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  • Between Assimilation and Independence: The Taiwanese Encounter Nationalist China, 1945–1950
  • Lawrence C. Reardon
Steven E. Phillips, Between Assimilation and Independence: The Taiwanese Encounter Nationalist China, 1945–1950. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003. xiii + 256 pp. $55.00.

Long after the Guomindang-controlled government in China was forced to flee to Taiwan in 1949, it maintained a clear if impractical strategy of reinstating political control over mainland China. Following the assumption to power of the first Taiwanese-born leader, Li Denghui, in the late 1980s, the Taiwanese people increasingly rejected the Guomindang's ideas of nationalism and asserted a more independent Taiwanese voice in domestic politics. By the time presidential elections were held in 2004, President Chen Shuibian and his Democratic Progressive Party unequivocally rejected the Guomindang's "one China" policy and argued for a separate, independent, and sovereign Taiwan.

To help us understand the visceral nature of this nationalist debate today, Steven Phillips has written a timely and thoroughly researched analysis of Taiwan's first five years under Guomindang rule. Working out of the Stanford Center in Taibei, Phillips delved into a trove of newly released materials on the 1945–1950 period to write his doctoral dissertation, which he has now transformed into a concise, focused monograph. [End Page 153] A historian by training, Phillips provides a balanced account of the period, which he describes as "the most tumultuous in Taiwan's history" (p. 140).

According to Phillips, Taiwanese elites treated Manchu, Japanese, and Guomindang rulers in a similar fashion. The elites sought to "minimize the central government's interference, particularly in business and trade, and to limit its demands (such as taxes), while maximizing 'services,' including public security and improved infrastructure" (p. 3). Unlike in Korea and Indonesia, colonial rule in Taiwan was not a catalyst for nationalism. Instead, Taiwanese elites sought an accommodation with outside rule: If the colonial rulers provided the infrastructure and a limited degree of local autonomy, the Taiwanese accepted their status as second-class citizens.

Phillips initially explains the Taiwanese accommodation strategy during fifty years of Japanese colonial rule. Following Japan's seizure of Taiwan at the end of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, Taiwan enjoyed a relatively prosperous period under Japanese "progressive despotism." The Japanese colonial rulers held absolute power, which was concentrated in the governor-general's office. They imposed a police state with a strict legal code and enforcement mechanisms that ensured a passive Taiwanese population. The Japanese also developed Taiwan's economy so that it could serve the home islands by providing raw materials and manufactured goods to support Japan's imperial economy. Finally, the Japanese established an extensive educational system in Taiwan to train elites, workers, and soldiers to serve the empire. The Taiwanese elites sought accommodation, not assimilation, with their Japanese rulers by attempting to establish a greater degree of self-government, especially at the local political level. Yet by the late 1930s, the limited degree of Taiwanese autonomy was sacrificed in order to strengthen Japan's wartime political control.

The book's third chapter analyzes the difficult period of transition from Japanese to Guomindang rule. From 1945 to 1947, the Taiwanese rejected the corrupt nature of the Guomindang leadership of Chen Yi and his attempts to centralize control of the province. The Taiwanese elites preferred to insulate Taiwan from the political and economic chaos on the mainland. However, the Guomindang regarded Taiwan not only as another errant province in need of direct control by the central government but also as a former Japanese colony whose people were suspected Japanese collaborators and enemies of the Chinese people.

This clash of views resulted in the "28 February Incident" of 1947. The Taiwanese blamed the Guomindang for introducing rampant corruption, crime, and economic dislocation and for being unwilling to promote local self-government. The accommodation that had been possible with the Japanese colonizers could not be reached with the Guomindang, and the Taiwanese revolted. The Guomindang military resolved the impasse by eliminating the truculent Taiwanese elites who had promoted a more autonomous position vis-à-vis the mainland.

Discussions of Taiwanese autonomy ended with the Guomindang's defeat on the mainland in 1949 and its...

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