Forbidden nation: a history of Taiwan PDF
Preview Forbidden nation: a history of Taiwan
01 manthorpe fm 8/11/05 11:52 AM Page i FORBIDDEN NATION A History of Taiwan This page intentionally left blank 01 manthorpe fm 8/11/05 11:52 AM Page iii FORBIDDEN NATION A History of Taiwan Jonathan Manthorpe 01 manthorpe fm 8/11/05 11:52 AM Page iv FORBIDDEN NATION Copyright © Jonathan Manthorpe, 2005. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published 2002 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS. Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN ISTHEGLOBALACADEMICIMPRINTOFTHEPALGRAVE MACMILLANdivision of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 1-4039-6981-7 hardback Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Forbidden nation: the history of Taiwan/ Jonathan Manthorpe. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 1-4039-6981-7 1. Taiwan—History—2000– I. Title: History of Taiwan. II. Title. DS799.844.M36 2005 951.24’9—dc22 2005047413 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Letra Libre, Inc. First edition: October 2005 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America 01 manthorpe fm 8/11/05 11:52 AM Page v CONTENTS Acknowledgments vii Preface xi Maps xv Chapter One: Two Shots on Chinhua Road 1 Chapter Two: A Leaf on the Waves 21 Chapter Three: Barbarian Territory 35 Chapter Four: Pirate Haven 43 Chapter Five: The House of Cheng 53 Chapter Six: The Siege of Fort Zeelandia 65 Chapter Seven: The Prince Who Became a God 83 Chapter Eight: Deliverance and Defeat 99 Chapter Nine: A State of Constant Rebellion 111 Chapter Ten: The Wolves Circle 125 Chapter Eleven: A Modern Province 141 Chapter Twelve: The Taiwan Republic 157 Chapter Thirteen: Becoming Japanese 165 Chapter Fourteen: Missionaries and Filibusters 179 Chapter Fifteen: New Beginning, New Betrayal 187 Chapter Sixteen: The Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier 195 Chapter Seventeen: Reform and Terror 201 Chapter Eighteen: Strategic Ambiguity 211 Chapter Nineteen: The Perils of Democracy 227 Chapter Twenty: 29,518 Votes 239 Notes 257 Bibliography 265 Index 267 This page intentionally left blank 01 manthorpe fm 8/11/05 11:52 AM Page vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My first visit to Taiwan was in the mid-1970s. Chiang Kai-shek had died a few months before and the government was a colonial military dictatorship thinly glossed with some trappings of democracy. The authorities regarded visiting foreign journalists with only marginally less suspicion than did the mainland government in Beijing. My impression was of a forbidding and unhappy place. That visit was part of my first tour of Asia and the beginning of my career as a foreign correspondent. I went on to postings in Europe and Africa before returning to Asia and a base in Hong Kong in 1993. I visited Taiwan soon after my return to Asia. It was a different place from the one I remembered. Taipei was vibrant and cosmopolitan, already showing the signs of renewal that have made it one of the most attractive cities in Asia. The general mood was optimistic and life seemed to offer a wealth of possibilities. In Africa I had reported on many countries attempting to make the transition from colonial rule to democracy. Taiwan, in contrast, was clearly making the same transition with many more hopes of success than I had seen in places like Zimbabwe, Zambia, Angola, Namibia, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and South Africa. It was clear too that political and social changes were more soundly based in Taiwan than in some other Asian countries where similar transitions were underway at the same period. I wondered what had given Taiwan its advantage. I started ex- ploring the island’s history even as I reported on the final stages of democratic transition in the 1990s. This book is the product of that exploration and my response to what I found. Writing in English about societies that use variations of the Chinese lan- guage and written characters poses a very basic problem. How should one spell Chinese names using the Roman alphabet? This problem goes beyond accuracy; it is a highly political issue. Many sounds used in the Chinese lan- guage and dialects have no easy equivalent in English. Several systems have been developed over the years and under different political regimes. Thus the system that a writer in English uses is frequently seen as a political state- ment of his or her approach to the subject. There are two main systems for the Romanization of Chinese names. There is the Wade-Giles system, first 01 manthorpe fm 8/11/05 11:52 AM Page viii viii FORBIDDEN NATION developed in the mid-nineteenth century and which is used on Taiwan, and there is pinyin, a simplified form which was instituted by the Communists after they came to power on the mainland in 1949. I have had long discus- sions with both Taiwanese and Chinese about which system I should use. My main debt on these questions of English spelling is to Dr. Charles Yang, former president of the Taiwan Cultural Association in Vancouver, and Mark Yang. They gave thoughtful advice not only on the question of names, but on several other aspects of the manuscript. While I tend to regard the Wade-Giles system as giving a better rendering of Chinese in the Roman alphabet than does pinyin, I have decided to com- promise in favor of the reader. Most readers will now be familiar with main- land names rendered in pinyin. For example, Beijing is now established as the English spelling of the name of the Chinese capital rather than the older Wade-Giles version, Peking. Similarly, Mao Zedong is now the more common spelling of the name of the Communist revolutionary leader in place of Mao Tse-tung under the Wade-Giles system. So I have used pinyin spelling for mainland names and Wade-Giles for those on Taiwan. Where older names, such as the Fujian provincial port city of Amoy, appear in quotations I have put the modern name, in this case Xiamen, in brackets. There are similar questions about how to render Japanese characters into English. There are, for example, several ways of expressing the long “o” which occurs at the end of many Japanese names such as Tokyo and Kyoto. After much discussion I have decided to follow the stance of most English-language Japanese publications, which is not to include any accent at all. The gestation period of this book has been so long that the list of those whose help and guidance I should recognize is massive. I must therefore con- fine myself to people most directly involved or consulted in the production of this book. I cannot neglect to mention, however, my editors at the Southam News Service—Nick Hills, Jim Travers, and Aileen McCabe—without whose support my career as a foreign correspondent would not have followed the same path. Robert Mackwood of the Seventh Avenue Literary Agency understood the idea of the book from the start and championed it through thick and thin. Toby Wahl of Palgrave Macmillan has been an essential link, tempering and bending the author’s inclination to explore the story’s side streams toward what’s best for the reader. Alan Bradshaw of Palgrave Macmillan has done a splendid job of editing the manuscript as well as engaging in an interesting ex- ploration of those English words and phrases that need translation when they cross the Canada-United States border. I am indebted to many members of 01 manthorpe fm 8/11/05 11:52 AM Page ix ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Vancouver’s community of immigrants from Taiwan, especially Dr. Charles Yang and James Chou, for their encouragement and readiness to spend hours drinking tea and chatting in order to help me understand aspects of Taiwan’s story. On Taiwan I am grateful to Kang Tien-wang and the staff of the Taipei Artist Village, where much of this book was written; my stay there would have been a more emotionally exhausting experience without the delightful com- pany of that community. Dr. Thomas Chen, Taiwan’s representative in Canada, and several members of the staff of the Government Information Of- fice in Taipei were of essential help in arranging interviews for me with a broad range of people on the island. I am grateful for the assistance of Peter Chen, Wendy Lin Ching-wen, Carmen Tsai, James Yu, Jason Yuan, and Liu Wei-ling. Several rotations of diplomats at Canada’s unofficial embassy in Taipei, the Canadian Trade Office, have been of unstinting assistance during my many visits to Taiwan over the years. Office directors David Mulroney, Ted Lipman, and Gordon Holden have all offered advice and analysis from their bountiful experience in the region. Many staff members have been equally helpful. In the context of this book I must mention James Mitchell, Weldon Epp, Sylvia Yan, and Sumeeta Chandavarkar. Among those who talked to me about their visions of Taiwan’s past, pres- ent, and future were Mayaw Biho, convener of the Amis Tribe Film Festival, Dr. Bien Chiang of the Institute of Ethnology at Academica Sinica, and Ku Lin-lin of the Graduate School of Journalism at the National Taiwan Univer- sity. There was Voyu Yakumangana of the Association for Taiwan Indigenous People’s Policies; Wei Ti, professor of mass communications at Tamkang Uni- versity and a member of Taiwan Media Watch; and Dr. Chao Chien-min of the Sun Yat-sen Graduate Institute for Social Science and Humanities at Chengchi University. Yao Chia-wen, president of the Examination Yuan, was generous with his time recalling his experiences of the 1979 Kaohsiung Inci- dent, and as a political prisoner afterward, and discussing his current plans for Taiwan’s constitutional reform. Dr. Ho Szu-yin, the director of International Affairs for the Kuomintang and professor at the Department of Political Sci- ence of Chengchi University, was a valuable source of views on Taiwan’s polit- ical present and future. Dr. Hung Chien-chao of the Kuomintang-linked National Policy Foundation was a pleasure to meet and talk to after having en- joyed and benefited from his writing for so many years. Peng Ming-min, sen- ior advisor to President Chen Shui-bian, and the father of the modern movement for Taiwan nationhood, was as welcoming and eager to exchange views as he has always been. Dr. Leng Tse-kang of the Institute of International relations at Chengchi University was most helpful in giving regional context
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