- This article is on the people, history, culture, and geography of Taiwan. For the state commonly known as "Taiwan", see Republic of China.
Taiwan is mostly mountainous in the east but gradually transitions to gently sloping plains in the west. Penghu Islands (the Pescadores) are to the west of Taiwan. (Satellite photo by NASA)
Taiwan (Traditional: 臺灣 or 台灣; Simplified: 台湾; pinyin: Táiwān; Wade-Giles: T'ai-wan; Taiwanese: Tâi-oân) is an island in East Asia located off the coast of mainland China, south of Japan and north of the Philippines. Taiwan is commonly used to refer to the territories currently administered by the Republic of China (ROC), which include Taiwan and the smaller outlying island groups of Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu (Lanyu (Orchid Island), and Green Island are part of the Taiwan island group). They have continued to be governed by the Republic of China after the People's Republic of China was established on mainland China at the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949.
The main island of Taiwan, also known as Formosa (Portuguese sailors called it Ilha Formosa, which means "beautiful island"), is bounded to the east by the Pacific Ocean, to the south by the South China Sea, to the west by the Taiwan Strait and to the north by the East China Sea. The island is 394 kilometers (245 miles) long and 144 kilometers (89 miles) wide and consists of steep mountains covered by tropical and subtropical vegetation.
From 1895 to 1945, Taiwan and the Pescadores was a Japanese colony, a concession by the Qing Empire after it lost the first Sino-Japanese War. After Japan's defeat at the end of World War II in 1945, these islands were turned over to the Republic of China and governed under a military administration. In 1949, upon losing the Chinese Civil War to the Communist Party of China, the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) retreated from mainland China and moved the ROC government to Taipei, Taiwan's largest city, while continuing to claim sovereignty over all of China and Mongolia. On the mainland, the Communists established the People's Republic of China, claiming to be the successor state of both the mainland and Taiwan and portraying the ROC government on Taiwan as an illegitimate entity.
Taiwan has been transformed into a major industrialized economy and is often touted as one of the East Asian Tigers. Meanwhile, political reforms beginning in the late 1970s and continuing through the early 1990s liberalized Taiwan from an authoritarian one-party state into a localized multiparty democracy that in 1991, for all practical purposes, ended its claims over mainland China. The consolidation of multiparty democracy culminated in 2000 when the KMT's monopoly on power ended after the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party won the ROC presidency. Besides supporters of the current government and the PRC, a Taiwan independence movement has grown prominent, seeking to establish a Taiwanese republic. The competing claims over the future of Taiwan have made and continue to make its political status a contentious issue.
History
Main article: History of Taiwan
The Puyuma's moon-shaped monolith, ca. 1896
Prehistory and early settlement
Taiwan has been settled for more than 30,000 years, although the first inhabitants of Taiwan may have been genetically distinct from any groups currently on the island. About 4,000 years ago, ancestors of current Taiwanese aboriginals settled Taiwan. These aborignials are genetically related to Malay and Polynesians, and linguists classify their language as Austronesian.
Records from ancient China indicate that the Han might have known of the existence of Taiwan since the Three Kingdoms period (third century); however, this hypothesis has not been validated since each dynasty gives different names for the islands discovered offshore and none of these names can be matched to Taiwan. It has been claimed but not verified that the Ming Dynasty admiral Zheng He visited Taiwan between 1403 and 1424.
Contact with the Europeans also occurred in the 15th century when a Portuguese ship sighted the island and dubbed it "Ilha Formosa", which means "Beautiful Island." The Portuguese made no attempt to colonize Taiwan. In 1624, the Dutch established a base on Taiwan and began to import male workers from Fujian as laborers. It was primarily around that period that Taiwan's indigenous population first joined and intermarried with male traders and seasonal workers from mainland China. The Dutch made Taiwan a colony with its colonial capital at Tainan.
Koxinga and imperial Chinese rule
The Dutch were ousted from the island in 1662 by Cheng Cheng-Kung (also known as Koxinga), a former pirate turned military leader who styled himself as a Ming loyalist and who hoped to marshal his troops on the island. Cheng therefore established the Kingdom of Tungning (1662–1683). Cheng establishing his capital at Tainan, and his dynasty launched several raids on the coast of mainland China.
In 1683, the Qing dynasty formally annexed Taiwan. Following the defeat of Cheng's grandson to an armada led by Admiral Shi Lang, Cheng's followers were expatriated to the farthest reaches of the Qing empire, leaving approximately 7,000 Han on Taiwan. The Qing government wrestled with its Taiwan policy to reduce piracy and vagrancy in the area, which led to a series of edicts to manage immigration and respect aboriginal land rights. Illegal immigrants continued to enter Taiwan as renters of the large plots of aboriginal lands under contracts that usually involved marriage, while the border between taxpaying lands and "savage" lands migrated east.
Japanese colonial rule
The building currently known as the ROC Presidential Office was originally built as the Office of the Governor-General by the Japanese colonial government.
Following its defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895), China ceded Taiwan and the Pescadores to Japan in perpetuity, with a grace period for inhabitants wishing to remain Han subjects to sell their property and return to the mainland.
On May 25, 1895, the Republic of Taiwan was formed, with its capital at Tainan, to resist impending Japanese rule. Japanese forces entered the capital and quelled this resistance on October 21, 1895. During the colonial period, the Japanese used the French model of an occupying power and were instrumental in the industrialization of the island; they built railroads, a sanitation system and a public school system, among other things. Around 1935, the Japanese began an island-wide assimilation project to bind the island more firmly to the Japanese Empire. By 1945, desperate plans were in place to incorporate popular representation of Taiwan into the Japanese Diet to end colonial rule of the island.
Following the end of World War II in 1945, under the terms of the Instrument of Surrender of Japan, Japan provisionally accepted the Potsdam Declaration, which referenced the never-signed Cairo Declaration, under which the island was to be transferred to the Republic of China. ROC troops were authorized to come to Taiwan to accept the surrender of Japanese military forces in General Order No. 1, issued by General Douglas MacArthur on September 2, 1945, and were later transported to Keelung by the U.S. Navy.
Republic of China era
Taiwanese National Assembly delegates with Chiang Kai-shek in 1946. There is little evidence that the people of Taiwan actually elected these delegates.
Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei
The ROC military administration on Taiwan under Chen Yi, immediately following the end of World War II, was extremely corrupt. This corruption, compounded with distrust due to the cultural differences between natives and newcomers, quickly led to the loss of popular support for the new administration, culminating in a series of severe clashes between the mainland military administration and native Taiwanese, in turn leading to the bloody 228 incident in which government troops massacred as many as 30,000 protesters and bystanders.
In 1949, the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party or KMT), which at the time controlled the government of the ROC, retreated to Taiwan after losing the Chinese Civil War to the Communist Party of China, bringing with it some 1.3 million refugees from mainland China. Initially, the United States abandoned the KMT and expected that Taiwan would fall to the Communists. However, in 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea, and in the context of the Cold War President Harry S. Truman moved the 7th Fleet into the Taiwan Straits to defend Taiwan from the Communists.
In the San Francisco Peace Treaty, which came into force on April 28, 1952, and the Treaty of Taipei, which came into force on August 5, 1952, Japan formally renounced all right, claim and title to Formosa (Taiwan) and the Pescadores (Peng-hu). The treaty remained silent about who would take control of the island, in part to avoid taking sides in the ongoing Chinese Civil War. Advocates of Taiwan independence have used this omission to justify self-determination.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Taiwan began to develop a prosperous and dynamic economy, becoming one of the East Asian Tigers while maintaining an authoritarian, one-party government. Because of the Cold War, most Western nations and the United Nations regarded the Republic of China government on Taiwan as the sole legitimate government of China until the 1970s, when most nations began switching recognition to the People's Republic of China.
During the presidency of Chiang Ching-kuo, from 1975 to 1987, Taiwan's political system began a gradual liberalization. Martial law, which had been in effect since 1948, was lifted in 1987. Upon Chiang's death, Vice President Lee Teng-hui succeeded him as president of the ROC and chairman of the KMT, and effective one-party rule was ended in 1991. Lee became the first native Taiwanese to become the president during KMT rule, which ended with the election of President Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party in 2000. Chen was re-elected in 2004.
See also
Political divisions
Main article: Political divisions of the Republic of China
Taiwan Island contains all but one county of Taiwan Province: 15 counties and all five province-administered cities. Penghu (the Pescadores) is the only county in Taiwan province which is not on Taiwan. Taiwan's two largest cities, Taipei City and Kaohsiung City, although on the island of Taiwan, are not part of Taiwan Province but centrally administered municipalities, with the same level as provinces.
Since 1998, the provincial tier of government has been largely eliminated, leaving the county the main division under the central government. Currently, in addition to the main island of Taiwan, the Republic of China also controls the Pescadores, Kinmen (Quemoy), and Matsu islands situated in the Taiwan Strait, plus some Pacific Coast islands (notably the Green and Orchid islands). Furthermore, the ROC also claims some islands in the South China Sea. Some of these outer islands, notably the Spratly (Nansha) islands in the South China Sea and the Senkaku (Diaoyutai) islands in the Pacific Coast, are simultaneously claimed by several other countries in the region.
Geography
Main article: Geography of Taiwan
The island of Taiwan lies some 200 kilometers off the southeastern coast of China, across the Taiwan Strait, and has an area of 35,801 square kilometers (13,823 square miles), with the East China Sea to the north, the Philippine Sea to the east, the Luzon Strait directly to the south and the South China Sea to the southwest. The island is characterised by the contrast between the eastern two-thirds, consisting mostly of rugged mountains running in five ranges from the northern to the southern tip of the island, and the flat to gently rolling plains in the west that are also home to most of Taiwan's population. Taiwan's highest point is the Yu Shan at 3,952 meters.
Taiwan's climate is marine tropical. The rainy season lasts from June to August during the southwest monsoon, though cloudiness is persistent and extensive all year. Natural hazards include typhoons and earthquakes.
Taiwan is a center of bird endemism. See Endemic Birds of Taiwan for further information.
Demographics
Main article: Demographics of Taiwan
Taiwan's population was estimated in 2005 as being 22.9 million. About 98 percent of the population is of Han Chinese ethnicity. Of these people, 84 percent are early Han immigrants known as Bensheng ren (本省人), meaning "original-province person." This group contains two subgroups. The first subgroup is the Southern Fujianese (70 percent of the total population), who migrated from the coastal Southern Fujian region in the southeast of mainland China. The second subgroup is the Hakka (15 percent of the total population), who originally migrated south to Guangdong, its surrounding areas and Taiwan, intermarrying extensively with Taiwanese aborigines. The remaining 14 percent of Han Chinese are later immigrants, known as Waisheng ren (外省人), meaning "external-province person" (see also Mainlanders). This group fled mainland China in 1949 following the Nationalist defeat in the Chinese Civil War. Dalu ren (大陸人) refers to residents of Mainland China. This group excludes almost all Taiwanese, including the Waisheng ren, except recent immigrants from mainland China, such as those made Republic of China citizens through marriage.
The other 2 percent of Taiwan's population, numbering about 440,000, are the indigenous people, divided into 11 major groups: Ami, Atayal, Paiwan, Bunun, Puyuma, Rukai, Tsou, Saisiyat, Yami, Thao and Kavalan.
Almost everyone on Taiwan born after the early 1950s can speak Mandarin, which has been the medium of instruction in the schools for more than four decades. A large fraction of people also speak Min-nan, also known as Taiwanese. The Hakka have a distinct Hakka dialect. Between 1900 and 1945, Japanese was the medium of instruction, and many Taiwanese educated during that period can speak fluent Japanese. Taiwanese schools also commonly teach English, resulting in a trilingual population, many of whom speak even more languages. Chinese romanization on Taiwan uses both Tongyong pinyin, which the national government officially has adopted, and Hanyu pinyin, which some localities use. Wade-Giles, used traditionally, also is found. Mayor Ma Ying-jeou recently succeeded in changing all Taipei street names to the Hanyu form, although most romanizations in other cities still are in Tongyong.
About half of the ROC population is religious, and most of these people identify themselves as Buddhists or Taoists. Belief in folk religion also is prevalent, and many people practice some combination of these three faiths. Confucianism also is an honored school of thought and ethical code. Christian churches have been active on Taiwan for many years; a majority of these churches are Protestant, with Presbyterians playing a particularly significant role.
Economy
Main article: Economy of Taiwan
Taiwan has a dynamic capitalist economy with gradually decreasing state involvement in investment and foreign trade. In keeping with this trend, the government is privatizing some large banks and industrial firms. Real growth in gross domestic product has averaged about 8 percent during the past three decades. Exports have provided the primary impetus for industrialization. The trade surplus is substantial, and foreign reserves are the world's third largest.
The ROC has its own currency: the New Taiwan Dollar.
Agriculture constitutes only 2 percent of GDP, down from 35 percent in 1952. Traditional labor-intensive industries are moving steadily offshore, with more capital- and technology-intensive industries replacing them. Taiwan has become a major investor in mainland China, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam; 50,000 Taiwanese businesses are established in mainland China.
Because of its conservative financial approach and its entrepreneurial strengths, Taiwan suffered little compared with many of its neighbors from the Asian financial crisis in 1998–1999. The global economic downturn, however, combined with poor policy coordination by the new administration and increasing bad debts in the banking system, pushed Taiwan into recession in 2001, the first whole year of negative growth since 1947. Due to the relocation of many manufacturing and labor-intensive industries to mainland China, unemployment also peaked at a level last seen during the 1970s oil crisis. This problem became one of the major issues in the presidential election of 2004. The unemployment rate eventually declined after the government adopted a few economy-stimulating measures.
The ROC has entered international governmental trade organizations such as the World Trade Organization and APEC under the name Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu (台灣、澎湖、金門及馬祖個別關稅領域) in WTO and under the name Chinese Taipei in APEC. Although the PRC objects to having other countries maintain diplomatic or official relations with the ROC, it made no objection to having the ROC maintain economic relations. However, under PRC pressure, the ROC joined governmental organizations under different names.
The opening of Taipei 101 on December 31, 2004, brought more world recognition to Taiwan and Taipei. The surrounding financial district is steadily becoming more recognized in the world market.
Culture
Main article: Culture of Taiwan
Dancer in traditional aboriginal dress
Taiwan's culture is a blend of traditional Chinese with significant Asian influences, notably Japanese, and Western influences, including American, Spanish and Dutch. Many observers describe Taiwanese culture -- especially social, political and architectural -- as being heavily influenced by American and Japanese culture. Taiwanese aboriginals also have a distinct culture. Fine arts, folk traditions, and popular culture embody traditional and modern Asian and Western motifs.
Karaoke is incredibly popular in Taiwan, where it is known as KTV and is an example of something the Taiwanese have drawn from contemporary Japanese culture. Pachinko is another example.
Taiwanese culture also has influenced the West: Bubble tea is a popular drink readily available around city centers in Europe, Canada and the United States. Ang Lee is the famous Taiwanese movie director of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, among other films.
About 80 percent of the people in Taiwan belong to the Holo subethnic group and speak both Mandarin and Taiwanese. Mandarin is the primary language of instruction in schools; however, most spoken media is split between Mandarin and Taiwanese. Speaking Taiwanese under the localization movement has become an emblem of expressing Taiwanese identity, and the language has undergone a resurgence since the early 1990s. The Hakka, about 10 percent of the population, have a distinct Hakka language. Aboriginal minority groups still speak their native languages, although most also speak Mandarin and Taiwanese.
Longshan Temple, Taipei, an example of architecture with southern Chinese influences commonly seen in older buildings in Taiwan.
Japanese mecha anime themed store in Taipei. Japanese culture has had a strong influence in Taiwan, including various mannerisms among the elderly who remember Japanese rule and TV dramas and anime among the younger generations.
The Taiwanese localization movement continues to be a major driver of Taiwanese culture, as a reaction against both the previous repression by the previously Kuomintang-controlled government and the hostility of the PRC. Thus, identity politics, along with the over 100 years of political separation from mainland China, 50 of which were under Japanese colonial rule, has led to distinct traditions in many areas, including cuisine, motion pictures, photography, opera and music.
One of Taiwan's greatest attractions is the National Palace Museum, which houses more than 650,000 pieces of Chinese bronze, jade, calligraphy, painting and porcelain. Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalist Party (KMT) moved this collection from the Forbidden City in Beijing in 1949 when it fled to Taiwan. The collection, estimated to be one-tenth of China's cultural treasures, is so extensive that only 1 percent is on display at any time.
Many people dispute whether Taiwan is a nation in its own right. Some Chinese nationalists deny the existence of a Taiwanese national identity, seeing it as incompatible with Chinese identity; some Taiwanese nationalists promote a Taiwanese national identity for the same reason. Other people view Taiwanese national identity as perfectly compatible with Chinese ethnicity.
See also
External links
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