The ROC on Taiwan

As introduced by the Yearbook of Republic of China:

Japanese forces surrendered the island of Taiwan to the Allied Forces on October 25, 1945. The Allies then placed the island under the sovereignty of the Republic of China in accordance with the Cairo Declaration. Thus, Taiwan, which had been occupied over the centuries by the Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, Manchus, and Japanese, was finally ruled by Chinese.

Prior to this turnover, the president of the Republic of China, Chiang Kai-shek, had already appointed a committee headed by Chen Yi to take over the island's administration in 1945. As the first administrator of Taiwan, Chen worked with the Taiwan Garrison Command to ensure a smooth transition of power. After Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's surrender, and before the ROC's administration could be put into place, a dangerous political vacuum ensued. Nonetheless, Taiwan's social order was well maintained under the temporary self-governance committee composed of local leaders and members of the intelligentsia.

In late September 1945, before the Japanese formally surrendered Taiwan, ROC armies arrived at Keelung, Tsoying , Kaohsiung, Tamsui, and Taipei and were heartily welcomed. However, the first group of ROC troops sent to take over Taiwan were poorly trained and undisciplined while the major fighting component of Nationalist troops remained on the Chinese mainland to fight the growing communist insurgency. Government inefficiency in Taiwan was a serious problem. Opportunists and carpetbaggers tried to seek financial and political advantages. Smuggling was rampant. Taiwan residents, both long-time natives and new arrivals from the mainland, were upset by the unjust appropriation of personal property, shortages of daily necessities, galloping inflation and unchecked profiteering.

It was under such conditions that the February 28 Incident took place in 1947. An old woman had been injured while protesting against the expropriation of untaxed cigarettes she was selling in the Taiping Ting section of Taipei. The public was deeply angered when a passerby was shot in the commotion and the assailant was given shelter in a nearby police station. Early the next morning, the Tobacco & Wine Monopoly Bureau was besieged by thousands of people demanding the punishment of the murderer. When it became apparent that no official response was forthcoming, the crowd attacked the bureau and rioting soon spread throughout the island.

Lin Hsien-tang, a public opinion leader, and other prominent members of the Taiwan elite organized the February 28 Incident Management Committee on March 2, 1947, and proposed democratic elections for county chiefs and city mayors; the abolition of government monopolies; government guarantees for human life and property; and protection of the freedom of speech, publication, and assembly. Governor Chen Yi, who had proposed the formation of the Committee in the first place, turned to the Chinese mainland for help. On March 9, 1947, the 21st division of the Nationalist army landed at Keelung. By March 14, many local leaders and the members of the Management Committee had been arrested. These people included landowners, entrepreneurs, doctors, and teachers. A considerable number of them were executed, but some escaped overseas. Chen Yi was later replaced by a moderate administrator.

In 1949, the communists launched an all-out offensive on the Chinese mainland. On May 19, the Taiwan Garrison Command proclaimed the Emergency Decree (martial law) throughout Taiwan Province. By early 1949, a force of about 300,000 Nationalist troops was stationed in Taiwan. As the ROC government refused to compromise on the Chinese communists' eight-point program, fierce fighting broke out in Guangdong and Amoy in October, and the ROC government was forced to move to Taiwan in December.

At first the situation on Taiwan was very tenuous, but, with the outbreak of the Korean War in late June 1950, US President Harry S. Truman ordered the US Seventh Fleet to protect Taiwan against Chinese communist attack. The US also provided Taiwan with economic aid. On March 3, 1954, Foreign Minister George K.C. Yeh and US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles exchanged instruments of ratification of the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty in Taipei to formally substantiate the neutralization of the Taiwan Straits. The international community sided with Taiwan and the internal situation began to stabilize. On August 23, 1958, the Chinese communists began shelling Quemoy [Kinmen] in the Battle of the Taiwan Straits. The communist attack was repulsed, and, on October 23, 1958, the US and the Republic of China issued a joint communique reaffirming solidarity between the two countries.

The ensuing decade brought a period of relative stability to the ROC. President Chiang Kai-shek used the time to re-invigorate Taiwan's economy. Land reform and a series of four-year plans undertaken during the 1950s and 1960s drastically reduced the inflation of wartime years and rapidly increased the island's productivity. When government leaders realized the economic bottleneck presented by the narrow base of Taiwan's domestic economy, they quickly opted for an export promotion strategy. As a resource-poor but labor-rich country, the ROC began with various light manufactured exports produced by labor-intensive industries.

Like many other developing countries, the ROC suffered from a shortage of capital at the early stage of economic development and relied on US aid. Yet by 1965 Taiwan's economy was doing so well that foreign assistance was no longer required. When the US aid program was terminated, the ROC's savings rate was a tremendous 19.5 percent of the GNP. Between 1962 and 1985, Taiwan's economy grew by an average of 9.3 percent per year, over two times the average economic growth rate of industrialized countries during this period.

The 1970s were a period of continued economic growth but political and diplomatic challenge. The ROC economy managed to ride out global recessions sparked by two oil embargoes but the global political environment was changing quickly. At the end of 1970, a campaign was launched to prevent the US from transferring the Tiaoyutai Islets to Japanese sovereignty together with the Ryukyu Archipelagos. As the campaign was under way, the US signaled a sudden change in its relationship with the ROC by stating that the "status of Taiwan remained undecided." In 1971, President Chiang Kai-shek announced that the ROC would withdraw from the United Nations rather than share a seat with the Chinese communists. The next year the ROC severed diplomatic relations with Japan when it recognized communist China, and, in the same year, US President Richard Nixon visited the Chinese mainland. President Chiang passed away on April 5, 1975, and was succeeded by the vice president Yen Chia-kan . In the next presidential elections, held on March 21, 1978, Chiang Kai-shek's son Chiang Ching-kuo was elected president of the ROC. He had been in office less than eight months when, in December 1978, President Jimmy Carter announced that the United States would shift diplomatic recognition from the Republic of China to the "People's Republic of China."

As the turbulent 1970s drew to a close, few international observers would have predicted that the ROC would continue to prosper, and yet, President Chiang Ching-kuo was able to stabilize the situation by implementing major infrastructure projects, expanding trade ties with other countries, and modernizing the ROC's defensive arsenal. President Chiang will be best remembered, though, for his commitment to rejuvenating the democratic functions of the ROC polity. Before passing away due to heart failure on January 13, 1988, President Chiang oversaw the lifting of the Emergency Decree, which had been the legal basis for the enforcement of martial law in the ROC for over three decades.

President Chiang's successor, President Lee Teng-hui has sworn to uphold his predecessor's legacy of democratic reform. After taking office, President Lee abolished the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion adopted in 1948 to give the government more power during politically unstable periods. The abolishment of these provisions, in effect, reinstated parts of the ROC Constitution that had been frozen during the period of communist rebellion. Since then certain articles of the ROC Constitution have been amended and new articles added to facilitate further political reforms. Among other things, these amendments have paved the way for the direct election of the entire National Assembly and Legislature as well as the president and vice president of the republic.

The ROC's efforts at democratization have borne fruit in recent years. Scores of new political parties have sprung up since the ban on their establishment was lifted in 1989. All members of both the National Assembly and the Legislature have been chosen by direct popular election since 1991 and 1992, respectively. On December 3, 1994, the governor of Taiwan Province and the mayors of Taipei and Kaohsiung cities were directly elected for the first time. And with the first direct popular presidential election in the history of China, held on March 23, 1996, full-fledged democracy was achieved in Taiwan.

The ROC is the inheritor of a historical tradition stretching back continuously for thousands of years. Those familiar with Chinese history will recognize that the Republic of China is a sovereign nation. And yet, the degree of economic prosperity and political democracy enjoyed in Taiwan are, in many ways, unprecedented in Chinese history. The process by which the ROC arrived at its present level of achievement is often referred to as a "quiet revolution."