KMT Government Research Articles

Mnemonic Politics around the Japanese Colonial Era in Post–Cold War Taiwan: Wei Te-sheng's Colonial Trilogy and Post–New Cinema

This article examines mnemonic politics after 1987’s democratization in Taiwan by discussing the cinematic representation of colonial memory, mainly focusing on Wei Te‐Sheng's films set in the Japanese colonial era. After the end of martial law in 1987, prohibited issues such as Japanese colonialism and Indigenous Taiwanese in the representational sphere began to appear on the screen. Therefore, the colonial memory that emerged on screen entangles with Cold War politics and the postcolonial geopolitical situation. In Wei's films, he links heroic Indigenous people in the history of Taiwan with the archetypical land. The suffering of those who are tightly bound to the land inspires a sense of deprived sovereignty—that is, occupation. The sense of occupation indicates the long history of colonial Taiwan, from the time of the Netherlands and Spain, via the Qing Dynasty and Japan, to the KMT government. Wei's films reclaim Taiwanese history from the perspective of the Indigenous people who lived in Taiwan before 1945 rather than that of the occupiers. Regardless of the memory of resistance, surrender, victory, or defeat, Wei's films, however, romanticize the memory of the Japanese colonial era. In doing so, his films denounce the time of KMT “occupiers” in the postcolonial era and reinforce Taiwanese nationalism against Chinese nationalism. Through textual analysis of Wei's films and comparison with other films provoking colonial memory, this article investigates how colonial memories are negotiated in the post–Cold War Taiwanese cinema to reformulate the contentious idea of “nation” and “nationalism” in Taiwan.

The Rehabilitation Movement over the 2.28 Incident under KMT Rule (1987-1997): Reexamining the transition from “confrontation” to “reconciliation”

ABSTRACT This article reexamines the turning point from “confrontation” to “reconciliation” in the rehabilitation movement over the 2.28 Incident which began in the late 1980s, with a special focus on the role and accomplishments of Christians without any party affiliation. The initial action to accuse the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and launch a redress campaign against the KMT government was driven by an anti-government movement. Following the establishment of the 228 Peace Day Association in 1987, the “2.28 Justice and Peace Movement” was carried out from 1989. However, the “2.28 Shalom Service” initiated by Su Nan-chou in 1990 opened the initial gate toward reconciliation. The first victims’ family association, the World Alliance for Concerned Citizens and Surviving Victims and Families, was set up by Su together with Lin Tsung-yi. Both played a significant role in transforming the rehabilitation movement from “confrontation” to “reconciliation.” Lastly, Lin’s five requests to President Lee Teng-hui (1. Publish an investigation report, 2. Issue a public apology and compensate families of victims, 3. Build a memorial monument and museum, 4. Establish February 28th as a national memorial day, 5. Establish a foundation) were achieved in the form of government-private sector joint task forces until 1997. As “practical idealists,” Lin and Su devoted their efforts to achieve maximum results. What they chose was dialogue, not confrontation, and they transformed the rehabilitation movement from “confrontation to reconciliation,” from their standpoint of being practical idealists.

Ethnic Ties, Organized Opposition and Voter Defection in Authoritarian Elections

AbstractExisting studies of ethnic voting mainly focus on democratic elections. In electoral autocracies, politically subordinate ethnicity can help citizens coordinate against the incumbent. However, we argue that collective action will be constrained when the group grows large, as it becomes costly for its members to form common behavioural norms and carry out effective sanctions through shared ethnic ties under authoritarian repression. Drawing on unique historical surveys in Taiwan, we study how Taiwanese ethnicity and local ethnic demography jointly induced voters' defection against the hegemonic KMT regime. We find that the pro-defection or anti-incumbent effect of Taiwanese ethnicity fell as the share of Taiwanese citizens in a township increased. However, the relative size of the Taiwanese group no longer undermined pro-defection ethnic voting after the KMT lifted the ban on opposition parties. Our results illustrate that formal organizations play a critical role in sustaining the informational salience of ethnicity in the elections.

Diaspora, Material Life and Cultural Identity: Chinese Women Writers in Taiwan during the 1950s

A large number of mainlanders were forced to move to Taiwan with the KMT government in 1949. This group of Chinese mainlanders was mostly servicemen, government employees, and teachers; their composition differed tremendously from local Taiwanese. Such differences have been the historical and social origins of ethnic conflicts in Taiwan accordingly. It is found that although gender issues are important, it is not necessary and sufficient in the relations among ethnic groups in particular. Female mainlanders, due to their everyday life interactions with local people, had a much closer contact with local Taiwanese. The closer contact generated a higher local identity than that of their male counterparts. This paper therefore aims to explore the dynamic process between one's everyday life and cultural identity. Through a series of textual analyses of the work of female mainland writers, the present author attempts to inquire into the material basis of cultural identity through aspects of social life, namely food, clothing, residence, social networks, transportation and travel, education, and entertainment. This paper would also discuss the theoretical implication in a diaspora space.

Mass Vaccination: Citizens' Bodies and State Power in Modern China by Mary Augusta Brazelton

Reviewed by: Mass Vaccination: Citizens' Bodies and State Power in Modern China by Mary Augusta Brazelton Wayne Soon Mary Augusta Brazelton. Mass Vaccination: Citizens' Bodies and State Power in Modern China. Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2019. 258 pp. Ill. $47.95 (978-1-5017-3998-9). Mary Augusta Brazelton has written an impressive history of vaccination in twentieth-century China. Through a sophisticated analysis of English, French, and Chinese archival materials, correspondences, scientific reports, consular documents, and speeches, Brazelton argues that mass vaccination was central in constructing the modern Chinese citizen. Not only did immunization campaigns entail collective participation as a means of identity building, but they also established the expectation that Chinese people would subject their bodies to the dictates of the state. This process accelerated during the Second World War between 1937 and 1945, when Yunnan province in Southwest China emerged as a critical site for vaccine experiments and the development of vaccination ideas and techniques. Scientists and physicians affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, KMT) and their local allies led wartime expansion of immunization. Their efforts left critical legacies for the post-1949 Chinese Communist Party–led People's Republic of China (PRC) utilization of vaccination for state building and medical diplomacy. [End Page 533] Chapter 1 highlights how Chinese physicians were limited by the financial and logistical limitations of prewar public health administration, even as they accumulated knowledge and experiences from fellow microbiologists around the world. Arriving in wartime Yunnan, Chinese doctors, as chapter 2 shows, encountered medical systems shaped by competing French, British, and Chinese forces. Chapter 3 describes how Chinese physicians finally received the support needed to enact mass vaccination from multiple health care organizations that emerged during the Second World War. These institutions were backed by a variety of overseas patrons, such as the League of Nations. Chapter 4 delineates how the Chinese government prioritized the production and dissemination of vaccination in wartime Kunming. They sometimes used coercive methods to compel immunization and thereby expanded the power of the state. Chapter 5 shows how the KMT and local government officials shifted their attention from disseminating cholera vaccines in wartime Southwest China to promoting Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccination in coastal China to combat tuberculosis during the Civil War period from 1945 to 1949. Chapters 6 and 7 show how the PRC state used vaccination to improve China's rural public health in the 1950s, setting the stage for touting its success in its global medical diplomacy in the 1960s and 1970s. Mass Vaccination, curated carefully from diverse sources, illustrates the negotiations over vaccination on the ground. We encounter officials in Yunnan who insisted on receiving bribes from custom duties on imported drugs and medical supplies before allowing them into the province (p. 61). We meet cafeteria workers who did not want injections because they were too painful (p. 94). We see mothers who rejected vaccination on the grounds they were too occupied with child-rearing (p. 139). We shudder that a prominent microbiologist committed suicide in 1958 after being hounded for being an "anti-rightist" by the PRC government (p. 168). One wonders if these cumulative acts of resistance and failure effectively challenged the expansion of state-led biopolitics (pp. 7–9). Or were they merely casualties of an unstoppable modern Chinese state, bent on inoculating patients at will for the sake of the greater good? In light of the global race to develop an effective COVID-19 vaccine quickly in 2020, one wonders too whether vaccinators resisted the Chinese state's calls to rapidly develop new vaccines. It is critical to ask if mass immunization (as opposed to barefoot doctors or commune-style healthcare) really underpinned the PRC's rural health advances, as these claims later formed the basis of international experts' promotion of the PRC model in resolving global health issues. As Brazelton points out, underpinning this global desire for the PRC's model is a much more complex history, ironically, that began with its principal rival, the KMT, which sought to immunize its way to victory against the Japanese during the Second World War. This book will undoubtedly...

Blessings in Disguise: How Authoritarian Legacies and the China Factor Have Strengthened Democracy in Taiwan

Democracy in Taiwan today appears consolidated and of high quality. Much writing on Taiwan’s democratisation explains this outcome by pointing to aspects of its modernisation, but an underappreciated cause is its well-institutionalised party system, which in comparison to most other Third Wave democracies is a model of competitiveness, consistency, and stability. The sources of party system institutionalisation (psi) in Taiwan can be traced back to two factors: the legacies of the martial-law-era kmt regime, and the emergence of the China question as a fundamental, polarising divide in Taiwanese politics. High psi has ensured a credible alternative to incumbents in each election, enhanced the responsiveness of governments to citizen demands, and encouraged the greater provision of public goods and development of broad, programmatic policies rather than narrowly targeted, clientelist ones. Thus, Taiwan’s democracy is consolidated because of, rather than despite, the legacies of the pre-democratic era and the China factor.

Diaspora as mind: making sense of the experiences of the Japanese in postwar Taiwan

ABSTRACTThis paper began as an inquiry into the plight of ethnic Japanese in postwar Taiwan. As a group, they have been an object of benign neglect. Despite the advent of “multiculturalism” (duoyuan wenhua zhuyi) in Taiwan, was marked by an “alien” (mainlander Chinese) KMT regime and led to the eventual liberation of opposition parties and indigenous ethnic groups, few have found it relevant to celebrate the cause of oppressed Japanese. The postwar ban on Taiwanese and Japanese culture was part of the same imperative of mono-cultural nationalism that endeavored to erase 50 years of Japanese colonialism in order to restore the legacy of Chinese civilization. At the same time, there is little recognition in the literature of any Japanese “diaspora” in Taiwan. It pales in comparison with the many Japanese orphans abandoned in Manchuria after the Second World War. The birth of a generation of children from mixed marriages making claims to Japanese “identity” has added other significant dimensions to the concept of diaspora and its definition as a social group or discursive construction.

Angels are in the Institutional Details: Voting System, Poll Workers, and the Integrity of Election Administration in Taiwan

What had prevented the KMT regime from stealing more elections during its heydays and thereby made possible Taiwan’s transition to democracy under the old voting rules? Whereas the existing literature on electoral authoritarianism, democratization, and electoral malpractice has addressed issues concerning the integrity of election administration in authoritarian states mainly at the wholesale level, this chapter looks into the rise and fall of vote rigging at retail level in Taiwan and argues that two under-appreciated voting arrangements—on-site ballot counting and poll worker selection—make much difference to the development of election administration integrity in Taiwan. In addition to relying on the deterrence of election monitoring and criminal law enforcement against vote rigging, the Taiwan experience suggests that election administration integrity can be strengthened from within by choosing good men and women to manage a voting system that is as transparent and meaningful as it can be.

Changing Taiwanese Identity and Cross-Strait Relations: a Post 2016 Taiwan Presidential Election Analysis

Although cross-strait relations have been the most stable in the last eight years under the pro-mainland KMT government, the pro-independence DPP scored a major victory in the 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections. This paper examines ways identity changes in Taiwan have influenced how Taiwanese view and deal with cross-strait relations and reactions from the mainland after the January elections. Using constructivism as the theoretical framework and survey data, we argue that Taiwan’s continued democratization has created a different social and political experience. This experience has solidified over time and created a unique Taiwanese identity. As time passes, the KMT, which has a stronger historical and social lineage with the mainland, is being weakened by Taiwan’s changing experience and identity. Nevertheless, peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait are not only essential for people on both sides of the strait, they are essential for the region and the world. Both the new DPP government and the mainland government must rethink their strategies and policies in order to construct a new framework to ensure continued peace and stability in the region.

1946: The Transition of the Kuomintang Government’s Policies towards Korean Immigrants in Northeast China

ë ¼ëž€ì´ 되는 사건들을 ëª©ë„í•˜ê³ ìžˆëŠ” 동북중국은 근대사에서 한국, 중국, 일본 의 영역이었다. 한편, 동북 중국의 한인 이민자들은 20세기 동안 다양한 ì •ì¹˜ê¶Œë ¥ 들의 타겟이 되었다. ì œ2ì°¨ì„¸ê³„ëŒ€ì „ì´ ì¢ ë£Œë˜ì—ˆì„ 때 거의 한인 이민자5세 혹은 6세들이 해방된(중국 공산당이 ì ìœ í•˜ë˜ 지역) 지역에 ì‚´ê³ ìžˆì—ˆë‹¤. 몇몇의 ì Šì€ 한인 이민자들은 중국 ë‚´ì „ì— ì°¸ì „í•˜ê¸° 위해 중국 공산당에 동원되었다. 국민당 ì •ë¶€ëŠ” 그들의 통치를 ê°•í™”í•˜ê³ ì§€ì§€ë¥¼ 얻기 위한 ëª©ì ìœ¼ë¡œ 1946ë „ 6월 10일 한 인 ì •ì°©ì— 대한 ì •ì± ì„ 바꾸었다. 또한 1947ë „ 교육, 복지, 귀환 분야의 ë¬¸ì œë¥¼ 해결하기 위해 동북지방 한인 이민자국 (the Northeast Korean Immigrants Department) 을 설치했다. 이 ë ¼ë¬¸ì€ ì—­ì‚¬ì  자료의 세밀한 분석과 함께 동북중국의 한인 이민자들에 대한 향후 현구의 기반을 다지는 것을 ëª©ì ìœ¼ë¡œ 한다. ì£¼ì œì–´: 국민당 ì •ë¶€, 한국이민자, ì •ì± ì „í™˜, 중국 êµ­ê³µë‚´ì „

From Two Camps to Three Worlds: The Party Worldview in PRC Textbooks (1949–1966)

AbstractThe worldview as reflected in the textbooks of the People's Republic of China during 1949–1966 centred on Party-led nationalism, anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism. This article emphasizes both the continuities and changes in nationalist ideology during the Republican and Maoist periods. First, textbooks in Maoist China presented the imperialist powers as shifting away from Britain, Russia and Japan under the KMT government and towards the United States (since 1949) and the Soviet Union (since the 1960s), and emphasized class struggle. Second, the CCP had far greater control over the production of textbooks than the KMT. In this sense, the CCP truly carried out “partified” (danghua) education, a goal shared by the KMT which it never had the ability to achieve. In addition, “the language of Cultural Revolution” appeared with the outbreak of the Korean War. In other words, the education that cultivated revolutionary successors began in the early 1950s.

Proposal for coalition government and KMT–CCP negotiations in the later stage of the Anti-Japanese War

The KMT–CCP negotiations between May 1944 and February 1945 were the last round of political negotiations between the two parties in the Anti-Japanese War period. The negotiations’ theme, proposed by the CCP, was a coalition government. Background factors determined the course of the negotiation proceedings. The three main aspects of the background and its effects were: the attack by the Japanese army that weakened the military and political power of the KMT; involvement of the US that caused ups and downs in the negotiation proceedings; and advocacy for a coalition government by the Democratic League that created a political advantage for the CCP. The proposal for a coalition government posed a threat to the one-party political system of the KMT government.

Taiwanese Identity and the Memories of 2–28: A Case for Political Reconciliation

This article examines how the native Taiwanese identity has been formulated in the 20th century, and how this identity affects the relations between the native Taiwanese and Mainlander minorities. During the Kuomintang’s (KMT) authoritarian rule on Taiwan, Mainlanders considered themselves distinct and enjoyed more privileges than the natives. The 2-28 Massacre of 1947 and the following oppressive policies toward the natives by the KMT regime reinforced the distrust and animosity between native Taiwanese and Mainlanders. This article finds that it is very difficult to achieve reconciliation and rebuild a common identity among all groups in Taiwan, as neither the KMT nor the following government of the Democratic Progressive Party was able to build a new Taiwanese identity on the basis of ethnic reconciliation. Yet efforts by both sides to uncover the truth and seek justice about the Massacre have made progress. Taiwan’s attainment of “transitional justice” appears in the later part of the article.

Taike rock and its discontent

As popular music is an important means of expression and representation, it is important to consider the social forces that give rise to it and the various extents of these influences. This paper explores generic and discursive practices that have been labelled ‘taike rock’ in Taiwan. In recent years, ‘taike rock’, a generic term brought into use by music industry insiders, journalists and entertainment media, has triggered animated debate. The disputed term tai‐ke, literally means ‘Taiwanese guest,’ but in its earliest and original form, as used by those post‐1949 mainland Chinese arriving in Taiwan with the KMT regime, the term connoted ethnic discrimination towards native Taiwanese and was used specifically to articulate perceptions of their unsophisticated outlook and behaviour. Recently, however, the commercial forces of the music industry have re‐appropriated the term tai‐ke to create ‘taike rock’, thereby ascribing new meanings and triggering controversy. In this paper, the phenomenon of taike rock is explored in order to discover the extent to which its newly ascribed meaning renders obsolete the old political and cultural antagonisms between native Taiwanese and ‘Mainlanders’ (i.e. post‐1949 immigrants from the Chinese mainland), especially as the trend attracts commercial and media attention. In the process of this examination, the taike phenomenon is then considered to be musically embodied in taike rock, the generic practice of which has given rise to its contested nature. Next, the discursive and performative aspects of taike rock are finally evaluated by looking at a general protest against the corporation Neutron Innovation’s attempt to trademark the term ‘tai‐ke’. In discussing this anti‐trademark campaign, this paper concludes by bringing up critical issues of cultural identity and creativity in popular music in the face of corporate monopolisation of intellectual property rights.

“New Taiwanese”

This study explores how “New Taiwanese” was offered and constructed as a viable identity category for people in Taiwan through the news discourse of the United Daily News (UDN) referenced in 922 news reports between 1987 and 2007. From the term’s first appearance in 1987, its promulgation as official discourse by the KMT government primarily between 1998 and 2000, to the end of 2007, “New Taiwanese” as an identity project (Laitin, 1998) has been utilized and challenged by political players of various camps at different junctures to achieve their political agenda. It has also gradually transformed its references and modified its meanings to join in the construction of Taiwan’s national identity. As a mediating concept for “Taiwanese” and “Chinese,” “New Taiwanese” has maintained a precarious and ambivalent positioning, having to constantly adjust to shifting ethnic relations of Taiwanese people and their complex, in-flux array of national identifications.

The 228 Incident and the Taiwan Independence Movement's Construction of a Taiwanese Identity

After the Second World War, Taiwan was returned to Chinese authority after 50 years of Japanese colonial rule. Only 18 months later, the local inhabitants of the island revolted against the new Chinese rulers of the KMT regime, demanding a greater degree of autonomy. After a brief period of feigned negotiations, this uprising was brutally suppressed by military reinforcements from the mainland. This 228 Incident of 1947 came to play a pivotal role in the struggle of the Taiwan independence movement. One of the major tasks of the movement was to create and propagate a distinct Taiwanese identity, which would legitimate the strife for an independent Taiwanese nation. In the course of the last 60 years, however, these attempts to create a Taiwanese “We” group distinct from China have not been static, but have had to be redefined and renegotiated according to a changing international and domestic environment. These alterations of group demarcation have necessitated reinterpretations of the 228 Incident, as a means of maintaining its legitimizing power for the Taiwan independence movement. As could be observed in the spectacular 228 hand-in-hand rally in 2004, redefinition and renegotiation are still unfolding to this day.

Reforming Intelligence: Identity and Security in Taiwan

Abstract: The intelligence and security services of the Republic of China on Taiwan have been transformed by democratization and Taiwanization. After decades as “political police” answering to the Nationalist Party, in the 1980s they began to focus on threats to the state, ending the use of coercion, and accepting external supervision. Like all aspects of political change on Taiwan, however, institutional reform of these agencies, particularly the National Security Bureau, became caught up in the island’s unresolved dilemmas of national identity and its precarious relationship with the People’s Republic of China. Such conflicts threaten to undermine the effectiveness of these agencies.

Political and Media Liberalization and Political Corruption in Taiwan

This article examines the relationship between democratic and media reforms and political corruption in Taiwan. Has liberalization resulted in increased corruption or has it created a cleaner political system? I argue that the Taiwan case reveals the potential positive effects of multi-party democracy for tackling political corruption, as opposition parties have exploited a liberalized media to challenge and alter accepted but corrupt norms of governance. Pillars of the KMT party state such as its party assets, vote buying and the corrupt patron–client relationship with local factions were until the 1990s either openly or tacitly accepted as legitimate. The Taiwanese opposition parties took a latent political issue, corruption, and progressively broadened the scope of what is publicly acknowledged as corruption. By exposing cases of KMT government corruption and establishing new norms of clean governance it is possible that in the long term opposition parties can contribute to the creation of a cleaner political system.

Isolation, identity and Taiwanese stamps as vehicles for regime legitimation

Postage stamps issued by the government of the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan provide a useful tool for considering changing elite aspirations and political objectives. Stamps issued on Taiwan while under authoritarian rule frequently sought to demonstrate or bolster the legitimacy of the ruling KMT, typically through demonstrating the ROC's status in international society or through portraying the economic and developmental success of the KMT regime. The on-going democratic transition on Taiwan has seen a move away from stamps as mechanisms for domestic regime legitimation. Since the election of President Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party in 2000 stamps have increasingly become a medium for promoting the idea of a ‘Taiwanese’ identity distinct from that of ‘China’.

Toward a New Identity: Nativism and Popular Music in Taiwan

By examining the music of two popular Taiwanese rock groups, Black List Studio and New Formosa Entertainment Troupe, this article explores the formation of a new Taiwanese identity. Specifically, this article studies the range of languages used by these two groups— Mandarin, Taiwanhua, Hakka, and English—as the primary trajectory of my inquiry into the phenomenon, and predicament, of Taiwan's quest for a new identity. During the first decade after the lifting of martial law in 1987, the relaxation of censorship prompted heated debates on, among other issues, Taiwanese identity, and witnessed the emergence of a Taiwanhua domination, which was reminiscent of the linguistic tyranny characterized by the earlier Mandarin-only policy imposed by the KMT government. To combat such a trend, New Formosa Entertain ment Troupe endeavored to portray Taiwan's multicultural society primarily through linguistic diversity, whereas Black List Studio strove to bring Taiwan out of its cultural cocoon by inserting the world into Taiwan's musical stream. Their move in opposite directions actually comprised a maneuver coming full circle to meet a common goal: that of more broadly representing Taiwanese culture, while avoiding the pitfall of hegemonic, national identity promoted by the KMT regime.