Taiwan

Taiwan (Republic of China) An island 100 miles off the Chinese coast, which in 1895 became Japan's first colony following its victory in the Sino-Japanese War (1894–5). Japanese became the official language, while Chinese customs were repressed. At the same time, the Japanese ended the factionalism and infighting between the various warlords and criminal groups that had dominated the island for so long. After centuries of neglect by the Chinese imperial government in Peking, the island prospered after land reform and the introduction of education, as well as economic measures such as the expansion of railways and the introduction of electricity. During World War II, most islanders supported its colonial power. The island served as Japan's unsinkable ‘aircraft carrier’, from which the invasion of the Philippines was launched.

After World War II, Taiwan reverted to the rule of the Nationalist Chinese government led by Chiang Kai-shek. The new governors from mainland China treated the island with disdain, while their corrupt and arbitrary government led to widespread rioting in 1947. Nevertheless, after Chiang's defeat in the Chinese Civil War, in 1949 the island became his last refuge. Together with over one million people he arrived in Taiwan to use it as a last bastion of the Nationalist Republic of China, while mainland China became the Communist People's Republic of China. In subsequent years, the country's politics were dominated by two central issues: the heterogeneity of its population and relations with the People's Republic, over which the small island continued to claim sovereignty.

After 1949, the island was composed of three major population groups: a small aboriginal population of Malaysian-Polynesian origin; the Taiwanese majority of over 80 per cent of the total population, which had arrived on the island from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries; and the Nationalists from mainland China, who arrived around 1949 and made up around 15 per cent of the population. The latter group was extremely heterogeneous in itself, an amalgam of mostly Guomindang (KMT) officials and their families from different parts of China, united not by culture or tradition but by politics. It was this group which controlled the country's government and administration, as well as the economy, through its command of the only legal party, the Guomindang under Chiang's leadership.

Throughout its existence after 1949, Taiwan's political and economic development was closely affected by the Communist People's Republic of China on the mainland. In the first decade, Chiang was determined to prepare for the reconquest of the mainland sooner rather than later, via bases on the islands of Quemoy and Matsu. When it emerged that Mao's government was more stable than Chiang had anticipated, and after the USA had made clear its refusal to support an offensive war against China in 1959, Chiang shifted his attention to domestic political growth. He promoted Taiwan's development into a prosperous, well-organized exporter of high technology, again as a positive contrast to the Chinese mainland, which was ridden with economic problems. This development continued with even greater speed under his son, Chiang Ching-kuo, who recognized the growing tension between economic liberalization on the one hand and political illiberalism on the other. In addition, during the 1970s the country was weakened fundamentally by the UN's recognition of the People's Republic of China as the sole international representative of China in 1972, and the taking up of diplomatic relations between Communist China and the USA in 1979, both at Taiwan's expense.

As a way of increasing domestic stability, and to emphasize Taiwan's distinctiveness from mainland China, Chiang Ching-kuo carefully relaxed the Guomindang's monopoly of political power, with competitive national elections being introduced in 1980 and 1983. More importantly, he appointed a Taiwanese, Lee Teng-hui, as his Vice-President and successor. Under Lee, a two-party system emerged, with the oppositional Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) winning a sensational victory in the local elections of 2 December 1994. In the early 1990s a number of constitutional amendments were passed, all of which effectively challenged mainland China's claim of sovereignty over the island. Not the least of these was the conduct of direct, democratic presidential elections in 1996, which Lee won despite angry interference from Communist China. The KMT recovered in the parliamentary elections of 1998 against the DPP.

A political shift occurred in 2000, when the DPP broke the KMT's monopoly of power and won the presidential elections. However, the new President, Chen Shui-bian, was blocked by the KMT's majority in parliament. The political establishment struggled to accommodate the precedent of a President and a parliamentary majority each pursuing contrasting political agendas. The KMT was riven by internal conflicts, and was divided between those propagating constructive opposition and those favouring a total blockade of the President's plans. Following the integration of Hong Kong into mainland China in 1997, the Chinese government put pressure on Taiwan as the one Chinese territory beyond its control. However, Taiwan remained heavily armed in case of conflict, while it acted as one of the biggest foreign investors in mainland China.