Thread by @nikocosmonaut

THE SECRET HISTORY OF TAIWAN
The common version of Taiwan history goes like this: Taiwan was once a province of China. At the end of the Civil War, Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist forces fled there and that’s how it ended up out of CCP control.
Let's examine what really happened🧵

Until the 1600s, Taiwan was ruled by warring Aboriginal tribes. Many made a custom of headhunting and decorating their villages with impressive skull walls. The coast was occasionally visited by Chinese and Japanese pirates hiding out from their governments.

Until this time, Taiwan was considered a wild and barbarous place by Chinese authorities and they had little interest in doing anything with it. Han imperial expansion went in every direction but east.

The first successful colonizers were the Dutch, who set up forts along the west coast. They never controlled the whole island.
They brought over large numbers of Chinese as farmers. The western plains became more Chinese as settlers mixed with locals. Mountains unaffected.

Meanwhile in China, the Ming dynasty foolishly let Manchurians through the Great Wall as hired help to put down a local rebellion and soon enough the Manchus had become the Qing dynasty.
Some remaining forces loyal to the Ming headed for Taiwan, perhaps to use it as a base.

Through superior numbers and tactics, their celebrated leader, Koxinga, seized the west coast from the Dutch.
Aborigines and local Chinese mostly took the side of Koxinga due to various disputes with the Dutch.

Koxinga died after a couple of decades and the island fell to the Qing dynasty in 1683. The main Chinese motivation for controlling the island after millennia of ignoring it seems to have been preventing any more pirates, Europeans or opposition groups settling there.

Like the Dutch before them, the Qing were unable to control the whole island. While authorities expanded their reach, much of the rugged east coast and all of the inland mountains was still ruled by various Aboriginal tribes.

There was a law banning Chinese from going up into the mountains because such contact always seemed to end up with enraged tribes pouring out of the mountains and taking Chinese heads, which they thought particularly powerful additions to their skull walls. But here's dancing:

There were also many local Chinese rebellions due to kleptocracy. Taiwan was the worst backwater an administrator could be sent to so they made up for it by pinching more stuff. They tried to ban bamboo so that the locals could no longer make sharpened bamboo spears!

While the Sino-Japanese war did not take place in Taiwan, the island was handed over to Japan in 1895 as part of the settlement. Some locals attempted to form a Republic of Formosa and repulse the Japanese but this effort quickly failed.

Japan expanded railways, wiped out diseases and established schools. They finally seized control of the highlands and east coast, becoming first to rule the entire island.
Japanese rule was both brutal and fruitful, with life improving but always unequal for the Taiwanese.

After WWII, world powers agreed that Taiwan would go to the Chinese Nationalists (ROC).
There was no major resistance from the Taiwanese. Most saw this as a reunification with their own people. However, the ROC seized everything for the mainland civil war against the CCP.

Protests arose due to gov. theft, lack of elections, inflation etc. These were brutally crushed with murder, rape and torture in the '228 incident' and White Terror. This explains much of Taiwan's modern, non-Chinese identity. They felt betrayed by the mainland a second time.

Nevertheless, after Nationalist forces lost the mainland war and fled to Taiwan, they stopped pinching everything and started properly administering the place. Industrialization quickly expanded. This was the time when all our toys said “MADE IN TAIWAN”.

After Chiang Kai-shek died in 1988, Taiwan was in a tricky situation. Most countries had already recognized the PRC as the only China and did not recognize the ROC. Taiwan had a legitimacy problem, which was an existential problem.

They realized that continued one-man rule would not help. The island held its first free elections and Taiwan-born Lee Teng-hui became the first democratically chosen leader. To many Taiwanese, this was the beginning of their independence - their own, locally chosen leader.

From a strong base, Taiwan rapidly developed. Accounting for PPP, Taiwan now has a per capital GDP greater than Germany, Australia, Canada, the UK and Japan. There is good infrastructure, little corruption, okay healthcare and an extremely low crime rate.
Fertility is 1.1 though

In Taiwan, there is only one political issue: China.
I guess about 10% of the population would like to rejoin the mainland, 20% want to declare independence and the rest would rather maintain the awkward status quo for as long as possible.
They've proved they can self-manage.

They do not see China as totally foreign and many were open to a Hong Kong style deal.
Recent events there have made that idea much less palatable and have increased the chances of war.
There ought not be a war bc fair compromise is possible, but the same was true of Ukraine.

I fear US Neocons are using Taiwan as a cat’s paw against China, just as they used Ukraine against Russia. Consequences might be similar.
But what is the alternative for Taiwan? Give up on hard-won freedom?
Yet I’m uncertain how many Taiwanese are willing to fight over it.

The point of this thread is not to argue who should rule Taiwan. It is to correct misunderstandings about its history. The future of the island lies with its inhabitants. It's a beautiful place with wonderful people and I hope there is a positive ending.

Original post:
sovietmen.wordpress.com/2022/08/05/the…