Nativity 2023
Through
Ignorance
Denial
Corruption
brilliantly
blazes
Triumphant
Truth.
Apparent defeat wherein
petty
plotting
callow
conniving
desperate
denying
achieves
tremulous
triumph,
Divinity
Ordains
that where
Pure Heart
Reigns
Victory is already won.
GMD
Christmas 2023
(Dedicated to Rochelle Cox, for bringing nonpareil skill and unprecedented
hope to public education, in Divine service of our most precious treasures)
Volume X, No. 5
December 2023
Journal of the K-12 Revolution:
Essays
and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota
The Terrorist Threat Posed by Xi Jinping
and the People’s Republic of China to Taiwan
A Five-Article Series
A Publication of the New Salem
Educational Initiative
Gary Marvin Davison, Editor
The
Terrorist Threat Posed by Xi Jinping
and
the People’s Republic of China to Taiwan
A Five-Article Series
Copyright © 2023
Gary Marvin Davison
New Salem Educational Initiative
Contents
Article #1
Understand These Facts, Should China’s Xi Jinping
Launch an Attack on Taiwan
Article #2
Beware a Chinese Attack on Taiwan in the Context of
Current Global Conflict
Article #3
Taiwan is Already and Will Continue to Be
an Independent Nation: Beware the Chinese Response
Article #4
Taiwan is Already and Will Continue to Be
an Independent Nation
Article #5
We Need a New, Ethically Focused Foreign Policy for the 21st Century
Article #2
Taiwan is Already and Will Continue to Be
an Independent Nation: Beware the Chinese Response
On Tuesday, October 10, of this week, the government and people of Taiwan celebrated the eventknown as “Double Ten,” recalling the day in 1911 when Chinese revolutionary forces overturned the Manchu-led Qing Dynasty, leading to replacement with the Republic of China. Celebration of this day is now essentially an anachronism, traceable to the beginning of Kuomintang rule on Taiwan that commenced when that party government of Chiang Kai-shek lost the Chinese Civil War (1945-1949) to the Chinese Communists of Mao Zedong and had to beat a retreat to Taiwan during the late 1940s.
With the Chinese Communist victory, the Republic of China was replaced by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which (led since 2013 by party head Xi Jinping) is the government in power in China to the present day. Until Chiang Kai-shek’s death in 1975, his regime maintained the fiction of representing the legitimate government of China, still under the banner of the Republic of China (ROC), which purportedly would one day return to conquer their Chinese Communist foes.
But against a backdrop of growing political opposition that by 1986 had formed the rival Democratic People’s Party, President Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law in 1987 and tapped the talented native Taiwanese official Lee Teng-hui as his successor as head of the Kuomintang. Lee oversaw an astounding political transformation; in 1996, he won Taiwan’s first democratic presidential election.
In the year 2000, Chen Shuibian, of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), won the presidential election and ended the dominance of the Kuomintang. The DPP lost control of the presidency to the Kuomintang in 2008 but regained the top office in 2016, when current president Tsai Ing-wen prevailed. Right now, DPP candidate William Lai seems likely to win the looming presidential contest in January 2024; the Kuomintang’s Hou Yu-ih is polling third, behind Ko Wen-je, the nominee of a new party, The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), with former Foxconn CEO Terry Gou running fourth as an independent.
Taiwan’s leading Democratic People’s Party had nothing to do with the documents and agreements so often given reference in the press; those were generated when the Kuomintang was still leading a one-party police state on Taiwan. The Shanghai Communique, issued in 1972 during the Nixon and Mao administrations, acknowledged that “all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain that there is but one China.” This position was consistent at the time with the official positions of Mao’s PRC (which claimed legitimacy as government of China) and Chiang Kai-Shek’s ROC (which still made the same forlorn claim from its Taiwan redoubt). And in an agreement known as the “1992 Consensus,” the PRC and the KMT (still clinging to diminished power on Taiwan) affirmed that, “There is only one China.”
But the presidential elections of 1996 and 2000, reinforced by those of an ever-maturing democracy from 2004 through 2020) transformed the government and polity of Taiwan. The governmental moniker of the “Republic of China” is retained for expedient maintenance of the status quo, whereby the PRC governs China and the ROC governs Taiwan. Today’s dangerous situation results from the increasingly bellicose insistence that the PRC leadership makes that Taiwan is part of China and the equally forceful position on the part of the DPP that Taiwan is a de facto independent nation that is most decidedly not part of China.
The current political contest became more acrimonious when the DPP announced that this year’s Double Ten would be celebrated as “Taiwan National Day,” with the slogan of “Democratic Taiwan, resilience and sustainability,” thus distancing the holiday from origins in a revolution that took place over one hundred years ago in China, not Taiwan. Terry Gou objected vociferously to this diminution of association with the ROC, while KMT candidate Hou and TPP candidate Ko registered less stringent but still clear disapproval. These latter candidates are more inclined toward economic and cultural linkages with the Chinese regime than is the DPP, but they do not seem likely to join forces against the DPP, whose William Lai holds a substantial plurality in recent polling.
The United States public needs to have a better understanding of the history of Taiwan on its ownterms. The Qing Dynasty claim on Taiwan, only made in 1683 after vigorous court debate as to the pros and cons of governing Taiwan, had been preceded by the claims of the colonial regime of the Dutch (1624-1661) and the administration of anti-Qing rebel Zheng Chenggong (often known in the West as Koxinga, 1661-1683). But the Qing lost Taiwan to the Japanese in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895; the Japanese ruled the island through the end of World War II in 1945. Hence, Taiwan has not been governed by any force claiming control over all of China for 128 years.
Taiwan is a de facto nation with a unique history. The island nation ranks number 12 among thenations of the world in GDP per capita (ppp indices) compared to number 73 for China) and is rated number 10 as a “full democracy” by the highly respected Freedom House and Economist Intelligence Unit indices (China, brutalizers of the Uighur and Tibetan peoples, is ranked “authoritarian”).
Taiwan is no more part of China than the United States is a colony of Great Britain; the island’speople have long identified primarily as Taiwanese, not Chinese. In the likelihood that Xi Jinping,faced with numerous economic challenges and the reality of another DPP victory in the loomingpresidential election of January 13, 2024, takes an even more violent posture, the United States andallies must as a moral and geopolitical imperative give firm military assistance to democratic Taiwan.
Article #3
Beware a Chinese Attack on Taiwan in the Context of
Current Global Conflict
With regional hostility now at great heights in the aftermath of the Hamas October 7 rocket attacks on Israel and the immediate Israeli response with air strikes in the Gaza Strip, a second major theater of global conflict has now opened in West Asia (with implications also for North Africa), in addition to the now nearly two years of confrontation provoked by the Russian attack on Ukraine.
In the People’s Republic of China (PRC), leader Xi Jinping is observing these events with elevated interest. Given Xi’s recent enhanced expression of amity with Vladimir Putin when the two met in Beijing beginning on October 17, prudent observers of international events must strongly consider that the Chinese leader’s narrow cast of bellicose advisers might successfully assert that now would be a favorable time to launch an attack on Taiwan.
Military analysts at organizations such as West Point’s Modern War Institute and the well-respected private Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) relate that the PRC would be best prepared for an attack on Taiwan in 2027, but such experts also comment that authoritarian leaders have their own logic, so that despite the catastrophic impact that would come from a PRC attack on Taiwan at any time, Xi Jinping’s increasingly aggressive stance must be taken seriously.
In the event of such an attack, the United States public should have a better understanding of the PRC’s faulty claim on Taiwan, which is no more part of China than the United States is a part of Great Britain.
With the victory of Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist victory over the forces of Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang in 1949, the latter retreated to Taiwan and until Chiang Kai-shek’s death in 1975 maintained the fiction of representing the legitimate government of China, still under the banner of the Republic of China (ROC), which purportedly would one day return to conquer their Chinese Communist foes.
But President Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law in 1987 and his successor, Li Teng-hui, soon superintended an astounding political transformation. In 1996, Li won Taiwan’s first democratic presidential election then, in the year 2000, Chen Shuibian, of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), won the presidential election and ended the dominance of the Kuomintang. The DPP lost control of the presidency to the Kuomintang in 2008 but regained the top office in 2016, when current president Tsai Ing-wen prevailed. Right now, DPP candidate William Lai seems likely to win the looming presidential contest in January 2024; the Kuomintang’s Hou Yu-ih is polling third, behind Ko Wen-je, the nominee of a new party, The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), with former Foxconn CEO Terry Gou running fourth as an independent.
Taiwan’s leading Democratic People’s Party had nothing to do with the documents and agreements so often given reference in the press; those were generated when the Kuomintang was still leading a one-party police state on Taiwan. The Shanghai Communique, issued in 1972 during the Nixon and Mao administrations, acknowledged that “all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain that there is but one China.” This position was consistent at the time with the official positions of Mao’s PRC (which claimed legitimacy as government of China) and Chiang Kai-Shek’s ROC (which still made the same forlorn claim from its Taiwan redoubt). And in an agreement known as the “1992 Consensus,” the PRC and the KMT (still clinging to diminished power on Taiwan) affirmed that, “There is only one China.” Today’s dangerous situation results from the increasingly bellicose PRC insistence that Taiwan is part of China and the equally forceful position on the part of the DPP that Taiwan is a de facto independent nation that is most decidedly not part of China.
Taiwan was inhabited first by its indigenous population, which arrived four thousand years ago. The Qing Dynasty claim on Taiwan, only made in 1683 after vigorous court debate as to the pros and cons of governing Taiwan, had been preceded by the claims of the colonial regime of the Dutch (1624-1661) and the administration of anti-Qing rebel Zheng Chenggong (often known in the West as Koxinga, 1661-1683). But the Qing lost Taiwan to the Japanese in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895; the Japanese ruled the island through the end of World War II in 1945. Hence, Taiwan has not been governed by any force with actual control over all of China for 128 years.
Taiwan is a de facto nation with a unique history. The island nation ranks number 12 among the nations of the world in GDP per capita (ppp indices) compared to number 73 for China) and is rated number 10 as a “full democracy” by the highly respected Freedom House and Economist Intelligence Unit indices (China, brutalizers of the Uighur and Tibetan peoples, is ranked “authoritarian”). Taiwan’s people have long identified primarily as Taiwanese, not Chinese.
Given numerous economic challenges, a likely DPP
victory in the looming presidential election of January 13, 2024, and the
attention that the United States and its allies is now giving to two major
conflicts, Xi Jinping could decide that the time for an attack on Taiwan is
now. The United States and allies must as
a moral and geopolitical imperative make preparations to render all necessary military
assistance to democratic Taiwan in a global situation that could quickly gain
appellation as World War III.
Article #5
We
Need a New, Ethically Focused Foreign Policy for the 21st Century
In its November 18, 2023
editorial, “A (small) step forward for the United States and China,” the
editorial board of the Star Tribune gave evidence of a stance that can
be witnessed in daily articles and opinions appearing in the publication: an uncreative view of foreign policy that
parrots a version of the realpolitik approach that has carried so much weight
since the unfortunate tenure of Henry Kissinger as secretary of state under
presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford during the 1970s.
The board touted the practical
advances that seemed to result from the four-hour discussion that Biden and Xi
had during last week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in San
Francisco: restoration
of military communication, termination of shipments of component parts for the
production of fentanyl, and the establishment of working groups on artificial
intelligence and climate change. The
board also expressed a view claiming the critical importance of the China
market for Minnesota industry and agriculture, respectively citing University of
Minnesota scholars Sri Zaheer and Ed Usset as to the
impact of trade in those sectors.
Much more briefly did the editorial board indicate that Biden rightfully prioritizes defending democracies in a
global atmosphere of rising authoritarianism and laments China’s complicit
support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine and failure to curb North Korea’s many
dangerous maneuvers in the Pacific region.
And only near the end of the editorial did the board write that “no
nation, especially the United States, should overlook China's human-rights
record, regional maritime aggression, support of repressive regimes and other
destabilizing policies.”
The United States needs a new foreign policy,
though, that moves beyond latter-day Kissinger realpolitik, inspired by 19th
century statespersons Metternich (Austria) and Bismark (Germany). Realpolitik has hardly created a safer world,
as could have been predicted by Metternich’s failure to sustain a
post-Napoleonic social order led by aristocrats and monarchs; and certainly Bismark’s dismal futility in
creating a balance of power that would lead to peace, rather than calamity of
the sort that in fact materialized in World War I.
We need in fact a foreign policy that follows the
advice of Salvatore Babones, writing in Foreign Policy (“Yes, you can go
ahead and use the T-Word to describe China,” April 10, 2021) to describe
forthrightly the totalitarian nature of Chinese society. In that sense, Joe Biden’s acknowledgment in
a press conference after he and Zi Jinping had met that he still regards Xi
Jinping as a dictator did not go far enough:
Xi Jinping is in fact no mere dictator but rather
the leader of a totalitarian regime that, because utilizing technology far more
advanced than any utilized by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, exerts more
control over Chinese citizens than the two prototypical totalitarian stalwarts
analyzed by historian Hannah Arendt could exert respectively over the German
and Soviet populations.
In the province of Xinjiang, the Xi regime has
detained over one million Uighurs under forced labor conditions and has taken
children from their homes and installed them in state-run schools in an effort
to Sinicize Uyghur children and eradicate Uyghur culture. Similarly brutal policies have been used in
Tibet, and anyone in China who dares to denounce any policy of the regime is
subject to “reeducation” in detention facilities and prisons. There is no scope in China to promote women’s
rights, gay marriage, LGBTQ rights, or the advancement of indigenous, non-Han
Chinese people. China ranks 156th
among 167 nations on the Economist Democracy Index.
Long-time United States ally Taiwan, by contrast,
ranks number 10 on that index, well ahead of the United States at 30. Taiwan since 1996 has evolved into one of the
most democratic, open societies in the world.
Presidential and legislative elections are free and highly competitive,
and the judiciary renders verdicts with factually justified and fair
rulings. The Taiwanese government has
recognized same-sex marriage since 2019.
LGBTQ rights are recognized in employment and society; a transgender person by the name of Audrey
Tang has held a position in female president Tsai Ing-wen’s cabinet since
2016. Sixteen indigenous languages are
recognized, and great strides have been made in the last decade to address concerns
and land rights of indigenous people.
The foreign policy that the United States should
advance for the 21st century should exalt relationships such as that
maintained with democratic Taiwan. The
foreign policy for this century should be one that seeks dialogue of the sort
that Xi and Biden had at APEC but only while pressing human rights concerns
that strenuously object to the treatment of the Uighurs and the Tibetans,
exalting the democratic model that is Taiwan, and maintaining firm commitment
(as Biden has expressed at his best) to defend Taiwan from any military attack
launched by the Xi administration on the island of 23 million people who at
birth behold futures in an advanced condition of human rights.
Foreign policy for the 21st century
should pursue national interest contextualized by broad human interest, not
recoiling from the ethical obligation to oppose abuses while remaining open to
dialogue if the opponent is not too offended by that gravely endangered value:
Truth.
Volume X, No. 5
November 2023
Journal of the K-12 Revolution:
Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota
Overview of the History of Taiwan:
The Case for Independence
A Five-Article Series
A Publication of the New Salem Educational Initiative
Gary Marvin Davison, Editor
Overview of the History of Taiwan:
The Case for Independence
A Five-Article Series
Copyright © 2023
Gary Marvin Davison
New Salem Educational Initiative
Contents
Introductory Comments
An Overview of the History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence
Article #1
The Dutch Period of Control and the Era of Zheng Family Rule, 1624-1683
Article #2
The Qing Period of Rule, 1683-1895
Article #3
The Japanese Period of Rule, 1895-1945
Article #4
The Guomindang Period of Control, 1945-2000
Article #5
The Political Independence of the Taiwanese People, 2000-Present
Introductory Comments
An Overview of the History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence
The geopolitical entity of Taiwan has been independent of any government controlling all of China for 128 years. The historical case for Taiwanese independence has already been made by the Taiwanese people, based on a number of compelling facts. There was very little Han Chinese settlement of Taiwan until the 17th century, during which two outside ruling powers held sway before a reluctant Qing court ultimately decided to make a claim on the island, thus becoming the third outside ruling force. With the exception of a decade at the end of the Qing period of rule, that dynasty ruled Taiwan with a light touch and attempted to limit Han Chinese settlement so as not to spark resistance from the always potentially restive aboriginal population. Taiwan’s introduction to significant elements of modernity came during a half-century of rule by a Japanese imperial administration that controlled the island from 1895 until 1945. Contemporary development and the evolution of an independent political economy then came under a Han Chinese regime that fled to the island as a refuge and redoubt from the forces to which that regime had lost control of China by 1949. Full-fledged independence for the Taiwanese people themselves came in a series of events that unfolded from 1987 into the present year of 1911.
About one hundred miles separate Taiwan from China across the Taiwan Strait, the distinctive island of Taiwan emerged from the Pacific Ocean about a million years ago through geological processes similar to those that produced the Japanese and Philippine archipelagos. Over thousands of years, lush grasses sprouted across the western plains, broadleaved deciduous trees and conifers gave shape to the forests, and 1,500 species of subtropical and tropical plants further defined the island’s exquisite beauty. Across the luscious landscape roamed fauna such as Formosan black bears, bats, boars, deer, foxes, rabbits, squirrels, and many species of birds and insects.
This natural life evolved on an island that stretches 245 miles northeast to southwest and 90 miles northwest to southeast. Mountains rise from the eastern coast and run spine-like along the island’s interior. Several mountain peaks soar to 10,000 feet and beyond, the highest rising to 13,114 feet above sea level. At the very highest elevations snow falls and lingers on the terrain. A fertile plain covers most of western Taiwan, and good farmland exists also at the northern and southern extremes of the island. Taiwan’s climate is subtropical in the north and tropical in the south, with an average rainfall of 100 inches across the island and with up to 200 inches falling in some years at certain locations.
Long before the Shang (ca. 1500-1000 B. C.) and Zhou (ca. 1000-246 B. C.) dynasties brought an identifiable civilization to China, and longer still before the Qin (221-206 B. C.) and Han (202 B. C.-220 A. D.) dynasties developed an enduring style of Chinese political rule, the first of Taiwan’s inhabitants migrated to the island, presumably from China. These very first inhabitants were destined to be absorbed by later arrivals, those who came either from Southeastern China or from islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific about 4,000 B. C. These were people of Austronesian cultural traits, giving evidence of Malayo-Polynesian linguistic affinities linking them to the original inhabitants of the Philippines, New Zealand, Australia, and many islands of the Pacific Ocean. On Taiwan these people eventually sorted themselves into groups that came to be identified as the Ami, Bunun, Paiwan, Puyuma, Rukyai, Saisyat, Taroko, Taya, Thao, Tsou, and Yami people; these are the yuanzhumin (“original inhabitants”) who comprise 2% of the population on Taiwan and present an enduring cultural legacy that is a highly important part of the island’s unique social fabric.
These aboriginal people of Taiwan had the island substantially to themselves from about 4,000 B. C. until 1624, a period of approximately 5,600 years that included the rise and fall of the culturally important Shang and Zhou, the governmentally foundational Qin and Han, and those dynasties that rose and fell during years corresponding to the European Middle Ages: the Sui (581-618 A. D.), Tang (618-907), Song (960-1279), Yuan (1264-1368), and the Ming (1368-1644). Only in the last two decades of the latter dynasty did Taiwan undergo significant non-aboriginal settlement, and this settlement occurred against Ming prohibitions.
There had in the meantime, though, been some impulses of interest that resulted in exploratory and scattered activity by parties launching from China. In 239 A. D. the kingdom of Wu, one of the many states that rose and fell during the long period of Chinese disunity between the fall of the Han (220 A. D.) and the establishment of the Sui (581 A. D.), sent an expeditionary force that explored parts of Taiwan then returned to China. Archeological and a few written records indicate that a smattering of migrants made their own way across the Taiwan Strait during the 7th century and established the first slim evidence of Han Chinese settlement. Another such period of scattered Han Chinese settlement occurred during the 11th century, and in the late 13th century the physically vigorous and geographically mobile Mongols skirted Taiwan proper but did take control of Penghu (the Pescadores Islands), establishing the 6th Circuit Intendancy as part of the Yuan Dynasty’s far-flung claims and in the spirit of Mongol quest for territory across Eurasia. But when the rulers of the Ming ousted the Mongols and established the new dynasty in 1368, the 6th Circuit Intendancy was disbanded, and strict anti-emigration policies were established that included proscriptions against Han Chinese settlement of Taiwan. These prohibitions were largely effective for all but the waning years of the Ming Dynasty, so that into the 17th century Chinese-style imperial power held no significance for Taiwanese history and any Han Chinese settlement of Taiwan was limited to a few coastal settlements that posed no challenge to the aboriginal population spread throughout the island.
There then began a 400-year period in which the constituent elements of Taiwanese population became more complex, and during which a series of outside rulers imposed their governance on the island’s people. The first of these outside powers to occupy Taiwan arrived as representatives of the Netherlands; the second was a rebel supporting the continuance of the Ming Dynasty against the invading Manchus of the Qing Dynasty.
Article #1
The Dutch
Period of Control and the Era of Zheng Family Rule, 1624-1683
The Dutch
Period of Control, 1624-1661
One could observe European powers beginning to exert
a presence when in 1557 sailors on a Portuguese ship passed by the island and
produced a journal that included a reference to Ilha Formosa (“Beautiful Island”), the latter part of which would
endure into the 20th century as a Western appellation for
Taiwan. In the early 17th
century, seafaring representatives of the Netherlands began nosing around
Taiwanese coastal areas, tried to establish themselves on Penghu, were ousted
by the Ming naval captain Shen Yourong, but then resumed coastal explorations
in 1622 in a thrust that landed them on Taiwan to begin construction of Fort
Zeelandia at Anping, close to today’s city of Tainan, in 1624. In this latter year another European power
began an effort to occupy part of the island when officials sailing for Spain
arrived; by 1629 Spaniards had completed
construction of Fort San Domingo (near today’s Danshui). The Spaniards also built Fort San Salvador
close to today’s Jilong (Keelung) during their period of occupation of northern
Taiwan. But suffering from various
diseases, bloodied by battles with the Dutch, and deciding that the Philippines
offered them ideal bases for their Asian-Pacific activities, the representatives
of Spain gave up their claims on Taiwan in 1642, so that for 20 years Dutch
assertions of rule on the island went mostly uncontested by other outside
powers, although that rule did provoke rebellions by those living under the
Dutch yoke.
Taiwan became an important Dutch base of trading
operations, from which the colonial administration extracted sugarcane, for
trade mainly to Japan; rice, for which
China was the most important market,
and sulfur, for transport and sale in Cambodia and China. Through this carrying trade the Dutch also
procured porcelain, silks, and pottery for which the home country of the Netherlands
provided the greatest market. During the
Dutch tenure, an important figure by the name of Zheng Zhilong operated variously
as a freelance pirate, a ship captain hired to keep other pirates at bay by the
Ming court, and a merchant plugging into the carrying trade of the Dutch. Zheng Zhilong
secured a contract from the Dutch for providing such services, and for
bringing Han Chinese immigrants into Taiwan from Fujian Province, especially
those whose homes had been in the prefectures of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou. The Dutch encouraged this immigration, still
officially proscribed by the Ming, so as to establish more farmers on land
producing rice and sugarcane. These
lands during the Dutch period of control on Taiwan were known as the “King’s
Lands” (wangtian), rented to these
immigrant farmers under conditions of heavy taxation. The Dutch colonial regime used various
devices to extract as much wealth as possible from the island; these included a head tax, customs duties,
trade tax, fishing tax, hunting tax, sulfur extraction tax, and liquor brewing
tax. Many taxes in these latter
categories fell heavily on the aboriginal population. Aborigine discontent with the Dutch overlords
culminated in the Great Matou Resistance of 1635; Han Chinese unrest became manifest in the Guo
Huaiyi Rebellion (1652). But operating
with 2,000 troops out of Fort Zeelandia at Anping and Fort Provintia (located
in the present city of Tainan), the Dutch put these Taiwanese rebellions down
in bloody but decisive fashion.
The Dutch were supplanted as overlords of Taiwan not
by troops of an administration exerting imperial rule in China, but by forces
of Zheng Chenggong, the son of the pirate Zheng Zhilong and an important
commander of forces in his own right.
Zheng Family Period
of Rule, 1661-1683
Zheng Chenggong committed these forces to the
resistance against the Qing Dynasty that had supplanted the Ming in 1644. Zheng Chenggong’s heyday as an anti-Qing
rebel came during the years 1658-1660, during which armed forces under his
command captured Zhenjiang, the capital of Jiangsu Province, and for a time
threatened Nanjing. But by 1660, Zheng
Chenggong was in retreat and in need of a new base of operations. He looked across the Taiwan Strait and saw a
redoubt that had great appeal. He and a
crony by the name of He Bin organized coordinated attacks from Penghu and
through the Luermen Waterway respectively and after a protracted siege of Fort
Zeelandia (Fort Provintia had fallen quickly), took control of the Tainan area
by the waning months of 1661. Zheng
Chenggong died in June 1662, at which time leadership passed to his son, Zheng
Jing. Zheng Jing passed day to day rule
for much of his 1662-1681 tenure as leader to trusted official Chen Yonghua,
whose importance was especially magnified during the period 1673-1680 when Zheng Jing was often in southern China
resuming the anti-Qing activities of his father. On Taiwan, the Zheng regime ruled over what
were now dubbed “Official’s Lands” with extractive policies similar to those
that had prevailed during the Dutch period of rule. So, too, did recruitment of Han Chinese
immigrants from Fujian (especially from Quanzhou and Zhangzhou) and Guangdong
(especially Hakka people from the Chaozhou and Huizhou areas) continue; the Zheng regime put these recruits to work
not only as farmers but also as soldiers deployed in the military activities of
Zheng Jing.[i] By the end of the Zheng tenure on Taiwan in
1683, the Han Chinese population had risen to about 175,000, now rivaling the
aboriginal population of about 300,000.
This termination of Zheng family rule came with the third outside occupation of Taiwan, this by the Qing Dynasty.
Article #2
The Qing
Period of Rule, 1683-1895
The Qing administration ordered forces to Taiwan not
out of a desire to possess the island, but rather to rid the dynasty of a pesky
opponent. The military initiative
of 1683 in Taiwan was part of a
successful year for the Qing as it faced down various opponents who for nearly
a century had kept the Manchus from securing firm control of southern
China. While the Qing court now had
achieved its territorial aims, moving on the Zhengs of Taiwan was the next
logical move in the effort to defeat all opponents of the dynasty. Catching the Zheng regime at a time of
disarray, after the death of Zheng Jing when the administration on Taiwan was
rent by rival factions and regent politics, Qing forces took control of Taiwan
proper on 22 August 1683. Forces under
General Shi Lang, the architect of the Taiwan campaign, then turned their
attention to Penghu, where Zheng military leader Liu Guxuan was mounting a
spirited defense. Within seven days Qing
forces pierced Liu’s defenses and took control of Penghu. Now the question arose as to what the Qing
Dynasty would do with Taiwan in the aftermath of its ousting of the Zheng
regime.
The sort of question now before the Qing court had
not been posed upon the defeat of Qing opponents in Guangdong, Guangxi,
Jiangsi, Jiangsu, and Fujian. These were
all understood to be provinces historically under the authority of any court
operating in the Chinese imperial style.
Taiwan had no such historical connection. Any occupation by representatives of the Qing
Dynasty would be the first from any Chinese administration to do so, and if
they elected to occupy Taiwan, they would do so as outside governing
authorities arriving to impose a new regime on the Taiwanese population,
succeeding Dutch and Zheng family operatives who had done the same.
In a vigorous debate at the Qing court, most
officials argued for abandonment of the island to the aborigines and those Han
Chinese who had made their way to Taiwan.
These officials said that Taiwan was not big enough to add significantly
to the territorial expanse of China, and that while Taiwan’s soils had proven
productive, the island’s size and population were not sufficient significantly
to expand the tax and agrarian base of the empire.[ii] The fact that Han Chinese now constituted a
sizable percentage of Taiwan’s population counted for little: Traditionally, such emigrants were scorned
for leaving their native places in pursuit of material gain, opting to take
residence outside the imperial glory of China.
Despite stiff opposition, the military official Shi
Lang, he who had engineered the Qing victory over the Zheng regime, eventually
won Qing decision makers to his two key arguments for retaining control of Taiwan. He reminded the Qing rulers that the island
had long been a staging base for pirates and other renegades who had caused
their Ming predecessors much misery. And
he pointed out that taking control of Taiwan would prevent any attempt on the
part of the Dutch or other Europeans to reassert Western authority on an island
of significant agricultural potential and possessing a favorable location for
trading activities. On the strength of
these arguments grounded in matters of geo-strategic concern, the Qing
administration decided to occupy Taiwan and enter the island on the official
map of China.
With the decision to enter Taiwan on the map of China
and assume governance of the island, the Qing court now faced another important
decision, also accompanied by a debate along two lines of thinking. One view was that Han Chinese settlement of
Taiwan should be promoted energetically, in tandem with a decided initiative to
sinicize the aborigines. The other view
held that sinicization of the aborigines would be so vigorously opposed by the
latter as to require too great an investment of dynastic resources and
misplaced imperial energy; therefore,
Han Chinese settlement should be subject to severe restrictions, and great care
should be taken not to rile the aborigines unnecessarily. The latter view won out and remained official
policy well into the 19th century, with the exception of a brief
pro-colonization phase during the rule of the Yongzheng emperor.(r.
1722-1735). Immigration into Taiwan from
mainland China was subject to applications reviewed with great care by the
military circuit intendant for Taiwan and Xiamen, and subject also to the
review of the magistrate for coastal defense.
Only single males were to apply, with the thought that they would till
the land or otherwise work on Taiwan for a specified period, then return to
their home villages in Fujian. No
families were to settle Taiwan, and there was an effort to prevent Hakka from
Chaozhou or Huizhou from gaining permission for immigration into Taiwan.
With regard to governance of the aborigines, Qing
policy endeavored to leave the native people of Taiwan largely to their own
affairs. The aborigines were required to
pay a manageable per capita tax in kind to an official, often also an
aborigine, given responsibility for collecting the tax, typically yielded as
deer hides. Various lines of demarcation
were drawn attempting to prevent Han Chinese penetration into traditionally
aboriginal territory. But the whole
effort to restrict Han Chinese immigration into Taiwan, and to prevent their
encroachment into aboriginal territory, proved very difficult. There were too many hungry Hakka (who
successfully circumvented official proscriptions) and Fujianese eager to try their
luck across the Taiwan Strait. And, once
on the island, many of these immigrants advanced ever southward, eastward and
northward into lands that the aborigines traditionally thought of as their own,
not as tightly held personal property, but territory for hunting, fishing, and
farming.[iii] Between 1684 and 1785, the Han Chinese
population of Taiwan increased from 175,000 to 415,000 [iv](roughly
equal to the aboriginal population at this point), with people hailing
originally from Zhangzhou and Quanzhou in Fujian making energetic thrusts
across the Jianan plain and from there to Zhanghua, Fengyuan, and Taizhong, a
pattern that by the late 18th century would reveal significant Han
Chinese settlement in the areas now known as Xinzhu, Danshui, and Taibei. Meanwhile, Hakka people proved insistent in
their efforts to settle areas today known as Chisan, Linbian, Donggang, and Fengliao.
Qing taxation policy was formulated so as to minimize
opposition, especially from local landholding elites whose support the dynasty
needed to maintain control. The typical
rate of taxation on the annual agricultural yield was 15%, held as a
responsibility of the landowners but usually collected by the latter from
tenant farmers, who paid another 15% of the yield for a total of about 30% as
their effective rental rate. In some
areas this latter figure totaled 50% and in a few rose as high as 70%. Qing policy also allowed a lively and
moderately taxed mercantile activity from which various town-centered
commercial actors benefited in a geographically far-flung trade involving ships
sailing out of the Netherlands and Japan;
Manila, and Luzon on the Philippines;
and various Chinese ports located at coastal areas of Jiangsu, Zhejiang,
Fujian, and Guangdong. Exports from
Taiwan typically included rice, sugarcane, venison, camphor, hemp, and fish
fins; imports into the island commonly
listed manufactured goods such as umbrellas, thread, gauze, bricks, gongs, cut
felt, and paper materials; and food and
agricultural goods such as oranges, pomelos, tangerines, cakes, and dried
persimmons. Merchant associations were
formed in various places, the first among them in Luermen (1740) and Fengshan
(1768).
Despite articulating generally successful economic
policies, the Qing rulers were not successful in preventing violent
conflicts. Small-scale episodes
frequently found Han Chinese pitted against aborigines resentful over
territorial encroachments; other
incidents found people of Quanzhou, Zhangzhou, and Hakka ancestry in opposition
to each other; still others saw one or
another of these groups rise up against local magistrates; and the most serious violent outbreaks
occurred as more general rebellions against the whole proposition of Qing rule
on Taiwan. The longest of these latter
conflicts in duration, and the most costly in terms of bloodshed, were the Zhu
Yigui Rebellion of 1722 and, especially, the Lin Shuangwen Rebellion of
1787-1788. Taiwan proved to be a
difficult frontier region in which to secure the unswerving loyalty of the
local population. Deals were constantly
cut with local notables who had no great love for the representatives of Qing
officialdom, but who could be responsive to promises of better political,
social, and economic position if cooperating in keeping unruly elements under
control.
Much changed on Taiwan due to the cumulative impact
of the Opium War (1839-1842), Anglo-Chinese War (1856-1860), and Sino-French
War (1884-1885). Each of these conflicts
brought an ever greater presence of Europeans into the lives of people both on
Taiwan and in China, as the Qing court was forced to open treaty ports all
along the Chinese coast and on Taiwan;
Danshui was the first of the latter, opening as a result of British
demands in the Treaty of Nanjing (1842).
During the 1868-1894 period, the value of Taiwanese trade with Western
powers and Japan was five times the value of Taiwanese trade with merchants in
China, a trade which featured imports into Taiwan of many manufactured items
but in which the most lucrative item for sale on the Taiwanese market by
European traders was opium. The most
valuable export from Taiwan during those same years was not the traditionally
emphasized rice or sugarcane; these
continued to play an important role, but when the hillsides of northern Taiwan
were found to be excellent for growing tea, well over 100 firms, especially
British, rushed in to take advantage of what proved to be a very lucrative item
for sale on the European market.
Concerned over the growing presence and demands of
foreigners in China and on Taiwan, the Qing court sent a succession of vigorous
officials to articulate policy for the whole island. The leaders included Shen Baozhen
(1874-1875), Ding Richang (1875-1878) and, especially, Liu Mingchuan
(1884-1891).[v] During the latter’s tenure of power, in 1887,
Taiwan was for the first time designated a province (previously it had held
only the status of a prefecture within Fujian province). Liu’s policies included administering
geological surveys and implementing land reform, thereby increasing the value
of Taiwan’s agriculture, forestry, and mining sectors to the government; promotion of the shipping industry, railroad
building, and road building;
modernization of machinery in the coal-mining, sugar-refining, and
brick-making industries; and successful
efforts to bring electrical lighting and the telephone and telegraph to Taibei
and other key urban centers. Under Liu’s
energetic leadership, Taiwan became a showcase for the Self-Strengthening
Movement, the Qing dynasty’s attempt to incorporate material elements of
modernity firmly within the context of Chinese culture and governing style. But the Qing court eventually scaled down its
support for Liu’s efforts and relented when rivals and opponents petitioned for
his removal. Liu left Taiwan in 1891,
much less assertive leadership ensued, and by 1895 governance of Taiwan was no
longer an issue for the Qing court, for it had lost control of Taiwan.
In retrospect, the Qing interlude was just another period during which outside ruling powers asserted control over the Taiwanese population. Two far more important such periods followed, and neither of the much more vigorous outside powers in question controlled all of China during their years of occupation of Taiwan. This long span of 116 years was taken up first by the Japanese, who gained possession of the island of Taiwan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed in the aftermath of Japanese defeat of the Qing in the 1894-1895 Sino-Japanese War.
