Taiwan: A Country Like No Other

Wojciech Harpula: What is Taiwan’s official status? Is there any other country in the world with a similar legal and international standing?

Prof. Jakub Polit: Taiwan’s status is impossible to define with precision. Comparing it to the pariah states such as Western Sahara, South Ossetia, or Abkhazia is highly confusing. Those are relatively new entities and hardly any country, if any, recognizes them. Taiwan’s official name is the Republic of China, and it emerged in 1911 following the Xinhai Revolution which overthrew the Chinese empire. Not only was it recognized by all the other states in the world, but it also joined the United Nations as a nominal superpower with the rights of a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.

In 1949, however, the Republic’s government lost to Mao Zedong’s communist rebellion in a civil war and retreated to Taiwan. Consequently, its rule was restricted to Taiwan itself and a few small islands in the Fujian Province close to the mainland. The USSR and its allies acknowledged the People’s Republic of China, which controlled the whole big remainder of the Chinese territory, as the rightful entity representing China. In 1971, the U.N. also ceased to recognize the Republic of China, replacing it with the PRC. Therefore, Taiwan’s case is special because it features a withdrawal of international recognition.

The current status of the Republic of China is unique for one more reason. The country is officially recognized by 13 states, with the Holy See and, to a lesser extent, Paraguay as the only important international players in this group. Nevertheless, it’s doing great as a state. It hasn’t collapsed like Somalia. It’s not a makeshift country like South Ossetia or Abkhazia, both of which are simply parts of Georgia annexed by Russia. If moved to Europe, Taiwan would be a middle-sized country—a little bigger than the Netherlands, or a bit smaller than Switzerland—with a population of 23 million.

It has an efficient, state-of-the-art economy, and its social development indicators are among the highest in the world. In fact, Taiwan should be a member of G20, a group of the world’s strongest economies! But it hasn’t been admitted, and that’s precisely because of its official status which indicates what Taiwan is and, perhaps more importantly, what it’s not.

How did that happen? Why did 1971 see the PRC replace the Republic of China in the international arena?

And why did 1945 see an entity later called the People’s Republic of Poland replace the Republic of Poland in the international arena? It was caused by the superpowers and their global game. The USSR had long been calling for recognizing the PRC as the rightful entity representing China, and one day it became beneficial to the United States too. Embroiled in the Vietnam War, the United States began to seek some agreement with communist China at the beginning of the 1970s. In 1971, the U.S. lifted its embargo on trading with the PRC; shortly thereafter, the government in Beijing invited the American ping-pong team to China, a move which became known as ping-pong diplomacy.

China was also visited by Henry Kissinger, who served as the national security advisor under President Richard Nixon and laid the ground for Nixon’s visit to the PRC. A little later, the U.S. gave its consent to the admission of communist China to the U.N. When the relevant resolution was passed, the Republic of China’s representative left the room, stating that Taiwan and other like-minded governments would still make an effort to defend the U.N.’s ideals which had just been betrayed by the General Assembly. That case was so special because a country expelled from the U.N. continued to exist: it still had its territory, government, and army, and was doing quite well internationally.

Why did the onset of communist rule in mainland China produce one Chinese state instead of two?

Because both the PRC and the Republic of China consider themselves as the only rightful representatives of the Chinese state. This is one of the very few mutual beliefs still held by the governments in Beijing and Taipei. As long as up to the beginning of the 1990s, the mainland’s communists and Taiwan’s Kuomintang [KMT: the Nationalist Party of China, established in 1912, which ruled the Republic of China in the years 1928–2000 and 2008–2016—editor’s note] consistently maintained that there was only one China and that Taiwan formed its part. It was as if the Republic of Poland’s government in exile, headed by President Władysław Raczkiewicz and Prime Minister Tomasz Arciszewski, had managed to remain on the Hel Peninsula in 1945 and declared that they were still Poland’s rightful government despite the communist party already ruling the country from its capital city of Warsaw under President Bolesław Bierut and Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz.

Since both Beijing and Taipei claimed that there was only one Chinese state in the world, it was impossible for them to recognize each other. Consequently, any country which acknowledged either of them had to face a formal severance of diplomatic relations by the other. Compare this to the situation developed by the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, or by North Korea and South Korea. The German states recognized each other and they both joined the U.N. The two Koreas haven’t normalized their relations yet, but both of them enjoy international recognition. Unlike those countries, the Republic of China is the weaker party to the conflict and as such is virtually deprived of international support. This prevents Taiwan from joining any international organizations, so whenever it wishes to do so, it must resort to tricks. For instance, it’s a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) as the Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu, while the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has admitted it as Chinese Taipei.

Has Taiwan ever been an independent country?

No, it hasn’t, but it’s unique in its own way. The end of the 19th century saw events which made Taiwan follow a different path than the mainland state. In 1895, when Japan won the war with China, Taiwan fell under Tokyo’s rule. The Japanese modernized the island: they facilitated efficient agriculture by building an irrigation system, invested in new industrial infrastructure, and revamped the ports. Although the local people were treated as second-class citizens and couldn’t hold offices, they sometimes looked favorably on the changes being made. After Japan’s capitulation in 1945, Taiwan was returned to China, and the mainland army arrived.

Almost half a million Japanese were deported, while the Taiwanese were accused of collaboration. Some lost property or had to watch their farms being destroyed. The reason was the different past of the islanders and the mainland newcomers. The Taiwanese apartments were decorated with photos of family members in Japanese uniforms because of conscription. Moreover, Japanese had been Taiwan’s elite language for a very long period and Taipei was even called Taihoku for a time. Since the Chinese from the mainland still remembered the atrocious crimes of their Japanese invaders, they treated the islanders with suspicion, to say the least. In fact, both sides glowered at each other.

The Taiwanese still vividly remember the events known as the February 28 Incident.

That’s true, because a trivial incident ended in a massacre. It was largely the fault of the island’s provincial governor, General Chen Yi, who behaved in an exceptionally brutal way. On February 27, 1947, the police were checking a Taiwanese woman accused of smuggling cigarettes, and they ultimately struck her. An outraged crowd gathered on site and the police shot dead a Taiwanese man during the resulting scramble. The next day, the protesters burst into the Taipei branch of the Tobacco Monopoly Bureau and then rushed toward the provincial authorities’ office. The soldiers gathered on the roof fired upon the crowd, killing or severely injuring a few dozen people.

The day triggered a general strike on the island: shops, schools, and factories closed, and riots broke out in Taipei. The mainland government reacted by sending an army to pacify Taiwan. The action lasted one month and claimed thousands of lives, including many members of the local elites. Although Governor Chen was later recalled, prosecuted, and executed, the local people still vividly remembered what mainland China had done to them when nearly two million Chinese from the continent arrived in Taiwan in 1949. That huge group consisted of soldiers from the broken-up army of the Republic’s President Chiang Kai-shek, clerks from various administration levels, and everyone else unwilling to live on in communist China—together with their families of course. The refugees made up almost 20% of the island’s population but differed from the locals in their dialect and customs. Naturally, the situation caused growing friction in the society.

Still, nobody eventually carried out the idea which was circulating among a group of local politicians highly disapproving of Chiang Kai-shek. In 1949, Taiwanese society was afraid that communist China, which had already seized control of all the mainland provinces and the large Hainan Island, would soon invade Taiwan too. The country would thus become a battleground for the last clash between the communists and the Kuomintang, which would certainly lead to its devastation. Thus, a group of Taiwanese activists, who had left the island together with the Japanese, hit upon an idea of declaring independence.

They thought that putting up a flag of the Republic of Taiwan and announcing neutrality in the seemingly inevitable conflict might convince both sides to leave Taiwan alone and incline the U.N. to recognize the new country. Those were anti-communist politicians who didn’t accept the Kuomintang’s authoritarian, non-democratic rule either. They counted on the presidential administration of Harry Truman, who personally couldn’t stand Chiang Kai-shek and was convinced that “the island of the Chiangs” (meaning Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo) would fall sooner or later. However, nothing of the sort happened because the Korean War broke out in 1950 and Taiwan got the United States’ support.

Would Taiwan have ultimately been annexed by the PRC had it not been for the Korean War and the USA’s strategic involvement in that part of the world?

I’m quite sure the PRC would have made such an attempt, although its outcome is impossible to guess today. The 1949 attack on the offshore islands controlled by Taiwan was a failure, and subsequent clashes in the Taiwan Strait revealed the growing determination on the part of those defending the Republic of China. Their advantage in the air was overwhelming, with the shootdown ratio reaching 4:1.

The Korean War made most countries perceive mainland China as a ruthless invader, and the U.N. shut its door in the PRC’s face for over twenty years. It must be stressed here that the Republic of China, albeit limited to Taiwan, was recognized as the only rightful Chinese state by a much higher number of countries for as long as till the end of the 1960s. The phenomenon stemmed from the fact that the Republic’s authorities weren’t a government in exile: they remained in their country and effectively controlled a fragment of China. True, the territory in question included only the Taiwan Province and a shred of the Fujian Province (the offshore islets), but the government had never been driven out of those areas.

Moreover, the Kuomintang refugees initially believed they would return to mainland China soon! “Is it worth growing tomatoes over here? Won’t we reach the mainland by harvest?” they kept saying. The Korean War changed it all because the Republic of China and the USA signed an alliance treaty and the Seventh Fleet of the U.S. Navy entered the Taiwan Strait. It’s often said today those ships prevented communist China from invading Taiwan. True, but they also prevented the Taipei authorities from attempting to reclaim the mainland.

The American guarantees and the Korean War safeguarded the Kuomintang’s control of Taiwan. So how did the mainland immigrants rule the island?

In the conditions of permanent martial law. While still in mainland China, the government had enacted a special law for the time of the communist rebellion. It included censorship and limited freedom of speech, assembly, public gatherings, and the press. The Kuomintang held a monopoly on ruling and Chiang Kai-shek remained president until his death in 1975. Representatives of two other parties did run in parliamentary elections, but it was allowed for propaganda reasons and didn’t make up a truly democratic competition. On the one hand, the government handled the islanders with care; for example, they were exempt from compulsory military service because the authorities worried that it could be misconstrued.

On the other hand, the locals weren’t allowed to rule: the “mainland locusts” held all the important offices. Furthermore, the government maintained an army of 600,000—an enormous number in comparison with the island’s population. Mandarin replaced Japanese as the official language, while the local language, Minnan, was removed from public life, the media, and education. We should remember here that Chinese writing is non-phonetic; in other words, it can be compared with Western digits, not with Western letters. For example, the number 21 is pronounced differently in various languages but looks the same in writing. The same applies to Chinese: it’s uniform only in writing, but its pronunciation varies. Therefore, Taiwan’s native pupils had to learn Mandarin, which was completely different from their everyday speech. All those factors caused much friction between the mainland immigrants and the Chinese living in Taiwan.

Nevertheless, Chiang Kai-shek’s regime never became a totalitarian one (although it certainly was authoritarian). Democratic mechanisms were in place at universities and during local elections. Of course, there were taboo topics, such as the attitude to communism, the island’s independence, or Chiang Kai-shek’s permanent presidency. Everybody knew that the authorities wouldn’t accept any deviations in those areas: communism was a murderous plague, Taiwan wouldn’t become independent because Taiwan was China, and Chiang Kai-shek would hold his office until he decided to quit. Discussions on other matters were allowed, albeit to a limited extent.

I should mention one more peculiar aspect here. Although the Republic of China presented itself as the only rightful Chinese state, it wasn’t able to organize a general election had it wanted to do so. Why? Because the mainland was ruled by communists. So how did the authorities arrange the work of the parliament which had been democratically elected in 1947? Its term of office was regularly prolonged! As a result, the 1970s saw numerous MPs arrive at the sessions in wheelchairs and assisted by nurses, while many of their colleagues had already died. The parliament’s rights were considerably limited anyway due to martial law. However, relatively free discussions were allowed at the Taiwan Province assembly.

Consequently, since the Republic of China was actually little more than Taiwan itself, the islanders were more interested in that local assembly than in the all-China parliament. On top of that, the provincial body became elective at a certain point. Only three parties were allowed, yet the government resorted to additional tricks. In the 1960s, a candidate from the opposition was elected mayor of Taipei—the capital city of not only the Taiwan Province, but also the entire country. Chiang Kai-shek invalidated the election as the head of state and then appointed the same candidate as administering mayor. So the man was anointed by the Kuomintang even though he maintained its rule was a dictatorship! Nonetheless, he accepted the nomination to serve the local community.

The system you describe functioned for decades until it was dismantled by Chiang Kai-shek’s son, Chiang Ching-kuo, who became president in 1978. Why did he decide to carry out a democratic transformation?

Chiang Kai-shek was actually asked in an interview why Taiwan wasn’t democratic. He searched through the Bible which he always carried (both he and his son were Christians) and quoted the passage about King David. The Israeli monarch wasn’t able to build a temple for God due to the wars unleashed by all the enemies around, but David’s son, King Solomon, did accomplish the task. By mentioning that biblical story, Chiang Kai-shek meant that he wasn’t able to democratize Taiwan due to the permanent threat of war, but his son Chiang Ching-kuo would make it—and it proved true. Chiang Kai-shek died in 1975, when a new, postwar generation was already living on the island. The country enjoyed intense internal growth, but it lost international recognition.

The model which had worked well under the threat of an invasion from the mainland required a modification. The turn of the 1970s and the 1980s saw a crop of informal groups called dangwai (literally ‘outside the ruling party’) which gathered democratic opposition activists. Chiang Ching-kuo dismantled the martial law structures of the state gradually, in a typical Chinese way. For example, the opposition was formally prohibited from participating in elections, but its representatives did run as independent candidates. The party affiliation space on the voting papers was simply left empty. In 1986, members of the dangwai movement established the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), and martial law was lifted a year later.

The political and social life was liberalized because the government believed that it had real achievements under its belt, such as the country’s incredible modernization, and so it would pass the test of free elections. Those calculations proved correct: the Kuomintang won the 1992 general election. By contrast, we should remember that the students who demanded democracy in Beijing just three years earlier were killed by tanks on Tiananmen Square.

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You’ve mentioned that Taiwan was modernized under the Kuomintang’s rule. Indeed, the island is perceived as an economic miracle. How was this possible?

The basis for the development was a successful agricultural reform commenced in 1953. Large holdings were broken up and redistributed to tenant farmers, who partly repaid the land with food supplies. That way, Chiang Kai-shek killed two birds with one stone: he gave land to farmers and solved the problem of feeding the big army and the administration (for instance, teachers temporarily received a part of their salary as food). The former owners—who didn’t lose all of their land by the way—were compensated with shares of the Japanese enterprises confiscated by the government. Thus, they established and developed their own businesses, which were frequently very successful. Actually, a unique spirit of entrepreneurship still prevails in Taiwan and the number of citizens opening businesses is incredibly high. Solving the problems of Taiwanese agriculture was tremendously important, especially in view of the simultaneous collectivization taking place in mainland China, where millions of people were murdered in the process.

To develop the economy, the government chose solutions similar to those applied in South Korea. Therefore, it subsidized the industries which manufactured exported goods, while simultaneously protecting the domestic market by imposing prohibitive duties on selected categories of products. Supported by the state, businesses found their feet, and export became the leading component of the Taiwanese economy. Rubber and plastic products paved the way, followed by bikes and mechanical equipment, and today’s sale is dominated by electronics, which currently amounts to a half of all exported goods! Furthermore, investments in education development and innovative technologies have made Taiwan the world’s leader in the production of semiconductors and integrated circuits. These two categories of products actually impact the island’s strategic position because disruptions in their production or any stoppage of their export would cause chaos all over the world.

The PRC has been testing Taiwan’s patience for some time now by sending battleships and aircraft to the Taiwan Strait. Why is Taiwan’s annexation so important for the Beijing authorities and what are the sources of the escalated tension we see today?

There’s a number of reasons at play here. Propaganda is certainly important because China could then announce a “historic victory” and President Xi Jinping would go down in history as the one who unified the country. The fundamental reason, however, is different: swallowing up Taiwan would enormously strengthen the Chinese economy and entail a complete change of the PRC’s strategic position. Today, China is a mainland giant without free access to open ocean. It’s separated from the Pacific by a chain of islands: Japan, the Ryukyu Islands (which also belong to Japan), Taiwan, and the Philippines. What do all those archipelagos have in common? All of them are the USA’s allies. If the PRC annexed Taiwan, it would obtain unhindered access to the ocean, mounting a challenge to the USA on equal terms. Moreover, it would set up an obstacle across Japan’s lifeline.

Why is that? We must remember that Japan has hardly any natural resources, so it’s forced to import them. Their shipping route runs through the Indian Ocean and the Strait of Malacca, and then along the Philippines and Taiwan. If mainland China became able to break that supply chain, and America permitted it, Japan would have to revise its relationship with the USA. For instance, the Japanese authorities could be forced to launch a nuclear weapon program because only then would the country be able to feel safe. That’s why the USA keeps repeating phrases about its security guarantees for Taiwan.

There was a time when both mainland China and Taiwan were analyzing the option of a union under the “one country, two systems” formula. Is it currently possible for the Beijing government to incorporate Taiwan in any other way than the military one?

Hardly. The PRC cannot do this peacefully because most islanders don’t want any union with China. The young generation does not feel Chinese—or, to be more precise, it feels Chinese in the same broad sense in which the USA’s founding fathers George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin felt English. Those men considered themselves as people coming from the English culture but not as U.K. citizens. Thus, a peaceful union requires holding a referendum in Taiwan, but its result would be negative. That’s why the PRC maintains any such referendum is out of the question—unless it’s held in all of China, up to the borders of Mongolia and Central Asian deserts.

Moreover, Beijing’s behavior towards Hong Kong has utterly compromised the assumptions of the “one country, two systems” formula. By brutally suppressing the demonstrations, the PRC’s authorities have proved their promises are worthless. Nobody in Taiwan believes that the communists would allow the islanders to keep their civil rights and their democratic system intact.

So what can Taiwan do in the long run? Declare independence?

The attitude to independence indeed remains the key aspect in today’s Taiwan because the shadow cast on the island by mainland China is darkening. History has played a weird trick in that corner of the world. Taiwan has developed a peculiar two-party system: the Kuomintang and the Democratic Progressive Party take turns to rule the island. The former one, although slandered by the communists for decades, is the only political circle on which the PRC can still count. This is because the KMT keeps claiming that there’s only one China in the world and Taiwan is simply its part.

The DPP in turn has maintained from the very beginning that it doesn’t want to unite with communist China and that declaring independence would be the best solution. I must make a reservation here though. In 2000, the DPP’s candidate won the presidential election, and his party obtained a parliamentary majority a year later. Nonetheless, the DPP didn’t carry out its independence proposal. Instead, it has put the direct solution aside and announced that Taiwan would declare independence if the PRC applied non-peaceful means against it. Consequently, we’re witnessing a paradox. China has passed the Anti-Secession Law which provides that “the state shall employ non-peaceful means and other necessary measures” if Taiwan declares independence, and that really means invasion. The Taiwanese government has responded that Taiwan shall declare independence should the authorities in Beijing apply those “other measures.”

Now imagine two men who hate each other but are desperate for fire. One has matches and the other has the matchbox. Only together can they make fire. Therefore, the near future is very hard to predict.