Taiwan's political history in a nutshell

    There can be no doubt that the current war in Ukraine has brought some light on the situation in Taiwan. Many commenteters are comparing China’s connection with Taiwan with Russia’s connection with Ukraine. Dear Charlie, let me tell you about this small island next to the big China :

 

To understand the current situation of Taiwan, we have to know its history:

At first, between the 16^th  and the 17^th centuries, European colonialist powers took over the island one after an another (Portuguese then Spanish then Dutch).  

After that, the island stayed under the influence of Chinese power until 1895. Back then, the population of Taiwan was composed of 100 000 Chinese and 100 000 aboriginal people.

In 1895, because of the loss of the war against the Empire of Japan, China accepted to give away Taiwan. For the following fifty years, the Empire of Japan tried to assimilate Taiwanese people into its culture.

Taiwan under Japanese rule

After Japanhad been defeated in the second world war in 1945, the republic of China again took over the island. From there on, Taiwan’s history was very much linked to China’s history and to its political situation.

In 1947, the republic of China was one of the five permanent United Nations Security Counsil member together with the United States, France, the United Kingdom and the USSR.

In 1949, Mao Zedong’s communist party took over and Tchang Kaï-chek’s Nationalist party was forced to go into exile in Taiwan. From then on, there were two Chinese governments claiming the same territory: the People’s Republic of China based in Beijing and the Republic of China based in Taipei (in Taiwan). Even after this very big political change, the United States made sure China would keep being represented by Tchang Kaï-chek’s government in the United Nations to stop the influence of communism.

Tchang Kaï-chek

This system kept on going until the relations between continental China and USSR started getting worse. In 1971, President Nixon’s government thought it good to have a bigger ally against the USSR and recognized the People’s Republic of China. But because there could only be one China, almost every country around the world stopped recognising the Republic of China so they could keep on having diplomatic and commercial relations with continental China.

After the death of Tchang Kaï-chek in 1975, the very authoritarian regime softened even though we had to wait until the 1990’s for the country to be an actual democracy.

In 1997, Hong Kong, an independent democratic city until then, became a part of China, the latter promising it would be able to manage itself without any interference from Beijing (“one country, two systems”). Unfortunately, the Chinese government did get involved in Hong Kong’s politics and today Taiwan now knows more than ever that it no longer wants to be a part of China.

Repression of a democratie demonstration in Hong Kong

This summer, Nancy Pelosi, the president of the American House of Representatives and 3rd most important person in the United States, went to Taiwan and sold 1,1 billion dollars worth of weapons. This move made Beijing launch the biggest ever military manoeuvre around the island.

Nancy Pelosi in Taiwan in August 2022 

Today, no government representative anywhere can say that Taiwan is an independent country without negative consequences from the Chinese government and, year after year, more Chinese military planes fly over Taiwanese airspace as a warning.

 

Thank you so much for reading this article. I hope you have enjoyed reading about Taiwan’s history and current geopolitical situation. I think we tend to forget that democracy and free speech are very fragile and that we can lose them very easily.

Of course, it is very hard to summarise the history of a country (yes, I say country) in a small article and, of course, I am absolutely not an expert on the subject so I strongly advise you to read more about it.

Amias