Hi everyone, i'm Jacopo, Simone's friend, the guy who made the previous videos.
I'm behind the editing and scripting of some of them, for example the one about Colombia.
The idea behind this project is to alternate our voices so in the future you will often hear
my broken English. But let's start.Our story begins on April 17, 1895. Before this date,
Taiwan had never been under total domination of a single power. For the sake of briefness,
we’ll start off with the end of the nineteenth century. With the treaty of shimonoseki in 1895,
at the end of the first Sino-Japanese war, Formosa (as Taiwan was called) and the Penghu islands were
given in concession to Japan. Japan was very interested in these islands, as he wanted to
affirm its position as a colonizing country. So, in reaction to what many saw as a betrayal by
China, some nobles loyal to the Ching Dynasty set up the so-called Republic of Taiwan, to resist,
without success, to the new rulers. This episode will provide one of the arguments used by the
current independentists against the prospect of a new unification with mainland China. However,
with the advent of the Land of the Rising Sun any connection with China was interrupted to make room
for the new demands and political objectives of the emperor. The new occupants presented
themselves as the benefactors who would raise the cultural level of a Taiwan that according to them
was in urgent need of reform. In a few decades Japanese rule was instrumental in making Taiwan
a modern colony in every aspect. And on this today most Taiwanese agree: Japanese imperialism is no
longer seen as a dark parenthesis to be forgotten but a fundamental stage in the country's progress,
which gave it a separate status from both the expanding Japanese empire and mainland China.
In fact, infrastructures were improved, public hospitals were built, the first paved roads,
bridges, big power plants and even a railway line. It was an all-round modernization which
also interested the rural economy, with the birth of the first chemical industries to refine sugar
cane into sweetener and facilitate the export on the Japanese market. After the Second World War,
the defeat of Japan meant that Taiwan, as a result of the Cairo Declaration of November 1943,
returned under Chinese sovereignty and precisely under the control of the Republic of China,
which was none other than the Kuomintang Nationalist Party (KMT), led by Chiang Jieshi,
who was appointed as trustee of the island on behalf of the allied powers. The Nationalists
immediately sought tight control over the economic and political life of the island,
due to fear of Japanese influence, of the pressures of reconstruction, and of the civil war
on the mainland that opposed them to the Communist led by Mao Zedong. The central government relied
on a provincial administration composed almost exclusively of mainland personnel, while the
Taiwanese tried to keep their autonomy with a self-government, a sort of compromise between
formal independence and complete submission. From late 1945 to mid-1946, the nationalists
increased tensions between the provincial administration and the local population.
To many, China appeared chaotic and backward, as a potential drain on the island's resources and a
threat to its stability, positioning itself in the eyes of residents as a new but less
competent colonial ruler. Reintegration to Mainland China meant recolonization,
something the Taiwanese wanted to avoid at all costs. In early 1947, tensions between state
and society exploded in what became known as the February 28 incident, triggered by the escape of
a cigarette smuggler that caused police officers, who were in hot pursuit, to fire shots to break
through the crowd. Protests in the following days would allow the Taiwanese to quickly wrest
control of the island from an ill-prepared provincial administration. But not for long!
Because after just one week, a military contingent sent from the mainland crushed all opposition
and massacred thousands of inhabitants. From that moment began the long period of the so-called
white terror (which lasted 38 years), during which the Kmt tried to suppress even in blood any form
of political dissent, arriving to imprison and execute thousands of Taiwanese. In December 1949,
at the end of the Chinese Civil War, what was left of the defeated Nationalist Party
retreated to Taiwan, thanks to US intervention that prevented Communist from winning the race.
Everything seemed to be turning for the worst, but the government was able to promote a development
that today is known as the "Taiwanese miracle". Between 1960 and 1970, thanks to measures such as
rent reduction, expansion of education, land reform, the introduction of a stock market and
banks that encouraged foreign investments in Taiwanese companies, the value of imports and
exports increased dramatically and the average annual growth in gross national product
registered a 9.7 percent , with a per capita gdp growth rate of 6.6 percent. Unlike the dark
period of the 1950s, when income distribution in Taiwan was much like that of Mexico or Brazil,
characterized by a wide gap between the poorest and richest citizens, by 1970 Taiwan's income
distribution was among the most equitable in the world, better even than that of the United States.
It’s not surprising that foreign countries found in Taiwan a valuable resource:
a skilled, well-educated and highly motivated workforce who saw in these measures a unique
opportunity to give a better life to their line of succession. With this in mind, the authoritarian
regime had little to fear that at some point the residents would revolt, and on the off chance that
this would happen, law enforcement would promptly be used to suppress any dissent. This situation
of unconscious submission, let's call it that, would only taper off from the 1980s onwards,
when the middle class, which had grown thanks to economic development, began to exert more and more
pressure on the state for a democratic reform. In fact, the big problem was that only a minority of
the population participated in political life, precisely 15%, corresponding to the military
and civilian elite who came from mainland China together with Chiang, and established themselves
at the top of all aspects of society, again confining the locals to a secondary status.
If we step back a few years, we realize that stability had begun to falter in 1971 when the
Republic of China lost its seat at the United Nations to the People's Republic of China
and so most states recognized the latter as the sole legitimate representative of all of China.
And this, making a big leap into the present day, brings us to the heated dispute between
Taiwan and mainland China. The fundamental question here is whether Taiwan, the Penghu,
Shinmen and Mazu islands should remain part of the territory of the autonomous Republic of China
or be unified with the territories now ruled by the People's Republic of China. It all depends
on the answer to the following question: is it legitimate to recognize the Republic of China as
a sovereign state? You need to know that Taiwan is strongly penalized on an international level:
we are dealing with a de facto state that is not recognized as independent neither by the PRC nor
by the other permanent members of the UN Security Council and that on paper maintains diplomatic
relations with the only 14 states that recognize it. Beijing, for its part, considers it a Chinese
province temporarily out of its control, the result of the dynamics of the Cold War, when the
United States prevented Mao from annihilating the nationalists, a fact that allowed them to migrate
to the island and keep the Republic of China alive. In order to stabilize relations between
the two sides of the strait without renouncing the reunification of the Chinese territory,
Beijing has imposed adherence to the principle of the existence of a single China (the so-called one
China policy). In practice, any state wishing to establish or maintain relations with the PRC
must recognize China with Beijing as the only existing China and therefore deny sovereignty
to Taiwan and not have official diplomatic relations with it. Adhering to this request,
the vast majority of countries, including the EU member states, maintain very close but unofficial
relations with Taiwan and therefore in many cases cannot offer Taiwanese institutions or businessmen
the same conditions normally applied to others. On the opposìte front, Taipei authorities
claim instead to represent a fully sovereign government; mind you, however that since 1949,
when the Constitution of the Republic of China came into force, Formosa adhered to the "One
China principle", claiming sovereignty over the territory now governed by the People's
Republic of China along with Outer Mongolia. But in 1991, after a series of revisions,
the Kuomintang reduced its claims, recognizing that its powers were limited only to the areas
under its control. A further rapprochement with the political trajectory of the PRC
was then the adherence to the so-called "1992 Consensus", whereby Beijing and Taipei agreed
that there was only one China but agreed to have different interpretations of what said China was,
whether the PRC or the Republic of China. More recently, the fear that Taiwan could fall into
Beijing's orbit has triggered a mobilization of Taiwan's civil society, starting with the
more than 3 million young citizens between the ages of 15 and 25. See experiences such as the
"Sunflower Movement," which in March 2014 marched over five hundred thousand people
leading to the occupation of Parliament and, briefly, the seat of government. This is the
result of widespread discontent arising from some important phenomena such as: social inequities,
rising unemployment, difficulty in finding a suitable job after studies and especially
the ecological degradation that plagues several areas of the island. Regarding this last aspect,
of crucial importance for environmentalists were the terrible earthquake of 2011 in Japan
and the subsequent tsunami that caused the accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant.
Events to which Taiwanese public opinion and media have given great prominence, given that the island
of Formosa is also located in a highly seismic zone and has at least 4 nuclear plants, 3 of which
are located in the municipal area of the capital Taipei. In any case, disrupting the status quo in
terms of foreign policy has been the rise of the Democratic Progressive Party led since 2016 by the
first female president Sai Ying-Wèn. Her approach and willingness to reshape the 1992 Consensus
were seen by Beijing as favorable to a process of independence and generated an immediate reaction,
as in 2017 the southern Chinese border hosted at least 1,500 missiles aimed at the island.
However, Taiwan has those who protect it. With the signing of the Taiwan Relation Act
in 1979, in fact, Washington committed to defend the sovereignty of the island,
providing constant military supplies that would act as a deterrent for a possible clash. This
is because the US has always considered Formosa a fundamental strategic junction in the South
China Sea. But how is it possible that the United States has official relations with both Beijing
and Taipei? Didn't we say that one excludes the other? Well, yes in theory, but in practice this
is possible thanks to a series of interpretative devices of the agreement with which the Americans
have established diplomatic relations with the PRC back in 1979. In fact, the PRC continues to
believe that by adhering to that document the Americans have also implicitly accepted the PRC
as China alone. But Washington doesn’t think so, since it has never expressly followed this
interpretation. However, the U.S. have managed to not disappoint neither Mainland China nor Taiwan:
on the one hand they have never expressly supported Taiwanese independence aspirations,
meeting the favor of Beijing and on the other hand they have continued to pursue their policy
of deterrence, maintaining close cooperation with Taipei. The prospect of a conflict in the Strait
is not ruled out. Although not very convenient for both actors, given the huge volume of trade
between the Taiwanese industries in Chinese territory, but if this were to happen, the fate
of Taiwan would be quite predictable, assuming there is no interference from outside. Let’s put
it in this way: in 2017 Chinese military spending was about $145 billion and active troops amounted
to more than eight hundred thousands, compared to only one hundred thirty thousand Taiwanese.
Not to mention that Taiwan's air force doesn't seem to be able to compete with China's new
Chengdu J-20 stealth fighters. The navy, on the other hand, is the real flagship of the
Taiwanese army, but it has constant difficulty in modernizing its technologies for certain sectors,
due to the blockades that Beijing imposes on military companies. In 2021, for the Chinese
Communist Party Centenary, Beijing has again put pressure on Taipei, with at least 600 air raids,
of which 150 in the first week of October alone. Saying that the invasion is imminent,
is too difficult to predict. According to the words of the Taiwanese defense minister,
Beijing would have the capabilities to annex the island by 2025, but not to undermine the sector
of essential goods called semiconductors, of which Taiwan is one of the largest producers. For such
reason, China may think twice before excluding the diplomatic route. And we're done today.
I hope I gave you a clear idea of Taiwan’s recent history, that’s what mattered. We'll definitely be
hearing about Taiwan again and again in the coming months. See you in the next video. Bye!