Taiwan History

[ManSnake]

Like it or not, the native Taiwanese consider themselves superior to the Chinese on the mainland.

This is a prime example of the trouble-maker attitude most TIers seem to share. Like it or not, without the KMT, Taiwan wouldn't be where it is today. You think Taiwan would be one of the Asian Tigers today if it weren't for the KMT rule? Not a chance in hell! Without the KMT, Taiwan would still be a backward farming island!!!

edit: FYI to the Japanese, Taiwanese are not even close to being treated as 2nd class. During WW2, Japan used occupied people (i.e. Korean, Taiwanese) as forced soldiers and comfort women. Thus the hatred of Japanese often exhibitted by the older generations of Koreans today. And yet we have someone here who feels superior to his own people because his ancestors were former Japanese slaves? Why don't you ask those women that were used as comfort women or those soldiers that were forced into a war that didn't concern them, how they feel about being under Japanese rule?

Like I said keep on living your pipe dreams!

 

[kage69]

Ah, The Chuckie and Kage Show! So refreshing to us all.

Please, I didn't bring it here, he did. Note too my attempt to stem it.

The Union did not allow some Southern states to sucede, land that was already part of the federal government. The South attacked over it. In order for chuckie's comparison to work, the Communists would have had to already have possession of Taiwan (they didn't) and the Nationalists attack over it (again, they didn't). Instead of noting the distinction however, lil chuckie would rather put words in my mouth (like saying I said Puerto Rico was a state, just one example of many) or divert away to something else (like try to paint me as denying there is a civil war between China and Taiwan, which I have never done, again, one of many).

My opinion of his rational is far too low to warrant any type of continued interest in listening to him, consider this now a one-ended debate.

 

[chuckieland]

Originally posted by: UltraPenguin

Therefore i believe people in Taiwan should have the option to choose whether to unification with PROC, or stay as ROC. To creat another nation by any mean is wrong. this land is pass down from ancestor.

How about a third option, independence? With no threat from China, I wonder which choice the people of Taiwan would choose? Its so tough! I'm thinking the Taiwanese would want to join the communists, with the splendid political, social and economic freedoms. Or maybe they prefer to remain isolated internationally as the ROC.

but taiwan is already independent as ROC.
changing the name is not gonna be the solution of all taiwanese problem.
no threat from China would be nice, but that ain't gonna achieve by changing the name.
the best way is to work it out slowly for both government, and people.
perhaps one day taiwan's democrate exprience would be helpful when China turn into Democrate nation.
I still remember the childhood song, " Taiwan is last line of defence again the communist and the darkness, but we must prevail, to holding the lights of freedom. and one day we should free the brother & Sister, who has the unforture to force to live under dark communist." "but becauseful, spy of communist may just be right beside you"
hehe

 

[zephyrprime]

is my believe and history knowledge that Chiang Kaishek and his KMT did the most of battle vs Japanese. compare to the mao government. Mao's chinese government didn't do much on fight the japanese.

Are you sure this is the case? My memory of southeast asian history contends that it was the exact opposite. And I also recall that the two sides spent a lot of time fighting each other.

 

[kage69]

I'm thinking the Taiwanese would want to join the communists, with the splendid political, social and economic freedoms.

Is this guy for real?

 

[chuckieland]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime

is my believe and history knowledge that Chiang Kaishek and his KMT did the most of battle vs Japanese. compare to the mao government. Mao's chinese government didn't do much on fight the japanese.

Are you sure this is the case? My memory of southeast asian history contends that it was the exact opposite. And I also recall that the two sides spent a lot of time fighting each other.

yes, it goes like this
Japanese attack china, Chiang went on Attack Mao, and Mao went on Long March to avoid getting kill.
then Chiang and Mao made agreement to joint attack Japanese
for the first 4 year, Majority of Major and small battle vs Japanese. Mao were not there
Last 4 year of war, Majority of battle vs japanese were by chiang and it's ally(USA, British...etc)
so Mao didn't attend to much of the war with Japanese.

 

[ManSnake]

Originally posted by: chuckieland

Originally posted by: zephyrprime

is my believe and history knowledge that Chiang Kaishek and his KMT did the most of battle vs Japanese. compare to the mao government. Mao's chinese government didn't do much on fight the japanese.

Are you sure this is the case? My memory of southeast asian history contends that it was the exact opposite. And I also recall that the two sides spent a lot of time fighting each other.

yes, it goes like this
Japanese attack china, Chiang went on Attack Mao, and Mao went on Long March to avoid getting kill.
then Chiang and Mao made agreement to joint attack Japanese
for the first 4 year, Majority of Major and small battle vs Japanese. Mao were not there
Last 4 year of war, Majority of battle vs japanese were by chiang and it's ally(USA, British...etc)
so Mao didn't attend to much of the war with Japanese.

Yes, that's pretty much the story!

 

[Pepsei]

Wow, the thread grew without any personal attacks. Cool.

I want to add what I believed were a major turning point in the civilwar. Which, during WWII when Japan invaded China. At the time, KMT did not want to engage Japan and wanted to finish off MAO first. CKS's right hand man, were ordered not to fight the Japanese and thus he had the nickname of "non-resistence general".

For his own reason, he end up kidnapping CKS trying to convince him to call a truce with Mao and fight the Japanese first. CKS's wife (who recently passed away) flew to the city where CKS was kept, by herself to negotiate with the general. They agree to call a truce with Mao and concentrate on the Japanese. The general then gave himself up to CKS and was locked up.

Many historians believed that Mao was almost defeated, this gave him a breathing room.

And thus, the rest is history. Mao won, and this general was declared a national hero. the general who is called a traitor by many fled with KMT back to taiwan and was under house arrest for a long time, and I believe was only allowed to move to Hawaii until CKS's son was in power?

Did this general do the right thing? Would Japanese rule be worse than Communist rule? Japanese definately were brutal, let's not forget the rape of Nanking. I also remember the brutal crack down of the Taiwanese people by KMT army in Taiwan during the famous 228 incident that was covered up for a long time. (Which I didn't learn until I move to USA, and only recently). Not to mention the student pro-democracy movement that was aborted by the Chinese communist party.

I do have to credit KMT for making Taiwan what it is today. It is an economic power. the average people are more wealthy compare to their mainland counterparts.

Perhaps if Dr.Sun Yat-sen lived a little bit longer, China would be a democracy today with no Taiwan issue.

 

[UltraPenguin]

This is a prime example of the trouble-maker attitude most TIers seem to share. Like it or not, without the KMT, Taiwan wouldn't be where it is today. You think Taiwan would be one of the Asian Tigers today if it weren't for the KMT rule? Not a chance in hell! Without the KMT, Taiwan would still be a backward farming island!!!

Taiwan's current success is a result of the hard working people of Taiwan with a healthy does of US Aid and KMT's policys. I don't think many TIer would deny that. Without the KMT in Taiwan, Taiwan would have received no US aid. Without US supervision, the KMT would have ran Taiwan into the ground like China.

edit: FYI to the Japanese, Taiwanese are not even close to being treated as 2nd class. During WW2, Japan used occupied people (i.e. Korean, Taiwanese) as forced soldiers and comfort women. Thus the hatred of Japanese often exhibitted by the older generations of Koreans today. And yet we have someone here who feels superior to his own people because his ancestors were former Japanese slaves? Why don't you ask those women that were used as comfort women or those soldiers that were forced into a war that didn't concern them, how they feel about being under Japanese rule?

I'm simply recounting what I experienced when I grew up in Taiwan and when I visit. The native Taiwanese feel socially, politcially and economically superior to the Chinese on the mainland. The older generation in Taiwan (non mainlanders), don't have deep rooted hatred for the Japanese like the Koreans. They feel closer to the Japanese then the mainlanders, many don't even speak the "national language" of Taiwan.

 

[Witling]

As they say in fake Japanese, 'Thanks-o-hatchi mucho for the information and perspectives. I'm always impressed at how hard it is to get "facts" in a complex cultural and political situation (Think Israel here.)

 

[UltraPenguin]

Umm.. no only about two percent of the Taiwanese population is truly "native" as in pacific islanders, the rest came in from fujian province in mainland during the the Ming and Qing dynasty. After that, another flock of chinese came with KMT around 1949. Those 85% that think they are native are not really native, even though they came before 1949. So i dont know why are they looking down on their own people.

I don't want to get into a semantic discussion on what is considered native is what is not. So lets use a new term I created five seconds ago, "pre-1949 Taiwanese". You can replace all the terms "natives" with "pre-1949 Taiwanese" in my previous post. Many of the pre-1949 Taiwanese feel socially, politically and economically superior to the Chinese on the mainland.

And for the last time, Taiwan does not have their own language, the so-called local dialect is just the local dialect of fujian province passed down from the earlier immigrants. Even if you can call it your own, you still need to use chinese for writing so you can hardly do anything with this so called language(which really isnt a language, but a local dialect from the southeast part of China).

How does any of this legitimize China's claim to Taiwan? I don't see what you are arguing about. Even the most fervant TIer would not deny that the pre-1949 Taiwanese were decendents of Chinese, with their local dialect is from the south east part of China (with the excception that PRC uses simplified Chinese writing while Taiwan uses traditional writing).

 

[Witling]

Ultra, there's no doubt that modern Taiwan is culturally different from, but related to, mainland China. I think everyone would also admit that Taiwan is a goose that is laying golden eggs. Nobody wants to kill the goose; but they sure want to own it. My take on the whole situation is that Taiwan is already so closely tied to mainland China that there will be a merging at some point. No doubt Taiwan's special status will be acknowledged by China. But, any attempt to take over Taiwan that would disrupt the output of Taiwanese industry would get a war like response from the U.s. [Hey, where would the computer industry be without Taiwan?]

But, didn't Chaing marry into a prominent Chinese family? The family name of his wife escapes me, but I'll bet you some thread readers know the name. (This isn't a subtle thing, it's ignorance. Chaing married into an important family. I don't know any more,. I'm an American of European descent. Taiwan and China are not particular areas of interest.)

 

[Imdmn04]

Originally posted by: UltraPenguin

Umm.. no only about two percent of the Taiwanese population is truly "native" as in pacific islanders, the rest came in from fujian province in mainland during the the Ming and Qing dynasty. After that, another flock of chinese came with KMT around 1949. Those 85% that think they are native are not really native, even though they came before 1949. So i dont know why are they looking down on their own people.

I don't want to get into a semantic discussion on what is considered native is what is not. So lets use a new term I created five seconds ago, "pre-1949 Taiwanese". You can replace all the terms "natives" with "pre-1949 Taiwanese" in my previous post. Many of the pre-1949 Taiwanese feel socially, politically and economically superior to the Chinese on the mainland.

And for the last time, Taiwan does not have their own language, the so-called local dialect is just the local dialect of fujian province passed down from the earlier immigrants. Even if you can call it your own, you still need to use chinese for writing so you can hardly do anything with this so called language(which really isnt a language, but a local dialect from the southeast part of China).

How does any of this legitimize China's claim to Taiwan? I don't see what you are arguing about. Even the most fervant TIer would not deny that the pre-1949 Taiwanese were decendents of Chinese, with their local dialect is from the south east part of China (with the excception that PRC uses simplified Chinese writing while Taiwan uses traditional writing).

I'm not legitimizing China's Claim to Taiwan using these facts, but a lot of Taiwanese are using the distorted version of these facts to legitimize Taiwan's independence from China, which as you have pointed out, should not hold any ground in a political argument even after they were corrected by me.

If these corrected facts doesnt have anything to do with China's claim to Taiwan, then why should Taiwanese use the false version of these facts to back up their claim of independence from China as you have done in your previous posts?

 

[Pepsei]

Originally posted by: Whitling
Ultra, there's no doubt that modern Taiwan is culturally different from, but related to, mainland China. I think everyone would also admit that Taiwan is a goose that is laying golden eggs. Nobody wants to kill the goose; but they sure want to own it. My take on the whole situation is that Taiwan is already so closely tied to mainland China that there will be a merging at some point. No doubt Taiwan's special status will be acknowledged by China. But, any attempt to take over Taiwan that would disrupt the output of Taiwanese industry would get a war like response from the U.s. [Hey, where would the computer industry be without Taiwan?]

But, didn't Chaing marry into a prominent Chinese family? The family name of his wife escapes me, but I'll bet you some thread readers know the name. (This isn't a subtle thing, it's ignorance. Chaing married into an important family. I don't know any more,. I'm an American of European descent. Taiwan and China are not particular areas of interest.)

Yes, Chaing marry into the Sung family, his wife's sister also married Dr. Sun, the Father of China, the one who overthrew Qing(Ching) dynasty and created ROC. Dr. Sun is considered a hero to both the mainland and Taiwan.

 

[Witling]

I'm very impressed that the discussion about mainland China and Taiwan is so less vitriolic and so much mor fact based than the discussions on this board that are about Israel. My take, as a WASP (PM me if you don't know what that is) is that there are genuine differences in opinions about "facts." What seems to me to be different here from the discussions about Israel is that the people who are discussing the subject at least acknowledge that the facts are murky, hard to determine, and subject to interpretation.

 

[Witling]

From Pepsei: "Yes, Chaing marry into the Sung family, his wife's sister also married Dr. Sun, the Father of China, the one who overthrew Qing(Ching) dynasty and created ROC. Dr. Sun is considered a hero to both the mainland and Taiwan."

Uh, was the Sung family rich? Were they so rich that people noticed them?

 

[rchiu]

Originally posted by: Whitling
From Pepsei: "Yes, Chaing marry into the Sung family, his wife's sister also married Dr. Sun, the Father of China, the one who overthrew Qing(Ching) dynasty and created ROC. Dr. Sun is considered a hero to both the mainland and Taiwan."

Uh, was the Sung family rich? Were they so rich that people noticed them?

Background story of the Sonng Sisters