The Original Taiwanese

Until just four centuries ago, the main island of Taiwan was home to mainly Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) peoples. Although they have left no written records or reliable oral history of their origins, archeological evidence indicates that their ancestors came to the main island of Taiwan several thousand years ago (see chapter 2, "People and Language").

Beginning in the early 17th century, lowland tribes were inexorably driven into the island's mountainous interior, overwhelmed by alien conquerors from both Europe and Asia, and by wave upon wave of immigration of Han peoples fleeing poverty and war in China. Over the centuries, many indigenes have been assimilated into Han-immigrant communities, and many Taiwanese have both Han and indigenous ancestry.

European Colonization (1624-1662)

Moved by the sight of Taiwan's blue-green mountains jutting out of the Pacific, Portuguese navigators passing by the island on their way to Japan in the mid-15th century dubbed it "Ilha Formosa," or beautiful isle. For centuries thereafter, it was known to the West as Formosa.

The next Europeans to come to Taiwan were from the Netherlands via bases in the Dutch East Indies (today's Indonesia), and from Spain via colonial holdings in the Philippines. In 1622, the Dutch East India Company established a base on the Penghu Islands (Pescadores), but was promptly driven away by Ming Dynasty Chinese forces. They then set up a base in Taiwan in the vicinity of today's Tainan City in 1624, from which they extended their hegemony—not absolute control—over the island's southwestern coast.

Meanwhile, in 1626, a rival Spanish consortium occupied areas in northern Taiwan corresponding with today's Keelung City and Danshuei Township, only to be driven away by the Dutch in 1642. Under Dutch control, Taiwan's seaports became important entrepots for maritime trade and transshipment of goods between Japan, China, Southeast Asia, Persia, and Europe.

Although settlements of Chinese are known to have existed as far back as the 15th century, they were scarce and very small until the Dutch East India Company imported laborers from China to work its sugarcane and rice plantations in the southwest. This marked the beginning of large-scale, intensive cultivation in Taiwan.

Taken as a whole, the company's trading and agricultural enterprises on the island accounted for 26 percent of its worldwide profits in 1649. The sugarcane and rice cultivation initiated by the Dutch continued to be mainstays of the island's economy and export business until as recently as half a century ago.

Protestant missionaries accompanying the Dutch East India Company established schools where religion and the Dutch language were taught. Records indicate that, as of 1659, 60 percent of the company's 10,000 colonial subjects had been converted to Christianity.

While the Dutch were colonizing Taiwan, Ming Dynasty China was experiencing a series of rebellions, followed by the invasion of Manchu conquerors, who wreaked havoc throughout China for many years. The resultant toll in human suffering, exacerbated by famine and banditry, prompted thousands of Chinese in the coastal provinces of Fujian and Guangdong to risk the dangers of crossing the Hei Shueigou, or "Black Ditch" (today's Taiwan Strait) to reach the mystery island of which they had heard by word of mouth. By 1662, an estimated 40,000 of them had successfully done so.

Reign of the Jheng Family (1661-1683)

As troops poured into northern China from Manchuria beginning in 1644, Ming loyalists fled southward, where they resisted Manchu incursions for over two decades. One of the best-known resistance fighters was Jheng Cheng-gong (Koxinga). The offspring of a Chinese father and Japanese mother, he inherited his father's position as the "godfather" of a syndicate of traders, pirates, and private armies whose operations ranged from Japan to Southeast Asia.

In 1661, when forces of the deposed Ming Dynasty were on its last legs, a fleet and army commanded by Jheng laid siege to the Dutch East India Company headquarters in Taiwan, and the two sides negotiated a treaty that allowed the Dutch to leave with honor in 1662. Jheng's aim, it is said, was to establish a secure base from which to carry on the fight against the Manchu invaders and eventually restore the Ming government.

Under the rule of Jheng Cheng-gong, his son Jheng Jing, and grandson Jheng Ke-shuang, a mini-kingdom with a Chinese-style political system was created, and Han culture became more deeply rooted. A steady stream of Han refugees fled to Taiwan, and settlements sprang up along the western coast. By some estimates, under the rule of the Jheng family, the population of Han peoples in Taiwan reached about 120,000.

Though short—existing for 22 years before surrendering to Manchu forces—the Jheng family's rule was significant for being the first time in which Taiwan was ruled as an independent state.

Ching Dynasty Rule (1683-1895)

During the two-plus centuries of Ching Dynasty (Manchu imperial) rule over China and Taiwan, hundreds of thousands of impoverished Hans in China's Fujian and Guangdong provinces flouted the Ching Dynasty's bans on immigration to the island and became "boat people" who bet their lives to get there and make a fresh start.

The bulk of these illegal aliens were farmers who, like the Hans hired by the Dutch East India Company, mostly engaged in rice and sugarcane cultivation. Most of the steadily growing agricultural exports were shipped to China and Japan, while some went to Australia.

As a consequence of the Second Opium War (1856-1860), four ports in Taiwan were forced to open up by the Manchu government to Western traders. Thereafter, tea and camphor, which enjoyed large global demand, became major cash crops for export. Being the production base of these hot new money-makers, as well as of coal, northern Taiwan overtook the southwest as the island's economic and political hub, with Taipei superseding Tainan as the Manchu colonial capital.

As in the preceding eras of rule by the Dutch and the Jheng family, during the era of Manchu rule, the desire of Han refugees to stake out a piece of land for themselves in their new homeland came into conflict with the indigenous Austronesian peoples' determination to defend their ancestral homelands from invasion. This conflict was exacerbated by the international demand for tea and camphor, which could be produced only in highland areas inhabited by indigenous peoples.

Taiwan's resources attracted growing international attention. Japan dispatched a punitive expeditionary force to southern Taiwan in 1874 on the pretext of teaching a lesson to indigenous people who had killed shipwrecked Okinawan sailors. A decade later, the French briefly invaded northern Taiwan from 1884 to 1885 during the Sino-French War.

The Manchu government in Beijing strengthened its claim of sovereignty over Taiwan by buttressing the island's defenses, developing its coal mining, and laying telegraph lines between northern and southern Taiwan as well as an undersea telegraph cable between the island and Fujian Province. It declared Taiwan a province of the empire in 1885, appointing Liu Ming-chuan as its first governor.

Japanese Imperial Rule (1895-1945)

In 1894, war broke out between the Manchu Empire and the Japanese Empire after the latter invaded Korea, which the Manchu court, as well as Chinese rulers before them, regarded as their satellite state. By the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki that concluded the conflict, known as the First Sino-Japanese War, Taiwan was ceded to Japan. Rejecting this outcome, Taiwanese intelligentsia proclaimed the establishment of the "Democratic Republic of Taiwan." This bid for self-rule failed, however, as Japanese troops crushed all resistance offered by local militias within half a year.

Broadly speaking, the Japanese colonial era can be divided into three periods:

ROC on Taiwan (1945- )

Shortly after occupying Taiwan on behalf of the Allies in 1945, the Nanjing-based ROC government declared Taiwan a province of the ROC, citing the unsigned Cairo Declaration as its justification. October 25, the date upon which Japanese troops in Taiwan surrendered to ROC administrators, was officially proclaimed "Retrocession Day."

Only four years later, the ROC government under Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang (KMT), was defeated in the Chinese Civil War that had been going on since the late 1920s. It vacated the mainland and took refuge on the island of Taiwan. The lost mainland territories became the People's Republic of China (PRC), established in 1949 by the victorious Communist Party of China (CPC) revolutionaries under Mao Zedong.

In terms of actual exercise of sovereignty, the ROC was thereby downsized from a vast territory to one that comprised, and comprises, only Taiwan and a few small islands.

Over the six decades since then, the oceanic ROC and continental PRC have coexisted as separate sovereign states, universally known by their popular names, Taiwan and China, and their societies have developed in radically different directions. Taiwan has become one of the world's freest countries, rated as Asia's freest in Freedom House's Freedom in the World 2006 survey. The same survey rated China as one of the world's least free countries.

The influx of around one and a half million soldiers and civilian refugees from the Chinese Civil War turned the island into a frontline of the Cold War. With the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, the United States dispatched its Seventh Fleet to protect Taiwan from attack by PRC forces and provided it with increased economic and military assistance. Taiwan became the focus of attention again in August 1958, when the PRC attempted to take over the Taiwan-held islands of Kinmen (Quemoy) and Matsu. Hostilities eventually ended, and in October 1958, the US and Taiwan governments issued a joint communiqué reaffirming their solidarity.

As summarized in the remaining sections of this chapter, and discussed in other chapters, political and economic developments inside and outside Taiwan since 1945 have dramatically transformed the self-perceptions of everyone in Taiwan. Events such as the seating of the PRC to the exclusion of the ROC in the United Nations in 1971, the lifting of martial law in 1987, the repeal of restrictions on travel and investment in China, and measures taken to redress injustices perpetrated in the earlier authoritarian era—these and other factors have prompted people in every social stratum to acknowledge a number of on-the-ground realities:

• Taiwan and China are distinctly different sovereign nations.
• The government should not compete with the Chinese authorities for the right to rule China.
• What unites the people of Taiwan—irrespective of their differing concepts and hopes vis-à-vis the Taiwan-China relationship—is their affirmation of the imperative to pursue and defend freedom and democracy.

Economic Transformation

Over the second half of the 20th century, Taiwan has transformed itself from a predominantly agrarian economy into a vigorous industrialized economy, a process that may be summarized in three main phases:

Ongoing Industrial Development (1981-1999)

Bananas were once one of Taiwan's most important exports. However, as the island industrialized, the fruit's export volume declined.

Beginning in the 1980s, the government implemented a series of measures to liberalize and internationalize the economy and privatize state-run enterprises. Labor-intensive industries, once the mainstay of Taiwan's economy, gave way to technology- and capital-intensive industries. Taiwan's first science-based industrial park, the world-renowned Hsinchu Science Park, was established in 1980.

In the 1990s, electronics and information technology businesses grew rapidly to become the leading industries in Taiwan's manufacturing sector. Over this period, the service sector experienced average annual growth of 9 percent, reflecting a maturing knowledge-based economy.

As the new millennium approached, there was increasing concern that Taiwan's growing dependence on China as an export market and massive outflows of China-bound investment would ultimately hurt its national security, as it was apparent that flourishing economic ties between Taiwan and China had not dampened Beijing's eagerness to annex Taiwan.

Political Development

The KMT's withdrawal from the mainland to Taiwan at the close of the Chinese Civil War marked the beginning of the period of martial law (1949-1987) in Taiwan. Under martial law, the KMT-controlled government imposed press censorship, banned new political parties, and restricted the freedoms of speech, publication, assembly, and association. Direct elections for some local government heads and legislative council representatives were initiated in 1950, however.

Following the death of President Chiang Kai-shek in 1975, Yen Chia-kan briefly served as president, succeeded by Chiang's son, Chiang Ching-kuo. The late 1970s and early 1980s saw the formation and development of an informal coalition of democratic opposition politicians and democracy activists known as the dangwai, or "party outsiders," referring to those who are not KMT members.

In December 1979, a rally in Kaohsiung City organized by leading dangwai figures and Formosa Magazine to commemorate International Human Rights Day turned into a violent confrontation when thousands of participants were hemmed in by military police. In connection with this event, known as the Kaohsiung Incident, prominent dissidents were detained, convicted of sedition by a military tribunal, and sentenced to long prison terms.

Ultimately, however, the incident and the repression that followed added steam to the democracy movement. In September 1986, dangwai leaders established the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in defiance of the ban on formation of new political parties.

Recognizing that the demand for democracy in Taiwan could only grow, President Chiang Ching-kuo rescinded martial law in 1987, shortly before his death. His successor, Lee Teng-hui, took vigorous action to reform the political system and dismantle the party-state machinery that had been in place in Taiwan for the preceding four decades. Under his administration, press freedoms were respected, opposition political parties developed, private visits to China increased dramatically, and the Constitution was revised to allow for the direct election of all legislators and the president. In 1996, incumbent President Lee Teng-hui became Taiwan's first popularly elected president.

The most telling moment in Taiwan's democratic progress, however, came in 2000, when DPP candidate Chen Shui-bian was elected president, marking the first-ever transfer of power between ruling parties. He was re-elected in March 2004.

Under the Chen administration, the Referendum Act was enacted (2003), the first national referendum conducted (2004), and the National Assembly abolished, while its power to ratify constitutional amendments was transferred to the people through referendum (2005). Meanwhile, a new "single-constituency, two-ballot" electoral system instituted through constitutional amendment (2005) will be used in the national legislative election scheduled for January 12, 2008 (see chapter 5, "Democracy and the Electoral System").

Foreign Relations: From ROC to Taiwan

The ROC was a founding member of the United Nations, established in 1945. With passage of General Assembly Resolution 2758 in 1971, however, the PRC succeeded in ousting "the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek" and taking over the UN seat. Since then, most UN members have severed diplomatic ties with Taipei in favor of ties with Beijing. When the United States established diplomatic ties with China in 1979, it discontinued formal ties with Taiwan and abrogated the 1954 Mutual Defense Treaty between the two countries.

In the absence of official relations, the US Congress enacted the Taiwan Relations Act to ensure that substantive relations with Taiwan, including sales of defensive weaponry, would be unaffected by US recognition of China.

With the emergence of "Taiwan-centric consciousness" and rising political and civic awareness in the 1990s, citizens began to have higher expectations of their government. Consequently, efforts have been made to increase Taiwan's participation in international affairs and develop closer ties with the community of democratic nations. After 12 years of negotiation, Taiwan gained entry into the World Trade Organization in January 2002. And in August 2005, representatives of Taiwan joined with those of other nations to create the Democratic Pacific Union.

Taiwan's pursuit of pragmatic arrangements that will enable it to participate in affairs of the United Nations and its affiliated organizations, however, continues to be frustrated. In view of China's persistent obstruction of Taiwan's modest request to participate in affairs of the World Heath Organization in the capacity of observer to the annual meeting of the World Health Assembly, and its hindrance of similar attempts to take part in UN affairs without becoming a member, the government made a major policy change in 2007: to apply for full membership in the United Nations system of organizations. In 2007, applications were filed for admission under the name "Taiwan" (see chapter 8, "Foreign Relations"; chapter 6, "Taiwan-China Relations"; and the introduction, "Taiwan in 2006-2007"). With this year's application to the UN, Taiwan has announced to the world that it sees itself not as a continuation of the Chiang Kai-shek regime, but rather a democratic nation whose rightful name is Taiwan.

• Academia Sinica: http://www.sinica.edu.tw
• Academia Historica: http://www.drnh.gov.tw
• Taiwan Historica: http://www.th.gov.tw