Formosa Betrayed

by George H. Kerr

In the process of rebuilding a new democratic Formosa, serious effort should be made to redress the damage and injustice done to the land and people of Formosa for the last 43 years.

Since the beginning of the Chinese occupation of Formosa in October, 1945, the ruling party has consistently maintained a policy of discrimination against the native Formosans while rooting out their sense of identity through the prohibition of public use of their native language and teaching of Formosan history and culture, all under the policy of glorifying China and Chinese culture to the exclusion of Formosa and its culture, which were deemed to be but an insignificant part of the greater Chinese panorama.

There seem to be two major obstacles to democratization of Formosa: one if the still fragile political strength of the ruled Formosans who tend to value temporary safety or seeking immediate material gain for survival over long-term political struggle which often requires certain sacrifice, and the other is the tenacious adherence to the old feudal-emperor concept of the ruling party conservatives.

The tradition of authoritarianism of the ruler is still deeply engrained in the minds of both the rulers and the ruled in Chinese culture.

For the rulers, only glory and power count. Human rights, freedom or equality or respect for the lives of people have to surrender to the might of the rulers.

the face of similar timeworn attitude and beliefs it will require an enormous courage and persistent organized effort on the part of the enlightened public...

Even the younger Formosans, however, tend to think of themselves as possessed of traditions, values, and a way of life distinct from that of the mainland Chinese.

The emergence of a Formosan nationalism is thus a natural development, and despite the many fissures existing in Formosan political circles, that movement strikes a responsive chord, especially among the intellectuals.

The Japanese legacy and the more recent American largess, moreover, have combined to give the people of Formosa a much higher standard of living than that of most of their Asian neighbors.

Refugees from the mainland, until recent times at least, were overwhelmingly engaged in government work, military service, and teaching.

How long can the Formosans be excluded from any effective voice in their government in a system that purports to be constitutional and democratic?

How long can the myth be continued that Formosa is China?

How long can the estrangement between Formosan intellectuals and mainland refugees continue without se...

Let no one underestimate the degree to which the Communists are seeking to take advantage of the po...

Self-determination for the Formosan people is one of those causes which happily unites our values and our national interests.

But from a contemporary continental point of view Formosa represents the easternmost thrust of a vast complex of continental interests, of Chinese interests pressing out toward the maritime world.

From an oceanic point of view the island represents the westernmost point on the Western Pacific rim, a maritime frontier which embraces Japan, the Ryukyus and the Philippines, a world of seaborne trade and international politics.

Two centuries of ineffective and abusive rule thereafter generated a local Formosan tradition of resentment and underlying hostility toward representatives of mainland authority.

At last in 1887 the Chinese government raised Formosa from the status of a Fukien dependency to the rank of a province although nearly two-thirds of the island still lay beyond the frontiers of local Chinese control.

Formosa ceased to be an irritating international problem when it entered upon its “Japanese half century”; no foreign power challenged Japan’s sovereign position in Formosa until the days of the Cairo meeting beside the Nile in 1943.

The reports revealed at once how very little the mainland Chinese knew about any aspect of Formosa, and it suggested how little they cared.

Obviously we were being told what the Chinese thought we wanted to know; considerations of “face” made it impossible to admit that they had no genuine recent intelligence from the island.

These marvelous Chinese tales were inventions, or fabrications based upon incidents

Chinese intelligence reports were often entertaining but generally useless.

With such stories we hoped to discourage any move to arm and train Formosans as a Home Guard serving under Japanese officers to repel an Allied invasion.

We also hoped to persuade the local government to divert large numbers of Japanese from sensitive labor posts to unproductive guard duty and internal security patrol.

Could we make certain that Formosa would not again become a threat to American interests in the Western Pacific?

I ventured to suggest that China would not be able to assume exclusive control of Formosa for two reasons; there were not enough Chinese administrators and technicians available to manage such a complex economy, and there were the ever-present dangers of an intolerable exploitation by the Soongs, the Kungs, the Chiangs and other families, and Army and Party cliques who were a curse to China.

I had visited China in 1940. It was evident that Formosa was many years in advance of mainland China in terms of technological organization. Certainly general standards of living for townsman and peasant alike were superior on Formosa. China had no surplus of trained manpower to spare for the job which would have to be done in Formosa.

America’s long range interests should have priority, but sympathetic consideration should be given to China’s claims, and to the interests, rights and welfare of the Formosan people.

History had long since demonstrated its military importance at a strategic point on the Western Pacific rim and its wealth and technological development placed it too far ahead of the mainland Chinese provinces to permit an easy return to Chinese control.

Formosa was an island, a maritime area which had always been agitated by separatist sentiment, and for half a century it had been entirely cut off from the Chinese mainland and the Chinese civil wars. It was not Japanized but modernized.

But most Far Eastern specialists in wartime Washington were under no illusion concerning Chiang’s capacities and strengths.

He was a “Leader of Democracy” and China was a “Great Power” only because the Washington Administration said so, and gave him money and arms to keep him in the field against the Japanese.

Nothing in the Nationalist record as of 1942 would support a belief that Chiang Kai-shek’s Party bosses could assume control of the government of Formosa without massive aid, or that American...

They conveniently forgot that China had ceded Formosa to Japan in 1895 “in perpetuity,” and that only a postwar treaty of peace could effect a legal retrocession.

that an important number of China specialists in the State Department were incurably “missionary” in their approach to Chinese problems.

The Chinese could do no wrong (at least outsiders were not allowed to say they could or did) and the Japanese could do no right.

I found it useless to point out that the Formosans’ ancestors had left the mainland centuries ago in an attempt to escape from intolerable conditions there.

The island was too small to be independent, and too big and too rich to be ignored.

He would have had a better case to argue if he could have shown more efficient use of the supplies which had already reached him over the Hump at tremendous cost to the Allies.

Britain’s delegation expected Cairo to be a major Anglo-American conference on the conduct of war in Europe, during which Prime Minister and President would prepare for the vital talks with Stalin.

Over Churchill’s vigorous objection, Roosevelt gave precedence to the problems of China in order to soothe the Chiangs and enable them to hurry back to Chungking.

we see that President Roosevelt’s highest military aides were deeply concerned lest we lose China as a base from which to cover our seaborne attack upon Japan.

Roosevelt made little use of his State Department advisors at Cairo, and made no serious effort to examine the China problem with Lieutenant General Stilwell.

This was not a carefully prepared State Paper but rather a promise to divide the spoils, dangled before the wavering Chinese.

It was a declaration of intent, promising a redistribution of territories held by the Japanese. None of the territories mentioned in the document were at that moment in Allied hands.

The Allied leaders had to show a bold face before the world, but in truth no one then knew what ultim...

For whatever reason, the Cairo Declaration is as noteworthy for historical inaccuracies within the text as for its rhetorical flourishes.

Some of the damage to American interests will never be repaired.