The Story of Taiwan

The Story of Taiwan

Taiwan's modern history is inseparable from the Chinese Civil War. When Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist forces (the GMD) were defeated by the Chinese Communist Party, he fled to Taiwan in 1949. He carried with him over 300 million dollars in gold reserves and crates of priceless art treasures, and there he established the Republic of China.

To understand why Taiwan mattered, you need its earlier history. Taiwan had been a Japanese colony since China ceded it after the 1894–95 war with Japan. The Cairo Declaration of 1943 and the Potsdam Proclamation of 1945 restored sovereignty over Taiwan to China. But the return of Chinese rule was brutal. Massive demonstrations in February 1947 led the GMD to kill a whole generation of leading figures on the island — an event that left deep scars.

Under Chiang Kai-shek, the GMD set up a repressive government. It forbade free speech and political opposition, and it excluded the local Taiwanese population from positions of power. Yet the same government carried out land reforms that increased agricultural productivity and modernised the economy. The results were striking: by 1973, Taiwan's GNP was second only to Japan's in all of Asia. The economy, heavily dependent on trade, has grown steadily since. Just as important, the gap between the rich and the poor has been steadily declining.

The most dramatic transformation, however, was political. Taiwan became a democracy, but slowly. The process began after Chiang's death in 1975 and gained real momentum when martial law was lifted in 1987 and opposition parties were legally permitted. The first free elections began the process of bringing local Taiwanese to power. …