Choosing the youth to Die for Taiwan

Or choosing diplomacy based on a little history

Does Any of the World Wish to have a Great Powers War over Taiwan?

The recent history, say the last 400 years, of Taiwan naturally involves China and then the Portuguese and French as colonial trading outpost occupiers, then the Japanese after the first Sino-Japanese War.

In the last 150 years one needs to factor in the "century of humiliation" of China via Britain, France and the USA during the Opium Wars and Boxer Rebellion, the emergence of the Republic of China, its civil war interrupted by WWII then re-started, the intervention of the USA, and then the creation of the People's Republic of China.

So, like all history, its very, very simple.

The through-line is that Taiwan was originally populated by people from south eastern China. The island was a part of China under its last dynasty, the Qing from 1644 to 1912 (from which the name "China" is derived). The Chinese on the island of Taiwan resisted all occupations by the colonial trading powers, and regularly rebelled against Japanese rule when the territory was ceded to Japan after the first Sino-Japanese war (1894 to 1895).

It is the period from 1912 at the creation of the Republic of China to 1949 when the Peoples' Republic was established on which I wish to focus. We must recall that during the Opium Wars and the period thereafter the Chinese banking system in the key trading ports was heavily influenced by the British and Americans who had been making money from what was colloquially called the "China Trade". Some of the big USA families made lots of money from this, as did the Brits and some French.

In 1912 Sun Yat-sen was the initial President of the new Republic, but transferred power and the new incumbent dissolved regional assemblies and tried to essentially create a new dynasty. The new "emperor" dies in 1916, a power vacuum is created (the Warlord Era) and god-dammit the Treaty of Versailles raises its ugly head again. German holdings in China were to be awarded to the Japanese. Which European idiot proposed this? Needless to say the Chinese wanted none of this and rejected the Treaty.

A period of turmoil commences, Sun Yat-sen re-emerges, the newly formed Soviet Union gets involved after the formation of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Sun dies and his protege Chiang Kai-check takes over the Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang (KMT). An alliance is formed between the CCP and KMT, and the war lords are defeated, while Chiang is provided with plenty of assistance by the foreign influenced financial elite. There is a classic moment before Sun's death in which he is betrayed by a war lord and is trapped on a boat. He is saved by Chiang via a British warship and is transported to Hong Kong. What I am trying to describe here is that "things are complicated" but that the KMT and Sun, and Chiang were heavily supported by foreign powers. That support may even have extended to the CCP who certainly had support from the Soviet Union. I know that Mao, soon to emerge, was trained at a Yale sponsored university in China. It is murky. It is a geo-strategic battle.

The KMT betray the CCP (or they stop collaborating) and the power struggle is then between them with the war lords defeated. So, a civil war is waged. During this the Japanese invade China (because why not), and the second Sino-Japanese war, which is a part of WWII, begins.

The USA defeats the Japanese during the Pacific component of WWII, with minor assistance from various allies, following the completely unnecessary use of two nuclear weapons. Today is the 76th anniversary of this first use of nuclear weapons in war. The side note to that is that against all warnings to “stay away” despite their being “no risk” of radiation it was a single Australian journalist Mr Wilfred Burchett who ventured to the devastation of Hiroshima to document the war crime which the USA had visited upon the city. May his name live long. It took an eye-widening degree of bravery to do what he did. Of course, his reports were suppressed.

After Japanese surrender, how did the USA "achieve" surrender of Japanese forces still on the island of Taiwan? To quote Wikipedia:

[T]he US Navy ferried ROC troops to Taiwan to accept the formal surrender of Japanese military forces in Taipei on behalf of the Allied Powers, as part of General Order No. 1 for temporary military occupation. General Rikichi Andō, governor-general of Taiwan and commander-in-chief of all Japanese forces on the island, signed the receipt and handed it over to General Chen Yi of the ROC military to complete the official turnover.

Translate "ROC" in the above to "KMT" who were the single political party “in control” of the “Republic of China”.

So, the USA installs the KMT on Taiwan during a pause in a civil war between the KMT and the CCP. At the end of WWII the KMT were weak and asked for USA assistance to retake cities in mainland China, in which the USA did assist. Also, now that Japan are defeated, the civil war between the KMT and CCP restarts. Mao leads the CCP to victory, despite all of the non-Soviet foreign support for the KMT, in 1949.

Despite all of this complicated narrative, and this is the extremely trivial version, Taiwan has been a Chinese territory for many centuries, except for a period after the first Sino-Japanese war when it was ceded, but the population regularly resisted this foreign rule. It was given to the KMT by the USA at then end of WWII. Unsurprisingly, the KMT “took with them” many national treasures and lots of gold and foreign currency from mainland China.

Side-bar

I love poking my finger at the USA, but a little, just a little, balance is required here. They transported the military forces of the last “legitimate” government of Japan to receive their surrender. Not very wise, but probably legally correct, and certainly expedient. Little political engagement was possible, due to the world being in chaos, and the Chinese in a paused civil war. Thus, it is military expediency which prevails. And, fair enough, its not the military’s job to solve political crises, but to win wars, and in that, they were trying to wrap one up.

It is that which comes afterwards which shows the complicity as the politics gets moving.

Post 1949

With the Peoples' Republic established and the ensuing panic in the capitalist West, the KMT are supported in establishing a democratic government in Taiwan. That support seems to have included a considerable amount of foreign investment, and it must be said that Taiwan has been a successfully governed territory, with this support after a very difficult "teething period" involving repression and many forms of civil strife.

I hope, however, you can understand why the Chinese consider the islands of Taiwan as territory of China.

To summarise, China cedes the Taiwan islands to Japan at the close of the first Sino-Japanese war, and then following the defeat of Japan in WWII, the USA supports the KMT in the re-started civil war. The KMT lose to the CCP, but the USA gives these islands to the losers of the civil war, based upon their having transported the KMT to the islands to receive the local surrender of Japan at the close of WWII.

For the Chinese this is the last chapter in the "century of humiliation" and it is an open wound. Ancient territory stolen from them by a foreign power and given to foreign backed “traitors”.

Sources

Taiwan, Wikipedia

History of China, Wikipedia

Chiang Kai-shek and the Battle for China. A biography of the Chinese Nationalist leader, History Channel from way back including advertisements on the television!