HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

     Since the Chiang Dynasty was overturned and the republic established in 1912, chaos, poverty, and internal strife between warlords were rampant. Since the 1930s, the country had been torn between the capitalist pro-West faction headed by Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomingtang and the communist pro-Soviet socialist party headed by Mao Ze-dong. China crawled out of the devastation of WWII economically bankrupt and corruptly governed. Chiang's corruption and incompetence proved to be fatal and in 1949 he was defeated by Mao and moved his two million followers to Taiwan to establish what was supposed to be a temporary anti-communist bastion in preparation for a counter-attack and recovery of the mainland. Taiwan proved to be an ideal safe haven for Chiang. Japan gave it up when it surrendered to the Allied Forces without its successor named in the San Francisco and Sino-Japan Peace Treaties. Chian hid himself on this island, and international power vacuum, and smartly espoused his brand of ultra anti-communism which was music to the ears of his American ally. He used to brag that Taiwan was "Free China" when in effect Taiwan was neither free nor China. However, for three decades the U.S. supported and perpetuated Chiang's myth that he represented all of China, as if the real Chinese Communist regime didn't exist at all. The high drama started to crumble when, in 1971, his government was kicked out of the United Nations. At the time his arrogant assertion that he, the legal government, who not co-exist with a bandit rebel regime cost Taiwan its only chance so far to be represented in the UN as a legal entity of Taiwan (which it is, not China), which would have been possible to arrange with the U.S. influence then. Taiwan lost its substantive international status in 1979 when the U.S. finally recognized Beijing as the government of China and served its official relations with Taiwan. Taiwan's ruling party still steadfastly refused to come to grips with the fact that it was no long "China" in name and in fact, and that it should settle down to what it was and still is-"Taiwan"-to be accepted in the international society. Instead, it clung to the marshal law which was imposed in 1948 and continued to suppress civil liberties. Taiwan has, over time, become and obscure legal entity with only some 20 countries having diplomatic relationships with it, while all along remaining in isolation from China. It persisted while Taiwan underwent its many glorious phases of economic development between the 1960s and 1980s.