A Brief History of Taiwan
- Before 1945, Taiwan, a small island 118 miles across a strait from mainland China, was controlled successively by Chinese and Japanese governments.
- After World War II, when Japan was forced to relinquish control over all territories it had claimed from the rest of Asia, Taiwan returned to China’s rule.
- 1946, a civil war resumed between forces loyal to the Nationalist government of the Kuomintang (KMT) party, led by Chiang Kai-shek, and forces of the Communist Party of China, led by Mao Zedong.
- In 1949, the Communist forces won and founded the People’s Republic of China.
- Chiang and the defeated KMT party fled to Taiwan and continued to use the name “Republic of China.".
- As many as 2 million nationalist Chinese, including hundreds of thousands of KMT military veterans and their families from all over China, retreated to Taiwan.
- The two opposing states both claimed to be the legitimate government of China.
- Most of the world recognized Chiang’s regime, and the United States was Taiwan’s staunch ally.
- May 19, 1949, The KMT decreed martial law in Taiwan.
- The KMT gave hope to the displaced populace with slogans such as “Recover the mainland, rescue our suffering fellowmen on the mainland.”--> The KMT was never able to mobilize a serious effort
- The refugees could not return to mainland China until late 1987—almost 40 years without any communication. It was a complete blackout: no travel, transport, no mail.
- (1949–1979) During the first three decades of KMT rule in Taiwan , the government strongly promoted Chinese identity to help the original Taiwanese assimilate with the mainlanders. The government repressed native Taiwanese studies and required students to speak Mandarin instead of Taiwanese and Japanese. All were required to study Chinese history and literature and to use the map of China instead of Taiwan in geography class.
- 1971- The UN switched recognition of the name “China” from the Republic of China to the People’s Republic and gave Taiwan’s UN seat to the Communist regime.
- 1978, Chiang Ching-kuo succeeded his father, Chiang Kai-shek, as ruler of Taiwan.
- 1979- the United States, which had been the strongest supporter of the KMT regime since the 1930s, severed diplomatic relations with the island nation.
- With economic development in the 1970s and 1980s, Taiwan became wealthy, its economy blooming as one of the four “dragons” in East Asia, along with Japan, South Korea and Singapore.
- The impact of increasingly frequent communications between Taiwan and the West, confused residents of Taiwan about where they actually belonged. Taiwanese intellectuals began to fight the political repression brought by martial law and to embrace traditional Taiwanese cultural symbols.
- September 28, 1986, a new political party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), was founded. It denied the KMT’s “One China” stance and claimed that Taiwan was a separate nation.
- 1987, Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law.
- In her 2005 master’s thesis about Stan Lai at Ohio State University, Taiwanese theatre scholar Mao Yuen-jean wrote that when travel restrictions were lifted, “many [Taiwanese] were excited to visit the legendary other shore. . . . Their quest for the long-lost past led to the attitude in favor of a unification.”
- When the refugees finally went back to the mainland, they found that the old China they remembered was gone.
- Mao Yuenjean cites a quote by film director Ang Lee in his book Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Portrait of the Ang Lee Film in which he describes his feelings the first time he visited Beijing. “I was kind of disappointed. Other than the palace, everything was modern. I didn’t see what I was looking for—it felt as if I were in a big Taipei. I had no thrill because that China does not exist anymore, either in Taiwan or America or here: It’s a history. It’s a dream that all the Chinese people in the world have, an impression. Gone with the wind.”
- For the older generation of refugees from mainland China, loneliness and homesickness made them belong to neither side of the Taiwan Strait