\nEvidence of human settlement in Taiwan dates back thirty thousand years, although the first inhabitants of Taiwan may have been genetically distinct from any groups currently on the island.
\nAbout four thousand years ago, ancestors of current Taiwanese aborigines settled in Taiwan.
\nThese aborigines are genetically related to Malay and Polynesians, and linguists classify their language as Austronesian.
\nPolynesians are suspected to have ancestry traceable back to Taiwan.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
Early settlement<\/span><\/strong> Records from ancient China indicate that Han Chinese might have known of the existence of the main island of Taiwan since the Three Kingdoms period (third century, 230 A.C.), having assigned offshore islands in the vicinity names like Greater Liuqiu and Lesser Liuqiu (etymologically, but perhaps not semantically, identical to Ry\u00fcky\u00fc in Japanese), though none of these names has been definitively matched to the main island of Taiwan. European settlement<\/span><\/b> In 1624, the Dutch established a commercial base on Taiwan and began to import workers from Fujian and Penghu as labourers, many of whom settled. The Dutch military presence was concentrated at a stronghold called Castle Zeelandia. <\/span> In 1683, following the defeat of Koxinga’s grandson by an armada led by Admiral Shi Lang of Southern Fujian, the Qing Dynasty formally annexed Taiwan, placing it under the jurisdiction of Fujian province.<\/span><\/p>\n The Qing Dynasty government tried to reduce piracy and vagrancy in the area, issuing a series of edicts to manage immigration and respect aboriginal land rights. In 1887, the Qing government upgraded Taiwan’s status from prefecture of Fujian to full province, the twentieth in the country, with its capital at Taipei. Japanese rule<\/span><\/b> In 1871, an Okinawan vessel shipwrecked on the southern tip of Taiwan and the crew of fifty-four were beheaded by the Taiwan aborigines. Qing China was defeated in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), and ceded Taiwan and the Pescadores to Japan in perpetuity in the Treaty of Shimonoseki. On May 25, 1895, a group of pro-Qing high officials proclaimed the Republic of Formosa to resist impending Japanese rule. The Japanese were instrumental in the industrialisation of the island; they extended the railroads and other transportation networks, built an extensive sanitation system and revised the public school system. Taiwan played a significant part in the system of Japanese prisoner of war camps that extended across South-East Asia between 1942 and 1945. The Imperial Japanese Navy operated heavily out of Taiwan. By 1945, just before Japan lost World War II, desperate plans were put in place to incorporate popular representation of Taiwan into the Japanese Diet to make Taiwan an integral part of Japan proper.<\/span><\/p>\n Japan’s rule of Taiwan ended when it lost World War II and signed the Instrument of Surrender of Japan on August 15, 1945. Kuomintang martial law period<\/span><\/strong> In 1949, during the Chinese Civil War, the Kuomintang (KMT), led by Chiang Kai-shek, retreated from Mainland China and moved the ROC government from Nanjing to Taipei, Taiwan’s largest city, while continuing to claim sovereignty over all of China and Greater Mongolia. Some 1.3 million refugees from Mainland China, consisting mainly of soldiers, KMT party members and most importantly the intellectual and business elites fled the mainland and arrived in Taiwan around that time. This was often used by the PRC government to explain its economic difficulties and Taiwan’s comparative prosperity. Taiwan remained under martial law and one-party rule, under the name of the “Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion” from 1948 to 1987, when Presidents Chiang Ching-kuo and Lee Teng-hui gradually liberalised and democratised the system. As the Chinese Civil War continued without truce, the Republic of China built up military fortification works throughout Taiwan. During the 1960s and 1970s, the ROC began to develop into a prosperous, industrialised developed country with a strong and dynamic economy, becoming one of the Four Asian Tigers while maintaining the authoritarian, single-party government. Modern democratic era<\/span><\/b> After the 1988 death of Chiang Ching-Kuo, his successor as President Lee Teng-hui continued to hand more government authority over to the native Taiwanese and democratise the government. In the 1990s, the Republic of China transformed into a true democratic state, as President Lee Teng-hui was elected by the first popular vote held in Taiwan during the 1996 Presidential elections. Separate identity<\/span><\/b> Since the DPP believes the independence position is popular among Taiwanese, President Chen has used this as rationale for holding a referendum in the 2008 presidential election on whether the island should enter the United Nations under the name Taiwan. Prehistory Evidence of human settlement in Taiwan dates back thirty thousand years, although the first inhabitants of Taiwan may have been genetically distinct from any groups currently on the island. About four thousand years ago, ancestors of current Taiwanese aborigines settled in Taiwan. These aborigines are genetically related to Malay and Polynesians, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-837","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/taiwan.asia-infos.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/taiwan.asia-infos.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/taiwan.asia-infos.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/taiwan.asia-infos.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/taiwan.asia-infos.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=837"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/taiwan.asia-infos.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":853,"href":"http:\/\/taiwan.asia-infos.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/837\/revisions\/853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/taiwan.asia-infos.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nHan Chinese began settling in the Pescadores in the 1200s, but Taiwan’s hostile tribes and its lack of the trade resources valued in that era rendered it unattractive to all but “occasional adventurers or fishermen engaging in barter” until the sixteenth century.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/erwin.bernhardt.net.nz\/asia\/images\/taiwan02.jpg\")
\nSiouguluan River<\/div>\n
\nIt has been claimed but not verified that the Ming Dynasty admiral Cheng Ho (Zheng He) visited Taiwan between 1403 and 1424.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nIn 1544, a Portuguese ship sighted the main island of Taiwan and dubbed it “Ilha Formosa”, which means “Beautiful Island.”
\nThe Portuguese made no attempt to colonise Taiwan.<\/p>\n
\nThe Dutch made Taiwan a colony with its colonial capital at Tayoan City (present day Anping, Tainan).
\nBoth Tayoan and the island name Taiwan derive from a word in Sirayan, one of the Formosan languages.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nThe Dutch colonists also started to hunt the native Formosan Sika deer (Cervus nippon taioanus) that inhabited Taiwan, contributing to the eventual extinction of the subspecies on the island.<\/span><\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/erwin.bernhardt.net.nz\/asia\/images\/taiwan03.jpg\")
\nTainan Confucius Temple.
\nFour characters on the inscribed board
\nmean “First School in All of Taiwan”<\/div>\n
\nKoxinga and Imperial Chinese rule<\/span><\/b>
\nNaval and troop forces of Southern Fujian defeated the Dutch in 1662, subsequently expelling the Dutch government and military from the island.
\nThey were led by Koxinga (pinyin: Zh\u00e8ng Ch\u00e9nggong).
\nFollowing the fall of the Ming Dynasty, Koxinga retreated to Taiwan as a self-styled Ming loyalist and established the Kingdom of Tungning (1662-83).
\nKoxinga established his capital at Tainan and he and his heirs, Zheng Jing (pinyin: Zh\u00e8ng Jing), who ruled from 1662-82, and Zheng Keshuang (pinyin: Zh\u00e8ng K\u00e8shu\u00e0ng), who served less than a year, continued to launch raids on the south-east coast of mainland China well into the Qing Dynasty, attempting to recover the mainland.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nImmigrants mostly from Southern Fujian continued to enter Taiwan.
\nThe border between taxpaying lands and “savage” lands shifted eastward, with some aborigines ‘Sinicising’ while others retreated into the mountains.
\nDuring this time, there were a number of conflicts between Chinese from different regions of Southern Fujian, and between Southern Fujian Chinese and aborigines.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nThis was accompanied by a modernisation drive that included building Taiwan’s first railroad and starting a postal service.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nImperial Japan had sought to control Taiwan since 1592, when Toyotomi Hideyoshi began extending Japanese influence overseas.
\nIn 1609, the Tokugawa Shogunate sent Arima Harunobu on an exploratory mission.
\nIn 1616, Murayama Toan led an unsuccessful invasion of the island.<\/p>\n
\nWhen Japan sought compensation from Qing China, the court rejected the demand on the grounds that the “wild”\/”unsubjugated” aboriginals were outside its jurisdiction.
\nThis open renunciation of sovereignty led to a Japanese invasion of Taiwan.
\nIn 1874, an expeditionary force of three thousand troops was sent to the island.
\nThere were about thirty Taiwanese and 543 Japanese casualties (twelve in battle and 531 by endemic diseases).<\/span><\/p>\n
\nInhabitants wishing to remain Chinese subjects were given a two-year grace period to sell their property and remove to mainland China.
\nVery few Taiwanese saw this as feasible.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\nJapanese forces entered the capital at Tainan and quelled this resistance on October 21, 1895.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nDuring this period, both rice and sugarcane production greatly increased.
\nAt one point, Taiwan was the seventh greatest sugar producer in the world.
\nStill, the ethnic Chinese and Taiwanese aborigines were classified as second- and third-class citizens.
\nLarge-scale violence continued in the first decade of rule.
\nJapan launched over 160 battles to destroy Taiwan’s aboriginal tribes during its 51-year rule of the island.
\nAround 1935, the Japanese began an island-wide assimilation project to bind the island more firmly to the Japanese Empire.
\nThe plan worked very well, to the point that tens of thousands of Taiwanese joined the Japanese army ranks, and fought loyally for them.
\nFor example, former ROC President Lee Teng-hui’s elder brother served in the Japanese navy and died while on duty in February 1945 in the Philippines.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\nAllied POW’s, as well as ‘women and children as young as seven or eight years old,’ were brutally enslaved at various locations like at the copper mine northwest of Keelung, sadistically supervised by Taiwanese and Japanese.
\nIt was found that, while the Japanese were invariably proud to give their name and rank, Taiwanese soldiers and ‘hanchos’ invariably concealed their names.
\nSome Taiwanese citizens were willing participants in war crimes of various degrees of infamy.
\nYoung males were to an extent highly nipponised; in fact a proportion in the 1930s are reported to have been actively hoping for a Japanese victory in China.
\nOne of the most tragic events of the whole Pacific war took place in Kaohsiung.
\nThis was the bombing of the prison ship Enoura Maru in Kaohsiung harbour on January 9th 1945.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\nThe “South Strike Group” was based out of the Taihoku Imperial University in Taiwan.
\nMany of the Japanese forces participating in the Aerial Battle of Taiwan-Okinawa were based in Taiwan.
\nImportant Japanese military bases and industrial centres throughout Taiwan, like Kaohsiung, were targets of heavy American bombing.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nBut the Japanese occupation had long lasting effects on Taiwan.
\nUp to this very day, a small number of older Taiwanese are still loyal toward Japan, and they share their beliefs with the next generation.
\nIn general for its effect on politics, while the KMT remains interested in reunification with China, the DPP seeks closer relations with Japan.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\nOn October 25, 1945, Republic of China troops representing the Allied Command accepted the formal surrender of Japanese military forces in Taihoku.
\nThe ROC administration, led by Chiang Kai-shek, announced that date as “Taiwan Restoration Day”.
\nThey were greeted as liberators by some Taiwanese.
\nMany other Taiwanese, however, who fought against China and the allies for the Japanese war machine never greeted more than reluctantly, this new generation of Chinese arrivals.
\nThe ROC military administration on Taiwan under Chen Yi was generally unstable and corrupt; it seized property and set up government monopolies of many industries.
\nMany problems like this, compounded with hyperinflation, unrest due to the Chinese Civil War, and distrust due to political, cultural and linguistic differences between the Taiwanese and the Mainland Chinese, quickly led to the loss of popular support for the new administration.
\nThis culminated in a series of severe clashes between the ROC administration and Taiwanese, in turn leading to the bloody 228 incident and the reign of White Terror.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nOn the mainland, the victorious Communists established the People’s Republic of China, claiming to be the sole representative of China including Taiwan and portraying the ROC government on Taiwan as an illegitimate entity.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nIn addition, as part of its escape from Communists on the mainland, the Nationalist government relocated to Taiwan with many national treasures including gold reserves and foreign currency reserves.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nFrom this period through the 1980s, Taiwan was governed by a party-state dictatorship, with the KMT as the ruling party.
\nMilitary rule continued and little to no distinction was made between the government and the party, with public property, government property, and party property being interchangeable.
\nGovernment workers and party members were indistinguishable, with government workers, such as teachers, required to become KMT members, and party workers paid salaries and promised retirement benefits along the lines of government employees.
\nIn addition all other parties were outlawed, and political opponents were persecuted, incarcerated, and executed.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\nWith the advent of democratisation, the issue of the political status of Taiwan has resurfaced as a controversial issue (previously, discussion of anything other than unification under the ROC was taboo).<\/span><\/p>\n
\nWithin this effort, former KMT soldiers built the now famous Central Cross-Island Highway through the Taroko Gorge in the 1950’s.
\nThe two sides would remain in a heightened military state well into the 1960’s on the islands on the border with unknown number of night raids and clashes with details that are rarely made public.
\nDuring the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis in September 1958, Taiwan’s landscape added Nike-Hercules Missile batteries with the formation of the 1st Missile Battalion Chinese Army and would not be deactivated until 1997.
\nNewer generations of missile batteries have since replaced the Nike Hercules systems throughout the island.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\nBecause of the Cold War, most Western nations and the United Nations regarded the ROC as the sole legitimate government of China (while being merely the de-facto government of Taiwan) until the 1970s, when most nations began switching recognition to the PRC.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nChiang Kai-shek’s eventual successor, his son Chiang Ching-kuo, began to liberalise Taiwan’s political system.
\nIn 1984, the younger Chiang selected Lee Teng-hui, a native Taiwanese technocrat, to be his vice president.
\nIn 1986, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was formed illegally and inaugurated as the first opposition party in Taiwan to counter the KMT.
\nA year later Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law.<\/p>\n
\nUnder Lee, Taiwan underwent a process of localisation in which local culture and history was promoted over a pan-China viewpoint.
\nLee’s reforms included printing banknotes from the Central Bank rather than the Provincial Bank of Taiwan, and disbanding the Taiwan Provincial Government.
\nUnder Lee, the original members of the Legislative Yuan and National Assembly, elected in 1947 to represent mainland constituencies and having taken the seats without re-election for more than four decades, were forced to resign in 1991.
\nRestrictions on the use of Taiwanese in the broadcast media and in schools were lifted as well.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nIn 2000, Chen Shui-bian of the DPP, was elected as the first non-KMT President and was re-elected to serve his second and last term since 2004.
\nPolarised politics has emerged in Taiwan with the formation of the Pan-Blue Coalition of parties led by the KMT, favouring eventual Chinese reunification, and the Pan-Green Coalition of parties led by the DPP, favouring an eventual and official declaration of Taiwan independence.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nOn September 30, 2007, Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party approved a resolution asserting separate identity from China and called for the enactment of a new constitution for a “normal country”.
\nIt called also for general use of “Taiwan” as the island’s name, without abolishing its formal name, the Republic of China.<\/p>\n
\nThis issue has also forced the KMT to become more identity-driven: it countered with its own version of the referendum.
\nHowever, due to China’s veto power as a member of the UN Security Council, neither methods will likely lead to Taiwan’s admission.
\nWhether the DPP is likely to benefit for both the presidential and legislative elections remains to be seen.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"