A brief (~10 min) history of China & Taiwan

In December 2021, the Economist said that “Taiwan is arguably America’s defining foreign policy challenge”. I wanted to investigate the history between the two countries to better understand what has led us to this point. A few notes first and then the history starts underneath the maps I’ve included:

Reading time estimate: ~8-12 min. I also condensed this essay into a series of Instagram posts at the bottom for those who prefer an even quicker read.

Why I care: I’m Taiwanese, but the two sides of my family arrived in Taiwan ~60 years apart and for very different reasons. Learning more about the history of Taiwan makes me feel closer to generations of my family, since this history is what we all have in common.

Why you might care: As NYTimes put it in November 2021: “If anything can tip the global power struggle between China and the United States into an actual military conflict, many experts and administration officials say, it is the fate of Taiwan.” There are also some parallels (but also some differences!) between Russia-Ukraine relations and China-Taiwan relations.

On sources and objectivity in history: My third grade teacher used to say that a story has three sides: yours, mine, and the truth. I think this is especially salient in history. I did my best to be “objective” in this piece, but I also struggle with what it even means to be objective in the context of history.

Some important people and acronyms:

Chiang Kai-shek: leader of the ROC from 1928 - 1975
Chinese Communist Party (CCP): the founding and sole ruling party of the PRC; started as a group within the KMT that studied Marxism
Koxinga: man born in Japan who moved to Fujian at the age of seven; led troops to defeat the Dutch in Taiwan in 1662 and establish Taiwan’s first formal Han Chinese regime
Kuomintang (KMT): major political party of ROC in mainland China (dominant from 1928 - 1949) and Taiwan (1949 onward)
Mao Zedong: Chairman of the CCP from 1943 - 1976
People’s Liberation Army (PLA): armed forces of the PRC
People’s Republic of China (PRC): recognized by the United Nations as the sole legitimate government of mainland China since 1971; now synonymous with “China”
Republic of China (ROC): based in mainland China from its founding in 1912 to 1949; now synonymous with “Taiwan”
Sun Yat-sen: first president of the ROC (in mainland China) and the first leader of the KMT; also known as the father of modern China

*Maps of some of the places mentioned in this summary*

Pre-1900s:

First signs of life: Fragmentary human remains and artifacts from the Old Stone Age show that human life on Taiwan existed up to 30,000 years ago. (1 - sources listed at the end)
Chinese arrive: Farmers from (present-day) southeastern China arrived in Taiwan ~6,000 years ago and are said to be related to the indigenous people of present-day Taiwan. In the 13th century, Han Chinese fishermen started arriving on Taiwan’s Penghu islands (#1 on the map). (1)
1624: The Dutch East India Company settled on southwestern Taiwan and called it Fort Zeelandia (#2 on the map). The Dutch recruited farmers from Fujian, China (#3 on the map) to come work under them. From 1624 to the 1660s, Taiwan’s Chinese population went from 1,500 to ~50,000. Spanish colonists arrived in 1626, but were defeated by the Dutch in 1642. (1)
1662: A man from Fujian named Koxinga led troops to oust the Dutch from Taiwan and established Taiwan’s first formal Han Chinese regime. (1)
1683: Koxinga’s grandson is defeated by a Fujian-led fleet of warships, and the Qing dynasty formally annexes Taiwan. (1)
1895: Japan defeats the Qing dynasty in the First Sino-Japanese War (fought because of disputes between China and Japan regarding Korea), and Taiwan becomes a Japanese colony. (1)
Late 1800s: My maternal great-great-grandfather immigrates from Fujian, China to Taiwan to work as a government official.

1910 - 1950:

1911: After the Qing dynasty falls, Sun Yat-sen becomes the first president of China and leads a new political party - the Kuomintang. The Kuomintang (KMT) works to create a single governing body for China, which is controlled by warlords at the time. Within the KMT, a study party called the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is formed to discuss Marxism. (2)
1923: Sun attempts to garner the support of Western nations, but only the Soviet Union agrees to aid the KMT. In 1927, a divide within the KMT emerges, as some worry that the Soviet Union wants to use the CCP to destroy the KMT. (2)
1927: In April, the KMT arrests and executes hundreds of CCP members. In August, the Chinese Civil War starts when, “the Communist Party launched an uprising in Nanchang against the [KMT] government in Wuhan.” (2)
1937: World War II starts in Asia after a battle between Japanese and Chinese troops in Beijing. The CCP kidnaps KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek. They establish a temporary CCP - KMT truce, so that China can focus on fighting Japan. The KMT and CCP loosely follow the truce, but there are still skirmishes between the two. (2)
1945: After Japan is defeated in WWII, the KMT regains control of Taiwan (previously a Japanese colony). The next few years are rife with conflict between the Taiwanese population and the new KMT government. During the February 28 incident in 1947, 18,000 - 28,000 people (both KMT and Taiwanese) are killed in an anti-government uprising and the subsequent KMT suppression. This is one of the crucial events that incites the Taiwanese independence movement. (3)
1945 - 1949: Fighting between the KMT and CCP resumes after the end of WWII, and the CCP starts to come out ahead. In October 1949, Mao Zedong and the CCP take control of mainland China, and Chiang Kai-shek, the KMT, and ~1 million people (including my paternal grandmother) escape from China to Taiwan. The KMT uses Taipei as their new capital (#4 on the map). (4)

1950 - 1960:

The CCP and KMT continue fighting with battles such as the Battle of Kuningtou (October 1949), Battle of Dengbu Island (1949), Battle of Dongshan Island (May 1950), the Battle of Nanri Island (1952), and the Kuomintang Islamic Insurgency in China (1950 - 1958). (5)
1950: President Truman initially says that the US will not get involved in the China - Taiwan conflict. But after the Korean War starts in June 1950, Truman fears that Taiwan might also fall to Communism. He sends the US navy to protect Taiwan and also prevent Taiwan from invading mainland China and opening a new front in the Korean War. (6)
First Taiwan Strait crisis (1954 - 1955): The People’s Liberation Army (China’s army; aka PLA) attacks a series of islands (Kinmen, Yijiangshan; #5 on the map) that are off the coast of China but belong to Taiwan. KMT and US troops are forced to give up the Tachen Islands. Some argue that Mao wanted the US to make nuclear threats during this crisis (which it did), so that he could amass domestic support for China to invest more in their own production of nuclear weapons. (6)
Second Taiwan Strait crisis (1958): The PLA shells islands in the Taiwan Strait (Kinmen, Matsu; #6 on the map) and fires artillery almost everyday for nearly two months. The US provides Taiwan with advanced weapons, escorts KMT convoys near Kinmen, helps Taiwan defend supply lines to the islands, and deploys fighter aircraft. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev said that the US was threatening world war with these actions. US Secretary of State Christian Herter (1959 - 1961) allegedly later called this “the first serious nuclear crisis.” (7)
During this time, most NATO governments (including the US) consider the KMT to be the legitimate government of China. Only the Soviet Union, members of the non-aligned movement, and a few Western countries (e.g., the UK, the Netherlands) see the CCP as the legitimate government of China. (5)
The CCP and KMT both believe they are the sole legitimate government of China, and spread propaganda that the other side lives in desolation and extreme poverty. (5) When my mom immigrated to the US from Taiwan in the 1980s, she met people her age from China for the first time. Both sides thought the other had grown up with almost nothing to eat, because that’s what they had been taught in school.

1960 - 1980:

1960s: A rift starts to form between the Soviet Union and the CCP as they clash over the right approach to spreading Communism. The CCP also argues that the Soviet Union is too cozy with the US. A skirmish breaks out in the eastern region of the Soviet Union after the two disagree over who crossed the border first and fomented the attack. (8, 9)
February 1972: President Richard Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger leverage the above tension to start diplomatic relations with the CCP. Nixon visits China as a “move calculated to drive an even deeper wedge between the two most significant communist powers.” (10)
January 1, 1979: The US officially recognizes the PRC (instead of the ROC) as the formal government of mainland China. The US believes this will help their economy (as they can trade with China now) and persuade the Soviet Union to be more flexible on issues such as arms agreements. (11)

*How I would’ve felt if I was Taiwan in the 1970s*

1979 Taiwan Relations Act:
- After the US normalizes relations with China, some members of Congress worry about the effects on Taiwan - US relations. The US passes the Taiwan Relations Act, which declares that the US will continue to sell arms to Taiwan. It also sets a deliberately ambiguous policy that stops short of promising to militarily defend Taiwan if China attacks. (12)
- This “strategic ambiguity” has so far dissuaded China from attacking Taiwan (since China doesn’t know if this would prompt a military response from the US), while also deterring Taiwan from declaring independence (since Taiwan doesn’t know if the US would support them). (12)

1980 - 2000:

December 1987: Taiwan starts allowing its citizens to visit China; some families have been separated for several decades. Daily direct flights between the two countries aren’t offered until December 2008. (13)
1988: Lee Teng-hui becomes president after President Chiang Ching-kuo (Chiang Kai-shek’s son) dies in January 1988. Born in Taiwan, Lee was the first KMT leader to use Taiwanese in his speeches and promote “a distinct Taiwanese identity, separate from that of China.” (14)
1991: Taiwan and China set up institutions to communicate with one another; Taiwan sets up the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and China creates the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS). (5)
Third Taiwan Strait Crisis (1995 - 1996):
- In 1995, the PLA launches a series of missile tests in the Taiwan Strait (#7 on the map) after Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui is invited to speak at his alma mater, Cornell. China wants Taiwan to be isolated from other countries, so they are furious that Lee is allowed to visit the US. In response to these tests, President Clinton sent “the biggest display of US military power in Asia since the Vietnam War, sending ships to the Taiwan Strait and a clear message to Beijing.” (15)
- In 1996, the PLA fires missiles near Taiwan to warn people against voting for President Lee Teng-hui in Taiwan’s first direct presidential election (i.e., voters directly cast ballots). The US sends US Navy ships near Taiwan to support and protect the country, and President Lee wins the election. (16)

2000 - present:

2014 Sunflower Movement: 100,000+ people in Taiwan protest the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement, a trade pact between China and Taiwan. Protestors say the pact will make Taiwan more economically reliant on China and benefit conglomerates while hurting small businesses in Taiwan. President Ma Ying-jeou (Taiwan’s president from 2008 - 2016) believes the pact will give Taiwan’s economy a major boost and underscores the value of building closer economic ties to China. (17)
Increasing military threat:
- In a demonstration of its military prowess and might, the PLA flies 800+ military aircrafts by Taiwan between September 2020 - October 2021. Between October 1- 4, 2021, the PLA flies a record high of 149 military aircrafts by Taiwan past the midpoint of the Taiwan Strait. (18)
- In October 2021, China also releases footage of the PLA practicing beach landing drills (e.g., storming the beach, carrying assault rifles, throwing grenades) in Fujian. Fujian is only 100 miles away from Taiwan, and the two share a similar landscape and climate. (19)
- Taiwan’s defense minister, Chiu Kuo-cheng, says that the PLA “would be able to launch a full-blown attack on Taiwan with minimal losses by 2025.” (20)

Strategic clarity: Because China has a much larger economy and stronger military now compared to 1979, some say the US should explicitly state it will come to Taiwan’s aid if China attacks. Robert M. Gates (former defense secretary and CIA director during the Bush and Obama administrations) says that it might be “time to abandon our longtime strategy of strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan.” However, others worry that a move toward strategic clarity may further incense China and provoke imminent hostility. (21)

Sources:

Additional reading & listening:

“Is Taiwan Next?” (Sarah Topol for NYTimes)
Green Island (Shawna Yang Ryan)
Economist podcast: Could Taiwan spark war between America and China?

A brief (~10 min) history of China & Taiwan

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