Chiang Kai-shek did not save Taiwan from the CCP: Part 1 - the origins of CCP interest in Taiwan

I took this photo years ago and it seemed appropriate to finally use it here.

I had thought I'd written about this before, but couldn't find an appropriate post. So, because it seems like I address this opinion frequently and I'm sick of repeating myself, it's time to write it all out here so I can link it next time someone comes out with a wacky historical interpretation of what actually happened after the Chinese Civil War. 

Also, Dictatorship Day is tomorrow (that's 10/10 for those of you who are still sleeping), so this feels like a good time to write such a post. 

So, what am I on about? Every few weeks, either wild-caught or while I'm talking about one of my favorite subjects (what an absolute sack of wankers the KMT is), someone seems to pop into one of my feeds with a comment along the lines of "yes but without Chiang Kai-shek/the KMT/the ROC army Taiwan would be a part of Communist China now".

These include comments by good people -- it's not personal. I've been wrong about history too. It's okay. But we need to deal with it.

This needs to be tackled in a few parts, in fact. First, I think it's important to clarify what exactly the KMT and CCP each thought of Taiwan in the years leading up to the Taiwan conflict. Only then do I think we'll have a good basis for discussing the degree to which Chiang and the KMT are not responsible for keeping Taiwan CCP free.

So first, let me make the case that Chiang Kai-shek is to blame for the CCP's interest in Taiwan in the first place. 

You read that right. It's all his (and the KMT's) fault that this is a problem to begin with.

I don't have many links for you because my biggest source is one of my favorite books, Accidental State by Hsiao-ting Lin, but I will link where I can. 

In 1924, Sun Yat-sen did include Taiwan in his Three Principles of the People, and it's likely Chiang got the idea to include Taiwan in the territories claimed by the Nationalists at the summit in Cairo in 1943 from this, according to Lin. Here's the thing though: Sun also included all sorts of places that no reasonable person believes "China" should control, including parts of Korea, Burma, Vietnam, Nepal, Bhutan etc. It also is not clear from Sun's other writing that when visiting Taiwan (he visited twice, I believe) he considered it to be anything other than Japanese territory.

What does matter is this: it was not clear until right before the meeting at Cairo that Taiwan would be included in Nationalist territorial claims the way, say, Manchuria certainly would be, as Taiwan had been ceded legally under the Treaty of Shimonoseki whereas the Nationalists had never accepted Japan's conquest of Manchuria. Before that, the ROC, its officials and Chiang himself had more or less treated Taiwan as a part of Japan, including opening a consular office in Taipei "under the jurisdiction of its legation in Tokyo". Chiang even spoke to Japanese politicians about how ending colonial rule in Taiwan and Korea could help bolster relations between China and Japan! To say the least, before 1941, Nationalist views of Taiwan and clear ideas about what Taiwan should be were, to use Lin's words, "murky", "cautious", uncertain" and "undetermined". 

The change in rhetoric to seriously consider claiming Taiwan happened after Pearl Harbor, when the ROC more or less saw an opportunity and decided to grab it. It was around that time that a definition of what constituted "lost" territories to be recovered was created by Chiang, and the top concerns regarding what should be included and what shouldn't were more geo-strategic than ideological.

In fact, according to Lin, the decision to include Taiwan as a claimed territory wasn't even finalized until after Chiang had received the invitation to Cairo! Until then it had been a matter of debate and exactly which "lost" territories ought to be "recovered" was very much a matter of debate.

George Kerr also notes in Formosa Betrayed that Allied attempts to gain intelligence on Taiwan from their Chinese allies showed how little interest the Nationalists actually had in Taiwan, as most of it was lazily thrown together at best, or outright fabricated at worst (to be fair, Lin finds Kerr's accounts to be generally exaggerated). 

The inclusion of Taiwan didn't start gaining truly serious ROC domestic or international traction until the Allies signed onto it at Cairo, and even then, to quote Kerr, the only reason the West was willing to prop up Chiang's claims was to help him save face as the self-proclaimed greatest leader and bringer of "democracy" to Asia (again, to be fair, no-one else in Asia at that time could reasonably claim the title of supreme democratic reformer, either). They knew perfectly well that his regime would require massive support from the West.

(It's worth taking a brief side-note here to point out that the result of Cairo was a declaration, not a treaty. The actual series of treaties that followed the Japanese surrender do not clarify to whom Taiwan was ceded nor what its status is.)

At the same time, the Communists seemed to hold a very different view of Taiwan. Mao's rhetoric on the topic somewhat implied that Taiwan had the right to some, if not total, sovereignty, and the CCP listed "Taiwanese" among the "minority nationalities" that had "equal rights" in "Soviet China", but were considered to be a distinct group or race from Chinese with their own homeland. 

I'm going to quote from the link above at length, because unlike Accidental State and Formosa Betrayed, two books you absolutely should spend your money on, this is a journal article and not everyone will have access. I've emphasized important points:

This position of the Sixth Congress was reiterated in the same year by the Fifth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Youth League, which in its regulations noted that the "minority na- tionalities" in China included "Mongols, Koreans, Taiwanese, Annamese, etc.," and urged that local organs form national minority committes.5 Two years later in Kiangsi, the "Draft Constitution of the China Soviet Republic," adopted by the First All-China Soviet Congress (November 7, 1931), extended constitutional rights to these same minority nationalities.6 According to Item 4 of this document, all races, that is the "Han, Manchu, Mongol, Mohammedan, Tibetan, Miao, Li and also the Taiwanese, Koreans, and Annamese who reside in China, are equal under the laws of Soviet China [emphasis added]." Taiwanese were seen not as Han but as a different "nationality" and even "race," who like the Koreans and the Annamese, but unlike the other minorities, came from a homeland separate from China.8 This view is strengthened by the fact that the CCP never referred to the Taiwanese as "brethren" (dixiong), or "the offspring of the Yellow Emperor," or "compatriots" (tongbao), who would de facto belong to the Han after they return to China. Indeed, a 1928 Central Committee Notice, while calling for the recovery from Japan of sovereignty over Shantung and Manchuria, failed to mention a similar goal for Taiwan in its seventeen "general goals of the present mass movement."9 Since the ideological perspectives of the early Chinese Communist elite were heavily influenced by an anti-Japanese (as well as an anti-Western) nationalism born out of the May Fourth Movement, this exclusion of Taiwan from recoverable sovereign territory of China is revealing.

 



(Yes, that is one long paragraph.)

It gets better, though: 

Mao Tse-tung's earliest comments on the Taiwanese came in his January 1934 "Report of the China Soviet Republic Central Executive Committee and the People's Committee to the Second All-China Soviet Congress." Commenting on various provisions in the 1931 Constitution, he said: Item 15 of the Draft Constitution of Soviet China has the following statement: 

To every nationality in China who is persecuted because of revolutionary acts and to the revolutionary warriors of the whole world, the Chinese Soviet Government grants the right of their being protected in Soviet areas, and assists them in renewing their struggle until a total victory of the revolutionary movement for their nationality and nation has been achieved. In the Soviet areas, many revolutionary comrades from Korea, Taiwan, and Annam are residing. In the First All-China Soviet Congress, representatives of Korea had attended. In the present Congress, there are a few representatives from Korea, Taiwan, and Annam. This proves that this Declaration of the Soviet is a correct one.’

Mao not only reaffirmed the Chinese Communist position that Taiwanese residing outside Taiwan and in China were a "minority nationality," but also implied CCP recognition and support of an independent Taiwan national liberation movement, which would be united in a joint effort with the Chinese movement, but with a different purpose, i.e., the establishment of an independent state similar to other Japanese colonies, such as Korea. 

A year later, Mao and P'eng Teh-huai manifestly dissociated Taiwan's political movement from China by incorporating it into the anti-imperialist revolution led by the Japanese Communist Party. According to the "Resolution on the Current Political Situation and the Party's Responsibility," passed at a meeting of the CCP Central Political Bureau on 25 December, 1935, and signed by P'eng and Mao: 

Under the powerful leadership of the Japanese Communist Party, the Japanese workers and peasants and the oppressed nationalities (Korea, Taiwan) are preparing great efforts in struggling to defeat Japanese Imperialism and to establish a Soviet Japan. This is to unite the Chinese revolution and Japanese revolution on the basis of the common targets of "defeating Japanese imperialism." The Japanese revolutionary people are a powerful helper of the Chinese revolutionary people." 

Here Taiwanese were not considered an integral part of the "Chinese revolutionary people," but were treated as a people whose natural political role was to fight alongside the "Japanese workers and peasants" in establishing a Soviet Japan. Whether Mao and P'eng expected the Taiwanese (and Koreans) formally to join a newly-created Soviet Japan is unclear from this resolution. But nowhere in this or other documents examined by the authors did CCP leaders suggest that the Taiwanese should fight to return to their "motherland" and join Soviet China - a point they would not make until after 1943.

That's my underline, so let me reiterate:

...a point they would not make until after 1943.

What changed between when these statements were made and 1943?

Oh yeah! All that stuff the Nationalists did, under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek, to change China's perspective on Taiwan toward claiming it as an integral territory and 'lost' province. 

It is not unreasonable to assert that the CCP changed its stance on Taiwan because the Nationalists had done so first. 

Guess what - it gets even better. Please enjoy:

As to explicit CCP support for an independent state on Taiwan, the most notable documentary evidence is Mao's personal statement made to Edgar Snow on July 16, 1936. Responding to Snow's question, "Is it the immediate task of the Chinese people to regain all the territories lost to Japanese imperialism, or only to drive Japan from North China, and all Chinese territory above the Great Wall?," Mao answered: 

It is the immediate task of China to regain all our lost territories, not merely to defend our sovereignty below the Great Wall. This means that Manchuria must be regained. We do not, however, include Korea, formerly a Chinese colony, but when we have re-established the independence of the lost territories of China, and if the Koreans wish to break away from the chains of Japanese imperialism, we will extend them our enthusiastic help in their struggle for independence. The same thing applies for Formosa. As for Inner Mongolia, which is populated by both Chinese and Mongolians, we will struggle to drive Japan from there and help Inner Mongolia to establish an autonomous State. 

The support for independence of Korea and Taiwan, both of which were formerly linked to China, is clearly stated.

There is some solid analysis in this otherwise older source about why the CCP policy was able to shift, and an interesting discussion of what constitutes "Chineseness" in the eyes of the CCP -- at least, the best possible analysis of it in 1979.

The authors also go on to provide more source material for Lin's analysis of the shifting Nationalist position on Taiwan pre-1943, pointing out that Taiwan was of minor importance before Cairo, belying the massive importance placed on it by the Nationalists after the conference. They go on to posit that Chiang's original goal was quite possibly very similar to the CCP's: to "liberate" Korea and Taiwan so as to create buffer states between China and Japan! 

Because I believe in free access to academic work, here's another quote:

What is important here is that Chiang, like Sun, was more concerned with "restoring" (hufifu) the independence and freedom of Taiwan and Korea so as to create buffer states against Japan, while China would assume traditional protection, but not necessarily sovereignty, over Taiwan and Korea. Moreover, throughout Chiang's pre-1942 collected works and speeches nowhere does he make a claim to “recover" (shoufu, guangfu or shouhut) Taiwan. The island was mentioned occasionally, along with Korea, but only in the sense that both nations were enslaved by the Japanese. No mention of the Taiwanese appeared in such strong nationalist tracts as "Prepare For Victory," nor in his message on "Resistance in the Enemy's Rear."

Although the ability of the CCP to shift so easily to a "Taiwan is an inseparable part of China" stance is of interest, the reason why they chose to do so at all is of more interest to me. Again, it all points back to Cairo, and we have Chiang Kai-shek and his minions to thank for that.

Hsiao and Sullivan (the heroes of this heavily-quoted article) reached the same (hedged) conclusion in 1979:

This tentatively suggests that the Chinese Communist position on the Taiwan question became most politically expedient after the 1943 Cairo Declaration when, still out of power, and in a subordinate position vis-a-vis the KMT, the CCP dropped its support for Taiwan's independent status and embraced Chiang Kai-shek's then very recent policy of full political reintegration of Taiwan into the Chinese polity.

!!!

I emphasized that in three different ways to draw your attention to it. It's analysis, not fact, but I happen to think it's right on the money. 

In other words, Chiang didn't "save" Taiwan from the Communists. He led them right into claiming Taiwan as a territory. If Chiang and the Nationalists had never fed that fire, it's entirely possible (though far from assured, to be fair yet again) that the CCP would have never become as interested in Taiwan as an integral part of China as they did. They might have had designs on it, after all they got involved in conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, but note that Korea and Vietnam don't suffer from the lack of diplomatic recognition or the same territorial claims by China (or at least, in Vietnam's case, not to the same extent) that Taiwan does.

And yet, there are still people who believe that Chiang deserves some sort of credit for keeping the Communists away from Taiwan. I would ask -- why? He's responsible for their claims on Taiwan in the first place!

At this point we veer into speculative history: if the Nationalists had never decided to claim Taiwan, would they have occupied Taiwan at the behest of the Allies in 1945, for convenience's sake? I don't know, as occupying Taiwan as a proxy of the Allies is not the same as occupying it as a claimed territory, but it seems at least somewhat less likely. In any case, it is less likely to have become the location of their retreat upon losing the civil war a few years later. This means that perhaps (?) the Nationalists might have been wiped out completely -- not a bad outcome, in my estimation, though the CCP disappearing would be even better.

If the KMT had not retreated to Taiwan, would the CCP have ever set its sights on the island? Possibly. There would have been so-called "justification" for it in Sun's writing, and they certainly were (and are) expansionist.

But their own writings indicate that it might not have rolled out that way, and Taiwan would have gained its independence in the same era as many other former colonies across Asia: Korea, most of Southeast Asia, India and more. 

Some of those former colonies have struggled (the Philippines, Myanmar, India, Indonesia), in part due to local issues and in part thanks to everything that was stolen from them or forced upon them by their colonizers. Others (Korea, Singapore) eventually succeeded -- if we take democracy and freedom as important markers of success, Korea even more than Singapore. As a relatively prosperous colony under the Japanese with much of its infrastructure already built (and built well), how might Taiwan have fared? We'll never know, but it's not a given that it would have been worse than under KMT rule. 

Importantly, if this is how it had played out, there might not have been any question now of whether Taiwan was a 'part of China', any more than that question is being asked of those other countries. All the missiles, all the threats, all the fighter jets -- none of it would be dangled over our heads by an angry CCP. 

All because they slobbered after the Nationalists and that led their sights right to Taiwan.

Blame the CCP, yes, but also...blame the KMT. They literally created this mess. They literally wrote the paper on how to screw Taiwan.

Academia Sinica, Foreigners and KMT Lies

From the Academia Sinica's history museum, I present:
A visualization of the KMT's beef with Fan Yun

Something really interesting popped up yesterday - well, interesting to me.

Back in March, some DPP lawmakers called for Academia Sinica's name to be changed, as "Sinica" means "Chinese" and, well, Taiwan is not a part of China - think "Academia Taiwanica". DPP party list legislator Fan Yun (范雲), formerly of the Social Democratic Party, has been one of the strongest voices calling for this change.

Considering Academia Sinica's very "Republic of China" roots (it was founded in Nanjing in the 1920s and moved to Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War), this would be quite a statement indeed.

Notably, the institution's name in Mandarin (中央研究院) doesn't refer to China at all - it's just the "Central Research Institute", and Fan pointed out that 'Academia Sinica' would most accurately be translated as '中國科學院' in Mandarin. 

Fan Yun made the news again yesterday when she and two other legislators, Wu Lihua (伍麗華) and Lai Pinyu (賴品妤) introduced a motion that all elected academicians "must be ROC citizens", and that if foreigners are elected, they should be "honorary" or in some sort of other category. 

That sounds insane, if you don't know what an academician is in this context, or if you think by "foreigners" they mean "non-Chinese".

An "academician" isn't someone who works for Academia Sinica. It's not a job, it's an honorary lifetime title. There's no payment, and no research requirement. They can be asked by the government to carry out research (but never have), and they can make recommendations to the government on academic policy. That's it, really. As far as I am aware, no-one with no Chinese ethnic heritage has been elected to one of these positions (please correct me if I'm wrong). However, it is quite possible for foreigners of Chinese or Taiwanese heritage to be elected, meaning that Chinese nationals can also be elected.

Old academicians nominate new ones, and I am assured by a reliable source that these senior academicians often tend to be Chinese nationalists (that is, dark blue, pro-China), and nominate quite a few PRC nationals for the role. Because the nomination process doesn't ask about nationality, this has, until now, been an un-examined process.

Fan, Wu and Lai's proposal also stated that:

中研院組織法第四條明訂院士資格為「全國學術界成績卓著人士」，因此院士應該具中華民國國籍。 

Article 4 of the Basic Law of Academia Sinica clearly states that the qualifications of academicians should be "outstanding academicians from around the country", so academicians should have the nationality of the Republic of China.

It makes perfect sense that DPP lawmakers would want to do something about this. What does "from around the country" mean if PRC nationals are being elected to these positions? What country are we talking about?

Allowing non-Taiwanese nationals to be elected but "honorary" (meaning they can't advise the government on academic policy) isn't such a crazy or nationalistic proposition.

Well, here's how the KMT spun it. From their website which was clearly designed by someone's teenage nephew (don't forget to enter your e-mail address for a SUPSCRIPTION):

In addition, the Academia Sinica is slated to elect new academicians in July. As no regulations exist on the nationality of Academia Sinica academicians, many of them don’t possess ROC citizenship. In a meeting of the Legislative Education Committee yesterday, three legislators, including Fan Yun, introduced a motion demanding that in order to ensure that all academicians elected “must be ROC nationals” in the future, the Academia Sinica re-examine its election system for academicians to fully implement nationality checks, and that those without ROC nationality could only be elected as “honorary academicians.”

This motion elicited disputes, with several academicians describing the move as “national isolationism” yesterday. [Emphasis mine].

This makes it sound like Fan wants to bar foreigners from working at Academia Sinica, as it never explains what an academician (a specialized term requiring clarification) is, or does.

UDN's somewhat more informative report echoed this line of "isolationism":

中研院院士陳培哲表示，此一提案顯示台灣「鎖國心態愈來愈嚴重」。他指出，中研院身為台灣最高學術機構，應該「廣招天下英才」，連美國科學院院士也聘國外院士，「台灣人才有多少?」他質疑立委「想讓中研院當一個封閉的單位，還是開放的單位？」 

Chen Peizhe, an Academia Sinica academician, said that this proposal shows Taiwan's "isolationist mentality is getting more and more serious". He pointed out that as the highest academic institution in Taiwan, Academia Sinica should "recruit talent from all over the world." Even the American Academy of Sciences also elect foreign academicians. "How many talented people are there in Taiwan? Is it an open list?" [Emphasis mine].

That's not the only such quote.

The UDN article never once mentions that most of these "foreign" academicians are PRC citizens and "all around the world" means "ethnic Chinese who may hold other citizenships but are mostly from the PRC".

The position, as I understand it, was never meant to "recruit foreign talent". It was conceived of as an internal, national thing. It doesn't pay and it isn't a job, and isn't generally open to people without Chinese ancestry of some kind, so how would changing the process end a flow of foreign talent into Taiwan?

What's more, isn't the KMT bottom line that Taiwan is Chinese, that the ROC is the rightful government of China and that Taiwan is a part of the ROC? So, by that logic, wouldn't they think of PRC nationals as...not really foreigners? It seems that to the KMT, Chinese and Taiwanese are the same, but these PRC nationals suddenly become "foreign talent" from "all over the world" when it's convenient for the KMT to target the DPP.

Hmmm.

UDN also gets the crux of the problem wrong, stating there are no "confidential research" or "academic secrets" that these foreign academicians can "steal" - but of course, that was never the point. The point is, how much influence do academics from China have on Taiwan's top research institution and the recommendations it makes to the government?

Even more importantly, if this title is meant to honor members of this society, the question is, how do we define "this society"? As Greater China? As the ROC? As Taiwan? If the Academia Sinica was originally meant to be a "Chinese" institution, well, that is no longer possible in a Taiwanese context where "this society" no longer considers itself "Chinese" (or rather, is no longer forced to do so, and is no longer ruled by an elite class from China). It would make sense, then, that those named "academician" would be from Taiwan, or at least have a strong connection to it. The pan-blues clearly know they've already lost the battle to define "this society" as "all Chinese", so they're trying to ensure that PRC nationals remain eligible while calling them "foreigners", when they clearly don't really believe that. Again, the KMT is trying to have it both ways: Taiwan and China as one cohesive "Chinese society", and Chinese as "foreigners" for the sake of a convenient attack narrative against the DPP.

In short, it should strike you as odd that the KMT is accusing Fan Yun - and others, but they are clearly targeting Fan here - of "isolationism" under the false pretext that it is keeping out academics "from all over the world" and not "recruiting foreign talent" when the roles being discussed were never intended or even particularly suitable for "foreign talent", almost all of the foreigners in question are Chinese nationals (so, people whom the KMT doesn't generally think of as "foreign" at all) being nominated by their ideologically biased predecessors, and the honor is specifically meant to recognize achievement among the country's own citizens.

Although the UDN article explains this - whereas the KMT brief does not - the reporter never questions the academicians interviewed, nor put quotes like "national isolation" into any sort of context or clarification.

Nothing - truly nothing- about the way the pan-blue media and the KMT are portraying this issue is accurate. It's just another attempt to set up the DPP, and Fan Yun, to look like rabid, xenophobic ethno-nationalists.

I'm not even particularly interested in how Academia Sinica nominates academicians, a position I didn't even know existed until the KMT started ranting about Evil Fan Yun. I am interested in how the media portray these incidents to stir up divisions in Taiwanese society. UDN did a terrible job analyzing a news item, but a fantastic job sourcing a bunch of un-examined quotes with which to attack the DPP.

I'll leave you with this: try Google Translating that UDN article. Every time Academia Sinica comes up in the Mandarin, Google translates it as "the Chinese Academy of Sciences", and every time "national" (國人) comes up, it translates it as "Chinese".

So if you were wondering if these name games matter, they do. 

The KMT's hard red turn isn't as weird as you think

Pretty sure "We Shall Return" was a threat more than a promise

Since the 2020 election, people have been asking how the KMT could have turned so thoroughly pro-China and along with that, pro-CCP. Once upon a dream they were the guys who fought the CCP. You know, "defeat the Communists and take back the Mainland!"

Whatever happened to those guys?

How did we get from that to disinformation and election interference campaigns by China, aimed at helping the KMT? How'd we get to the KMT arguing that we need closer ties with China - a policy the CCP supports? How'd we get Han Kuo-yu meeting officials in China, Ma Ying-jeou changing his tune from "no independence, no unification, no war" to "no independence, no war, don't reject unification" and KMT party officials attempting to wheedle and threaten an alleged defected Chinese spy into recanting his story? Or pro-unification groups broadly supporting the KMT (though that varies), a legislator who attended a speech by Xi Jinping, a KMT party list entry (later removed) who called for "beheading" independence advocates, a party list so avidly pro-unification that it had to be changed after public outcry, and some support for a "peace agreement" with the CCP?

It's true that the KMT used to espouse anti-Communist rhetoric:

Chiang spent the majority of his adult life fighting Communism either as the leader of the KMT during the Civil War in China or as the head of state of the Republic of China (ROC) leading the Chinese government in exile in Taiwan. He was unequivocal that the ROC should never submit to the will of the CCP.

But the only thing that sticks about the KMT is how they consider themselves a Chinese party, and their own - and Taiwan's - destiny as being ultimately Chinese:

To outsiders, this looks like a betrayal of their forefathers. But within the KMT ranks, they appear to have long since made peace with the paradox. “One China” has been deemed more important than the KMT’s historic opposition to the Chinese Communist Party.

They may have once appended the notion that the ROC is the only rightful government of China, but since it's become clear that such a vision is hopeless, they've defaulted to "Chinese by any means, regardless of what Taiwanese think".

Their only other ideology is power, for themselves. Knowing they'll never have the power they've wanted to regain in China, they'll take the next best thing: no, not power in Taiwan. Taiwan means nothing to them.  I mean power in China through cooperation with their former enemy.

When a rival offers a better deal through cooperation than continued conflict, those who care only about their own ambitions will take it.

Does it seem so unusual, then, that absent any reason other than a generations-old rivalry with the CCP, the KMT would turn red?

People have explored the 'what' of this question - what exactly is happening with the KMT. But nobody, to my knowledge, has considered the 'why'. Why is KMT-CCP cooperation possible, after so many years of mutual enmity? 

The short answer can be found in examining the KMT's core ideology. It is not anti-communist - if anything, they've shared more elements with communist-aligned parties than they've differed over the years. Nor is it inherently anti-dictatorship - they were quite comfortable acting as dictators themselves.

That latter point doesn't need to be explored in much detail. The only thing you really need to know is that, contrary to what KMT historical revisionism espouses, they weren't the ones who democratized Taiwan - that can be attributed to opposition forces that forced the KMT to implement democratic reforms.

As such, there's no clear reason why they would think the way the CCP runs China is inherently wrong because it is authoritarian. 

The shared quasi-socialist ideology angle, however, doesn't get a lot of attention online outside of academic sources which not everyone can access, so let's explore that.

I'm going to quote a lot of academic work here because I'm too lazy to write it all out myself, but also because not everyone has access to academic sources, so I hope long block quotes will be helpful.

First, let's be clear: the KMT has never had a "Marxist" ideology. There was no final goal of any 'dictatorship of the proletariat'. Even when they were nationalizing every industry that they could milk for their own benefit, they still existed within a system that was generally capitalist.

That said, both KMT and the CCP were borne of the ideas of Sun Yat-sen, and one of those ideas (minsheng 民生) or welfare of the people is generally interpreted as a kind of socialism - Wikipedia says Georgism. I don't know a lot about Georgism other than that it espouses the idea that labor should not be taxed, but the benefits you derive from owning non-labor resources such as land should. That sounds like it's in a socialist-like family to me! The point is, although 'minsheng' was never clearly defined, Sun Yat-sen was not exactly a rolicking capitalist. 

The connection has been made by many:

The KMT's Leninist roots go back to Sun Yat-sen, but more important was the party's reorganization (gaizao) after its retreat to Taiwan.' During the early 1950s, the KMT cre- ated a network of party cells throughout the government, military, and society to which each party member had to belong, and created a cadre system to handle party work in these sectors. The principles of democratic centralism, ideology as guide to policy, and party supremacy over the government and military were reasserted. And a ban on organized opposition inside and outside the party was enforced. It was this reorganization that made the KMT similar to other Leninist parties, not by coincidence but by intent.

Even before the KMT reddened like a Japanese maple, it showed that it was not necessarily ideologically opposed to the CCP, although neither were they the same:

KMT leaders justified many of these reforms by pointing to the success of the CCP. But although similar, the two parties are obviously not identical....

In any case, the way it spread its tentacles of influence throughout various aspects of society was certainly Leninist:

In terms of party structure and party-state relationship, the KMT regime in this period was a Leninist one. There was organizational parallelism between the party and the state: party organs controlled administrative units at various levels of government as well as the military via a commissar system....Party cadres were socialized as revolutionary vanguards....Party cells also penetrated the existing social organizations. 

Look at all that...that stuff that also comes up in Leninism. A commissar system. "Democratic centralism" (a system in which free expression is permissible until their is a group consensus, at which point members of the group must 'toe the line'). 'Revolutionary vanguards' (professional revolutionaries who run the show in the best interests of the people until true revolution can occur). There might not have been any specific  'revolution' planned for the end of this process, but surely these cadres did think of themselves as vanguards representing the best interests of 'the people':

Defining "the people" as its social base, the KMT organized a youth corps, recruited leading farmers, formed labor unions in the state sector, and prevented the emergence of independent labor unions all through leadership control and exclusive representation of these social groups.

This probably helped them sleep at night, that is, if they weren't all tuckered out from a day of genteel looting and not-so-genteel imprisonment and murder of their political opposition.

If you're wondering if social control is truly an important feature of Leninist party structures, it is:

The essence of Leninism, according to Philip Selznick, consists in the concentration of "total social power in the hands of a ruling group." Leninism views power everywhere, and therefore a combat party manned by disciplined cadres is used as an organizational weapon to remake the whole society. From a Leninist perspective, society is highly malleable, or to use James Scott's term, "prostrate". In reality, few societies are so vulnerable that they are ready to be re-engineered from above. Leninist control is necessarily embedded in social structures so that its actual impact is always less than the revolutionary rhetoric.

And if you are thinking "that just sounds like dictatorship, how is that supposed to lead to the Marxist utopia that all those edgelords on Facebook talk about when they claim to be Marxist-Leninists?" - well...yeah:

In his classical study on the evolution of industrial relations in communist China, Andrew Walder discovers the hidden realities of party-state control. Contrary to its professed unselfish collectivism, Leninism encourages the pursuit of petty interests as party cadres are given arbitrary powers to distribute scarce goods. In national factories, there is a pattern of "neo-traditionalism" whose syndrome includes organized dependency, in which workers are placed under the economic, political and personal control of work-unit superiors, and a culture of authority, in which official power assumes a moral leadership and intrudes into the most private sphere of daily life. Leninist control gives rise to factory clientelism which reproduces inequality between leaders and workers. Working life is fragmented into a fiercely individualist competition for personal favours from cadre leaders.

Historically, it has not worked as well as intended. Not surprising - if you give yourself power as a "revolutionary vanguard", that sort of power is hard to give up.

If that sounds like both Taiwan under KMT authoritarian rule, and China under the CCP - yes.  Exactly.

According to Bruce Dickson, this Leninist transformation was completed even before the similar attempt by Chinese communists. In the industrial sector, the KMT tried to "recruit skilled and productive employees and workers with leadership and revolutionary patriotism." Thus, from a very early stage, cadres were present in Taiwan's factories, where they built up a vast redistributive network among KMT loyalists.

It's worth noting that the lack of a specifically Marxist political goal doesn't mean that the KMT lacked a 'vanguard' element. It's just that they instead intended to mold society via a process called "political tutelage" (controlling the country until the 'masses' could be sufficiently 'educated' about their political rights to ensure a democratic transition).

You can imagine how tempting it would be - positively irresistible! - for a party with total control of the state as well as the education system intended to 'tutor' the people to simply...stay in power, and use that 'tutelage' to their own ends through political indoctrination.

The CCP skipped the actual tutelage and went straight to political indoctrination. The KMT adopted Japanese Meiji-era education systems that had been implemented in Taiwan, replacing Japanese cultural identity indoctrination with Chinese. They allowed a few local (sub-national) elections, and was thus able to feign a veneer of 'education', which was actually political and cultural indoctrination. The total KMT control permitted through 'temporary' provisions (when in fact they were not) enabled them to avoid giving any sort of concrete timetable for full democratization while providing a way to "co-opt local elites" as their chosen political candidates (source: that first link in the post).

In fact, pretty much every aspect of how the party ran itself follows these lines.

Leninist parties direct the action of the state by dominating both political and governmental institutions. During its first four decades in Taiwan, the KMT charted the state's course by selecting and cultivating all political and institutional leaders. 

[From earlier in the article] Leninist parties brook no opposition to their power from other parties and customarily treat factionalism as heretical to the party's ideology. While on mainland China, the KMT cooperated with other parties reluctantly and relentlessly sought to expunge factional conflict. Like other Leninist parties, however, the KMT could not extirpate factional divisions....Intra-party factionalism initially was rigorously suppressed; however, after the death of Chiang Kai-shek, policy differences appeared more frequently in party fora and were tolerated in fact (but factions were still opposed in principle).  

If that also sounds like it describes the CCP, well, surely you've got the point by now.

In fact, the factionalism within the KMT party state was such that it was basically its own complex ecosystem. For those who don't already know, that's basically why opposition from outside rather than between factions was called "tangwai", or "outside the party" opposition (also, that had not really been allowed to exist before). 

These factional disputes did lead, eventually, to break-off parties (such as the New Party). The New Party spun off because Lee Teng-hui was pushing the KMT towards prioritizing Taiwan over "reunification" and hardliners who wanted to keep the primary focus on China, well, left. But, you'll remember that Lee himself was kicked out of the KMT because they didn't like his push for Taiwan-focused localization.

It makes sense, then, that post-Lee, with a demagogue-ish DPP president in power (that'd be Chen, it's 2001 at this point), the KMT would double down on its earlier China-oriented ideology. And, when that happened, it'd make sense that the strong unificationists/China-oriented breakaway parties would circle back around to existing in their own right, but also supporting Big Daddy KMT's pro-China ideology.

The nationalization of key industries into state-owned enterprises (SOEs) also follows this political trajectory. From the link to Ming-sho Ho's work some ways up:

After the war, all these economic resources, private or public, were declared "the enemy's properties" and summarily confiscated. The KMT was determined to keep the industrial assets nationalized despite local complaints and American privatization pressure. For the KMT, state-owned enterprises guaranteed its political and economic independence from the host society. In the early period, nationalized industries made up the backbone of Taiwan's economy. In 1966, state-owned enterprises employed 13.5 per cent of the workforce in the manufacturing sector, concentrating in upstream industries.

Some such state-owned enterprises in Taiwan that you may be familiar with include Taiwan Salt, Taiwan Sugar, Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor, the China Petroleum Company and...well, plenty more. There have been organizational changes; I couldn't tell you what the exact structure of these companies is now. Their function as SOEs in the past, however, is absolutely in line with everything above. They are often seen as a form of 'state capitalism' (when the state engages in commercial/economic activity), a term which has also been used to describe the Chinese economy under the CCP. Lenin himself considered state capitalism to be a 'final stage' of capitalism before Marxist revolution.

That revolution was not the goal of the KMT, but from a political and economic structural standpoint, there has historically been little difference.

Of course, the actual effect is one of enabling total party control (all from Ho's work linked earlier on):

The full-blown transition to Leninism in state-owned enterprises came with the KMT's re-organization in 1950-52. In order to exert a firmer control over this hostile island, the KMT proclaimed it was to build "a social base with the vast labouring mass of youth, intellectuals, agricultural and industrial producers The central reorganization commission set up a special taskforce to speed up the building of a party branch in every nationalized factory and a party cell in every workshop. There was an impressive growth of worker party members from 26,505 in 1952 to 44,312 in 1957. In 1954, the KMT claimed membership of between 25.3 and 45 per cent of the workforce in selected industries.

SOEs are not necessarily bad - they're a fairly common way of structuring, for example, transit companies as public transportation is good for a city, but doesn't always turn a profit. They can help bring needed services to a community even if there's no market incentive to provide it. However, the KMT's SOE scheme mainly served to enrich itself:

Mainlanders [basically, the non-local KMT] continued to enjoy their privileges over the Taiwanese. Compared to other government positions, state-owned enterprises offered better rewards since more than half of their income derived from the handsome rationing of necessities. Thus, a sustained wave of mainlanders continued to move into state-owned enterprises through private guanxi. Nepotism was rampant.... Unionizing was also an integral part of the KMT's Leninist transformation....officials began a unionizing campaign in major public and private sectors in the mid-1950s....Far from empowering grassroots workers, the KMT's guidelines made it explicit that unions followed the party leadership. Without exception, union officials must be KMT members and were handpicked by the party branch.

Hey, doesn't that also sound more or less like the way the CCP does things? 

If you're wondering "how did Taiwan move from that model to something far more free-market leaning?" - simple. The US government pressured them into it. Maybe you're a free-market bourgeois, maybe you're an edgy Marxist. Whatever. From a historical standpoint, it remains that reforms loosening the KMT's hold on the economy enabled small and medium-sized businesses to flourish, and that was the foundation of the Taiwan Miracle.

There is one final point to make as we discuss Leninist influences in the KMT - and that's land reform. I don't want to belabor this point. This is what land reform supposedly looked like in Taiwan:

It is only after these two [1949 and 1951 reforms] that we come to the famous 1953 reform, tendentiously called the land-to-the-tiller programme. This comprised the compulsory purchase of private tenanted farmland by the State and its resale, by installment purchase, to the former tenant....

Of course, even that is contentious (the whole piece is worth reading, although it is old). 

The KMT essentially used land reform to consolidate its own power (from Cheng's article linked further up):

[Leaders of early opposition movements] were not rooted in the contemporary social structure, which was basically composed of small farmers (a class politically captured by the KMT because of land reform) and state employees (a natural constituency of the KMT). Thus, not only was the political opposition of the fifties unprepared for strategic bargaining with the regime; society itself was not amenable to the mobilization of political opposition.

There's a lot more to be said about this which I am essentially skipping over, and a strong argument to be made that land reform was not as successful as some make it out to be - and I may write more about that in the future. The point is, from a theoretical perspective it sure sounds a lot like one of the stages of Marxist-Leninist revolution (Lenin envisioned it as one step toward the eventual goal of abolishing all privately-owned land). Of course, although one can make a case that "land to the tiller" is not an accurate description of the land reform the KMT actually carried out, for a number of reasons - one of the biggest being that they never intended to fully abolish private ownership.

The KMT wiped out a potential opposition base by appropriating the land of wealthier Taiwanese, and built up a support base of smaller farmers by distributing it (there's a lot more to say there, but that summary will do). The CCP, on the other hand, went straight to killing the landlords. One might have used far more violent means than the other, but ideologically, there isn't a huge difference.

All of this is to say that the KMT, from a historical perspective, was never as ideologically opposed to the CCP as people believe. There are differences, but they could be characterized as a strait, not a yawning ocean.

I repeat: the KMT-CCP conflict has always been far more about wanting power - rivals vying for the One Ring - than it was ever about core ideological differences. Now, I suppose we could say that by grabbing the Ring, the CCP has turned itself into Gollum. But the KMT is essentially Smeagol - having the power it actually wants (control of China) taken away, it pretends to play-act as a willing partner in the fellowship of Taiwanese democracy, but is ultimately trying to sabotage the whole project to get what it has really wanted this whole time.

No, not to abolish the CCP. They just want China. They don't want to kill Gollum - they are Gollum, in a sense. They just want the Ring.

(I didn't think that Smeagol/Gollum analogy would work initially, but you know, I think it does.)

The whole "they're damn Commies and we're Free China" talk, then? Where did it come from?

From the KMT's own mouthpieces, of course!

If you control the education system, you get to decide how you are portrayed in textbooks. It's extra helpful for you if you bow and scrape to the US and convince your buddies over there that you're the good guys, the Free China, the anti-Commies.

It's all a farce.

From quasi-socialist beginnings - claiming the same founding father as the CCP - to a basically Leninist party structure, to being quite comfortable with dictatorship themselves, the KMT cannot truly claim to be "against" anything the CCP stands for, ideologically. Their core ideology, therefore, can only be characterized as thinking of themselves as leaders of China, not Taiwan, and Taiwan's destiny as ultimately Chinese. Surely, leaders in the KMT have been offered plum positions in the new government, if they manage to make unification of the 'motherland' a reality. Surely, they believe that these rewards will actually materialize (they won't, but that's a topic for another post).

As such, their real ideological opponent is Taiwanese identity - institutionally speaking, the DPP (among others). Not the CCP.

One of the first links above concluded that the KMT has "accepted the paradox" of working with their former enemy.

I'd say that the paradox never existed, beyond what they tried to convince us was there. It was a chimera. A fake wizard behind a curtain. The KMT and the CCP were always more similar than they were different.

Knowing they won't get there any other way, and being offered a leg up by their former foe, wouldn't it make sense that they'd team up with them in order to defeat the people they actually disagree with - those who simply do not see themselves as Chinese or their land as part of China?

Typical American: a book that isn't about Taiwan, or is it?

This wasn't meant to be my next book review. It was supposed to be Social Movements Under Ma Ying-jeou, but I finished that the day before flying out for Lunar New Year, and didn't bring it with me. Being highly academic, it's the sort of book you need to refer to as you write about it, so that'll have to wait until I return to Taiwan. 

Instead, let me tell you about a book that's not about Taiwan at all, except that I think it sorta kinda is. I brought only fiction on this trip, including a book I'd picked up secondhand years ago, but never read: Gish Jen's Typical American. Having already read its sequel, Mona in the Promised Land, some years ago, as well as several of her other works and knew her to be an engaging author, so it was a solid beach read choice. 

(Contains spoilers - for a book written in 1991, so you can just deal.)

Typical American begins in 1947 in a small town outside Shanghai, and ends in upstate New York not far from where I grew up. The son and daughter of a scholar and former government official are sent to the US under very different circumstances (because, of course, sons are so often treated better than daughters). Theresa, the cleverer of the two, accompanies the daughter of wealthy Shanghai friends, whereas Ralph is sent to graduate school for engineering. Then the Chinese Civil War takes a turn for the worse, their parents disappear, Ralph marries Theresa's companion, Helen. They meet wealthy yet ultimately deceptive Grover Ding and staid, old fashioned Old Chao. They live together, then apart, then together again. 

Taiwan isn't mentioned once (though the Nationalists are; of course the Nationalists and Taiwan are not the same things). But, in a way, it was. 

I don't know if this was Jen's intent, and it was written too long ago - 1991 - for me to feel anything but awkward about asking her. But I can't help but see an allegory well beyond "family from China finds its way in post-War America and has its own experience with the American Dream". But reading some of the language used, which could not have been unintentionally chosen, I have to wonder. 

Think of Old Chao as, well, the well-worn traditions of "ancient China" (his name basically means "Old Dynasty", or is at least a sort of homonym of it, as I don't know what the character would have been.) Now see Grover as everything corrupting about US influence (in terms of culture and family life, but also, perhaps, in terms of international relations). Theresa, a woman born "outside of her time", represents the Republic of China and the hopes leaders had for the Republican era in China. Helen is everything dainty and refined - but also resourceful and plucky - about early twentieth-century urban China (Jen all but says so explicitly on this point). I'm not sure what that makes Ralph, or Old Chao's wife Janis. But I have to say, Ralph's Chinese name - Yi-feng or "strive for the peak" - can not only represent struggling to attain the American Dream but also echoes a lot of language choices of Communist China. 

Okay, so what? Well, Ralph, Helen and Theresa live together at first somewhat peacefully. They are friendly with Old Chao, then Grover Ding throws a wrench in their lives. Theresa moves out angrily - Jen even calls it "exile". When she moves back in with Ralph and Helen - a "reunification", and calls it the hope of all Chinese people (though she doesn't entirely use those  words, "reunification" is straight from the text. This cannot be a coincidence.) At several points in the text, ideas like "once a Chang, always a Chang" and the custom of Chinese families to live together in sprawling compounds are referenced, as how difficult it is for families to splinter and then reunite. That things change and cannot go back to anything like they used to be after a "reunification" (both sides change) also whizzes by readers who lack contextual knowledge. In between, various characters get involved with, then extricated from, then re-involved with Old Chao and Grover. Ralph abuses Helen, Old Chao seemed associated with Ralph but turns out to be most closely tied to Theresa. Ralph either proclaims the house they live in is "his" - he's the "father" (you know, like Confucius) - but at one point realizes it is actually Theresa's (don't ask why; read the book). 

Do you not see it?

Maybe I'm insane, but I see it. 

I don't like it. 

Don't get me wrong, I loved the book. Read straight as a coming-to-America tale and how cultures collide when immigrants chase a foreign dream, it is engaging, thoughtful and mesmerisingly written. The prose draws you in and is elegant both in sound and how it falls on the page. Structures - houses, restaurants - serve as visual symbols for the state of the family. Old books in Chinese make an appearance, as does the game of 'bridge', a loveseat (you know, where love sits) and more. And, for fans of Chinese idioms, the moon makes several appearances in the narrative. You know, in America. A foreign moon. The moon is sometimes big and round as the idiom suggests, sometimes a sliver of a nail.

But...that other narrative, the one I might have just spun out of my own Taiwan-evangelism. 

That one? It glorifies the Nationalists (I assume Jen is aware of their treatment of Taiwan - the theft of Taiwan's wealth, the White Terror, the oppressive and murderous military dictatorship that differed from Mao's mostly in scale). If you read the symbolic elements as I did, it treats the US's severing of recognition of the ROC as a tragedy, not unlike being attacked by a dog and hit by a car. (It was a tragedy, but for reasons nobody realizes; the way Chiang Kai-shek screwed Taiwan out of United Nations membership, the way US foreign policy at the time made sense, but in the decades following did not adequately address Taiwan's democratization and more open recognition of its own unique cultural identity). 

It assumes that there are two sides in this conflict only: the Nationalists and the Communists - that Taiwan as a unique place that had a unique population long before Chiang started crowing about "retrocession" let alone before his government took the island, or he himself set foot on it - simply doesn't exist, or matter. That there is no unique Taiwanese cultural, historical and political identity distinct from China's. 

That "reunification" can not happen - because the two sides that would supposedly 'reunify' had never actually been together (Qing imperialism should not count.) It assumes that Chineseness will mean that, while there might be conflict and a future very different from the past, that these differences have some hope of being bridged. After all, they're all part of one sprawling household, aren't they?

Except they're not. For that take on things to work, both sides have to agree that they are more alike than different, that there is some ineffable "Chineseness" that ought to bind them. 

Forget what politicians have to say to avert a war. Those are words stated at first under a dictatorship, at the tail end of Martial Law, by a government the Taiwanese people had never asked for. Now, they are words not denied under threat, nothing more, though that slowly seems to be changing. Finally.

Do not think that the people of Taiwan believe this. They haven't, for awhile. If you are going to reify 'one Chinese family' as a cultural structure, then everyone in the family has to agree they are in it, and want for that family to be 'reunited'. 

But they don't. They haven't, for who knows how long (pre-democratization public opinion polls are suspect at best; remember what kind of education everyone got. It's very difficult indeed to grow beyond what one has been told all their lives. It's a miracle and a credit to Taiwan that they have done so as quickly as they have.)

In this sense I have to hope that Jen did not intend Typical American to be read this way; that I'm adding all of this in because I'm just nuts. After all, the story is not that different from Jen's parents', just as Mona in the Promised Land is clearly heavily influenced by her own formative years. It could be as simple as that. But Jen produces smart, layered work - so it's possible. If she did, it might represent a nostalgic view from a Chinese perspective, but it belies a lack of understanding of Taiwan. 

If true, this isn't terribly surprising, and isn't Jen's fault. She's not from Taiwan; she was born in the US to Chinese parents. I have not heard that she has spent any meaningful amount of time here. Why would she have insight into the Taiwanese collective psyche? What's more, Typical American was written just before Taiwan's first true - though tentative - steps towards democratization. Nobody without a connection to Taiwan was talking about Taiwanese identity then. So, it's hardly surprising that she focused on history more immediately familiar. 

So where does this land me? Hoping that a book is less deep, not more? Enjoying it for what is immediately clear on the surface, and hoping there are no weeds or sharp rocks lurking below on which my feet and her story might become entangled or scraped?

I guess it does.