The KMT government’s “purification” through the Chinese nationalist party government and the bureaucratic system’s structure and party government and the bureaucratic system’s structure and

integration

Chart of the Bureaucratic System during the Second Turnover and the Population Proportion

During the Japanese colonial period, in 1935, the system was amended to the Taiwan Self-Autonomous System, with the Taiwanese prefectural assembly, city council, and neighborhood street associations having half their representatives elected by the people. Although there were also provisions for elected legislative representation on the

249 “Waisheng” ethnic group refers to a comparative notion regarding local ethnic groups in Taiwan. In common parlance, this is often abbreviated to “mainlander” and “Taiwan native”. This is in context of the KMT’s move to Taiwan, although there have been other migrations to Taiwan before. This generates a relation of “Other”

and exclusion. For more information, one can see Stéphane Corcuff, Feng he ri nuan: Taiwan wai xing ren yu guojia rentong de zhuanbian, Asian Culture Publishing, 2004.

Much research has used “waisheng ethnic group” and “bensheng ethnic group” or “waishengren” and

“benshengren” as its descriptive terms. But this can be deceiving, because the view of “Taiwan province” was only promoted after the KMT came to Taiwan. The idea that Taiwan was and always was part of the Republic of China is a historical error, because Taiwan had been ceded to the Japanese before the founding of the Republic of China. Likewise, using “benshengren” to describe Han Taiwanese neglects and excludes the existence of indigenous and non-Han groups, such as the Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, and Japanese.

Japanese,

took place was approximately eight years

Japanese soldiers typically did not stay in Taiwan long-term after entering, and were sent to the Japanese mainland or other locations according to orders.

Under the KMT, soldiers became necessary, “Japanese” were not allowed to stay, but there was counter-attack in the second year, eliminating the Communists by the third year, victory by the fifth year” was the slogan that the KMT government clung to when they retreated to Taiwan. Like Meiji during the Japanese colonial period, both

250 George Watson Barclay, Colonial Development and Population in Taiwan (Princeton University Press, 1954). p.

13.

251 Ou Su-ying, “"Zhan hou chuqi zai tai ri ren zhi qianfan yu liuyong: Jian lun taiwan gaodeng jiaoyu de fuyuan,"

Taiwan Historica 61, No. 3 (2010): 287-329.

252 Lin Tong-fa, 1949 da chetui (Linking Books, 2009), p. 323.

253 Lin Tong-fa, Chapter 13.

254 What is meant by this is that there were no specifications regarding whether Taiwanese would or would not choose have to their nationality. This leads one to question how many Taiwanese chose to retain their Japanese citizenship, why they did this, and what the social implications were. There is a lack of primary sources and research regarding this.

thought of Taiwan as a source of resources to exploit, without long-term planning. However, because of historical reasons, the KMT’s policy planning and administration of Taiwan was chaotic, with the belief that after a few years, they would be able to return to China.

Information: Organized by the author

When the KMT came to Taiwan in 1948, they brought with them the backbone of the KMT government, what we might refer to as the civil government (

國民政府

) or the Chinese Nationalist government (

國 民黨 政 府

). This small but obvious ignorance shows deliberate manipulation in historical memory. Here is also another example of this kind of “mistake”. KMT means Kuomintang ^(國民黨) and the official name is actually “Chinese Nationalist Party (

中 國 國 民 黨

)”. The shortening name of KMT might not to call it the “Chinese Nationalist Party” but simply the “China Party.” "Chinese Nationalist government" should not be simplified to "civil government", otherwise it will not be able to highlight the fundamental difference between the two in the process of moving to Taiwan²⁵⁵. Analyzing this social background, there were differences in these two systems of government, however: In even the Nationalist government in 1923, there were some who were not members of the KMT political party, and there were members of the Chinese Communist Party who participated in the Nationalist government.²⁵⁶ But by the time the KMT retreated to Taiwan, only members of the Chinese Nationalist Party were left. The Chinese Nationalist government should not be reduced to the KMT, otherwise this neglects the fundamental difference between the two.²⁵⁷

For example, among the 759 Legislative Yuan members, only around 380 came to Taiwan with the KMT. One could say that the Nationalist government became the KMT party government, as a form of political purification, because of its conflict with the CCP. In the process of retreating to Taiwan, the KMT only brought party members or individuals with a sufficient amount of social prestige. This led the government to become monopolized by KMT party members. Soldiers were another large group that came to Taiwan. Consequently, when the KMT came to Taiwan, a military government constituted the primary political structure of the

255 In order to strive for the accuracy of the historical facts, the government system that was in power in China before 1949 is called the "Civil Government", the “Chinese Nationalist Government” or “KMT Government”

from 1949 to 1987, and the "Republic of China (Taiwan)" Government" or "Taiwan Government" or

“Government” after 1987..

256 In 1923, the Chinese Communist Party agreed that members could, as individuals, join the Chinese Nationalist Party to take on party responsibilities and political responsibilities. But both struggled for control over the nationalist government and the KMT continually attempted to purge Chinese Communist Party members

257 This is for the sake of historical accuracy. In this dissertation, the Chinese government will be referred to as the

"national government" for periods before 1949. From 1949 to 1987, it will be referred to as the Nationalist government. After 1987, it will be referred to as the Republic of China (Taiwan).

government, and bureaucratic staff administered from the standpoint of military affairs rather than civilian government in planning long-term policies. Clinging to the aim of reclaiming the Chinese mainland, Taiwan was seen merely as a temporary relay point, and so plundering Taiwan of its resources was the basis of policy.

This only led to a halt in the modernization that had begun during the Japanese colonial period, even leading to the 228 Incident in 1947.²⁵⁸ The middle class which had previously constituted the social base for modernization were replaced with ethnic waishengen who had come from China, leading to a new process in which Taiwanese society confronted the social relations of the “ruler” and “ruled.”

This led to a qualitative change in the original social embeddedness which had existed previously, with new processes of exclusion and integration. The organizational activity of new strategic groups, and at the same time new social factors and organizational behaviors were embedded in these conflictive groups at their same time.

The formal date on which the KMT government entered Taiwan was on December 29^th 1948,²⁵⁹ and from December 28th of the following year, the Chinese Communist Party controlled the whole of China. Within just this short one year, twice the number of people who had moved into Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period moved into Taiwan, and with the new troops that moved in, the difference between short-term garrison and permanent stay were apparent. From this point of view, “colonization” or “immigration” both cannot fully describe this relation of social embeddedness, but the notion of “parasitism” from biology may be more appropriate.

Chart 4.2. : Comparison of colonization, immigration, and parasitism

Mode Colonization Immigration Parasitism

Group

258 The 228 Incident began on February 27th 1947 and lasted until May 16th of that year. The event broke out after Tobacco Monopoly Bureau inspectors confiscated cigarettes in an incident which led to the outbreak of conflict, leading to uprisings against the government across Taiwan. Apart from conflict between Taiwanese natives and the waisheng administrative powers, different waisheng political and economic interests also came into conflict.

The 228 Incident led to much bloodshed, but opinions differ on how many were killed, with some counts as low as one hundred, and some as much as tens of thousands.

259 On December 29th, 1948, the Executive Yuan during its 32nd government affairs meeting, agreed to name Chen Cheng as governor of Taiwan province. On December 30th, the KMT Central Standing Committee named Chiang Ching-kuo as director of the Taiwan provincial party office

people begin to move University Law Journal 29, no. 3 (April 2000): 43-88; Shigeri Oda, “Zhuquan duli guojia de 'taiwan' - 'taiwan' zai guojifa shang di diwei,” Taiwan International Law Quarterly 4, no. 2 (June 2007): 293-322; Lee Ming-jun, “Yi taiwan mingyi shengqing ru lian de guojifa wenti,” Taiwan International Law Quarterly 4, no. 3 (September 2007): 135-66; Yu Xian-deng, “taiwan wenti jiejue de guojifa sikao―jian lun ‘fan fenlie guojia fa’ de guojifa yiju,”

Journal of Shantou University, Humanity and Social Sciences Edition 23, no. 5 (October 2007): 58-63.

to the mother

Historically speaking, if colonization is primarily for the sake of economic reasons, and this leads the government to violent measures, most results are not successful.

After defeat, the colonizer usually returns to their mother country. Yet with the entrance of a new population into Taiwan in the 1940s, these were people who did not have anywhere to return to, leading to mutually interactive relations between those who entered Taiwan and those who were displaced. Those who entered had to be more careful, for fear of provoking an immune system response, and so they had to tread a delicate path.

Consequently, with regards to a parasitic form of migration, for those who enter, this has to occur with large numbers of people moving in at a quick pace and requiring settlement. Likewise, they seize the resources of those who are displaced, pushing society to a limit. The largest limitations are with regards to whether they control society, whether they can maximize social production, or whether they can achieve equality with those displaced. Another way of putting it is that with the maximization of productive capacities of those displaced, this will not lead to protest, or settlers falling into ruin.

But for those who newly entered into a society, why would their movement into society led to opposition to new immigrants in the form of protest actions? In examining, the Taiwanese example, the KMT government as well as the waisheng ethnic group that came with them, on the one hand, used the historical opportunity of the military defeat of the Japanese government, which at the level of administration left a political vacuum.

In this way, Taiwanese natives did not have the time to expand their political participation. The upper stratum of society once inhabited by the Japanese was rapidly taken over by KMT government, preserving the hierarchy present in the political system. However, the largest difference in terms of this colonial movement is that, even if the ruling stratum of society were the large numbers of waisheng ethnic group members who had immigrated to Taiwan, society also had

to accommodate the newcomers as “part of the same culture and race” while also accommodating the superior social position allotted to this group. Which is to say, for the whole, structurally, with regards to politics, economics, culture, and other aspects, a process of internalized mutual recognition had to take place in a short period of time, but this response was too slow and this resulted in a system of control.

As such, in order to describe this process, we might say it is much like the life process of a viscum album: it is first born in another organism, begins to hang on the outside of the host, and begins to grow and expand in a perpendicular fashion, penetrating into the host to extract resources and stabilize its parasitic system.

The host may resist, such as stiffening its outer surface.²⁶¹ But if the amount of parasitic organism present is enough for control, the mistletoe can reside a long period of time in the host organism, and even comes to become permanently bound to the host organism. In this parasitic process, mistletoe links with its host, with the two absorbing moisture together, leading to symbiosis.

But to achieve this process of shared existence, the migrant (or the parasite), must have strategic aims including expanding of area of the host occupied, and breaking off any means of survival for the host not directly bound to the parasite.

Consequently, the parasite needs to urgently expand its control of the host. The host and parasite have different strategic considerations, but if the parasitic process is successful, this establishes a long-term shared existence.

4.1.2. Economics as a demonstrator of the outlook of social embeddedness In examining the shifts in the economy during the period, the most drastic shift one immediately sees in Taiwan was the defeat of Japan in 1945, with exports as a percentage of GDP dropping to zero. It was not until 1972 that Taiwan reached the levels of economic productivity which existed during the Japanese colonial period.

Figure 4.1. : Exports as a percentage of GDP

261 Corkification involves the hardening of a plant’s cell walls, in order to prevent exchange of oxygen and water, to isolate the surroundings of a cell to starve and kill them. This a reactive measure by a plant for self-protection.

Corkification is common when plants are used as hosts or sprayed with a high concentration of chemicals.

Source: Wu Cong-min, 2003.²⁶²

The accepted view is that as a colony of Japan, Taiwan’s main products under the Japanese were a source of industrial raw materials and foodstuffs, and that exports were primarily to Japan. Japan was the destination for 55.10% of exports from 1897 to 1913, which grew to 91.38% by 1930 to 1942.²⁶³ After the defeat of Japan in World War II, it was hard to preserve trade routes between Taiwan and Japan, and it also proved hard for Japan to maintain commercial production, leading there to be no place for Taiwanese products to go.

Secondly, after the KMT government came to Taiwan, it faced bankruptcy.

According to recently declassified documents in Academia Historica, 244 million gold and foreign currencies were sent from China to Taiwan in1949²⁶⁴, but within only 370,000 of that gold was left.²⁶⁵ The largest expenditures which led to these funds being used up were military expenditures, constituting 73% of spending.²⁶⁶ Apart from that, from December 1949 to June 1951, according to the Business Expenses Report of the Central Bank of the Republic of China, the KMT Central Office paid out the remaining 8,800,000, constituting more than half of the 17 million the Central Bank paid out.²⁶⁷ The reason for these enormous troop and party expenditures was because the economic and financial system had no way to produce capital, and because waisheng capitalists and bensheng Taiwanese petit bourgeoisie did not see the military and KMT political leaders born in China as

262 Wu Congmin, 'Taiwan jingji fazhan shi" (October 5, 2001).

263 Chen Tsu-yu, "Ri ju shiqi chukou pin de liutong jizhi", Xin ya xue bao 31, (December 2013): 395+397-444

264 Liu Kung-yung, ''Cheng jiang zhongzheng hecha jiaohuan zhongyang yinhang kucun jinyin yin wai waibi mingxi biao ji jinyin waihui waibi zhehe meijin deng biaodan', (Academia Historica, July 8, 1949)，P. 10.

265 Yu Hungchun, "Cheng jiang zhongzheng shi yuefen zhongyang yinhang kucun huangjin ji jingli waihui shou zhi qingxing ji taiwan yinhang fa hang zhunbei ji huangjin chuxu ge qingxing", (Academia Historica, November 11, 1950), p. 1.

266 Yen Chia-kan, "Cheng jiang zhongzheng sanshijiu nian yizhi shi yuefen guoku shou zhi zongshu ji ge bi lei ge kenmuu shou zhi xiang shu qingxing," (Academia Historica, November 13), p. 4.

267 Ibid., p. 33

having the ability to resolve Taiwan’s economic problems. Instead, they took advantage of the differences in exchange rates as a product of economic crisis, with a large amount of property converted and remitted to other countries in the face of the Central Bank’s large-scale need for gold.

Consequently, the Minister of Finance at the time and the Central Bank chairman, Yu Hung-jun, recommended several economic reforms for both the economic and financial sectors. First, he recommended the reform of financial measures, and second, boosting economic production, as a means of resolving the financial affairs crisis faced by the KMT, according to recently declassified government reports.

In addition to his financial reports on the Central Bank and the government treasury, in his private actuarial report to Chiang Kai-shek, he emphasized in the report and in letters the importance of economic productivity; otherwise this would lead to overreliance on the Central Bank and Ministry of Finance and it would not be possible to resolve the fundamental economic issues facing the nation. However, this was actually the responsibility of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and not the Ministry of Finance. For example: In “Understanding the cause of financial gold outflows, facilitating smooth import-export exchange, abolish the draft foreign exchange visa system for imported goods, supplementary principle of the financial foreign exchange policy”, outside of explaining the causes for financial issues, and coming up with guidelines to address them, one sentence in particular about Taiwan’s economic productivity is significant.

“The public sector of Taiwan province’s economic system is of great importance.

Besides what is publicly run, though providing for the people, the majority of profit-seeking enterprises are not sufficient to supply the national treasury. A good foundation was built when Taiwan province was administered by the Japanese. Apart from the railroads, there is no way to achieve this goal. This is a large gap in financial affairs and the provincial government and the economic department should be instructed to complete the rectification within a time limit.”²⁶⁸

Among declassified documents, this is the earliest record of public enterprises in official documents. This paragraph succinctly describes Taiwan’s economic circumstances up to the present, and also points to the greatest split in Taiwan’s labor force. The subsequent points are of great importance

1. During the Japanese colonial period, the public sector was planned and was diversified with regards to different sectors. It already held a central role in Taiwan’s economy. But under the KMT, apart from running the railroads, it did not operate at its former economic productiveness.

2. The entrance of Chinese refugees into Taiwan also was a burden and was not able to stimulate the economy.

268 Yu Hungchun, "Caizheng jinrong huangjin wailiu yuanyin yu bujiu zhi dao yu changtong jin chukou maoyi feizhi jinkou huowu zi bei waihui qianzheng zhidu ji jinrong waihui fangzhen buchong yuanze caoan", (Academia Historica, May 25, 1950), p. 8.

3. If publicly run industries were not directly related to the lives of the people, they were run for the sake of profit, and could be used to bolster the government treasury.

With regards to these three points, up until now, Taiwan continues to have a great deal of state-owned, public sector enterprises, which were originally run by the KMT after they were taken over from the Japanese colonial government. With the public sector deeply bound up with the party, to some extent this helped alleviate the financial crisis facing the KMT government. But from the standpoint of social

With regards to these three points, up until now, Taiwan continues to have a great deal of state-owned, public sector enterprises, which were originally run by the KMT after they were taken over from the Japanese colonial government. With the public sector deeply bound up with the party, to some extent this helped alleviate the financial crisis facing the KMT government. But from the standpoint of social

Im Dokument The Political Participation of Taiwan's Labor: Public Perception and Legitimation (Seite 136-152)