Article #7 in A Seven-Article Series >>>>> An Overview of the History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence

The Political Independence of the Taiwanese People, 2000-Present

 

 

Given the aggressive and illogical claims of the regime that maintains control in China, the people of Taiwan have thus far been satisfied with de facto independence, continuing to operate under the outdated and always fanciful official appellation, Republic of China.

 

But Taiwan has never been the Republic of China.  That term was brought from China as part of the baggage carried by the Guomindang, the loser of a territory that it aspired to regain.  Until the 1990s, the Guomindang maintained a “provincial” government for Taiwan and even a “provincial” legislature based in Taizhong that was officially separate from the “national” government in Taibei.  Among the reforms of the Lee Teng-hui era was the elimination of the Taizhong governments.[xi]  With Chen Shuibian’s tenure came the adoption of the name “Taiwan” for many central government journals and the abiding assumption that any reference to the “Republic of China” was a convenient fiction.

 

Indeed, Taiwan has never been China, and only briefly in the long scope of history even under the sway of any government that actually exercised control over all of China. And no government has simultaneously controlled Taiwan and all of China for the last 128 years.  Only during the Dutch, Zheng, and Qing periods did Han Chinese people begin immigration into Taiwan in significant numbers.  Until the 17^th century, Taiwan was an island on which the stock of people who had conducted themselves freely across the island for about 5,600 years still had the island to themselves.  Taiwan’s populace then endured a succession of periods during which outsiders controlled the island:  the periods of Dutch (1624-1661);  Zheng family (1661-1683);  Qing Dynasty (1683-1895);  Japanese (1895-1945);  and Guomindang (1945-1987) control.  Only as the Dutch, Zheng, and Qing periods ensued did Han Chinese people from Fujian and Guangdong come to the island in significant numbers, eventually overwhelming in sheer size the aboriginal population.  During the Guomindang era, people with ancestral roots across China followed the Guomindang across the Taiwan Stratit.  Thus today the Taiwanese population consists of a small aboriginal population, a sizable minority population of Han Chinese whose ancestral roots lie outside Fujian and Guangdong, and a majority population of Han Chinese people with ancestral ties to Fujian and Guangdong whose forebears have resided on Taiwan for about 400 years.

 

In the momentous year of 2000, the same year that a non-Guomindang political actor was elected to the presidency, an exhibition at the Taibei Fine Arts Museum highlighted the four prime contemporary cultural influences on Taiwan:  aboriginal culture;  traditional Chinese culture;  the cultural legacy of the Japanese period, and the manifestations of Western cultures (especially that of the United States) that have significantly affected Taiwan in contemporary times. These are the Taiwanese people.  These are the influences that have shaped a unique and independent political entity.

 

Taiwan features a thoroughly industrialized and post-industrialized economy with a high per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $64,937 (#14 in the world).  The People’s Republic of China features a rapidly growing economy but has a low per capita GDP of $12,556 (#73 in the world).  Taiwan underwent a political transition beginning in 1987 that resulted in full-blown democracy by the late 1990s.  The government of the People’s Republic of China unleashed troops on its people at Tiananmen in 1989 and maintains tight political and military control.  Taiwan’s wealth is well-dispersed throughout the island, which has a very natural politico-territorial integrity.  The People’s Republic of China features a dynamic economy, the benefits of which are unevenly dispersed;  it is an empire, rather than a nation proper, that exercises dominance over restive and unwilling peoples, most especially those of Tibet and Xinjiang.  The People’s Republic of China extends its claim to Taiwan on the basis of that imperial thrust, not on the basis of any logic found in history.

 

Empires and nations usually control territory based on original thrusts of martial force.  The leadership of the People’s Republic of China could opt to make such a move on Taiwan in an effort to make the island an addition to the empire of China.  Taiwan, though, is currently an independent political entity with a history mostly separate from the great unfolding of events in China.  Its history has been one of outsider seizures of power from which the people broke free beginning in 1987.  The great bulk of the Taiwanese people recognize the substantial difference between their own polity and that which prevails in China.  They want the independence that remains theirs to maintain and, if they so chose, to formally proclaim.  If the Taiwanese people should ever declare that independence, such a declaration could only be dishonored through force of arms, under the watchful eye of an international community that chooses to side with military might over historical right.