2002–2008
The United States and China Contain Taiwan: 2002–2008
Conclusion: The Lessons of the Chen Shui-bian Presidency
Note
6: Satisfying Washington and Beijing
A New Relationship across the Strait
Beijing and Ma Ying-jeou: Patience…But for How Long?
The United States: Relief and Continued Commitment
Conclusion
Notes
7: Economic Relations
Some Statistics
Patterns of Growth and Composition
Analyzing the Numbers: The Development of Economic Relations
A Politicized Trade Regime, 1990–2008
The Political Limits of Economic Negotiations, 2008–2014
The United States and Cross-Strait Economics
Conclusion: Economics and Cross-Strait Relations
Notes
8: The Security Dimension
China: Preparing on Two Fronts
Taiwan: Creating a “Hard ROC”
The United States: Dual Deterrence
Conclusion: The Dangers of Deadlock
Notes
Conclusion
The Ambiguity of “Status Quo”
Competing Objectives
Assessing Stability in the Taiwan Strait
Note
References
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Start Reading
CHAPTER 1
Index
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Series page
China Today
Greg Austin,
Cyber Policy in China
David S. G. Goodman,
Class in Contemporary China
Stuart Harris,
China's Foreign Policy
Elaine Jeffreys with Haiqing Yu,
Sex in China
You Ji,
China’s Military Transformation
Michael Keane,
Creative Industries in China
Joe C. B. Leung and Yuebin Xu,
China's Social Welfare
Orna Naftali,
Children in China
Pitman B. Potter,
China's Legal System
Xuefei Ren,
Urban China
Judith Shapiro,
China's Environmental Challenges
Alvin Y. So and Yin-wah Chu,
The Global Rise of China
Teresa Wright,
Party and State in Post-Mao China
LiAnne Yu,
Consumption in China
Xiaowei Zang,
Ethnicity in China
Copyright page
Copyright © Steven M. Goldstein 2015
The right of Steven M. Goldstein to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2015 by Polity Press
Polity Press
65 Bridge Street
Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press
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Malden, MA 02148, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5999-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-6000-4 (pb)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Goldstein, Steven M.
China and Taiwan / Steven Goldstein.
pages cm. – (China today)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7456-5999-2 (hardback : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-0-7456-6000-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. China–Foreign relations–Taiwan. 2. Taiwan–Foreign relations–China. 3. China–Foreign relations–United States. 4. United States–Foreign relations–China. 5. Taiwan–Foreign relations–United States. 6. United States–Foreign relations–Taiwan. 7. Taiwan–International status. I. Title.
DS740.5.T28G65 2015
327.51051249–dc23
2015010144
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Map
Chronology
1895
Taiwan becomes a Japanese colony by the Treaty of Shimonoseki
1911–12
Chinese republican revolution and fall of the Qing dynasty
1937–45
Anti-Japanese war
1943
Cairo Conference calls for Taiwan to be returned to China after the war
1945–9
Chinese Civil War between the Nationalists (KMT) and the Communists (CCP)
1945
Kuomintang troops accept the Japanese surrender on Taiwan
1947
February 28 uprising (2.28)
1949
Founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC); Kuomintang-dominated Republic of China moves to Taiwan
1950–3
Korean War; Truman orders US Seventh Fleet “to prevent any attack on Taiwan” and calls for the ROC to stop operations against the mainland
1953–7
First Five-Year Plan: the PRC adopts Soviet-style economic planning
1954
Constitution of the PRC implemented: first meeting of the National People's Congress; the US signs Mutual Defence Treaty with the ROC
1954–5
First Taiwan Strait crisis
1957
Hundred Flowers movement: brief period of political debate followed by repressive anti-rightist movement
1958
Second Taiwan Strait crisis
1958–60
Great Leap Forward: Chinese Communist Party aims to transform the agrarian economy through rapid industrialization and collectivization
1959
Tibetan uprising and the departure of the Dalai Lama for India
1959–61
Three years of natural disasters: widespread famine, with millions of deaths resulting largely from the policies of the Great Leap Forward
1960
“Sino-Soviet split”
1962
Sino-Indian border skirmishes
1964
First PRC atom bomb detonation
1971
UN General Assembly votes to replace the ROC with the People's Republic of China as representative of “China”
1966–76
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
February 1972
“Shanghai Communiqué,” issued during Richard Nixon's visit to China, pledges that neither the US nor China will “seek hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region”
April 1975
Death of Chiang Kai-shek
July 1976
The Great Tangshan Earthquake: by death toll, the largest earthquake of the twentieth century
September 1976
Death of Mao Zedong
October 1976
Ultra-leftist Gang of Four removed from leadership
1978–89
Democracy Wall movement
1978
Beginning of Chinese economic reform and openness
1978
Introduction of one-child policy restricting married urban couples to one child
1979
Diplomatic relations established between the US and the PRC and broken with the ROC; US Congress passes Taiwan Relations Act
1979
PRC invades Vietnam
1982
US and PRC sign arms sales communiqué
December 1984
Margaret Thatcher co-signs Sino-British Joint Declaration agreeing to transfer sovereignty over Hong Kong to the PRC in 1997
1986
Democratic Progressive Party founded
January 1988
Chiang Ching-kuo dies and is succeeded as president of the ROC by Lee Teng-hui
1989
Tiananmen Square movement and crackdown
1989–2002
Jiang Zemin serves as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and president of the PRC
1991
Period of national mobilization for suppression of the communist rebellion ended
1992
Deng Xiaoping's southern inspection tour restarts process of economic reform and development; ARATS and SEF meet in Singapore
1995
Lee Teng-hui visits the United States
1996
Mainland conducts missile tests during Taiwan elections; US sends two aircraft carrier groups to the area; Lee Teng-hui elected president of the ROC
May 1999
US bombing of Chinese embassy in Belgrade
1999
Falun Gong demonstrations in Beijing
2000
DPP candidate Chen Shui-bian elected president of the ROC
2001
China joins World Trade Organization
2002
Taiwan joins the World Trade Organization as the “Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu (Chinese Taipei)”
2002–12
Hu Jintao serves as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and president of the PRC
2002
SARS outbreak
2004
Chen Shui-bian re-elected president of the ROC
2005
China passes Anti-Succession Law
2007
China overtakes the US as the world's biggest emitter of CO
2
2008
Sichuan earthquake; Kuomintang candidate Ma Ying-jeou elected president of the ROC; Hu Jintao announces six points for managing relations with Taiwan
2008
Summer Olympic Games held in Beijing
2010
Shanghai World Exposition
2012
Xi Jinping elected general secretary of the CCP (and president of PRC from 2013); Ma Ying-jeou re-elected president of the ROC
Abbreviations
Epigraph
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon
Dedication
For Erika, without whom . . .
Acknowledgments
Academics, like professional gamblers, usually accumulate a long string of debts. I have been no exception. My study of Taiwan came relatively late in my academic career and I have benefited from intellectual inspiration and challenges coming from many sources. My students at Smith College, especially the recent influx of students from China, have provided not only research assistance but questions and comments that have forced me to clarify my thinking on cross-strait relations.
I have also been fortunate to have led delegations from the Taiwan Studies Workshop of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University that have travelled to Taiwan and the mainland for more than a decade. We have met (and continue to meet) with academics and government officials to discuss cross-strait relations and American foreign policy. Our interlocutors (too numerous to mention) on both sides have been generous with their time as well as their willingness to discuss some very difficult questions with candour and, often, good humour.
However, special recognition must go to the members of the delegation who, year after year, left their families right after New Year to take part in our expeditions. On plane rides as well as in restaurants and hotel bars, I learned an enormous amount from Tom Christensen, Joe Fewsmith, Taylor Fravel, Sheena Chestnut Greitens, Iain Johnston, Robert Ross, and the late Alan Wachman. However, there is one member of the group who, I am confident, we would all agree deserves special mention – Alan Romberg. With his encyclopedic and precise knowledge of cross-strait relations and American foreign policy, he was the one whom we consistently turned to for wisdom and guidance on difficult or arcane questions. As this book demonstrates, he has had an incalculable influence on my thinking about Taiwan. I couldn't be more grateful. However, to preserve his good name as well as those of my fellow travellers to China, I have quickly to add that they are in no way responsible for this work.
Final mention has to go to those who helped enhance the quality and coherence of the discussion which follows. Pascal Porcheron and Louise Knight at Polity Press were patient when I failed to meet deadlines and helped to sharpen my argument. Saikun Shi provided research assistance. Samantha Wood and Caroline Richmond were amazing editors who performed magic on this manuscript.
Introduction
For more than six decades, the embers of the post-World War II conflict between Taiwan and the mainland of China have threatened to burst into flames, engulfing the Taiwan Strait in a war that could quickly become a broader and more dangerous conflict between the United States and China.
The roots of today's cross-strait tensions are relatively straightforward. In 1949, after driving the government of the Republic of China (ROC) – often referred to as the “Nationalists” – off the mainland and onto the island of Taiwan, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) declared the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Today, that government in Beijing considers itself the legitimate ruler of all China, including Taiwan. It views the continued separation of the island from the mainland, as well as its governance by another political authority claiming equal sovereignty, as preventing both closure in the civil war and restoration of the full territorial integrity of the Chinese nation. Although PRC leaders have committed to peaceful modes of achieving this reunification as their preference, they nevertheless retain the option to use force in their efforts to incorporate the island into China.
The authorities on Taiwan, on the other hand, insist that, regardless of the defeat on the mainland in 1949, it remains the same government that ruled China before the forced relocation. For some of the period after its defeat, the ROC claimed to govern all of China despite the mainland's occupation by “communist bandits.” Today, decades after the major world powers (including the United States) finally recognized the PRC as the legitimate government of China, the government on Taiwan continues to assert the ROC's status as a sovereign and independent state on the international stage. Although economic relations with the mainland have flourished, the ROC has resisted discussions aimed at resolving cross-strait political and military disagreements.
This brief account of the origins of cross-strait relations tells only part of the story. The United States became entangled in China's internal politics during World War II and has remained so since, despite several efforts at disassociation. Washington backed the Kuomintang (KMT or Nationalist Party) during the civil war with the Communist Party and, today, remains the ultimate guarantor of the safety of Taiwan. Communist leaders have, since 1949, considered the United States to be the principal obstacle to the incorporation of the island into the new Chinese state.
Thus the policies of both China and Taiwan have, of necessity, been focused on the United States even as Washington has had, in turn, to consider its objectives in regard to each side of the strait in formulating policy toward the area. For this reason, the discussion that follows proceeds from the premise that cross-strait relations cannot be fully understood if the focus is simply on the bilateral relationship between the two sides in an earlier domestic conflict. Despite their origins in the Chinese Civil War, these relations have had, from their beginning, a significant international dimension as a result of continued American involvement and, as a result, have taken on a triangular pattern.
For more than sixty years, this triangular configuration has remained the defining characteristic of cross-strait relations. However, it has not been a static configuration. The triangle has evolved over time in response to the policies of the three actors as well as to the broader international environment. These policies, which have accumulated over more than six decades, have created perceptions, assumptions, and commitments that together are the foundation of the present triangle in the Taiwan Strait. As is the case in so many other global hotspots, the past weighs heavily on the present and continues to shape interactions.
To assess the influence of the past on the contemporary situation, the analysis that follows posits that relations have gone through two distinct configurations since the end of World War II. These stages of development, despite their very different natures, combine to have a profound impact on the current policy in the area. The two periods are separated by the decade of the 1990s, with the most dramatic single event marking the passage into a new era in cross-strait relations being the end of KMT authoritarian rule and the emergence of democracy in Taiwan.
Before democratization, Taiwan's mainland policy was made by a small group of KMT leaders who were preoccupied with regaining power on the mainland and who treated Taiwan simply as a provincial jumping-off point for realizing that larger ambition. For them, the Taiwan Strait was still the front line in a continuing civil war. There were, to be sure, sporadic secret contacts between the two sides. However, aside from occasional military forays and frequent public propaganda statements across the strait, there were no interactions between the two sides that could be considered “relations.” To the extent that there were any “relations,” they were manifested in Sino-American dealings over the status of Taiwan, which was rooted in the post-war controversies that periodically flared into crises in the area. These were the years of the Cold War and the “Red Scare.” China was viewed by Washington as the spear point of the international communist movement in Asia. By the mid-1950s the United States not only refused to acknowledge the communist victory in the civil war, as manifested by its continued recognition of the ROC as the government of China, but also denied that the PRC had sovereignty over Taiwan.
Until 1972, the United States was in the middle of the cross-strait dispute. American policy in the area was one of dual deterrence (for this term, see Bush 2005). Washington sought to prevent the Kuomintang on Taiwan from provoking a clash with the mainland that would drag it into a war with Beijing, while at the same time deterring a possible mainland attack on the island by its military presence. The United States engaged the mainland in 136 sessions of ambassadorial talks intended to de-escalate tensions in the area. China, however, would have none of it. Like the KMT on Taiwan, it regarded the cross-strait conflict as a domestic matter and American interference as a violation of its newly won sovereignty. Taiwan's status was considered a matter to be settled by the two sides themselves, and Beijing's representatives consistently argued that China would accept nothing less than American abandonment of Taiwan – an unlikely step given the political environment in the United States. It was a dialogue of the deaf.
It was against the background of this Sino-American deadlock over the status of Taiwan that the rapprochement of the 1970s, beginning with the visit of President Nixon and mutual recognition in the Carter administration, took place. As we shall see, the Sino-American differences over Taiwan proved no more soluble than they had been earlier, and differences nearly wrecked the process of normalization. However, both sides sought a better rapport, and, by means of ambiguous statements, muted disagreements or simple papering over the still sharp divisions over Taiwan, Sino-American relations went ahead into the 1990s – and into a new stage in the triangular relationship.
As noted earlier, it was the democratization of Taiwan and the end of KMT authoritarian rule during the 1990s that was the occasion for the transition to this new stage in cross-strait relations. This action enfranchised a portion of the Taiwan population who had lived on the island before World War II and whose orientation toward the island and its relation to the mainland was fundamentally different from what had previously been official policy.
The roots of this new orientation and the subsequent shift in Taiwan's policy that resulted were in the past. Specifically, they were the result of a unique historic relationship between Taiwan and the mainland of China as well as the impact of the period of KMT authoritarian rule. Until the mid-seventeenth century, when it finally became a minor subdivision of the Chinese empire, the island was better known to pirates in the area than it was to the rulers of China. After two centuries of neglect by the mainland, Taiwan finally achieved provincial status. However, after less than a decade it was ceded to the Japanese empire in 1895, following China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese War, and became Tokyo's first colony. It retained that status for fifty years, until Japan's surrender at the end of World War II.
The distant relationship with imperial China and, more importantly, Taiwan's half-century as a Japanese colony would play a central role in shaping the domestic political environment on the island. When the Kuomintang army arrived to reclaim Taiwan after the war, it encountered an ethnically Chinese population that appeared to be more Japanese than Chinese and that shared little of the antipathy to Japan felt by the arriving mainlanders, who had just endured eight years of brutal occupation and war. The clash of cultures and history between the arrivals from the mainland (known as waisheng, or those from outside the province) and the Chinese whose ancestors had come before the end of the war (known as bensheng – those from within the province) became immediately apparent, and tensions grew, leading to an armed confrontation in 1947. The brutal suppression of local activists by mainland troops marked the end of any hope of greater self-rule for the islanders and initiated an authoritarian ROC government dominated by the newly arrived Kuomintang.
This cleavage between these two populations came to define Taiwan politics for more than four decades, as the mainlander government moved to reshape the island to meet its needs in the civil war against its enemy across the strait. Taiwan was subjected to what amounted to military rule, which suspended the constitution and virtually excluded the local population from political participation except at the very local level. In an effort to rally the population around the cause of retaking the mainland, the KMT government sought to “Sinify” the local population by imposing mainland values, history, and language to replace those associated with Taiwan. The result of these policies was that, over time, much of the resistance to authoritarian rule came to be associated with the bensheng population, who, in reaction to the forced Sinification, fashioned the island's past into a narrative that, contrary to the official policy, emphasized its distinctive history and identity as well as its extended separation from the mainland.
Thus, with democratization, mainland policy became subject to the influence of a population that had already become deeply divided over the question of identity during the previous period. The unique history of the island and the experience of mainland rule under KMT auspices had engendered a search for a distinctively Taiwanese identity, and the nature of the relationship with the mainland became a contested political issue. In contrast to the previous period, when the island's relationship with the mainland was taken as a given, it became, by the end of the twentieth century, an issue considered subject to negotiation among equals, with the newly formed opposition party floating the idea of independence.
However, democratization on Taiwan not only led to a questioning of the assumption regarding the island's status as a part of China, it also saw the end of the earlier refusal of the government to have any contacts with the “enemies” on the mainland. Democracy empowered the business community, and, with commercial interests leading the way, contact rather than conflict between the two sides became the dominant theme in cross-strait relations. In 1992, this new stage in the relationship was marked by a meeting between unofficial organizations from the two sides – the first since 1945.
In short, Taiwan's earlier policies of hostility and refusal to allow any contact with the mainland – outside of military provocations promoted by a bitter, defeated KMT leadership – were ended. The foundations of the unprecedented, multifaceted relationship in trade, investment, tourism, and official consultations that characterize contemporary cross-strait relations were laid. However, this policy was now subject to the pressures of an electorate far more ambivalent about the political nature of the relationship and clearly reluctant to replace the rule of one mainland government with another.
Taiwan's democratization had also shifted the central focus of cross-strait relations away from Sino-American diplomacy. One scholar (Su 2009) has referred to the period after the 1990s as “a tail wagging two dogs.” After the 1990s, the United States and China were forced to adjust to policies resulting from domestic politics in Taiwan over which they had very little control and which were increasingly coming to shape the triangular configuration of relations (Chu and Nathan 2007–8).
For the mainland, the result was that the management of cross-strait relations became dramatically more complicated. The relationship with Taiwan that developed after the 1990s was a multifaceted one that encompassed a wide range of issues, including investment, culture, tourist exchanges, and governmental agreements. It operated on many levels, involving individual citizens, party members, and government officials. Most challenging for the mainland were the domestic political currents on Taiwan, which often pushed the limits of Beijing's long-established policies regarding the island's relationship with the mainland. Fundamental principles laid down by the mainland in the previous period were proving ill-suited to the new environment.
The same could be said for China's relationship with the United States. Beijing's frustration in managing an increasingly complex cross-strait relationship often caused it to look to the United States as either a cause of, or a solution to, its problems. The distrust of American motives rooted in the previous period remained. They had been neither dispelled nor, more importantly, solved by the earlier ambiguous agreements. This threatened at times to disrupt Sino-American relations, while at others Beijing looked to Washington to cooperate in limiting provocative behavior on the part of the newly democratic Taiwan.
The new period in cross-strait relations posed challenges for the United States as well. In some respects these were not new challenges. In the period after recognition, domestic political pressures and concerns for the American image in Asia had required that a delicate balance be maintained between enhancing the post-Cold War relationship with China and appearing not to abandon Taiwan. After democratization on Taiwan this balance was complicated, on the one hand, by a Chinese military build-up in response to the uncertain direction of cross-strait relations and, on the other, by the possibility that provocative policies resulting from Taiwan's new democratic politics would trigger a mainland response.
American policy became once more one of dual deterrence – only this time China was a far more formidable opponent and a democratic Taiwan more difficult to restrain. Moreover, in the previous period the provocation on Taiwan's part that might drag the United States into a war was military in nature. Now the principal danger was that provocative actions resulting from the island's domestic politics would be the cause of a military response from the mainland that could involve the United States.
In short, today the United States remains very much in the middle of the cross-strait relationship. Its options in playing its role in the reconfigured triangle, like those of the mainland, are constrained by past policies and perceptions. Moreover, in dealing with the two sides, Washington is bound by ambiguous commitments and agreements of the earlier period. This only increases the difficulty of its position.
The analysis that follows is intended to demonstrate the propositions regarding cross-strait relations outlined above. It is divided into two sections: the first is focused on the period before the 1990s and the second on the period afterward. Each is organized differently. The first proceeds in a largely chronological manner, tracing the evolution of cross-strait relations as an issue between the United States and China as well as the nature of the policies pursued by the mainland and Taiwan. The second section covers contemporary relations, and its organization is thematic. In individual chapters it discusses the way in which democratization in the presidencies of Chen Shui-bian (2000–8) and Ma Ying-jeou (2008–) has shaped Taiwan's policies and the manner in which the United States and China have tried to cope with those policies as well as each other's reactions to them. The analysis then turns to the two most important issues in contemporary relations – trade and investment and the military balance. A conclusion discusses the current state of cross-strait relations in light of the patterns of the past and speculates on the parameters of future developments.
1An Island of Unsettled Status
On February 27, 1947 – a year after Japan's formal surrender of its Taiwanese colony – agents of the mainland Republic of China government seized the cigarettes and cash of a street vendor in the capital city of Taipei and beat her. Facing an angry crowd, the agents claimed that the vendor was violating the official Tobacco Monopoly by selling untaxed cigarettes. During the ensuing confrontation, a bystander was shot and killed by an ROC agent. The following day, an estimated 2,000 demonstrators marched first to the headquarters of the Tobacco Monopoly and then on to the office of the governor, General Chen Yi, where security officers fired into the crowd.
These events sparked anti-government demonstrations across the island. Governor Chen entered into talks with the popular opposition, which quickly escalated from an investigation of the two shootings to a call for governmental reform. These tentative negotiations ended on March 8, when ROC reinforcements landed on the island. Over the next weeks, many of Taiwan's intellectual and political elite were methodically killed or arrested, while the general populace faced random killings and other atrocities. The total number of deaths during this period has been estimated to be between 10,000 and 20,000. These events became collectively known as the “February 28 Incident,” or simply 2.28, and would play a decisive role in shaping the subsequent political development of Taiwan, as well as its relationship with the mainland. To fully understand the incident's profound impact, we must delve further into the history of Taiwan.
Harsh governmental response to popular demonstrations was a familiar reality in post-war China. The 2.28 Incident was not the first time that the Kuomintang-dominated Republic of China government had encountered resistance as it sought to re-establish its authority in areas previously occupied by the Japanese. Such episodes escalated to eventually become part of the civil war that raged on the mainland from 1947 to 1949. Yet the unrest on Taiwan was distinct in many ways from other opposition faced by the KMT government.
Unlike the contested mainland areas, Taiwan had not been a victim of Japanese wartime occupation. The island was a Japanese colony – its first and oldest colony, in fact – that had been ceded to Tokyo by the terms of the treaty that ended the Sino-Japanese War of 1895. Taiwan occupied an anomalous position during the early twentieth century, which was a period of emerging Chinese nationalism and determination to regain full national sovereignty. Sun Yat-sen, founder of the KMT, paid it scant attention. It was only in the early 1940s that his successor, Chiang Kai-shek, began to demand the island's return to China. Mao Zedong, leader of the Chinese Communist Party, adopted a similar position, although earlier he had argued that Taiwan, like Korea, should become an independent country after the war (Wachman 2007: chs 4 and 5).
The ambivalence of China's twentieth-century politicians regarding the status of Taiwan had historic provenance.1 Until the end of the seventeenth century, the island was better known to Dutch and Spanish settlers, to Japanese pirates, and to the occasional Chinese civilian who came to the island in search of natural resources than it was to mainland officialdom. The first written report of a mainlander's visit was published in 1603. It was not until 1684 that a reluctant emperor agreed to the incorporation of what he called a “ball of mud…[of] no consequence” and Taiwan began appearing on mainland maps. In the eyes of most mainland Chinese, Taiwan was a “wilderness…beyond the seas…populated by savages” (Teng 2004: 31–59).
This incorporation into the Chinese administrative structure came after the Qing dynasty defeated rebels supporting the previous dynasty who had used the island as a base. The court official Shi Lang convinced a sceptical emperor to finally pay attention to the island, arguing for its strategic importance in defending the Chinese coast from foreign invasion as well as for its potential economic value. The expansionist Qing dynasty (responsible for nearly doubling the size of China) incorporated Taiwan as a mere sub-jurisdiction under the coastal province of Fujian. For the next two centuries, the imperial court ruled the troublesome island with a light hand, leaving much of its governance up to prominent Chinese families who had settled there.
In 1887, when it became apparent that Taiwan was coveted by foreign powers, the island gained provincial status and for the first time benefited from central government efforts to develop its economy. However, after China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1895 (fought nowhere near Taiwan), it was ceded to Japan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki. It would remain a colony until Tokyo's surrender at the end of World War II.
In 1895, Taiwan's population (probably around 3 million) consisted predominantly of ethnic Chinese: a group known as the Hoklo, who had migrated from coastal Fujian (c. 70 percent of the population), and the Hakka, or “guest people,” who had come from northern China before making the crossing (c. 15–20 percent of the population). There were also a small number of native inhabitants of uncertain origin.2
Over the next five decades, Japan developed the island's economy to serve its needs.3 At first, the emphasis was on developing agriculture (predominantly rice and sugar) and then, as war approached, on industrial development. Japan engaged in extensive construction of transportation systems and industrial infrastructure. By the end of the war, the island had developed a considerable manufacturing base (30 percent of GDP) and boasted a level of economic development second only to Japan's among Asian economies as well as a per capita income twice that of mainland China. Social transformation accompanied economic development.
The urban population – primarily factory workers – and the number of Taiwanese in the educational system grew. Although Japanese students were advantaged, some Chinese did advance to university, either in Japan or at the university established in Taipei by the colonial regime. These educational reforms were part of a broader program that sought to introduce the Chinese population of Taiwan to Japanese language and culture. By the early 1940s an estimated 58 percent of the island's inhabitants were functionally literate in Japanese, while 10 percent had actually adopted Japanese names. Among themselves, the Chinese population continued to speak the regional dialects of the mainland from which they had come. However, by the end of the war, Chinese language had been banned in newspapers as well as in schools, and as a result few islanders could speak the northern dialect that had become the national language on the mainland.
The political rule of the Japanese was strict and favored its own. However, it was generally honest, efficient, and based in law. Although the colonial government controlled the island's central administration, almost half the bureaucracy was Taiwanese, with low-level officials often elected by the local population. The main demand among the Taiwanese was for greater self-rule as a part of the empire. Only the Taiwanese Communist Party (a very minor player) spoke of independence. Yet the Japanese colonial authorities made only symbolic gestures to meet these demands. With the outbreak of World War II, military governors pushed the Taiwanese to assimilate into imperial culture. More than 200,000 Taiwanese (including a future president, Lee Teng-hui) served in the Japanese army. Finally, in a desperate attempt to gain the support of the island's population as defeat neared, Taiwan was promised full integration into the Japanese empire.
Japan surrendered to the Allies in August of 1945. Over the next few months, ROC soldiers and officials arrived on Taiwan from the mainland. Seven years at war with a hated and brutal Japanese enemy had left a devastated, demoralized China. When the ROC officials came to the island, they found a comparatively undamaged and prosperous economy, as well as a population that had been spared the suffering experienced on the mainland. Moreover, the islanders seemed more Japanese than Chinese: they spoke Japanese, dressed like Japanese, ate Japanese food, and, in some cases, had Japanese names. General Keh King-en, chief of the first ROC military mission, articulated the contemptuous attitude shared by many mainlanders when he characterized the island as a “degraded territory” and its inhabitants a “degraded people.” To Keh and other mainlanders, Taiwan was “beyond the passes” – beyond the pale of true Chinese civilization (Kerr 1965: 72).
Although the islanders initially greeted the mainlanders, they soon reciprocated their disdain. Their “liberators” were a rag-tag army of often ignorant, undisciplined recruits. Within a year of the ROC's arrival, it became clear that the new government had none of Japan's efficiency and would deny Taiwanese aspirations for self-rule. The same corrupt, authoritarian management that was eroding the influence of the Nationalist government on the mainland was at work in Taiwan. Islanders began equating ROC “liberators” with Japanese occupiers, noting that the new occupiers lacked the competence of the former colonial regime. One contemporary observer notes that the prevalence of the phrase “Dogs go and pigs come” reflected not only Taiwanese contempt for corrupt mainlander rulers but also the fact that the ROC was being judged against the standard set by the Japanese – and found wanting (Kerr 1965: 97). This unfavorable comparison only heightened the disdain directed at the Taiwanese by the recently embattled mainlanders, who hated Japan and all things Japanese. On the eve of the 2.28 Incident, the ROC announced that the Chinese constitution due to go into effect at the end of 1947 would not extend to Taiwan. Governor Chen Yi claimed that, while mainland China was “advanced enough to enjoy the privileges of constitutional government,” Taiwan was not (ibid.: 240).
During the February 1947 violence, representatives of the population spoke in terms of the rights and grievances of the “Formosans,” claiming that islanders were entitled to the same treatment as “Chinese” (Kerr 1965: 278–90; Hsiau 2000; 57). Their plea was denied, and an official report on 2.28 spoke of a population divided by identity, of a people who desired to be Japanese and whose colonial education had engendered a “slave mentality” that had purged all knowledge of “the motherland” (Wang 2004: 6–8).
Facing an increasingly tenuous Nationalist position on the mainland, more than 2 million refugees migrated to Taiwan – including many military personnel and civilian administrators. As defeat loomed, rule on Taiwan became more authoritarian: in May of 1949, martial law was imposed on the island to defend against the communist threat. Articles of the nominally democratic ROC constitution passed on the mainland two years previously were suspended by the “Temporary Provisions and Special Legislation During the Period of Mobilization and Combating Rebellion,” also in response to the conflict with the communists (Tien 1989: 105–11). In December, President Chiang Kai-shek and his ROC government officially moved to the island, establishing a new national capital in Taipei and designating Taiwan a province under the government that still claimed to rule all of China.
It soon became apparent that post-war Nationalist policies would focus on two objectives: justifying the ROC's claim as the legitimate government of all China and preparing to return to the mainland. The latter objective became the rationale behind the establishment of an autocratic regime in which the major government, military, and KMT party posts were dominated by newly arrived mainlanders (about 15 percent of the island's population). The parliament elected on the mainland became a mere rubber stamp, and political power was concentrated in the president's office and implemented by the police and military. Yet the parliament still sat with members representing all of China's provinces. The parliament symbolized not only the ROC's claim to national rule but also the inferior status of the Taiwanese – the only citizens actually ruled by the ROC – who were granted only token membership.
