Article #4 in A Seven-Article Series >>>>> An Overview of the History of Taiwan: The Case for Independence

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 19^th 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 18^th 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.