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REDFLAG.ORG.AU PUBLICATION OF SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE 14 JUNE 2021 | REDFLAG

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Senior officials from labour force for urban industry, the KMT carried the KMT on the question of independence. Both
the United States through a major land reform that essentially elim- prefer to avoid the issue.
and China meet in inated the old landlord class. There is something of a left in Taiwan, most of
Anchorage for the first
bilateral meeting since Initially, the US did not particularly aid the which, with the exception of a few small Stalinist
President Biden was KMT regime, believing it was doomed to fall to groups, is pro-independence. The trade union
inaugurated 23 March Mao’s armies. But with the outbreak of the Korean movement remains fairly weak, though there
2021 PHOTO: Frederic War and the heightened tensions in the region, have been some strikes, including an 11-day strike
J. Brown/Reuters the US began to provide substantial military and by flight attendants in 2019.
financial aid to Taiwan. In terms of popular sentiment, a 2020 poll
By the early 1960s, Taiwan began rapidly to showed 35.1 percent support for independence, 5.8
develop its manufacturing exports. Reflecting a percent support for unification with China and
common pattern for newly industrialising nations, 52.3 percent support for postponing a decision on
initially these exports were primarily textiles and status or for maintaining the status quo.
clothing. From the late 1960s, the KMT state pushed There has been a marked collapse since the
to move away from these labour-intensive indus- 1990s in the number of Taiwanese people, partic-
tries to capital-intensive ones, including steel, ularly young people, identifying as Chinese. In
Subsequently, Japan seized Taiwan in 1895 aluminium, petrochemicals and synthetic fibres. 2020, 67 percent of people identified only as Tai-
and ruled there until the end of World War Two. Then, from 1981, there was a liberalisation of wanese, 2.4 percent identified as Chinese, and 27.5
Japanese rule was initially extremely brutal and the economy with more room for private capi- per cent identified as both Chinese and Taiwanese.
provoked numerous local revolts. Nonetheless, talists. Trade with the US expanded rapidly with Indigenous people make up between 2.5 per-
significant economic development did take place a turn to electronics, telecommunications equip- cent and 4 percent of the population and have
under Japanese rule, which helped prepare the ment, microchips and the like. But state interven- special seats allocated to them in the parliament.
ground for Taiwan to become one of the so-called tion remained very important to maximise profits However, despite being poor and racially op-
Asian tiger economies alongside Singapore, South by holding down wages, banning strikes, keeping pressed, they solidly vote for the right-wing KMT.
Korea and Hong Kong in the 1970s and 80s. unions weak and preventing welfare legislation There is nothing then automatic about racial
With the victory in 1949 of Mao’s Red Army that protected workers. oppression leading to left-wing attitudes. There
over the nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek’s In 1987, martial law was finally lifted, and there is also a rapidly growing migrant population that
Kuomintang (KMT), a section of the defeated followed a transition to bourgeois democracy. currently makes up 6 percent of the workforce.
KMT army and its supporters fled to Taiwan. In The DPP (Democratic Progressive Party), the cur- In conclusion, socialists should not support
all, 2 million KMT supporters reached Taiwan, rent ruling party formed in 1986, in some sense the forcible incorporation of Taiwan into China,
which had an existing population of only 6 represented those forces that were pushing for let alone a Chinese invasion of the island. It
million. In 1947, there had been an uprising on democratisation. should be up to the Taiwanese people to decide
Taiwan against the KMT authorities who had The DPP initially had something of a left-wing democratically. However, the question of Taiwan-
taken over from the Japanese. A long period of image and backed independent trade unions. To- ese independence cannot be separated from the
reactionary terror followed, with hundreds of day, however, it loyally rules on behalf of the Tai- growing imperialist tensions between the US and
thousands imprisoned or killed. wanese bourgeoisie, despite— somewhat like the China. The US uses the issues of Taiwan, the op-
Although the KMT was stridently anti-Com- US Democrats—managing to incorporate various pression of the Uyghurs and the brutal repression
munist, it established an authoritarian state cap- progressive-seeming social movement activists in Hong Kong to inflame hostility to China. This is
italist regime that in many ways was very similar as parliamentary candidates and backing causes an utterly cynical and hypocritical approach given
to the regime in Beijing. The KMT regime realised like same sex marriage. the US’s own long record of brutal suppression
that if it was to survive in the face of the threat of The DPP formally favours Taiwanese inde- of democratic rights from Iraq to Afghanistan to
invasion, it needed rapidly to build up Taiwan’s pendence from China, but it does not really push Vietnam and Latin America.
industrial base to provide the underpinning for the issue because it does not want to provoke the Socialists should strongly oppose the current
a strong military. This could not be achieved by Chinese regime. The KMT, on the other hand, military build-up in the US and Australia, and the
relying on the profit-driven whims of private formally supports unification with China once increasing Cold War-style rhetoric from our rul-
capitalist investors. Only a powerful state could the current Chinese regime is overthrown, and it ers. Any shooting war between the US and China
play that role. For decades the core industries, still nominally upholds its absurd claim to be the would be an imperialist war, reactionary on both
the banks and so on in Taiwan were either state legitimate government of China. However, since sides, which would override the specific issue of
enterprises or subject to rigid state control, as in democratisation in the 1990s, it has essentially the Taiwanese people’s right to independence.
“Communist” China. Furthermore, in order to ac- buried the issue. So in terms of practical politics, Socialists need to campaign hard against any
celerate food production and obtain the necessary there is not much difference between the DPP and Australian involvement in such a war.