I was what TuringPolice described as “the guy [finding out] Rojava is bad in 2017” but by 5 months into my post-Obama era I started reading about the fascist international + litany of US war crimes including Taiwan’s fascism. Big sandtrap that stood in the way of Marxism-Leninism for me was critical American history people that project the dynamics of the US on the world stage or its internal politics onto other countries as if they are universal. It does give you this sense of seeing behind the veil which can be self-defeating. Same people would never have predicted Mossad would fail in Iran like this.
When I decided to learn the communist version of Chinese history, I had heard of ‘the white terror’ period in passing and anecdotes about people visiting Taiwanese beaches on holiday and finding human skulls on the beach, never put two and two together till I learned about the KMT’s allignshipment with Nazi Germany or incidents in the 70-80s where the Taiwan military committed atrocities against civilians.
I first learned that Taiwan as a political entity was formed when the KMT had retreated there.
It wasn’t until later until I learned that the KMT were essentially Chinese Nazis, and I put two and two together.
They were more like the Chinese confederates but the confederates also inspired the Nazis. So fairplay.
I don’t really know. Even when I was still USian progressive, it’s not like most issues suddenly slapped me in the face (although some certainly did and do). It’s more like things just eventually seep into conscious awareness, kind of like waking up from general anesthesia.
Honestly I didn’t know shit about piss as far as the world was concerned until I started actually learning about socialist and communist history in general. The American education system is truly fucked. We don’t know shit over here. Many just think that Taiwan, was always Taiwan (as in a country on its own) and China just one day decided they wanted it.
Just a few months ago, maybe a year or so. While I can’t assure the full blame on the GMD (Guomindang), since settlement started in 1600s, I think I can attribute significant blame for their actions there post-1949.
And to think the Greens, the imperial Japanese-influenced DPP, are now rivaling them, the GMD, who are now pro-reunification, even if on CPC’s terms.
I know there are 3 types of demographics there, the more historical benshengren, Chinese before 1949, that lived under Japanese empire, the more recent waishengren, GMD remnants, and the yuanzhumin, the indigenous people that are related to those in the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia etc.
After realizing the history of the past century I’ve been taught in school was incomplete at best and a malicious falsification at worst and the Soviet Union wasn’t a looney tunes cartoon dictatorship that oppressed everyone around them because they were evil and cruel. Eventually decided to look up the actual history of Taiwan because libs kept libbing about it and I was getting the suspicion it wasn’t just a random smol bean island minding its own business that the evil CCP is oppressing for no reason. Turned out it was a government in exile ruling through martial law and murdering dissenters.
It was still called Formosa, when a “college kid” clued high school aged me in on Mao and his battle against the nationalists and Dulles brothers.
Just now.
I read about the KMT under Chiang Kai-Shek escaping from the mainland, stealing the whole Treasury, and fleeing there after they were overwhelmingly crushed by the Communist Revolution. I knew the Nationalists were fascists, raging pro-capitalists, and even in their own business affairs, were corrupt and unprincipled beyond belief. Explains why they lost. The Communists had a tremendous period of study for years following the survival of the Red Armies after the year-long Long March. No doubt, the strong reinforcement to their knowledge base coupled with their revolutionary experiences up to that point were tremendous in guiding the Communists to creating a strong, flexible program and plan to defeat the Nationalists moving forward. I don’t know much of the specifics of fascist rule within Taiwan, but I can’t imagine it being a good period, especially under the despotism of Chiang Kai-Shek and the KMT.
I never paid any attention to them in the first place tbh, apart from semi conductors they seemed completely irrelevant to me
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It was ruled by Japan for 50 years, they had a project to eradicate and replace local Taiwanese culture with Japanese culture. They imported around half a million Japanese settlers to set up their own little apartheid villages during this era.
AAAAAH, I get it now, thank you.
When you say local Taiwanese culture… that word didn’t exist back then. It’s a recently coined word.
Are you referring to the Japanese eradicating the local Han culture on the province of Taiwan?
Or are you referring to the indigenous peoples of the island chain (referred to as the Formosans during the time of Japanese occupation)?
No, you’re right, I mean Japan’s goal was to eradicate the culture of the population already living on the island.
So the Han, predominantly.
So there’s still the issue of the Han displacing the indigenous peoples of the island chain. I am not as familiar with that process. I don’t believe it was similar to European settler colonialism, given what I know about Chinese political history and their long commitment to peaceful coexistence. But it’s something that ultimately needs to be processed by the Chinese and the indigenous peoples there.
Yeah, here’s the difference between how the Communists handled the multiculturalism vs how the nationalis did. The nationalists massacred the indigenous population of Taiwan while the Communists integrated the the 56 ethnic groups on the mainland.
I assume by “the nationalists” you mean the KMT, but the large migration of the Han to the island happened in the 1600s.
And doing a little more research (thanks for the impetus) it looks like that migration was a process that was initially driven by the Dutch East India Company.
Then it was driven by occupying it with Chinese military to keep the Dutch out.
But that process never stopped and Han settlers became dominant over the next century.
Then the Japanese imperialized. Then the KMT terrorized it.
But the original indigenous people still live there and the national question will likely arise at some point after reintegration.
