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9 The story of Taiwan’s historical development and relationship with China is a complicated tale, one that has been told before. Others have provided their own fine treatments, and I offered mine in Untying the Knot.1 The discussion that follows lightly covers what transpired in cross-Strait relations before 1988 and then summarizes in more detail what happened in the three decades that preceded Ma Ying-jeou’s election. Taiwan, which first came into the Chinese cultural orbit in the sixteenth century, became a unit within the imperial administrative system in 1689.An unruly frontier area for more than a century thereafter, it was ruled with a light hand. It was only in the latter part of the nineteenth century that the Qing government decided to strengthen its position there, to keep the island out of the covetous hands of countries like France and Japan. But when a rising Japan defeated a declining China in the war of 1894–95, Taiwan was part of the spoils of war, and it became Japan’s first colony. Japanese rule was harsh at times, but it also brought civil order and economic and social development to the island. Although Taiwan was spared the internal strife that plagued Mainland China during the first half of the twentieth century, it was a target of repeated American bombing raids during World War II. Toward the end of that conflict, the Allies decided that Taiwan should be returned to China, then ruled by Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang, and it was his military units that took control of the island from the Japanese in 1945. The KMT’s initial rule of the native Taiwanese population was exploitative and abusive, and the people erupted in rebellion in February 1947. When Chiang sent troops to suppress the uprising, they did so with indiscriminate 2 Historical and Political Context 10 Historical and Political Context violence. Within two years, however, Chiang’s regime, facing military defeat at the hands of Mao Zedong’s communist army, came to regard Taiwan as its only refuge and moved there in late 1949. To secure its control, it imposed harsh political constraints on the native people, many of whom had only hatred for their new rulers. It was only North Korea’s invasion of South Korea in 1950 that saved Taiwan from a communist takeover. Occupied with the Korean War, Mao put off plans to take the island, and the United States gradually committed itself to ensuring its security. Taiwan soon became a link in the U.S. chain of containment in East Asia; it also became the principal obstacle to any improvement in relations between Washington and Beijing. Mao’s People’s Republic of China and Chiang’s Republic of China remained bitter ideological rivals. The only thing that they agreed on was that Taiwan was a part of the state called China. They disagreed on which was the legal government of that China, and each wished to end their rivalry by defeating the other. This deadlock continued for two decades; it changed only when Richard Nixon decided that perhaps the United States could use China as a counterweight to the Soviet Union. Mao, who had his own disputes with Moscow, came to the same conclusion. The two began a gradual rapprochement that culminated in the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1979—at Taiwan’s great expense. The United Nations replaced the ROC with the PRC as the holder of China’s seat, as did most other international organizations. In 1979, Washington terminated diplomatic relations with Taipei and voided their mutual defense treaty of 1955. Yet Taiwan was able to survive as a separate and autonomous actor. One reason was the continued political commitment of the United States, exemplified by the Taiwan Relations Act and a stream of weapons systems that flowed from the United States, growing in quality and quantity over time. A second reason, just as important, was the determination of the island’s government and people to achieve Taiwan’s economic and social development. They succeeded: in 1990 it was approximately the twentieth-largest economy in the world, depending on the method of measurement used. A third reason was that China had long lacked the ability to take Taiwan militarily or persuade it to submit politically. Beijing had some hope in the early 1980s that Taipei, weakened after losing the battle for international recognition, would come around to agreeing to unification on the PRC’s terms. But the proposal...

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