The transferring of the title of Taiwan

[Charlie Jack]

Do you have records showing that in 1945, any attempt to form a civil government was muffled by the ROC armed forces?

No, and I can't find any records of the ROC armed forces interfering in any balloon races, either.

On the other hand, there are records indicating the warm welcome the Taiwanese people gave to the nationalist government in 1945.

I don't know about records, but here's a little testimony:

Formosan enthusiasm for "liberation" lasted about six weeks. Posters began to appear here and there lampooning Nationalist soldiers and showing Chen Yi as a fat pig. He was in fact short and fat, beady-eyed and heavy-jowled, an easy target for caricature. "Dogs go and pigs come!" was scrawled up everywhere on Taipei's walls and heard everywhere in private conversation. "At least the Japanese dogs protected the property!"

--George Kerr, Formosa Betrayed

This might help explain why there might not have been excessive activism at the time:

It was soon established that the Americans were working with the Generalissimo's dread Bureau of Investigation and Statistics or BIS, known to Americans in wartime China as "Chiang's Gestapo." Under General Tai Li the BIS investigations were known to be sometimes very brief and at bayonetpoint. On the mainland Tai Li's first duties were to eliminate Chiang's personal enemies and more important critics and to weaken political opposition through methods of terror. As a wartime measure President Roosevelt had approved a secret agreement enabling certain American cloak-and-dagger groups to work closely with the BIS.

On Formosa the Americans served merely as a front for the activities - the "investigations" - of Colonel Chang and Mayor Huang of Amoy. The latter were probing the local political situation, noting the names and records of Formosan leaders who had shown themselves bold enough to demand a voice in local government under the Japanese administration. Such men would bear watching. They were also taking notes on wealthy Formosans who might be worth blackmailing at a later date under charges of "collaboration with the enemy."

--Ibid.

Communist influence on Taiwan during that time wasn't a mere 'scare'.
It was a reality. You should read some history about Xuehong Xie (謝雪紅).

Looks like she was about as much of a threat to the Kuomintang as Che was to the Bolivian government:
http://tinyurl.com/XieXueHong

But if one is looking for reds under the beds, one need look no further than Chen Yi, former Kuomintang governor of Taiwan:

In January, 1949, Chiang's agents discovered that Chen Yi was dickering with Hsieh Nan-kuang, the turncoat Formosan who had so bemused American intelligence officers at Chungking (Chongqing) in wartime and had briefly represented the Nationalists at Tokyo during the Occupation. Now he was deeply committed to the Communists. It is alleged that Chen Yi was talking of a new form of Necessary State Socialism for Chekiang Province, under the Communist regime.

--Kerr, ibid.

In a spectacular bid for favor Chiang at last ordered the execution of his old friend General Chen Yi. It was announced that he was being punished for his abuse of the Formosan people in 1946 and 1947. Rallies were organized, a ration of fireworks was issued to make a gala occasion, and on June 16, after a year in prison contemplating this event, Chen Yi was taken before the firing squad.

The Formosans were glad to see him go but as they set match to the firecrackers, not a few remembered Chiang's praise of Chen Yi for a "job well done" in March, 1947.

--Ibid.

[headhonchoII]

Actually, it is a widespread myth that Outer Mongolia is included in the constitution. The ROC government recognized its independence back in January 1946 and established official diplomatic ties with it. The making of the constitution began in December 1946, during which the diplomatic relation remained valid. How could Outer Mongolia have ever been in the Constitution? Also, in the National Assembly meeting, the person who directed the making of the Constitution, Ke Sun, mentioned Outer Mongolia as an example of territorial abandonment. IT was in the1950's that the ROC revoked its recognition of Outer Mongolia because the Soviets failed to honor their treaty obligations. But all was too late. Mongolia had been independent. Recognition of statehood cannot be reversed. The ROC did not amend the constitution to re-include Outer Mongolia, but only included it on the maps. (You can still find the term 'Mongolia' in the constitution, but it could well refer to the vast area inhabited by ethnic mongols, including some places in several northern provinces, not an area geographically distinct from them.)

I stand corrected. Possibly. Cheers. However, the present government does make the claim that the ROC has sovereignty over Mongolia, an absurd position for which they should be laughed off the planet.

Your information is outdated. The current government has no longer recognized Outer Mongolia as its territory.

The whole discussion is absurd. Politics on this island is absurd.

[TaiwanTeacher]

My fellow American!
(Although that status still remains in doubt due to your seemingly perpetual need for secrecy, like some sort of cloak and dagger spook.)
I read that you are coming from US to Taiwan soon??
I hope you enjoy a wee-hours red-eye flight; when losing a day, I feel that it's the best time to fly going westbound; sleep all night and wake up TWO days later!

Asserting that I'm composing the messages in the US is not equal to me claiming that I'm American.
No wonder you cannot distinguish between State and government.

Nobody "claimed" you were American. I was...
(A) expressing the friendly sentiment that you might be one, and
(B) went on to add that your nationality remains in doubt due to your dedication to being secretive.

In regards to (A), it appears by your negative reaction (an insult?) to my gesture that you are somewhat unfamiliar with being jovial and friendly.
In regards to (B), you have remained true to form as a person who likes to lurk in shadows and avoid answering a direct question.

Let's try again...
Are you American, Taiwansese, Mainlander, Australian, Canadian, Japanese, Iranian, or what?
If Taiwanese, might you work for MOFA or MJIB?

Me = McCarthy??? Wow... that's a LOOOONNNG stretch.
As I recall, YOU were the one who justified the White Terror on the basis of there being a perceived Red Scare on the island....
Your case seems to be based on the premise that Imperialists/Colonists are always right in killing indigenous people who scare them, so long as the invaders have greater firepower and can get away with doing so.

Communist influence on Taiwan during that time wasn't a mere 'scare'.
It was a reality. You should read some history about Xuehong Xie (謝雪紅).

You really ARE Sen. Joe "Red is Dead" McCarthy reincarnated, aren't you?

I might add that AT THAT TIME, the Americans were trying to get the CCP and the KMT to sit down toegether and resolve their differences in the spirit of "mutual respect". Have you read about WHY that effort failed?

What about my "Imperialists/Colonists are always right in killing indigenous people who scare them" comment.
Care to address that one with your "legal opinion"?

I find it odd that in Taiwan's case, the invading and LESS-ADVANCED society held sway (records say that many ROC soldiers stole bicycles that they didn't even know how to ride, and some were deathly afraid of elevators) and then forcefully imposed their rule over a defenseless population of generally peaceful people.
Care to compare that observation of events with your theories for application of the term terra nullius?

Dateline Taiwan, 1947: "Gorillas with guns kill the citizens of Atlantis in the name of Western Progress!"

If I hid some grenades inside several smiling puppets styled after members of your family, might you, too, at first welcome their arrival to perform a show with your hearty cheers while munching your popcorn ?
And, later on, might you just take a moment to vote for a few audience members to go meet the performers, if they asked?
Of course, those activities would occur "well before" the puppets start stealing from you and the grenades are tossed at you, the chronology of which therefore, by your logic, makes grenade tossing "perfectly legal", because it's ok to kill your own citizens if they get in the way of your puppets' plans, right?

The "They didn't object at first, thus the ROC owns them" argument is a bit of legal stretch, don't you think?

[raymondaliasapollyon]

Let's try again...
Are you American, Taiwansese, Mainlander, Australian, Canadian, Japanese, Iranian, or what?
If Taiwanese, might you work for MOFA or MJIB?

I'm Taiwanese. Currently a grad student. Not working for any governmental agency.

You really ARE Sen. Joe "Red is Dead" McCarthy reincarnated, aren't you?

I might add that AT THAT TIME, the Americans were trying to get the CCP and the KMT to sit down toegether and resolve their differences in the spirit of "mutual respect". Have you read about WHY that effort failed?

What about my "Imperialists/Colonists are always right in killing indigenous people who scare them" comment.
Care to address that one with your "legal opinion"?

As others have pointed as well, the Communist influence at that time wasn't a mere scare. Even some governmental officials were colluding with communists or had a communist lurking behind them. Would you call that a 'scare''?

I find it odd that in Taiwan's case, the invading and LESS-ADVANCED society held sway (records say that many ROC soldiers stole bicycles that they didn't even know how to ride, and some were deathly afraid of elevators) and then forcefully imposed their rule over a defenseless population of generally peaceful people. Care to compare that observation of events with your theories for application of the term terra nullius?

As I told you, terra nullius as a legal term has no thing to do with how advanced a community is. After the Treaty ofTaipei and the SFPT took effect, Taiwan was not under the sovereignty of any State anymore (disregarding again the self-determination theory). IT was of course terra nullius.

Btw, I wouldn't call my ancestors from Fujian and Guangdong 'peaceful people'. You probably don't know much about the internecine fighting between the major Minnan groups, or between Minnan and Hakka groups, or between Han Chinese on the one hand and the aboriginals on the other on the island 2 or 3 hundred years ago.

If I hid some grenades inside several smiling puppets styled after members of your family, might you, too, at first welcome their arrival to perform a show with your hearty cheers while munching your popcorn ?
And, later on, might you just take a moment to vote for a few audience members to go meet the performers, if they asked?
Of course, those activities would occur "well before" the puppets start stealing from you and the grenades are tossed at you, the chronology of which therefore, by your logic, makes grenade tossing "perfectly legal", because it's ok to kill your own citizens if they get in the way of your puppets' plans, right?

The nationalist government indeed carried weaponry on their first arrival to Taiwan. But this was something the Taiwanese people knew at that time.
Of course, none of them thought the army would attack them one day.

But you've offered another wrong analogy. I only said the constitutional basis for the incorporation of Taiwan was legal; but I didn't say that the subsequent White Terror was legal.
You were comparing the White Terror to the grenade tossing, which is unfounded. Note that I only said that suspension of (some parts of) the Constitution could be (morally) justified; but this is not equal to supporting the White Terror. You unfortunately confounded the two cases.

The "They didn't object at first, thus the ROC owns them" argument is a bit of legal stretch, don't you think?

'Volenti non fit injuria' isn't legal stretch. It is the basis on which a few verdicts were reached. In fact, the application of 'Volenti non fit injuria' to the ROC and Taiwan is not my invention; it was first pointed out by the pro-independence lawyer Yun-Qin Fu.

Have someone translate his writings for you:

http://taiwangok.blogspot.tw/2000/09/21 ... china.html

[Charlie Jack]

As others have pointed as well, the Communist influence at that time wasn't a mere scare.

I hope you weren't referring to this statement of mine:

Looks like she was about as much of a threat to the Kuomintang as Che was to the Bolivian government:
http://tinyurl.com/XieXueHong

By comparing Xie Xuehong to Che, I was trying to say that I didn't think she was much of a threat:

Guevara's chief selling point of revolution--Land to the Landless--automatically fell flat when pitched to Indians with land. But, more than that, in Che's area of operations . . . the Indians were . . . parochial and suspicious of any outsiders. * * * Not one of the guerrillas, including the Bolivians, could speak [Guarani, the language of the locals]. * * * His monthly analysis for April included the ominous statement: " . . . The peasant base has not yet been developed, although it appears that through planned terror we can neutralize some of them; support will come later. Not one enlistment has been obtained." * * * And the last analysis, in September: " . . .the peasants do not give us any help and are turning into informers."

Peasants had been informing all along. Though no great shakes, the Barrientos government and the Bolivian army impressed the peasants far more than did Che's guerrillas. This was partly because of land reforms, partly an "ingrained fear and respect" of the army, and partly because it was a peasant army and its recruits were aware that the government had been trying to help the peasants. * * * . . . peasant organizations throughout Bolivia . . . denounce[d] "the invaders" and . . . organize[d] armed peasant detachments to fight them. . . .

--Robert B. Asprey, War in the Shadows: The Guerrilla in History, Volume 2

The irony of the . . . surprise publication of Che's Diary was that it contained some big surprises for the adherents of the solitary American devil theory, among whose foremost proponents were the editors of Ramparts. First, by Che's own account, his theory of revolution, or at least his practice of his theory in Bolivia, looked to be a loser, even if his enemies on both sides of the Iron Curtain had not moved in to leave nothing to chance. Che violated his own commandments in Bolivia. He had written that guerrillas must be of the people and as one with the people, yet the guerrilla team he fielded was more visiting firemen than recruits from the hills; over half his small band consisted of foreigners, the majority of those Cubans. Bolivia is a nation of tongues, yet his men did not speak the most common native dialect; even the Bolivians with him did not know the regional tongue dominant in the area in which they were operating. Che had written that to be successful a rural guerrilla operation must be in close contact with the cities for money, volunteers and propaganda, yet Che was isolated — his wayfaring guerrillas connected with the cities the way a skunk railroad in Arkansas is to Grand Central Station. Che had written that where even some hope of peaceful change exists among people, the time is not right for guerrilla warfare; yet Bolivia, while no model-city of a nation, had experienced a successful revolution in 1952, entailing land reform and some redistribution of wealth, and had popular elections and other fixtures of democracy; Che found himself bucking the widespread belief of Bolivia's peasant citizenry, that while their country was no Nirvana, it was no Haiti, either.

--Warren Hinckle, If You Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade

It would seem that bringing about a communist revolution requires a little more than merely getting some like-minded people together to tromp around in the boonies, propagandize, and raise a little hell every now and then.

Even some governmental officials were colluding with communists or had a communist lurking behind them.

I don't think Chen Yi cared about communism. I think he just cared about Chen Yi. He'd collude with anybody if he thought he could gain by it:

Chen Yi and his Japanese mistress (the "First Lady of Fukien") enjoyed cordial relations with the Japanese naval representatives along the Fukien coast. When at last the Generalissimo ordered General Chen to withdraw (in 1942) it was arranged for them to leave the province with their personal property intact and without interference before the Japanese forces took over the administration at Foochow.

--George Kerr, Formosa Betrayed

Chen Yi remained in Fukien for eight years (from 1934 until 1942) which was a very long time indeed for an appointment of this sort in China. He had powerful patrons and acted for them as "front man" covering clandestine trade between China and Japan, long after the second Japanese invasion of China had been launched in 1937. Powerful interests in Shanghai were dealing with powerful interests in Japan. They were under the protection of the Japanese Imperial Navy which patrolled the China coast from Shanghai southward toward Hong Kong and Canton. (There was an old Sino-Japanese agreement guaranteeing Japan's "special interests" here.) British firms along the coast were aware of a continuing, extensive trade with Japan through Fukien ports. The Japanese invasion of China in 1937 was an "incident" and not a declared war.*

* . . . . A formal declaration would have embarrassed the great Chinese commercial interests, trading secretly with the enemy.

--Ibid.

From what I've seen, it seems to me the biggest overall threat to the Kuomintang was the Kuomintang:

On October 26, [1945,] Chiang Kai-shek sent a telegram to Ch'ien Ta-chun, the new Mayor of Shanghai, reading in part:

It has been reliably brought to my attention that the military, political and party officials in Nanjing, Shanghai, Peiping and Tientsin have been leading extravagant lives, indulging in prostitution and gambling, and have forcibly occupied the people's larger buildings as offices under the assumed names of various party, military or political organizations. They have resorted to every perverse act, even including blackmailing. The worst conditions are said to be found in Shanghai and Peiping. * * * To be corrupted to this extent without any self respect in the recovered areas is a disgrace to the local people. . . .

Yet no concerted actions were taken either by central or local authorities to enforce Chiang's wishes.

--Suzanne Pepper, Civil War in China: The Political Struggle, 1945-1949

During the night of April 20-21, 1949, Communist troops, jammed aboard thousands of junks, sampans, and motor launches, swarmed across the Yangtze on a 325-mile front to envelop Nanjing. They met little resistance from the 350,000 Nationalist troops concentrated in the Shanghai-Nanking region. Chen Yi's [the communist general, a different Chen Yi from the one executed by Chiang] Ninth and Tenth armies crossed on the east. Their crossings were facilitated by large-scale Nationalist defections. At the Kiangyin fortress, guarding the Yangtze narrows, about ninety miles downriver midway between Nanjing and Shanghai, the Communists succeeded in bribing the commander, General Tai Yung-kwan, who turned his thirty heavy guns on Nationalist river gunboats, preventing them from blocking the Communist crossings. At Nanjing, Commodore Lin Tsun defected to the Communists with his naval squadron.

--Seymour Topping, On the Front Lines of the Cold War: An American Correspondent's Journal from the Chinese Civil War to the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam

[raymondaliasapollyon]

As others have pointed as well, the Communist influence at that time wasn't a mere scare.

I hope you weren't referring to this statement of mine:

Looks like she was about as much of a threat to the Kuomintang as Che was to the Bolivian government:
http://tinyurl.com/XieXueHong

By comparing Xie Xuehong to Che, I was trying to say that I didn't think she was much of a threat:

I think it'd be an insult to Che if Xuehong Xie was being compared to him. She fled to Mainland China after her attempted uprising failed.
Also, the purpose of the Communists in Taiwan was not so much to gain Taiwan's independence, as to overthrow the Chiang regime. She was appointed some positions in the Chinese Communist government until she died in 1970.

The so-called uprising against the Nationalist governmnet was only a means, not an end in itself.
Had her efforts led to the removal of the nationalist government from Taiwan, the Chinese Communsits would have taken over Taiwan at that time.

[printlessfoot]

For your weekend amusement here is one current news showing that the ROC-phasing-out has speeded up. The ROC-phasing-out is a high-dimensional task. It requires all parties from US government agencies, Emperor of Japan, ROC government, and Formosans to work together as a team to make it succeed. This time Ma YJ made his contriution with his usual cunning and reluctant manner.




Ma sent five coast guard vessels and a fishery boat to deliver a PRC flag to the neighborhood water of Senkaku Islands 尖閣諸島（せんかくしょとう）.
The messages communicated by Ma through such act by Ma to other members of the ROC-phasing-out team are:
1. Ma recognizes that ROC does not have a claim to the title to Senkaku Islands
2. ____________________________________________________________
3. ____________________________________________________________
..... (fill-in the blank with as many messages as you like ).

[bohica]

I guess the US isn't coming over to take over Taiwan, not when Taiwan actally belongs to the PRC.

[fanglangzhe]

For your weekend amusement here is one current news showing that the ROC-phasing-out has speeded up. The ROC-phasing-out is a high-dimensional task. It requires all parties from US government agencies, Emperor of Japan, ROC government, and Formosans to work together as a team to make it succeed. This time Ma YJ made his contriution with his usual cunning and reluctant manner.

Why would ROC government phase itself out? Other than you and perhaps Mr Hartzell, who else will work to bring about the US takeover of Taiwan? Indeed, if the ROC gets phased out, the acquirer won't be the US, it will be Mainland China.

[printlessfoot]

Why would ROC government phase itself out?

Why not? Being peacefully phased out is one hundred times better than being lasered out.

the acquirer won't be the US, it will be Mainland China

Would you please in this weekend open up a Google earth and check again where in the Pacific PRC navy ever won a single air-sea battle? For the sake of your sanity please do that, would you?


The US Seventh Fleet