A History of Taiwan

A History of Taiwanw.lonympics.co.uk/

Taiwan is estimated in 2006 to have been populated for approximately 30000 years. Little is known about the original inhabitants, but distinctive jadeware, & corded pottery of the Changpin, Puyuma & Tapenkeng (Dapenkeng) cultures show a marked diversity in the island's early inhabitants. Today's Taiwan's aboriginal peoples are classified as belonging to the Austronesian ethno-linguistic group of people, a linguistic group that stretches as far west as Madagascar, to Easter Island in the east & to New Zealand in the south with Taiwan as the northern most point. Austronesian culture on Taiwan begins about 4,000 B.C.
Several entries that may refer to Taiwan appear in Chinese historical records, but otherwise no records exist of Taiwan in the early period. Between 607 & 610, some generals of Sui Dynasty embarked on several military operations on Liuqiu described in the Book of Sui. Many scholars think that the Liuqiu of the Sui Dynasty was what is the island of Taiwan. In 1292, Kublai Khan of the Yuan Dynasty tried to force minorities in Yizhou to pay tribute. Between 1335 & 1340, Wang Dayuan wrote a book which describes Liuqiu after he had visited it. In 1375, the Ming Dynasty dispatched a delegation to the now Ryukyu Islands. Thereafter the Han referred to the Ryukyu Islands as "Liuqiu" & an island south of the Ryukyu Islands as "little Liuqiu", which may be the island of Taiwan. Between 1403 & 1424, the great fleet of Ming Dynasty's admiral Zheng He possibly visited Taiwan. None of these records were definite (the earlier records being set in mythical or legendary contexts), & it was not certain that the island/s referred to is indeed Taiwan (Teng;2004, pp. 33-49). Permanent Han settlement on Penghu began in the 1100s but the same on the main island of Taiwan did not take place until several centuries later (Shepherd;1993, pp.1-8).
Despite Taiwan being rumored as the fabled "Island of Dogs," "Island of Women," or any of the other fabled island thought, by Han literati, to lie beyond the seas, Taiwan was officially regarded by Ching Emperor Kangxi as "a ball of mud beyond the pale of civilization" & did not appear on any map of the imperial domain until 1683 (Teng;2004, pp. 34-59). The act of presenting a map to the emperor was equal to presenting the lands of the empire. It took several more years before the Ching court would recognize Taiwan as part of the Ching realm. Prior to the Ching Dynasty, the Middle Kingdom was conceived as a land bound by mountains, rivers & seas. The idea of an island as a part of the Middle Kingdom was unfathomable to the Han prior to the Ching frontier expansion effort of the 17th Century (Teng;2004:pp 34-49, 177-179) The presence of the Great Wall demonstrates some earlier concepts of "China's" borders in relation to the PRC's current holdings & claims (Millward;1998, pp 36-38). The "suspicious history" of Taiwan is often cited by Chinese nationalists to support their claim that "Taiwan has belonged to China since antiquity". Taiwanese nationalists do not regard these claims as valid.
Portuguese sailors, passing Taiwan in 1544, first jotted in a ship's log the name of the island "Ilha Formosa", meaning Beautiful Island. In 1582 survivors of a Portuguese shipwreck spent ten weeks battling malaria & aborigines before returning to Macau on a raft.
Dutch traders, in search of an Asian base first arrived on the island at the request of the Ming court in 1623 to use the island as a base for Dutch commerce with Japan & the coastal areas of China. The Spanish & allies established a settlement at Santissima Trinidad, building Fort San Salvador on the northwest coast of Taiwan near Keelung in 1626 which they occupied until 1642 when they were driven out by a joint Dutch-Aborigine invasion force. They also built a fort in Tamsui (1628) but already abandoned it in 1638. The Dutch later built Fort Anthonio here (1642), which still stands.

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The Dutch East India Company (VOC) administered the island & its predominantly aboriginal population until 1662, setting up a tax system, schools to teach romanized script of aboriginal languages & evangelizing. Although its control was mainly limited to the western plain of the island, the Dutch systems were adopted by succeeding occupiers. The first influx of migrants from coastal Fujian came during the Dutch period, in which merchants & traders from the Chinese coast sought to purchase hunting licenses from the Dutch or hide out in aboriginal villages to escape the Ching authorities. Most of the immigrants were young single males who were discouraged from staying on the island often referred to by Han as "The Gate of Hell" for its reputation in taking the lives of sailors & explorers.
The Dutch originally sought to use their castle Zeelandia at Tayowan as a trading base between Japan & China, but soon realized the potential of the huge deer populations that roamed in herds of thousands along the alluvial plains of Taiwan's western regions. Deer were in high demand by the Japanese who were willing to pay top dollar for use of the hides in samurai armor. Other parts of the deer were sold to Han traders for meat & medical use. The Dutch paid aborigines for the deer brought to them & tried to manage the deer stocks to keep up with demand. The Dutch also employed Han to farm sugarcane & rice for export, some of these rice & sugarcane reached as far as the markets of Persia. Unfortunately the deer the aborigines had relied on for their livelihoods began to disappear forcing the aborigines to adopt new means of survival. The Dutch built a second administrative castle on the main island of Taiwan in 1633 & set out to earnestly turn Taiwan into a Dutch colony.
The first order of business was to punish villages that had violently opposed the Dutch & unite the aborigines in allegiance with the VOC. The first punitive expedition was against the villages of Baccloan & Mattauw, north of Saccam near Tayowan. The Mattauw campaign had been easier than expected & the tribe submitted after having their village razed by fire. The campaign also served as a threat to other villages from Tirossen (Chia Yi) to Lonkjiaow (Heng Chun). The 1636 punitive attack on Lamay Island (Hsiao Liu Chiu) in response to the killing of the shipwrecked crew of the Beverwijck & the Golden Lion ended ten years later with the entire aboriginal population of 1100 removed from the island including 327 Lamayans killed in a cave, having been trapped there by the Dutch & suffocated in the fumes & smoke pumped into the cave by the Dutch & their allied aborigines from Saccam, Soulang & Pangsoya. The men were forced into slavery in Batavia (Java) & the women & children became servants & wives for the Dutch officers. The events on Lamay changed the course of Dutch rule to work closer with allied aborigines, though there remained plans to depopulate the outlying islands.
Japan had sought to claim sovereignty over Taiwan (known as Takayama Koku) since 1592, when Toyotomi Hideyoshi undertook a policy of overseas expansion & extending Japanese influence southward. Korea, to the west, was invaded & an attempt to invade Taiwan & subsequent invasion attempts were to be unsuccessful due mainly to disease & attacks by aborigines on the island. In 1609, the Tokugawa Shogunate sent Haruno Arima on an exploratory mission of the island. In 1616, Murayama Toan led an unsuccessful invasion of the island. In 1871, an Okinawan vessel shipwrecked on the southern tip of Taiwan & the crew of 54 were beheaded by the Botan aborigines. When Japan sought compensation from Qing China, the court rejected compensation on the account that they didn't have jurisdiction over the island. This was to lead to Japan testing the situation for colonizing the island & in 1874 an expedition force of 3,000 troops were sent to the island . It was not until the defeat of the Chinese navy during the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894-95 was Japan to finally realize possession of Taiwan & the shifting of Asian dominance from China to Japan. The Treaty of Shimonoseki was signed in 1895 ceding Taiwan & the Pescadores over to Japan, which would rule the island for 50 years until its defeat in World War II.
Manchu forces broke through Shanhai Pass in 1644 & rapidly overwhelmed the Ming Dynasty. In 1661, a naval fleet led by the Ming loyalist Koxinga, arrived in Taiwan to oust the Dutch from Zeelandia & establish a pro-Ming base in Taiwan.
Koxinga, born in 1624 in Japan to Japanese mother & a Chinese father, Iquan, in a family made wealthy from shipping & piracy, inherited his father's trade networks, which stretched from Nagasaki to Macao. Following the Manchu advance on Fujian, Koxinga retreated from his stronghold in Amoy (Xiamen) & besieged Taiwan in the hope of establishing a strategic base to marshal his troops to retake his base at Amoy. In 1662, following a nine month siege, Koxinga captured the Dutch fortress Zeelandia & Taiwan became his base (see Kingdom of Tungning). Concurrently the last Ming pretender had been captured & killed by General Wu Sangui, extinguishing any hope Koxinga may have had of re-establishing the Ming Empire. He died four months thereafter in a fit of madness after learning of the cruel killings of his father & brother at the hands of the Manchus. Other accounts are more simple, chalking up Koxinga's passing to a case of malaria.
In 1683, following a naval engagement with Admiral Shi Lang, one of Koxinga's father's trusted friends, Koxinga's grandson Zheng Keshuang submitted to Manchu (Qing Dynasty) control. Koxinga's followers were forced to depart from Taiwan to the more unpleasant parts of Qing controlled land. By 1682 there were only 7000 Han left on Taiwan as they had intermarried with aboriginal women & had property in Taiwan. The Koxinga reign had continued the tax systems of the Dutch, established schools & religious temples.
From 1683, the Qing Dynasty ruled Taiwan as a prefecture & in 1875 divided the island into two prefectures, north & south. In 1887 the island was made into a separate Chinese province.
The Manchu authorities tried to limit immigration to Taiwan & barred families from travelling to Taiwan to ensure the immigrants would return to their families & ancestral graves. Illegal immigration continued, but many of the men had few prospects in war weary Fujian & thus married locally, resulting in the idiom "mainland grandfather no mainland grandmother"The Qing tried to protect aboriginal land claims, but also sought to turn them into tax paying subjects. Han & tax paying aborigines were barred from entering the wilderness which covered most of the island for the fear of raising the ire of the non taxpaying, highland aborigines & inciting rebellion. A border was constructed along the western plain, built using pits & mounds of earth, called "earth cows", to discourage illegal land reclamation.
Following a shipwreck of an Ryukyuan vessel on the southeastern tip of Taiwan in winter of 1871, in which the heads of 54 crew members were taken by the aboriginal Taiwanese Paiwan people in Mutan village the Japanese sought to use this incident as a pretext to integrate Ryukyu Kingdom into the Japanese Empire & expand into Taiwan. According to records from Japanese documents, Mao Changxi & Dong Xun the Chinese (Qing) ministers at Zongli Yamen who handled the complaints from Japanese envoy Yanagihara Sakimitsu replied first that they had heard only of a massacre of Ryukyuans, not of Japanese, & quickly noted that Ryukyu was under Chinese suzerainty, therefore this issue was not Japan's business. In addition, the governor-general of Chinese province Fukien had rescued the survivors of the massacre & returned them safely to Ryukyu. The Chinese explained that there were two kinds of aborigines on Taiwan: those governed by Chinese, & those unnaturalized "raw barbarians... beyond the reach of [the Chinese] government & customs." They indirectly hinted that foreigners travelling in those areas settled by unnaturalized aboriginal people must exercise caution. After the Yanagihara-Yamen interview, the Japanese said that the Chinese government had not opposed Japan's claims to sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands, disclaimed any jurisdiction over aboriginal Taiwanese, & had indeed consented to Japan's expedition to Taiwan; however, these claims were unfounded. The Qing Dynasty made it clear to the Japanese that Taiwan was definitely within Chinese jurisdiction, even though part of that island's aboriginal population was not yet under the influence of Chinese civilization. The Qing also pointed to similar cases all over the world where an aboriginal population within a national boundary was not under the influence of the dominant culture of that country.
The Japanese nevertheless launched a expedition with an force of 2000 soldiers in 1874. The number of casualties for the Paiwan was about 30, & that for the Japanese was 543 (12 Japanese soldiers were killed in battle & 531 by disease). Eventually, the Japanese withdrew as about Qing Dynasty sent 3 divisions of forces (9000 soldiers) to reinforce Taiwan. The Okinawan affair was more of a trial balloon sent up by the Japanese to test the situation on Taiwan for a possible colonization campaign of their own. This caused the Qing to re-think the importance of Taiwan in their maritime defense strategy & greater importance was placed on gaining control over the wilderness regions. The second test of Qing commitment came during the French blockade of Keelung harbor during the Sino-French War of 1884-1885. The result was a brief bombardment of Qing positions & a French amphibious operation. The French had some limited early gains but was eventually forced to withdraw. The Qing finally made Taiwan a province & appointed Liu Mingchuan as the first governor of Taiwan to initiate Taiwan development in 1887. In the waning years of Qing control over Taiwan, Governor Liu Mingchuan initiated a series of modernizing reforms & infrastructure projects, including 60 km of railroad track laid between Keelung & Hsinchu. This segment of railroad became too old in the Japanese eye, & was demolished for modernization later under Japanese rule.
On the eve of the Sino-Japanese War about 45 percent of the island was administered under direct Qing administration while the remaining was lightly populated by Aboriginal. As part of the settlement for losing the Sino-Japanese War, China ceded the island of Taiwan & the Pescadores to Japan in 1895. The loss of Taiwan would become a rallying point for the Chinese nationalist movement in the years that followed.
After receiving sovereignty of Taiwan, the Japanese feared military resistance from both Taiwanese & Aborigines who followed the establishment by the local elite of the short-lived Republic of Formosa. Taiwan's elite hoped that by declaring themselves a republic the world would not stand by & allow a sovereign state to be invaded by the Japanese, thereby allying with the Qing. The plan quickly turned to chaos as standard Green troops & ethnic Yue soldiers took to looting & pillage. Given the choice between chaos at the hands of Chinese or submission to the Japanese, the Taipei elite sent Ku Hsien-rong to Keelung to invite the advancing Japanese forces to proceed to Taipei & restore order.
The Taiwanese resistance was sporadic, yet at times fierce, but was largely crushed by 1902, although relatively minor rebellions occurred in subsequent years, including the Ta-pa-ni incident of 1915 in Tainan county. The rebellions were often caused by a combination of the effects of colonial policies on local elites & extant millenarian beliefs of the local Taiwanese, rather than nationalism or patriotism. Aboriginal resistance to the heavy-handed Japanese policies of acculturation & pacification lasted up until the early 1930s. The last major Aboriginal rebellion, the Wushe Uprising in late 1930 by the Atayal people angry over their treatment while laboring in the burdensome job of camphor extraction, launched the last headhunting party in which over 150 Japanese officials were killed & beheaded during the opening ceremonies of a school. The uprising, led by Mona Rudao, was crushed by 2,000-3,000 Japanese troops & Aboriginal auxiliaries with help of poison gas.
Japanese colonization of the island fell under three stages. It began with an oppressive period of crackdown & paternalistic rule, then a doka period of aims to treat all people (races) alike proclaimed by Taiwanese Nationalists who were enlightened by the Self-Determination of Nations proposed by Woodrow Wilson after World War I, & finally, during World War II, a period of kominka a policy which aimed to turn Taiwanese into loyal subjects of the Japanese emperor.
Initial infrastructural development took place quickly. The Bank of Taiwan was established in 1899 to encourage Japanese private sectors, including Mitsubishi & the Mitsui Group, to invest in Taiwan. In 1900, the third Taiwan Governor-General passed a budget which initiated the building of Taiwan's railroad system from Keelung to Takao (Kaohsiung). By 1905 the island had electric power supplied by water power in Sun-Moon Lake, & in subsequent years Taiwan was considered the second-most developed region of East Asia (after Japan). By 1905, Taiwan was financially self-sufficient & had been weaned off of subsidies from Japan's central government.
Under the governor Shinpei Goto's rule, many major public works projects were completed. The Taiwan rail system connecting the south & the north & the modernizations of Keelung & Kaohsiung ports were completed to facilitate transport & shipping of raw material & agricultural products. Exports increased by four-fold. 55% of agricultural land was covered by dam-supported irrigation systems. Food production had increased four-fold & sugar cane production had increased 15-fold between 1895 to 1925 & Taiwan became a major foodbasket serving Japan's industrial economy. The health care system was widely established & infectious diseases were almost completely eradicated. The average lifespan for a Taiwanese resident would become 60 years by 1945.
In October 1935, the Governor-General of Taiwan held an "Exposition to Commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the Beginning of Administration in Taiwan," which served as a showcase for the achievements of Taiwan's modernization process under Japanese rule. This attracted worldwide attention, including the Republic of China's KMT regime which sent the Japanese-educated Chen Yi to attend the affair. He expressed his admiration about the efficiency of Japanese government in developing Taiwan, & commented on how lucky the Taiwanese were to live under such effective administration. Somewhat ironically, Chen Yi would later become the ROC's first Chief Executive of Taiwan, who would be infamous for the corruption that occurred under his watch.
The later period of Japanese rule saw a local elite educated & organized. During the 1930s several home rule groups were created at a time when others around the world sought to end colonialism. In 1935, the Taiwanese elected their first group of local legislators. By March 1945, the Japanese legislative branch hastily modified election laws to allow Taiwanese representation in the Japanese Diet.
As Japan embarked on full-scale war in China in 1937, it expanded Taiwan's industrial capacity to manufacture war material. By 1939, industrial production had exceeded agricultural production in Taiwan. At the same time, the "kominka" imperialization project was put under way to instill the "Japanese Spirit" in Taiwanese residents, & ensure the Taiwanese would remain loyal subjects of the Japanese Emperor ready to make sacrifices during wartime. Measures including Japanese-language education, the option of adopting Japanese names, & the worship of Japanese religion were instituted. In 1943, 94% of the children received 6-year compulsory education. From 1937 to 1945, 126,750 Taiwanese joined & served in the military of the Japanese Empire, while a further 80,433 were conscripted between 1942 to 1945. Of the sum total, 30,304, or 15%, died in Japan's war in Asia.
In 1942, after the United States entered in war against Japan & on the side of China, the Chinese government under the KMT renounced all treaties signed with Japan before that date & made Taiwan's return to China (as with Manchuria) one of the wartime objectives. In the Cairo Conference of 1943, the Allied Powers declared the return of Taiwan to China as one of several Allied demands. In 1945, Japan unconditionally surrendered & ended its rule in Taiwan.
The US fleet & evacuations, help the KMT flee to Taiwan,
A country half the size in area of Ireland,
Which had seen allot of development form 1930s, with investment, & stability,
And more trade with Japan,

They had elected legislature from 1935, which is from when the development began, With some representative in the powerless, Japanese parliament,
That was totally powerless in 1930s, & some de-feudalisation, & investment in medical care & industry,
A case of Japanese aggression in China, Which was an improvement on the 10,000 deaths revolt of 1915, That was for unity with China,

Even after great development most supported a self rule to some extent, & unity with China, The first Ps, had founded in 1921, with a petitions for the parliament,
After which more investment was better, As in 1930, it had a LE below China, partly as of Japanese imperial oppression, in 1945, above China, But a China that had been bombed & attacked & destroyed in many ways by Imperial China.With Taiwanese revolutionaries starting organising in 1941,
The year segregation in schools ended, & education for all kids started that decade as of the Ps, protests,

Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) rule of Taiwan began in October 1945 after the end of World War II. During the immediate postwar period, the Kuomintang (KMT) administration on Taiwan was repressive & extremely corrupt compared with the previous Japanese rule, leading to local discontent. Anti-mainlander violence flared on February 28, 1947, prompted by an incident in which a cigarette seller was injured & a passerby was indiscriminately shot dead by Nationalist authorities (Kerr, 1966; pp. 254-255).
For several weeks after the February 28 Incident the rebels held control of much of the island. Feigning negotiation, the Nationalists assembled a large military force (carried on United States naval vessels) that attacked Taiwan, massacring nearly 30,000 Taiwanese & imprisoning 1000s of others.
The killings were both random & premeditated as local elites or educated Taiwanese were sought out & disposed of. Many of the Taiwanese who had formed home rule groups under the Japanese were the victims of 2-28. This was followed by the "White Terror" in which many thousands of Taiwanese were imprisoned or executed for their real or perceived opposition to the Kuomintang military regime, leaving many native Taiwanese with a deep-seated bitterness to the mainlanders. Until 1995, the KMT authorities suppressed accounts of this episode in Taiwan history. In 1995 a monument was dedicated to the victims of the "2-28 Incident", & for the first time the ROC President Lee Teng-hui publicly apologized for the Nationalists' brutality.
From the 1930s onward a civil war was underway in China between Chiang Kai-shek's ROC government & the Communist Party of China led by Mao Zedong. When the civil war ended in 1949, 2 million refugees, predominantly from the Nationalist government, military, & business community, fled to Taiwan. In October 1949 the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.) was founded on the mainland by the victorious communists; several months before, Chiang Kai-shek had established a "provisional" ROC capital in Taipei & moved his government there from Nanjing. Under Nationalist rule, the mainlanders dominated the government & civil service forcing 37,000 Taiwanese out of the government sector.
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, post-war economic conditions compounded with the then-ongoing Chinese Civil War caused severe inflation across China & in Taiwan, made worse by corruption. This gave way to the reconstruction process & reforms.
The KMT took control of Taiwan's monopolies & property that had been government property under the Japanese passed into possession of the KMT party-state. Approximately 17% of Taiwan's GNP was nationalized. Also, Taiwanese investors lost their claim to the Japanese bond certificates they possessed. These real estate holdings as well as the large amount gold reserves brought from the Chinese mainland helped KMT become one the wealthiest political parties in the world but also helped to ensure Taiwan recover quickly from war.
With the help of the China Aid Act of 1948 & the Chinese-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction, the KMT authorities implemented a far-reaching & seemingly highly successful land reform program on Taiwan during the 1950s. They redistributed land among small farmers & compensated large landowners with commodities certificates & stock in state-owned industries. Although this left some large landowners impoverished, others turned their compensation into capital & started commercial & industrial enterprises. These entrepreneurs were to become Taiwan's first industrial capitalists. Together with businessmen who fled from the mainland, they once again revived Taiwan's prosperity previously ceased along with Japanese withdraw & managed Taiwan's transition from an agricultural to a commercial, industrial economy.
Taiwan has developed steadily into a major international trading power with more than $218 billion in two-way trade. Tremendous prosperity on the island was accompanied by economic & social stability.
Taiwan's phenomenal economic development earned it a spot as one of the East Asian Tigers.
Until the early 1970s, the Republic of China was recognized as the sole legitimate government of China by the United Nations & most Western nations, both of which refused to recognize the People's Republic of China on account of the Cold War. The KMT ruled Taiwan under martial law until the late 1980s, with the stated goal of being vigilant against Communist infiltration & preparing to retake the mainland. Therefore, political dissent was not tolerated.
The late 1970s & early 1980s were a turbulent time for Taiwanese as many of the people who had originally been oppressed & left behind by economic changes became members of the Taiwan's new middle class. Free enterprise had allowed native Taiwanese to gain a powerful bargaining chip in their demands for respect for their basic human rights. The Kaohsiung Incident would be a major turning point for democracy in Taiwan.
Taiwan also faced setbacks in the international sphere. In 1971, the ROC government walked out of the United Nations shortly before it recognized the PRC government in Beijing as the legitimate holder of China's seat in the United Nations. The ROC had been offered dual representation, but Chiang Kai-shek demanded to retain a seat on the UN Security Council, which was not acceptable to the PRC. Chiang expressed his decision in his famous "the sky is not big enough for two suns" speech. In October 1971, Resolution 2758 was passed by the UN General Assembly & "the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek" (and thus the ROC) was expelled from the UN & replaced as "China" by the PRC. In 1979, the United States switched recognition from Taipei to Beijing.
Chiang Kai-shek's eventual successor, his son Chiang Ching-kuo, began to liberalize Taiwan's political system. The events of 1979 highlighted the need for change & groups like Amnesty International were mobilizing a campaign against the government & President Chiang Ching-kuo. Finally, in 1986, the Democratic Progressive Party was formed illegally & inaugurated as the first opposition party in Taiwan to counter the KMT. A year later Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law. Chiang selected Lee Teng-hui, a native Taiwanese technocrat to be his Vice President. The move followed other reforms giving more power to the native Taiwanese & calmed anti-KMT sentiments during a period in which many other Asian autocracies were being shaken by People Power movements.
After the 1988 death of Chiang Ching-Kuo, his successor as President Lee Teng-hui continued to hand more government authority over to the native Taiwanese & democratize the government. Under Lee, Taiwan underwent a process of localization in which local culture & history was promoted over a pan-China viewpoint. Lee's reforms included printing banknotes from the Central Bank rather than the Provincial Bank of Taiwan, & disbanding the Taiwan Provincial Government. Under Lee, the original members of the Legislative Yuan & National Assembly, elected in 1947 to represent mainland constituencies, were forced to resign in 1991. Restrictions on the use of Taiwanese languages in the broadcast media & in schools were lifted as well.
However, Lee failed to crack down on the massive corruption that developed under authoritarian KMT party rule. Many KMT loyalists feel Lee betrayed the R.O.C. by taking reforms too far, while other Taiwanese feel he did not take reforms far enough.
Lee ran as the incumbent in Taiwan's first direct presidential election in 1996 against DPP candidate & former dissident, Peng Min-ming. This election prompted the PRC to conduct a series of missile tests in the Taiwan Strait to intimidate the Taiwanese electorate so that electorates would vote for other pro-unification candidates, Chen Li-an & Lin Yang-kang. The aggressive tactic prompted U.S. President Clinton to invoke the Taiwan Relations Act & dispatch two aircraft carrier battle groups into the region off Taiwan's southern coast to monitor the situation, & PRC's missile tests were forced to end earlier than planned. This incident is known as the 1996 Taiwan Straits Crisis.
One of Lee's final acts as president was to declare on German radio that the ROC & the PRC have a special state to state relationship. Lee's statement was met with the PRC's People's Army conducting military drills in Fujian & a frightening island-wide blackout in Taiwan, causing many to fear an attack. Lee's assertion that the ROC is a sovereign & independent nation separate from the mainland was popular among Taiwanese. However, many suspected that his two nation theory was intended to ultimately create a Republic of Taiwan, which was not popular among the electorate.
In the 2000 presidential election marked the end to KMT rule. Opposition DPP candidate Chen Shui-bian won a three way race that saw the pro-reunification vote split by independent James Soong & KMT candidate Lien Chan. Chen garnered 39% of the vote. In 2004, President Chen was re-elected to a second four year term after an apparent assassination attempt occurred the day before the election seemed to have boosted his support to a 0.2% advantage despite being as much as 10% behind in many opinion polls 2 days before the election. Widespread election fraud was reportedly committed by election staff, & after a recount & lawsuit, the High Court declared the election legitimate. Despite reports that voter lists had been prepared for election fraud & that some of them had repeated thumb prints in them which usually indicate fraud, the High Court gave the rationale that voter lists did not need to be considered as evidence given that all voters theoretically have their ID's checked at the door which means that no election fraud was possible.
According to both the People's Republic of China & the Republic of China (Taiwan), Japan's unconditional surrender & signing of the Instrument of Surrender in 1945 is the basis for the return of Taiwan to China, though there is the contention by a number of Taiwan independence advocates that Japan did not return Taiwan to either entity.
The position of the People's Republic of China is that the Republic of China ceased to be a legitimate government in 1949 & as the successor government of China, it has the right to rule Taiwan under the succession of states theory as supported by the United Nations Vienna Conference on Succession of States in 1978, which advocates states rights to territorial integrity. The official position of the Republic of China is that it is a legitimate government with a general mandate over the people of Taiwan.
A number of advocates of Taiwan independence argue that the Instrument of Surrender of Japan was merely an armistice, a modus vivendi in nature, which served as a temporary or provisional agreement & always would be replaced with a peace treaty afterwards. Thus the Instrument of Surrender of Japan did not transfer title of Taiwan. Only after Japan renounced signed the Treaty of San Francisco in 1951 did sovereignty of Taiwan return to its people, a resolution based on the principle of self-determination provided by the UN Charter. Some people believe, however, this Treaty made an undetermined cession of Taiwan that entrusted Taiwan sovereignty to the principal occupying power under the peace treaty, hence Taiwan is actually an overseas territory of the USA. The ambiguity of the Treaty makes interpretation of Taiwan's political status especially complicated.
Although these interpretations of international law challenged the legitimacy of the Republic of China before the 1990s, the introduction of popular elections in Taiwan means that except for the most extreme Taiwan independence supporters, supporters of the popular sovereignty theory no longer see a conflict between this theory of sovereignty & the ROC's position that it is the current sovereign government of Taiwan, Kinmen, the Pescadores & the Matsu Islands. In fact, Chen Shui-bian has often promoted the popular sovereignty theory by emphasizing it in his speeches.

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