Taiwan - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

History

; Old story and modern The traces of human occupation are old (- at least 30.000 years), but the history, relatively recent, begins primarily with the arrival from the first Chinese colonists in the Western plain with approximately from 1600. These young colonists, who will be until 1874 as a vast majority of the men, bring agricultural novel methods, new worships and a culture, which amalgamate with the local practices because of the intermarriages and of the cultural transfers. Mongrel population slowly, while the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Portugal are interested in this stopover between the Indonesia and the Japan. The pirates pro Ming of Koxinga “release” the island, but do not manage to push back the incipient Dynastie Qing: Taiwan becomes a walk of the Empire in 1683. The island, considered as too poor and offset, remains quasi-abandoned by the Empire, until the Western and Japanese aimings on this territory make him become aware of its strategic importance. The archipelago is thus truly included in the Chinese policy around 1880, but will be yielded to the Japan 15 years later, at the time of the 1 {{Re}} Sino-Japanese Guerre.

; 1895 - 1945, Japanese years The Japan applies an ambiguous bipolar policy, regarding the archipelago as the continuity of the Japanese Archipel, but wrongly exploiting the local resources (invaluable wood, coal, agricultural produce) and considering the autochtones initially neither Japanese nor japonisables: it is a colony of production with a low level of development. The rise in the level of education in the elites, their association at the stations with responsibilities and the threat for the Second world war encourage the Empire of the Rising sun years 1930 to intensify the japonisation in order to completely assimilate the archipelago and its population: in the public schools teaching is made in Japanese and the newspapers also publish in Japanese, the Japanese Culture is proposed like model with tous.
During the first years of war (1933 - 1941), the island of Taiwan is an important producing back-country: the local population cultivates in priority for the victorious Japanese soldiers with the face. But shift the tendency, and the exhausted Japanese forces thus accept, then automatically enlist the valid men of the island, considered then and often regarding themselves as Japanese citizens defending the country.

; Since 1945, “Chinese” years? The second world war gives the island to the nationalist government of the Republic of China.

Chronology

30.000 years ago: older human trace with Taiwan (the man of Zuozhen)
6.000 years ago: the ancestors of the indigenous start to arrive by successive waves at Taiwan.
17th century: Chinese migration towards the island of Taiwan and beginning of interbreeding of the population.
1895 : Taiwan is annexed by the Japan following the Sino-Japanese Guerre.
1945 : Japanese defeat, fine of the occupation.
1947 : Arrived of the Chinese nationalists of the Kuomintang, who take control of the island. In order to consolidate their capacity, they start a repression of resistances which culminates on February 28th in a slaughter followed by arrests. Approximately 20.000 people die at the time of what will remain known like the Incident of February 28th, generally evoked by the group of figures 228.
1949: End of the Chinese civil war. Kuomintang does not control any more that Taiwan, but preserves the seat of China at UNO, having ratified the charter of the United Nations in 1945. The Popular republic of China is declared on the continent and the new capital becomes Beijing.
1950 : Proclamation of the state of emergency and suspension of the democratic process until in 1987 - 1991.
1952 : Japan gives up straight on Taiwan.
1971 : UNO votes the recognition of the Popular republic of China like only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations (Résolution 2758). Consequently, the Republic of China loses its seat and is excluded.
1987 - 1991: Democratization of the island.
1996 : Lee Teng-hui, elected president by the universal direct suffrage, is also the first Taiwanese of stock elected president.
2000 : Chen Shuibian, first president non-member of the Kuomintang, is elected.
2004 : Re-election of accuracy of Chen Shuibian.

Geography

Subdivisions of the island of Taiwan

See also: List of the subdivisions of Taiwan, Subdivisions of Taiwan

Since the October 12th 2002, the island of Taiwan is divided into 17 Comtés, 6 Villes and 2 Territoires (managed directly by the central government).

Cities

In north: Taipei, Keelung, Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Miaoli
In the North-East: Yilan
In the center: Taichung, Changhua, Yunlin, Nantou
In the south: Chiayi, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Pingtung,
In the east: Hualien, Taitung

Demography

Current statute of Taiwan

Policy

Army

Economy

See also: List of companies of Taiwan, List of companies of Taiwan

Taiwan belongs to the Forum of economic cooperation the Asia-Pacific (APEC).
The currency in force of the Republic of China is the Taiwanese Dollar (NT$ for New Taiwan Dollar ).

Political economy

In the past, the island of Formosa (the beautiful one) in the Eastern China Sea, it became Chinese in 1945, after one half-century of Japanese colonization which left an industrial infrastructure there. Taiwan became a refuge and land of welcome for Tchang Kaï-chek and the Chinese “nationalists” who lost the civil war (1927-1949) with the profit of the Chinese “Communists”, taking the control of all continental China. Until now and without believing in it too much and insisting too there - for reason of economic prosperity, in contrast with the economic decomposition of continental China - Taiwan asserts the title of “Republic of China” in a mythical continuity with that (1911-1937) of Sun Yatsen. In spite of and with its characteristics, as there is only one traditional Chinese writing for several spoken languages, Taiwan is on one level in a “Asian political economy”, by the tradition confucéenne, as for the Japan which opened the door and carried out the dance. The industrial Harmonie is the ideological base of the Asian political economy for a social peace in which can spread operations with “tended flow” or with “null stock” for the benefit of all.

This way, Taiwan became the alive museum of eternal China and with the liberalization of the circulation of the people between Taiwan and the Popular republic of China, the culture of the latter seems to be revivified after the destruction with large scales of the “middle-class” traces by the “red guards” of the “Cultural revolution”. This liberalization is also beneficial for the culture of Taiwan which vacuum-cleaned itself in contact with the physical reality of the mythifiée ancestral ground. The asserted statute of “Republic of China” imposed the Mandarin like official language, with the costs of the traditional language of use brought by the settlement mainly come from the province from Insane-Kien (Fujian) which drove back the old indigenous settlement towards the highlands in the center of the island.

China has only one written language; to the unicity of the written language logographic corresponds a quantity of pronunciations and phonetic expressions different from which one distinguishes three great groups: the Central Asia, North with the “Pekinese one” or “Mandarin” and South with “Cantonese” very singing. In this manner, the emissions of Taiwanese television are subtitled with the Chinese characters to be included/understood of all through the same written language.

By its insular situation, with broad Canton, Taiwan enjoyed a position of “new borders” conquering compared to the dynastic fights of the celestial empires and with European and Japanese colonizations. A simple visit with the bi-annual fair of the international business of Taipei (International Trade Fair) makes it possible to seize the entrepreneurial dynamism of these “new borders” forged by the Chinese of overseas who brought with them the dynamic and alive part of this Chinese thought confucéenne. These Chinese of overseas make work of pioneers and contractors.

More than the city-States of HongKong and Singapore which does not have a sufficient back-country surfaces some and coherent as an social organization and policy, Taiwan is a concentrate of continental China and peripheral Chinas. The paradox of the double strategies of Taiwan east in the compromise to be at the same time China traditional and traditionalist, rigid and closed on itself in its centrality and peripheral Chinas unmethodical and progressists, flexible and opened on the world.

The compromise is not bastard medium term or a confused mixture by rejecting the extremes and by keeping the remainder and even less one “mythical and mysterious happy medium”. It is a double strategy, par excellence, which consists in leading actions on these two extreme ways at the same time and to the same place.

Annals of imperial China provided us a historical illustrative example of a compromise Chinese (Maurice Durand, 1952, “complete Mirror of the History of the Vietnamese soldier”, French École of the Far East, Hanoi). In a diplomatic correspondence, during years 258-112 before J-C, between an empress Han and the old man Trieu Da, Chinese general who had been made itself king and later emperor of the country of the Vietnamese soldiers, the empress expressed his regret to have to make pour a valorous blood on both sides, only because Da said also emperor. This last answered that it had been obliged to take this title because its two viceroys had been made “kings”.

The question was settled by a remarkable typically Chinese compromise: the Vietnamese king would be made call “emperor” in his own country, but it would use the title of “king” in his relations with the other countries. Perhaps this incident founder of historical Vietnam explains confusions of the posterior authors who designated alternatively the sovereigns of Vietnam like “kings” and like “emperors”. The question of Taiwan to UNO was settled with the manner of this typically Chinese compromise to the satisfaction of all.

Taiwan, in spite of its insularity (like HongKong and Singapore) and its position of peripheral China, presents in a way quite different by the statute before asserted and discussed “Republic of China” which was worth an economic aid and political generous of the United States and a benevolence of their allies to him. Helps and benevolence that Taiwan wanted and knew to use with its profit, contrary to much of other countries which profited, to various degrees, of this help and this benevolence granted in the name of an anticommunism militant of the cold war.

As for the majority of the other Chinese provinces, the settlement of Taiwan was done by successive waves through invasion, the assimilation and the sinicization of the indigenous populations. This settlement founded a traditional economy rural with Chinese, rice and market-gardening, supplemented by fisheries. Industrialization was carried out with the Japanese occupation of approximately a half-century which, after 1945, left an industrial and intellectual infrastructure. The economic advancement of Taiwan was launched by a successful land reform and a generous help of the United States to the refuge of the Chinese “nationalists” of Tchang Kaï-chek.

This successful land reform and this generous economic aid made it possible the farming community to become small holders, to grow rich and constitute a market interns rather bulky which launched an light industry of transformation to satisfy the interior solvent demand in consumer goods and capital equipment and then to turn to the export of the products of first need and the light motorized agricultural machines initially and doors then. This farming community enriched becoming by the small and medium-size companies which constitute a network tangled up subcontractors as contractors being propagated and binding gradually to the base of the large companies and the megastructures like “Evergreen”, for example, according to a crawling sociability which spotted and crosses the large geometrical organizations which are only parts emerged and visible at surface.

A rustic and rural imagery of this policy, this strategy and this structure is that of the tree with its roots which ensure solidity and anchoring, its trunk and its foliage, drawing by the roots water and rock salt of an edge and transforming them into nutritive matters of the other with the light. This imagery is representative of the agrarian values removed from the dogmas Confucianists which govern the policies, strategies and technical-commercial tactics Taiwanese containing sociability in the epidemic propagation gradually on the ground, of the constitution upwards and the practical value and the co-operation which wrap, forces, directs, delimits and médiatisent the exchange value and the competition.

These policies, these strategies and these tactics refer at the same time to the design, the production, the marketing and the penetration of a market per flood of the lowlands to isolate and reach the tops which become islands, small islands and islets, according to such a rural and rice imagery. In the industrial production, at the beginning, Taiwan manufactured a little very for Japanese industries and, while developing, Taiwan became the project superintendent and the customer of the small companies of HongKong, Singapore and besides who, in their turn, directly on the spot organize, coordinate and distribute the production of a multitude of family workshops cash a manpower of ten people or in regions which became more and more of the contractors and subcontractors of these new industrialized countries of Asia. The technical-commercial tactics of Taiwan consist of a succession of waves of which first is to provide in great quantity of the simple products, well done and at moderate consumer prices basic to be made well know, the second consists of anonymous components of the famous brands, the third out of accessories obliged of the products of prestige as well on the civil market as the military market of the armaments.

Codes relative has Taiwan

Taiwan (Republic of China) has as codes:

according to the international Code list of the number plates: RC,
according to the standard ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 (code list country): TWN
according to the standard ISO 3166-1 (code list country), code alpha-2: TW
according to the Code list country of the CIO: TPE
according to the code list countries used by NATO, alpha-3: TWN
according to the code list countries used by NATO, code alpha-2: TW
according to the list of prefixes ICAO of registration of the aircraft: B
according to the list of Internet TLD (Signal level domain): .tw

References and notes

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