History of Taiwan

 

History of Taiwan

Taiwan (including the Pescadores) was first populated by Austronesian peoples. It was colonised by the Dutch in the 17th century, when influx of Han from the continent across the Taiwan Strait took place. The Spanish later settled in the North for a brief period, but were driven out by the Dutch. In 1662, it became a base for Koxinga, a Ming loyalist. It was defeated by the Qing (Ch’ing) dynasty of China in 1683. The Qing Dynasty was forced to cede the island to Japan in 1895 after the 1st Sino-Japanese War. Then Japan was forced to renounce control to Taiwan in 1945 after Japanese defeat in the 2nd World War. In 1949, after losing the Chinese mainland as a result of the Chinese civil war, the ROC government under the Kuomintang (KMT) withdrew to Taipei. KMT had been the seat of the government of the ROC until the presidential election in 2000, when Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Chen Shui-bian was elected president of Taiwan, becoming the first non-KMT member to assume the executive office since 1945. Chen was elected again in the 2004 election and currently serves as Taiwan’s president.

Prehistoric Settlement

The Puyuma’s Moon-shape Monolith ca. 1896
Taiwan is estimated by anthropologists to have been populated for approximately 30,000 years. Little is known about the original inhabitants, but distinctive jadeware, and corded pottery of the Changpin, Puyuma and Tapenkeng (Dapenkeng) cultures show a marked diversity in the island’s early inhabitants. Today’s Taiwan’s aboriginal peoples are classified as belonging to the Austronesian ethno-linguistic group of people, a linguistic group that stretches as far west as Madagascar, to Easter Island in the east and to New Zealand in the south with Taiwan as the northern most point. Austronesian culture on Taiwan begins about 4,000 B.C.
Early history
Several entries that may refer to Taiwan appear in Chinese historical records, but otherwise no records exist of Taiwan in the early period. Between 607 and 610, some generals of Sui Dynasty embarked on several military operations on Liuqiu (流求國), described in the Book of Sui (《隋書流求傳》). Many scholars think that the Liuqiu of the Sui Dynasty was what is the island of Taiwan. In 1292, Kublai Khan of the Yuan Dynasty tried to force minorities in Yizhou (夷州) to pay tribute. Between 1335 and 1340, Wang Dayuan (汪大渊) wrote a book (《岛夷志略》) which describes Liuqiu (琉求) after he had visited it. In 1375, the Ming Dynasty dispatched a delegation to the now Ryūkyū Islands. Thereafter the Han referred to the Ryūkyū Islands as “Liuqiu” (琉球) and an island south of the Ryūkyū Islands as “little Liuqiu” (小琉球), which may be the island of Taiwan. Between 1403 and 1424, the great fleet of Ming Dynasty’s admiral Zheng He possibly visited Taiwan. None of these records were definite (the earlier records being set in mythical or legendary contexts), and it was not certain that the island(s) referred to is indeed Taiwan (Teng;2004, pp. 33-49). Permanent Han settlement on Penghu began in the 1100s but the same on the main island of Taiwan did not take place until several centuries later (Shepherd;1993, pp.1-8).
Despite Taiwan being rumored as the fabled “Island of Dogs,” “Island of Women,” or any of the other fabled island thought, by Han literati, to lie beyond the seas, Taiwan was officially regarded by Qing Emperor Kangxi as “a ball of mud beyond the pale of civilization” and did not appear on any map of the imperial domain until 1683 (Teng;2004, pp. 34-59). The act of presenting a map to the emperor was equal to presenting the lands of the empire. It took several more years before the Qing court would recognize Taiwan as part of the Qing realm. Prior to the Qing Dynasty, the Middle Kingdom was conceived as a land bound by mountains, rivers and seas. The idea of an island as a part of the Middle Kingdom was unfathomable to the Han prior to the Qing frontier expansion effort of the 17th Century (Teng;2004:pp 34-49, 177-179) The presence of the Great Wall demonstrates some earlier concepts of “China’s” borders in relation to the PRC’s current holdings and claims (Millward;1998, pp 36-38). The “suspicious history” of Taiwan is often cited by Chinese nationalists to support their claim that “Taiwan has belonged to China since antiquity”. Supporters of Taiwan Independence do not regard these claims as valid.
Dutch and Spanish rule
Main article: Taiwan under Dutch rule
Portuguese sailors, passing Taiwan in 1544, first jotted in a ship’s log the name of the island “Ilha Formosa”, meaning Beautiful Island. In 1582 the survivors of a Portuguese shipwreck spent ten weeks battling malaria and aborigines before returning to Macau on a raft.
Dutch traders, in search of an Asian base first arrived on the island at the request of the Ming court in 1623 to use the island as a base for Dutch commerce with Japan and the coastal areas of China. The Spanish and allies established a settlement at Santissima Trinidad, building Fort San Salvador on the northwest coast of Taiwan near Keelung in 1626 which they occupied until 1642 when they were driven out by a joint Dutch-Aborigine invasion force. They also built a fort in Tamsui (1628) but already abandoned it in 1638. The Dutch later built Fort Anthonio here (1642), which still stands (now part of the Fort San Domingo museum complex).

The Island Formosa and the Pescadores/ Johannes Vingboons/ ca.1640/ Nationaal Archief, Den Haag
The Dutch East India Company (VOC) administered the island and its predominantly aboriginal population until 1662, setting up a tax system, schools to teach romanized script of aboriginal languages and evangelizing. Although its control was mainly limited to the western plain of the island, the Dutch systems were adopted by succeeding occupiers. The first influx of migrants from coastal Fujian came during the Dutch period, in which merchants and traders from the Chinese coast sought to purchase hunting licenses from the Dutch or hide out in aboriginal villages to escape the Qing authorities. Most of the immigrants were young single males who were discouraged from staying on the island often referred to by Han as “The Gate of Hell” for its reputation in taking the lives of sailors and explorers.
The Dutch originally sought to use their castle Zeelandia at Tayowan as a trading base between Japan and China, but soon realized the potential of the huge deer populations that roamed in herds of thousands along the alluvial plains of Taiwan’s western regions. Deer were in high demand by the Japanese who were willing to pay top dollar for use of the hides in samurai armor. Other parts of the deer were sold to Han traders for meat and medical use. The Dutch paid aborigines for the deer brought to them and tried to manage the deer stocks to keep up with demand. The Dutch also employed Han to farm sugarcane and rice for export, some of these rice and sugarcane reached as far as the markets of Persia. Unfortunately the deer the aborigines had relied on for their livelihoods began to disappear forcing the aborigines to adopt new means of survival. The Dutch built a second administrative castle on the main island of Taiwan in 1633 and set out to earnestly turn Taiwan into a Dutch colony.

Fort Zeelandia built in Tainan.
The first order of business was to punish villages that had violently opposed the Dutch and unite the aborigines in allegiance with the VOC. The first punitive expedition was against the villages of Baccloan and Mattauw, north of Saccam near Tayowan. The Mattauw campaign had been easier than expected and the tribe submitted after having their village razed by fire. The campaign also served as a threat to other villages from Tirossen (Chia Yi) to Lonkjiaow (Heng Chun). The 1636 punitive attack on Lamay Island (Hsiao Liu Chiu) in response to the killing of the shipwrecked crew of the Beverwijck and the Golden Lion ended ten years later with the entire aboriginal population of 1100 removed from the island including 327 Lamayans killed in a cave, having been trapped there by the Dutch and suffocated in the fumes and smoke pumped into the cave by the Dutch and their allied aborigines from Saccam, Soulang and Pangsoya. The men were forced into slavery in Batavia (Java) and the women and children became servants and wives for the Dutch officers. The events on Lamay changed the course of Dutch rule to work closer with allied aborigines, though there remained plans to depopulate the outlying islands.
Japanese invasions
Japan had sought to claim sovereignty over Taiwan (known as Takayama Koku) since 1592, when Toyotomi Hideyoshi undertook a policy of overseas expansion and extending Japanese influence southward [1]. Korea, to the west, was invaded and an attempt to invade Taiwan and subsequent invasion attempts were to be unsuccessful due mainly to disease and attacks by aborigines on the island. In 1609, the Tokugawa Shogunate sent Haruno Arima on an exploratory mission of the island. In 1616, Murayama Toan led an unsuccessful invasion of the island. In 1871, an Okinawan vessel shipwrecked on the southern tip of Taiwan and the crew of 54 were beheaded by the Botan aborigines. When Japan sought compensation from Qing China, the court rejected compensation on the account that they didn’t have jurisdiction over the island. This was to lead to Japan testing the situation for colonizing the island and in 1874 an expedition force of 3,000 troops were sent to the island . It was not until the defeat of the Chinese navy during the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894-95 was Japan to finally realize possession of Taiwan and the shifting of Asian dominance from China to Japan. The Treaty of Shimonoseki was signed in 1895 ceding Taiwan and the Pescadores over to Japan, which would rule the island for 50 years until its defeat in World War II.
Ming loyalist rule
Main article: Kingdom of Tungning
Manchu forces broke through Shanhai Pass in 1644 and rapidly overwhelmed the Ming Dynasty. In 1661, a naval fleet led by the Ming loyalist Koxinga, arrived in Taiwan to oust the Dutch from Zeelandia and establish a pro-Ming base in Taiwan.
Koxinga, born in 1624 in Japan to Japanese mother and a Chinese father, Iquan, in a family made wealthy from shipping and piracy, inherited his father’s trade networks, which stretched from Nagasaki to Macao. Following the Manchu advance on Fujian, Koxinga retreated from his stronghold in Amoy (Xiamen) and besieged Taiwan in the hope of establishing a strategic base to marshal his troops to retake his base at Amoy. In 1662, following a nine month siege, Koxinga captured the Dutch fortress Zeelandia and Taiwan became his base (see Kingdom of Tungning). Concurrently the last Ming pretender had been captured and killed by General Wu Sangui, extinguishing any hope Koxinga may have had of re-establishing the Ming Empire. He died four months thereafter in a fit of madness after learning of the cruel killings of his father and brother at the hands of the Manchus. Other accounts are more simple, chalking up Koxinga’s passing to a case of malaria.
Qing Dynasty rule
In 1683, following a naval engagement with Admiral Shi Lang, one of Koxinga’s father’s trusted friends, Koxinga’s grandson Zheng Keshuang submitted to Manchu Qing Dynasty control. Koxinga’s followers were forced to depart from Taiwan to the more unpleasant parts of Qing controlled land. By 1682 there were only 7000 Han left on Taiwan as they had intermarried with aboriginal women and had property in Taiwan. The Koxinga reign had continued the tax systems of the Dutch, established schools and religious temples.

1896 map of Formosa, revised by Rev. William Campbell
From 1683, the Qing Dynasty ruled Taiwan as a prefecture and in 1875 divided the island into two prefectures, north and south. In 1887 the island was made into a separate Chinese province.
The Manchu authorities tried to limit immigration to Taiwan and barred families from travelling to Taiwan to ensure the immigrants would return to their families and ancestral graves. Illegal immigration continued, but many of the men had few prospects in war weary Fujian and thus married locally, resulting in the idiom “mainland grandfather no mainland grandmother” (有唐山公無唐山媽). The Qing tried to protect aboriginal land claims, but also sought to turn them into tax paying subjects. Han and tax paying aborigines were barred from entering the wilderness which covered most of the island for the fear of raising the ire of the non taxpaying, highland aborigines and inciting rebellion. A border was constructed along the western plain, built using pits and mounds of earth, called “earth cows”, to discourage illegal land reclamation.
Following a shipwreck of an Ryūkyūan vessel on the southeastern tip of Taiwan in winter of 1871, in which the heads of 54 crew members were taken by the aboriginal Taiwanese Paiwan people in Mutan village (牡丹社), the Japanese sought to use this incident as a pretext to formally annex the Ryūkyū Kingdom as a Japanese prefecture.[1] and expand into Taiwan. According to records from Japanese documents, Mao Changxi (毛昶熙) and Dong Xun (董恂), the Chinese (Qing) ministers at Zongli Yamen (總理衙門) who handled the complaints from Japanese envoy Yanagihara Sakimitsu (柳原前光) replied first that they had heard only of a massacre of Ryūkyūans, not of Japanese, and quickly noted that Ryūkyū was under Chinese suzerainty, therefore this issue was not Japan’s business. In addition, the governor-general of Chinese province Fukien had rescued the survivors of the massacre and returned them safely to Ryūkyū. The Chinese explained that there were two kinds of aborigines on Taiwan: those governed by Chinese, and those unnaturalized “raw barbarians… beyond the reach of [the Chinese] government and customs.” They indirectly hinted that foreigners travelling in those areas settled by unnaturalized aboriginal people must exercise caution. After the Yanagihara-Yamen interview, the Japanese said that the Chinese government had not opposed Japan’s claims to sovereignty over the Ryūkyū Islands, disclaimed any jurisdiction over aboriginal Taiwanese, and had indeed consented to Japan’s expedition to Taiwan; however, these claims were unfounded [2]. The Qing Dynasty made it clear to the Japanese that Taiwan was definitely within Chinese jurisdiction, even though part of that island’s aboriginal population was not yet under the influence of Chinese civilization. The Qing also pointed to similar cases all over the world where an aboriginal population within a national boundary was not under the influence of the dominant culture of that country.
The Japanese nevertheless launched an expedition with a force of 2000 soldiers in 1874. The number of casualties for the Paiwan was about 30, and that for the Japanese was 543 (12 Japanese soldiers were killed in battle and 531 by disease). Eventually, the Japanese withdrew as about Qing Dynasty sent 3 divisions of forces (9000 soldiers) to reinforce Taiwan. The Okinawan affair was more of a trial balloon sent up by the Japanese to test the situation on Taiwan for a possible colonization campaign of their own. This caused the Qing to re-think the importance of Taiwan in their maritime defense strategy and greater importance was placed on gaining control over the wilderness regions. The second test of Qing commitment came during the French blockade of Keelung harbor during the Sino-French War of 1884-1885. The result was a brief bombardment of Qing positions and a French amphibious operation. The French had some limited early gains but was eventually forced to withdraw. The Qing finally made Taiwan a province and appointed Liu Mingchuan as the first governor of Taiwan to initiate Taiwan development in 1887. In the waning years of Qing control over Taiwan, Governor Liu Mingchuan initiated a series of modernizing reforms and infrastructure projects, including 60 km of railroad track laid between Keelung and Hsinchu. This segment of railroad became too old in the Japanese eye, and was demolished for modernization later under Japanese rule.
On the eve of the Sino-Japanese War about 45 percent of the island was administered under direct Qing administration while the remaining was lightly populated by Aboriginal. As part of the settlement for losing the Sino-Japanese War, China ceded the island of Taiwan and the Pescadores to Japan in 1895. The loss of Taiwan would become a rallying point for the Chinese nationalist movement in the years that followed.
Japanese rule
Main article: Taiwan under Japanese rule.

A 1912 map of Japan with Taiwan, which was part of the Empire of Japan from 1895 to 1945.
After receiving sovereignty of Taiwan, the Japanese feared military resistance from both Taiwanese and Aborigines who followed the establishment by the local elite of the short-lived Republic of Formosa. Taiwan’s elite hoped that by declaring themselves a republic the world would not stand by and allow a sovereign state to be invaded by the Japanese, thereby allying with the Qing. The plan quickly turned to chaos as standard Green troops and ethnic Yue soldiers took to looting and pillage. Given the choice between chaos at the hands of Chinese or submission to the Japanese, the Taipei elite sent Ku Hsien-rong to Keelung to invite the advancing Japanese forces to proceed to Taipei and restore order.
The Taiwanese resistance was sporadic, yet at times fierce, but was largely crushed by 1902, although relatively minor rebellions occurred in subsequent years, including the Ta-pa-ni incident of 1915 in Tainan county. The rebellions were often caused by a combination of the effects of colonial policies on local elites and extant millenarian beliefs of the local Taiwanese, rather than nationalism or patriotism. Aboriginal resistance to the heavy-handed Japanese policies of acculturation and pacification lasted up until the early 1930s. The last major Aboriginal rebellion, the Wushe Uprising in late 1930 by the Atayal people angry over their treatment while laboring in the burdensome job of camphor extraction, launched the last headhunting party in which over 150 Japanese officials were killed and beheaded during the opening ceremonies of a school. The uprising, led by Mona Rudao, was crushed by 2,000-3,000 Japanese troops and Aboriginal auxiliaries with the help of poison gas.
Japanese colonization of the island fell under three stages. It began with an oppressive period of crackdown and paternalistic rule, then a dōka (同化) period of aims to treat all people (races) alike proclaimed by Taiwanese Nationalists who were enlightened by the Self-Determination of Nations (民族自決) proposed by Woodrow Wilson after World War I, and finally, during World War II, a period of kōminka (皇民化), a policy which aimed to turn Taiwanese into loyal subjects of the Japanese emperor.

Bank of Taiwan established in 1897 headquartered in Taipei.
Initial infrastructural development took place quickly. The Bank of Taiwan was established in 1899 to encourage Japanese private sectors, including Mitsubishi and the Mitsui Group, to invest in Taiwan. In 1900, the third Taiwan Governor-General passed a budget which initiated the building of Taiwan’s railroad system from Keelung to Takao (Kaohsiung). By 1905 the island had electric power supplied by water power in Sun-Moon Lake, and in subsequent years Taiwan was considered the second-most developed region of East Asia (after Japan). By 1905, Taiwan was financially self-sufficient and had been weaned off of subsidies from Japan’s central government.
Under the governor Shinpei Goto’s rule, many major public works projects were completed. The Taiwan rail system connecting the south and the north and the modernizations of Keelung and Kaohsiung ports were completed to facilitate transport and shipping of raw material and agricultural products. Exports increased by four-fold. 55% of agricultural land was covered by dam-supported irrigation systems. Food production had increased four-fold and sugar cane production had increased 15-fold between 1895 to 1925 and Taiwan became a major foodbasket serving Japan’s industrial economy. The health care system was widely established and infectious diseases were almost completely eradicated. The average lifespan for a Taiwanese resident would become 60 years by 1945.

In October 1935, the Governor-General of Taiwan held an “Exposition to Commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the Beginning of Administration in Taiwan,” which served as a showcase for the achievements of Taiwan’s modernization process under Japanese rule. This attracted worldwide attention, including the Republic of China’s KMT regime which sent the Japanese-educated Chen Yi to attend the affair. He expressed his admiration about the efficiency of Japanese government in developing Taiwan, and commented on how lucky the Taiwanese were to live under such effective administration. Somewhat ironically, Chen Yi would later become the ROC’s first Chief Executive of Taiwan, who would be infamous for the corruption that occurred under his watch.
The later period of Japanese rule saw a local elite educated and organized. During the 1930s several home rule groups were created at a time when others around the world sought to end colonialism. In 1935, the Taiwanese elected their first group of local legislators. By March 1945, the Japanese legislative branch hastily modified election laws to allow Taiwanese representation in the Japanese Diet.
See also
Political divisions of Taiwan (1895-1945), List of Governor-General of Taiwan,Structure of the Taiwan Army of Japan
As Japan embarked on full-scale war in China in 1937, it expanded Taiwan’s industrial capacity to manufacture war material. By 1939, industrial production had exceeded agricultural production in Taiwan. At the same time, the “kominka” imperialization project was put under way to instill the “Japanese Spirit” in Taiwanese residents, and ensure the Taiwanese would remain loyal subjects of the Japanese Emperor ready to make sacrifices during wartime. Measures including Japanese-language education, the option of adopting Japanese names, and the worship of Japanese religion were instituted. In 1943, 94% of the children received 6-year compulsory education. From 1937 to 1945, 126,750 Taiwanese joined and served in the military of the Japanese Empire, while a further 80,433 were conscripted between 1942 to 1945. Of the sum total, 30,304, or 15%, died in Japan’s war in Asia.
In 1942, after the United States entered in war against Japan and on the side of China, the Chinese government under the KMT renounced all treaties signed with Japan before that date and made Taiwan’s return to China (as with Manchuria) one of the wartime objectives. In the Cairo Conference of 1943, the Allied Powers declared the return of Taiwan to China as one of several Allied demands. In 1945, Japan unconditionally surrendered and ended its rule in Taiwan.
Chinese Republic rule
Main article: History of the Republic of China
See also: Legal status of Taiwan
The Republic of China proclaimed October 25, 1945 as Taiwan Retrocession Day with the surrender of Japanese troops. The validity of the proclamation is subject to some debate, with some supporters of Taiwan independence arguing that it is invalid, and that the date only marks the beginning of military occupation that persists to the present. During the immediate postwar period, the Kuomintang (KMT) administration on Taiwan was repressive and extremely corrupt compared with the previous Japanese rule, leading to local discontent. Anti-mainlander violence flared on February 28, 1947, prompted by an incident in which a cigarette seller was injured and a passerby was indiscriminately shot dead by Nationalist authorities (Kerr, 1966; pp. 254-255).

Tensions between local Taiwanese and Chinese mainlanders resulted in an uprising known as the “February 28 Incident” where 30,000 civilians were killed by the ROC military.
For several weeks after the February 28 Incident the rebels held control of much of the island. Feigning negotiation, the Nationalists assembled a large military force (carried on United States naval vessels) that attacked Taiwan, massacring nearly 30,000 Taiwanese and imprisoning thousands of others.
The killings were both random and premeditated as local elites or educated Taiwanese were sought out and disposed of. Many of the Taiwanese who had formed home rule groups under the Japanese were the victims of 2-28. This was followed by the “White Terror” in which many thousands of Taiwanese were imprisoned or executed for their real or perceived opposition to the Kuomintang military regime, leaving many native Taiwanese with a deep-seated bitterness to the mainlanders. Until 1995, the KMT authorities suppressed accounts of this episode in Taiwan history. In 1995 a monument was dedicated to the victims of the “2-28 Incident”, and for the first time the ROC President Lee Teng-hui publicly apologized for the Nationalists’ brutality.
From the 1930s onward a civil war was underway in China between Chiang Kai-shek’s ROC government and the Communist Party of China led by Mao Zedong. When the civil war ended in 1949, 2 million refugees, predominantly from the Nationalist government, military, and business community, fled to Taiwan. In October 1949 the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.) was founded on the mainland by the victorious communists; several months before, Chiang Kai-shek had established a “provisional” ROC capital in Taipei and moved his government there from Nanjing. Under Nationalist rule, the mainlanders dominated the government and civil service forcing 37,000 Taiwanese out of the government sector.
In the 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty, Japan renounced all right, claim, and title to Taiwan, but no “receiving country” was specified. This ambiguity has been used by independence supporters to argue against the legitimacy of the ROC government’s rule over the island.
Economic developments

The Chinese Civil War led to severe inflation. Currency was issued in denominations of 1 million Old Taiwan dollars.
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, post-war economic conditions compounded with the then-ongoing Chinese Civil War caused severe inflation across China and in Taiwan, made worse by corruption. This gave way to the reconstruction process and reforms.
The KMT took control of Taiwan’s monopolies and property that had been government property under the Japanese passed into possession of the KMT party-state. Approximately 17% of Taiwan’s GNP was nationalized. Also, Taiwanese investors lost their claim to the Japanese bond certificates they possessed. These real estate holdings as well as the large amount gold reserves brought from the Chinese mainland helped KMT become one the wealthiest political parties in the world but also helped to ensure Taiwan recover quickly from war.
With the help of the China Aid Act of 1948 and the Chinese-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction, the KMT authorities implemented a far-reaching and seemingly highly successful land reform program on Taiwan during the 1950s. They redistributed land among small farmers and compensated large landowners with commodities certificates and stock in state-owned industries. Although this left some large landowners impoverished, others turned their compensation into capital and started commercial and industrial enterprises. These entrepreneurs were to become Taiwan’s first industrial capitalists. Together with businessmen who fled from the mainland, they once again revived Taiwan’s prosperity previously ceased along with Japanese withdraw and managed Taiwan’s transition from an agricultural to a commercial, industrial economy.
Taiwan has developed steadily into a major international trading power with more than $218 billion in two-way trade. Tremendous prosperity on the island was accompanied by economic and social stability.
Taiwan’s phenomenal economic development earned it a spot as one of the Four Asian Tigers.
Democratic reforms

Until the early 1970s, the Republic of China was recognized as the sole legitimate government of China by the United Nations and most Western nations, both of which refused to recognize the People’s Republic of China on account of the Cold War. The KMT ruled Taiwan under martial law until the late 1980s, with the stated goal of being vigilant against Communist infiltration and preparing to retake the mainland. Therefore, political dissent was not tolerated.
The late 1970s and early 1980s were a turbulent time for Taiwanese as many of the people who had originally been oppressed and left behind by economic changes became members of the Taiwan’s new middle class. Free enterprise had allowed native Taiwanese to gain a powerful bargaining chip in their demands for respect for their basic human rights. The Kaohsiung Incident would be a major turning point for democracy in Taiwan.
Taiwan also faced setbacks in the international sphere. In 1971, the ROC government walked out of the United Nations shortly before it recognized the PRC government in Beijing as the legitimate holder of China’s seat in the United Nations. The ROC had been offered dual representation, but Chiang Kai-shek demanded to retain a seat on the UN Security Council, which was not acceptable to the PRC. Chiang expressed his decision in his famous “the sky is not big enough for two suns” speech. In October 1971, Resolution 2758 was passed by the UN General Assembly and “the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek” (and thus the ROC) was expelled from the UN and replaced as “China” by the PRC. In 1979, the United States switched recognition from Taipei to Beijing.
Chiang Kai-shek’s eventual successor, his son Chiang Ching-kuo, began to liberalize Taiwan’s political system. The events of 1979 highlighted the need for change and groups like Amnesty International were mobilizing a campaign against the government and President Chiang Ching-kuo. Finally, in 1986, the Democratic Progressive Party was formed illegally and inaugurated as the first opposition party in Taiwan to counter the KMT. A year later Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law. Chiang selected Lee Teng-hui, a native Taiwanese technocrat to be his Vice President. The move followed other reforms giving more power to the native Taiwanese and calmed anti-KMT sentiments during a period in which many other Asian autocracies were being shaken by People Power movements.
After the 1988 death of Chiang Ching-Kuo, his successor as President Lee Teng-hui continued to hand more government authority over to the native Taiwanese and democratize the government. Under Lee, Taiwan underwent a process of localization in which local culture and history was promoted over a pan-China viewpoint. Lee’s reforms included printing banknotes from the Central Bank rather than the Provincial Bank of Taiwan, and disbanding the Taiwan Provincial Government. Under Lee, the original members of the Legislative Yuan and National Assembly, elected in 1947 to represent mainland constituencies, were forced to resign in 1991. Restrictions on the use of Taiwanese languages in the broadcast media and in schools were lifted as well.
However, Lee failed to crack down on the massive corruption that developed under authoritarian KMT party rule. Many KMT loyalists feel Lee betrayed the R.O.C. by taking reforms too far, while other Taiwanese feel he did not take reforms far enough.
Lee ran as the incumbent in Taiwan’s first direct presidential election in 1996 against DPP candidate and former dissident, Peng Min-ming. This election prompted the PRC to conduct a series of missile tests in the Taiwan Strait to intimidate the Taiwanese electorate so that electorates would vote for other pro-unification candidates, Chen Li-an and Lin Yang-kang. The aggressive tactic prompted U.S. President Clinton to invoke the Taiwan Relations Act and dispatch two aircraft carrier battle groups into the region off Taiwan’s southern coast to monitor the situation, and PRC’s missile tests were forced to end earlier than planned. This incident is known as the 1996 Taiwan Straits Crisis.
One of Lee’s final acts as president was to declare on German radio that the ROC and the PRC have a special state to state relationship. Lee’s statement was met with the PRC’s People’s Army conducting military drills in Fujian and a frightening island-wide blackout in Taiwan, causing many to fear an attack. Lee’s assertion that the ROC is a sovereign and independent nation separate from the mainland was popular among Taiwanese. However, many suspected that his two nation theory was intended to ultimately create a Republic of Taiwan, which was not popular among the electorate.
In the 2000 presidential election marked the end to KMT rule. Opposition DPP candidate Chen Shui-bian won a three way race that saw the pro-reunification vote split by independent James Soong and KMT candidate Lien Chan. President Chen garnered 39% of the vote. In 2004, President Chen was re-elected to a second four year term after an apparent assassination attempt which occurred the day before the election. The gunman fired two shots, one grazing the President’s belly, the other grazing the vice president’s knee.