Pod Insights If You're Listening Taiwan’s 100 year fight for freedom About this episode For decades, Taiwan has existed in political limbo: claimed by China, governed separately, and shaped by a history far more complicated than most people realise.
After the Second World War, Taiwan was handed back from Japan to China just as the mainland descended into civil war. Mao Zedong’s Communists eventually defeated Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists, who fled to Taiwan and rebuilt the Republic of China government there. Taiwan was marketed internationally as “Free China” but on the ground, it was a different story. Taiwanese people were subject to nearly 40 years of martial law: censorship, political persecution, arrests, and violent crackdowns on dissent. Eventually the people started to push back.
Today, Beijing considers Taiwan a breakaway province. But in Taiwan, a growing number of people see themselves as something entirely separate: not Chinese, but Taiwanese.
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0:07 Speaker 01 At a rural picnic spot in the dark, a young man suddenly disappears.
0:11 Speaker 02 You could nearly say an alien took him away because he's just vanished.
0:15 Speaker 01 When more clues from that night surface, something doesn't sit right.
0:19 Speaker 03 It's nonsensical where the stuff is. It's been scattered.
0:22 Speaker 01 I'm Rob Bergen. Join me as I investigate what became of Jack in the new season of Unravel. Is it a murder? Is it someone just gone missing?
0:30 Speaker 03 You know where my son is.
0:32 Speaker 01 Search for the Unravel podcast on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast was produced on the lands of the Uwabakal and Gadigal people. So, we have a bit of a problem. Nobody can agree on what Taiwan actually is.
0:48 Speaker 04 Taiwan is a cork in a bottle. A country that isn't a country. Well, then again, maybe it is.
0:52 Speaker 01 It's an international pressure point.
0:54 Speaker 05 Taiwan is Taiwan and China is China. There is only one China, Taiwan being part of China.
1:01 Speaker 01 Obviously, it's complicated. The short, simplified version we usually tell goes like this. More than 100 years ago, the ancient Chinese Empire was overthrown in a revolution. What followed was a decades-long civil war where the communists under Mao Zedong and the nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek fought over who would control the New Republic of China.
1:26 Speaker 06 On both sides, the war is fought savagely, without quarter. Millions have been displaced or died.
1:32 Speaker 01 That civil war was put on hold when the Japanese Empire invaded China in the 1930s. Mao and Chiang joined forces to fight the Japanese in World War II. When World War II ended, the civil war resumed. Mao won, and Chiang Kai-shek's nationalists fled to the island of Taiwan.
1:53 Speaker 05 Chiang arrived in Taiwan with about 2 million troops, politicians and assorted refugees.
2:00 Speaker 05 They proceeded to impose their rule on Taiwan, which had just been freed after 50 years as a Japanese colony.
2:06 Speaker 01 That was in 1949, and it's at this point that the civil war froze in place. Both sides, the communists and the nationalists, claimed all of China, including Taiwan, as their territory. Neither will agree to surrender the territory they control to the other side. And this is where it gets complicated. Mainland Chinese people say that they live in the People's Republic of China and that Taiwan is one of their provinces. The Taiwanese government officially calls their country the Republic of China, and Taiwanese people say... Taiwan is Taiwan and China is China.
2:47 Speaker 01 It helps to think about it this way. Taiwan, aka the Republic of China, is kind of David facing the authoritarian communist Goliath of Xi Jinping's People's Republic of China.
3:01 Speaker 01 This is the version of the story that we have told before when we were talking about Xi Jinping's hopes of reunification or Taiwan's world-leading semiconductor industry. The thing that we and most rapid-fire summarisers of a century-long civil war miss is that the story is actually far more bizarre and complicated than it seems.
3:31 Speaker 01 The inexplicable, improbable, unique geopolitical entity of modern Taiwan exists thanks in part to an American magazine magnate, a truly unusual and unique woman, an incredible propaganda campaign, high housing prices and a horrific massacre. Over the next couple of weeks, as Taiwan continues to find itself as...
3:56 Speaker 05 ...an international pressure point.
3:57 Speaker 01 I'm going to tell you this story with as much nuance and complexity as we can jam into two episodes. I hope you'll stick around because it's a wild, wild ride. I'm Matt Benham and this is If You're Listening.
4:16 Speaker 01 What do you know about Time Magazine?
4:19 Speaker 03 More than 29 million people all over the world turn to Time's lively pages each week to catch up on what's new.
4:26 Speaker 01 You know, that thing that we all used to read on long train trips and in doctors' surgeries before we got smartphones?
4:32 Speaker 03 With writing so fresh and pictures so colourful, you enjoy every minute and start looking forward to the next issue.
4:43 Speaker 01 Well, it was founded by a guy named Henry Luce, who, according to his biographer Alan Brinkley, was in most ways exactly the kind of guy that you would expect him to be.
4:55 Speaker 05 He was the product of elite boarding schools. He was a skull and bones man at Yale. He was an ardent Republican through most of his life. He was one of the wealthiest men in America and lived accordingly.
5:07 Speaker 01 But before all of that, Henry Luce's early life was extremely not what you'd expect. He spent his childhood in China, back when China still had an emperor.
5:20 Speaker 05 He was the son of a Presbyterian missionary in China, and much of his life was shaped by the culture of the missionary world that he grew up in.
5:30 Speaker 01 So in the 1930s, the most powerful media mogul in America was looking at the world through an unexpected lens, that of the son of a Christian missionary in China. Picture yourself in that position. Now, picture how you'd react when you hear that the generalissimo of the Chinese army and de facto leader of the nationalist government there had married a Christian, American-educated woman named Song Mei Ling, and then himself converted to Christianity. I bring to you, the American people, the greetings of French.
6:12 Speaker 02 From the Chinese people.
6:19 Speaker 01 Song Meiling toured the United States under the name Madame Chang, giving speeches about her vision for the future of China, one that was free, Christian and democratic.
6:31 Speaker 02 We are both fighting for a common cause.
6:37 Speaker 02 And after peace is ours, we shall continue, hand in hand, to work for justice amongst mankind. Freedom for all people.
6:55 Speaker 01 Henry Luce had been hoping for a Christian democratic China, and suddenly the Changs dropped into his lap like a golden ticket. He started promoting them aggressively on the front cover of Time magazine. When the Japanese invaded in 1937, Madame Chang toured war-affected parts of China with Western newsreel cameras in tow.
7:18 Speaker 05 Most pitiable is the need of the children. Thousands of them orphaned in the recent fighting. Their safety has been the special care of Madame Chang Kai-shek. This heroic little lady visits each group as they arrive in Hangzhou.
7:28 Speaker 01 American audiences heard endlessly about Madame Chang's exploits.
7:33 Speaker 05 Under the guidance of Madame Chang Kai-shek and her sisters, the Chinese are continually rebuilding the city.
7:40 Speaker 01 Henry Luce led the way, naming Madame Chang and her husband Time magazine's Man and Wife of the Year, and bringing her to America on a US tour. And with Luce's backing, she toured America to rapturous welcomes.
7:57 Speaker 05 Fifteen thousand New Yorkers and again thousands of Chinese-Americans gathered to salute the woman history may well classify as the greatest of our time.
8:09 Speaker 01 At the time, the US was trying to stay out of the conflict, which had escalated into World War II. Madame Chang addressed Congress and begged the Americans for more resources.
8:20 Speaker 02 Let us not forget that the longer Japan is left in undisputed possessions of these
8:27 Speaker 04 The stronger she must become. These passing days take small tolls in life of both Americans and Chinese.
8:41 Speaker 01 As the war continued, her husband, Chiang Kai-shek, was publicly portrayed as being one of the key Allied leaders.
8:49 Speaker 04 President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill met with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo.
8:58 Speaker 01 It was genuinely one of the most impressive propaganda campaigns of the 20th century. To the rest of the world, the Chiangs were a heroic power couple, leading a Christian democratic crusade against the barbarians. But the image that Henry Luce had crafted for them was very different to reality. To start with, Chiang Kai-shek's claim to being the undisputed leader of China was, well, problematic.
9:27 Speaker 06 War has become part of Chiang's life. He has been fighting the communists since 1924.
9:34 Speaker 01 That civil war that you may recall from the highly simplified history I gave earlier may have been paused in order to fight off the Japanese, but it was by no means over. If and when the Japanese were defeated, Mao Zedong and his enormous communist forces would be back to try and overthrow him. On top of that, the Allied officials who actually had to work with Chiang Kai-shek had experienced a very different version of the Generalissimo than the one who was portrayed on the cover of Time magazine. Lord Mountbatten of the British Navy said negotiating with him was enough to drive people absolutely mad. U.S. Army General David Barr described Chiang as "the world's worst leader",
10:18 Speaker 01 but it was General Joseph Stillwell, head of U.S. forces in China, who turned hatred of Chiang into a literal art form. In his diary and personal letters to his wife, he called the Generalissimo "a peanut dictator", he said he wished that Chiang was dead, and wrote poetry about stabbing him in the face with a harpoon.
10:40 Speaker 01 In the opinion of the American military leadership, Japan's defeat would not be because of Chiang Kai-shek, but despite him. When World War II finally ended, the Japanese colony of Taiwan was handed over to the Generalissimo. At first, Taiwanese people celebrated the end of Japanese colonial rule. We were happy that Taiwan was going back to its mother country. We hoped things would get better. But the reality of living in Chiang's "free China" was not as rosy as the Taiwanese expected.
11:16 Speaker 01 Chiang and his nationalist government were suspicious of the Taiwanese, accusing them of having helped Japan during the war. He ruled over them with an iron fist, appointing one of his own men as governor and implementing a policy of widespread oppression of the Taiwanese people. And then in 1947, just two years after China had taken control of Taiwan, something happened that would shape the Taiwanese perspective of the mainland forever.
11:47 Speaker 01 On the evening of the 27th of February, a cigarette seller was beaten up by a police officer for selling without a proper permit. People gathered to protest and were shot by police, which led to more protests and a brutal crackdown.
12:03 Speaker 07 The evidence shows the troops shot everyone, man or woman, old or young.
12:11 Speaker 07 This was intentional terrorism.
12:14 Speaker 01 More than 10,000 people were killed, with some estimates saying it was more like 30,000. It's difficult to say because information about the massacre was suppressed for decades. Even now, there's only a handful of grainy pictures of what happened. Back on the mainland, things weren't much better. The truce between Mao and Chiang had ended when the Japanese left, and the civil war was back in full swing. By 1949, Chiang had lost.
12:46 Speaker 06 October 1st, 1949. The war is over. The communists take over China. For the first time since 1911, China has a central government effectively able to control the whole country.
12:59 Speaker 01 Well, almost the whole country.
13:04 Speaker 01 Chiang, his wife, his army and his followers retreated to Taiwan.
13:09 Speaker 05 Chiang arrived in Taiwan with about 2 million troops, politicians and assorted refugees.
13:14 Speaker 01 When most people lose a civil war, they flee to a friendly country and retire in exile. Chiang Kai-shek and his wife could have just gone to America and lived there as Time Magazine's "Men and Wife of the Century" or whatever.
13:28 Speaker 05 Not so for Chiang Kai-shek. He called himself "this undiscurcised old soldier".
13:34 Speaker 01 Instead of admitting defeat, he declared that he was still President of China but was just temporarily operating from Taiwan.
13:42 Speaker 05 President of some 13 million people, who are never allowed to forget that their generalissimo has pledged to lead them back home to the mainland. But for 11 of the 13 million, Taiwan is their home. They were born here, and to the outside observer it seems that they have no strong feelings about invading the mainland.
14:01 Speaker 01 And it's easy to understand why he didn't win over the hearts and minds of those 11 million Taiwanese people. Many of them were still rather upset about the massacre Chiang's forces had committed just two years earlier.
14:15 Speaker 05 Some Taiwanese resisted, and the revolt was savagely put down.
14:19 Speaker 01 Many native Taiwanese wanted Taiwan to become an independent country, rejecting both Chiang and Mao.
14:26 Speaker 05 Many observers point out that if the native Taiwanese had their say today, they'd opt for neither Chiang's nationalists nor Mao's communists.
14:35 Speaker 01 Chiang was in a difficult spot, squished between the communists on the mainland and supporters of Taiwanese independence on the island. He was the meat in a very inconvenient sandwich. So in order to keep his paranoia of being invaded or overthrown at bay, Chiang declared martial law in Taiwan.
14:56 Speaker 05 There are some political prisoners in Taiwan. There's an elaborate security system.
15:01 Speaker 01 Chiang turned Taiwan into a surveillance state facilitated by a huge network of human informants.
15:11 Speaker 04 Public places like hotels and restaurants.
15:15 Speaker 01 The oppressive regime became known as the White Terror. Over the 40 years it was in place, 140,000 people would be imprisoned and thousands executed for alleged opposition to Chung's ruling Nationalist Party.
15:31 Speaker 04 The fact is, you don't know it when you're in trouble, until it's too late.
15:37 Speaker 01 So what did that look like for the people of Taiwan? Well, for the next part of this story, we need to talk about Popeye. I'm Popeye the Sailor Man. I'm Popeye the Sailor Man. In 1967, Popeye cartoonist Bud Sagedorf started a new storyline, where Popeye and his son start their own country called Popolania. Strong to the finish, 'cause I eat my spinach. I'm Popeye the Sailor Man. During the story, Popeye declares he's going to run an election for president of Popolania, where he is the only candidate and his son, the only voter. He gives a speech saying, "Fellow Popoladians, if you vote for me,
16:22 Speaker 01 I promises to give you peace, happiness, and spinach in your pots."
16:30 Speaker 01 Now, one of the top newspapers in Taiwan ran translated versions of Popeye cartoons. One of the paper's journalists, Bo Yang, did the translations.
16:44 Speaker 01 Now, Bo Yang was extremely aware that criticism of the nationalist government was forbidden and journalists could be punished for things they wrote in the paper. Police really ran things and everyone had a little police headquarters inside himself. You would think, "This phrase I wrote, will they approve?" But he wasn't thinking about that when he was translating this cartoon. It was, after all... Just a cartoon about a spinach-fuelled sailor man. So it felt like pretty safe territory. But it was when he got to the phrase "fellow Popelanians" that he ran into trouble.
17:19 Speaker 05 There could be hundreds of translations for fellows, but I chose one which was "all my fellow countrymen".
17:25 Speaker 01 But that was a phrase that Chiang Kai-shek used in his speeches.
17:29 Speaker 05 The Bureau of Investigation arrested me, saying, "Why didn't you translate it into something else?"
17:34 Speaker 01 They said portraying President Chiang as Popeye was an insult.
17:39 Speaker 05 This attacks our national leadership. It deserves the death penalty. No doubt, the death penalty.
17:44 Speaker 01 Whilst he was under arrest, Bo Yang was tortured and had his leg broken in order to get a confession out of him. Then he was sentenced to eighteen years in Green Island Prison. And stories like this of torture and imprisonment were routine under Chiang's nationalist party leadership. And because they were under martial law, there was no way for the Taiwanese people to do anything about it. They didn't have any control over their own government.
18:15 Speaker 01 The actual structure of that government was bizarre. Chiang and the parliamentarians in the National Assembly had been elected in 1948 while they were still on the mainland. The parliamentarians had fled with Chiang to Taiwan the following year, and under martial law, no elections could be held. So the guys who won that mainland election in 1948 just stayed in office. The parliament was a farce. Only about twenty percent of its members represent electorates in Taiwan. The rest are still sitting on seats they won in the late 1940s for electorates on the mainland. They're all old men now.
18:54 Speaker 05 The present residents of Shanghai may not appreciate it, but their aging delegate of 1948 still represents their interests in Taiwan's Assembly Hall.
19:03 Speaker 01 And yet, despite this clear lack of democracy, if you read Time magazine and the American media, Taiwan was still being described as "free China".
19:15 Speaker 05 And last hope of free China. The last refuge of free China which the communists want to smash. The last spark of hope for free China and the first line of defence for the United States.
19:27 Speaker 01 And all the positive press really paid off. Throughout the 60s and 70s, Americans became a common sight on the streets of Taiwan.
19:35 Speaker 05 This follows a pact by the United States to defend Taiwan from communist attack. 10,000 American soldiers are based here and Taipei has become a favourite spot for Americans on leave from Vietnam.
19:48 Speaker 01 The US invested billions in the Taiwanese economy, deployed nuclear weapons to the island and spent significant resources arming and training Chiang Kai-shek's army.
19:59 Speaker 05 Members of our army are helping the Chinese nationalists to become a potent fighting force, a helpful ally, ready and able to cut off the spreading tentacles of communist aggression.
20:11 Speaker 01 The FBI in America also assisted Chiang's authorities in spying on Taiwanese dissident groups living in the US and Japan. The Americans weren't always super enthusiastic about supporting Chiang's brutal authoritarian dictatorship. The CIA considered attempting a coup against him once. But Chiang died in office in 1975 and was succeeded by his son, who was elected by the strange parliament full of old men representing mainland electorates. President Chiang Chin Kwu, son of Chiang Kai-shek, assures the people as usual that the mainland will be recovered. He doesn't say how.
20:53 Speaker 01 Martial law continued and yet, from an economic perspective, the results were hard to argue with. The Taiwanese economy is one of the success stories of Asia. Taiwan boasts one of the most dynamic economies in the world. There's a theory that a lot of dictatorships have, that if they make their population wealthy, it will solidify their control over the country. If your people are rich, they won't protest. Unofficial voices of discontent.
21:21 Speaker 07 Are muted by airwaves.
21:24 Speaker 01 In the early 1960s, the average Taiwanese person was twice as wealthy as their mainland counterparts, but by the mid 80s, they were 10 times wealthier. But making your society wealthier isn't a foolproof way to protect your dictatorship. In the 70s and 80s, authoritarians in rapidly growing societies from Portugal to South Korea faced growing protest movements. It generally starts with something small. Farmers get angry about a trade deal they think benefits America more than them. City folks get angry about the high cost of housing. Then, when the government cracks down, people start demanding democratic freedoms.
22:04 Speaker 01 In both versions of China, the communist one on the mainland and the nationalist one on Taiwan, people took to the streets demanding free and fair elections. But the communist and nationalist governments reacted very differently.
22:19 Speaker 07 As the army still massacres unarmed protesters in Beijing, the authorities have foreshadowed a continued purge.
22:26 Speaker 01 In Beijing's Tiananmen Square, student protesters were met with gunfire. The troops, without warning, opened up with a burst of rifle fire lasting a minute or more.
22:41 Speaker 01 请把站开到文化堂门口 Less than a year after the massacre at Tiananmen Square, student protesters were standing outside the Chiang Kai-shek memorial in the Taiwanese capital, Taipei.
22:57 Speaker 01 It was March 1990. Scattered protests had been seen across Taiwan for years. Martial law had been lifted, and the Chiang Dynasty had ended. The new president, elected by that same strange parliament, was Lee Dung-hui. Now, he was facing demands from students for direct democratic elections of the president and national assembly.
23:25 Speaker 01 In Taiwan, the students were painfully aware that they might face the same fate as the protesters in Tiananmen Square, but they didn't. After six days of protest, President Lee agreed to a timetable for democratic reform.
23:47 Speaker 01 Hopeful but sceptical, the students left the square.
23:52 Speaker 01 As they left, they chanted "We'll be back", expecting that they would need to return to make sure President Lee followed through on his promises. Within six years, Taiwan was a full democracy, and an extraordinary one at that.
24:10 Speaker 01 So that was the early 1990s. Chiang's Nationalist Party had been holed up on an island for 40 years, creating an authoritarian economic miracle. Now, they were facing elections. So buckle up when I tell you what the current leader of the Nationalist Party is up to now.
24:30 Speaker 07 Zheng Liwun is on a six-day trip to China.
24:35 Speaker 01 Zheng Liwun, the opposition leader of Taiwan, was given the red carpet treatment by the leader of the Communist Party, Mao's heir, Xi Jinping, while the governing party back in Taiwan begged her to stop.
24:48 Speaker 07 General Secretary Xi Jinping says the meeting is of great significance for developing relations between the two parties and across the Taiwan Strait.
24:57 Speaker 01 While Taiwanese people protested loudly back home.
25:04 Speaker 01 Zheng Liwun is the leader of a political movement that for a century has been at war with the party Xi Jinping leads, a group that essentially defines itself as "not the Communist Party". So the question is, why would she go there?
25:19 Speaker 07 This meeting is historic for multiple reasons, and it could have greater implications for Taiwan's China policy moving forward.
25:26 Speaker 01 That story's next, on If You're Listening.
25:36 Speaker 01 This episode of If You're Listening was written by Adair Shepherd and me, Matt Bevan. Supervising producer is Cara Jensen-McKinnon. Sound engineer is Anna John. It's produced by Adair Shepherd and Pat Sunderland. If you've got any questions about Taiwan or the situation in China at the moment, we might get a chance to do a Q and A episode in the next few weeks. Send any questions you've got on those topics or any others, if possible in voice memo form, to [email protected] . I'll see you next week.
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