It was widely suspected that the Japanese government had employed delaying tactics in the treaty negotiations to demonstrate their political and diplomatic autonomy. One of the members of the Japanese delegation, however, in an informal talk with the British consul in Tamsui, stoutly maintained that Tokyo had no intention of protracting negotiations until after the San Francisco treaty became effective.37 Whatever the truth, the 1952 peace treaty between Tokyo and Taipei bore tremendous significance. The text of the treaty and an accompanying exchange of notes were designed to allow both the Japanese and Nationalists to claim that their position on the scope of application of the treaty had been honored. The treaty itself contained no reference at all to the territorial limits of Japanese recognition of the Nationalists. To some historians, the semantic ambiguity on the status of Taiwan’s sovereignty in this treaty flung open the possibility of an independent Taiwan and was later used by Taiwanese independence advocates to advance their campaign.38 Nonetheless, the very specification that the disposition of Japanese property and Japanese nationals in Taiwan and the Pescadores, and that their claims against the authorities of the Republic of China in Taiwan and the Pescadores, should be the subject of special arrangements between the governments in Taipei and Tokyo, had demonstrated that the scope of Nationalist Chinese sovereign jurisdiction was confined to the two island regions.39 This was one very important step toward creating a legally and territorially (re)defined Taiwan-based Republic of China, whose political repercussions continue to this day.40
THE PARTY REFORMS
On the diplomatic front, challenges confronting Chiang Kai-shek in securing the Nationalist government’s international status remained fierce. Nonetheless, as the threat of a Communist takeover of Taiwan had largely died down with the onset of war in Korea, Chiang was now more comfortable in initiating a genuine reorganization of the KMT party so as to deepen the Nationalist social foundation on the island.41 Indeed, as U.S. consular staff on the island noted, Truman’s decision to send in the Seventh Fleet made Taiwan a more secure environment, which allowed Chiang the breathing room to restructure political leadership within the party and the government, under the perfect excuse of furthering “mutual cooperation of all factions.”42 The constant reminders of the powerful threat across the Strait kept the Nationalists on their toes. They realized that their Taipei-based regime’s legitimacy, based on its claim to be the central government of the ROC, could now be challenged relatively easily. Chiang and his cohorts had to ensure their survival, not only by building up a potent defense force and a powerful party-state apparatus, but also by functioning as an efficient and effective government.43
Four days after General MacArthur visited Taipei, on August 5, a confident Chiang Kai-shek announced the inauguration of the Central Reform Committee (CRC) to replace the old, near-defunct Central Executive Committee back in the mainland era, and become the KMT party’s new core leadership for planning and acting. Chiang’s handpicked sixteen CRC members, with Premier Chen Cheng and his son Ching-kuo as the key figures, were relatively young and well educated, and were now his newly trusted inner circle. To create a fresh party image within and abroad, Chiang appointed a professor in history and geography named Zhang Qiyun as the new CRC secretary general.44 Meanwhile, Chiang isolated his erstwhile political opponents from regional factions and cliques by assigning them to another newly instituted honorary party organ called the Central Advisory Committee, thus marginalizing the party veterans.45
8.2 The first meeting of the KMT Central Reform Committee convened on August 5, 1950, shortly after the war broke out in Korea. (Courtesy of the KMT Party History Institute)
To extend the Nationalist influence deep into Taiwan society, thus broadening its social base, CRC leaders endeavored to recruit new party members from different social strata and groups, especially intellectuals, on the island. By early 1952, more than forty party branches were recruiting educated youth, with more than 40 percent of Taiwan’s provincial party members having a high school or college education.46 As the CRC recruited, it also created a cadre system that strengthened its political and ideological control at every level of the state administration. Before 1949, the KMT had made the party branch (qu fenbu) the basic organizing unit and created the work team (xiaozu) to indoctrinate party members. When reform began in Taiwan, the CRC made its work teams responsible for enforcing party policies, producing propaganda, recruiting and investigating members’ backgrounds, and preventing communist infiltration.47
In the early 1950s, as national security remained a primary concern, Chiang Kai-shek insisted on tightening the grip of party organizations and disciplining work teams to prevent internal insurgences and enemy infiltration. To strengthen the KMT party’s legitimacy with the Taiwanese people and to seek continued support from the international community, particularly from the United States, new measures had to be taken. The conflicting nature and incompatibility between tightening the island’s internal security and maintaining a democratic façade so as to improve the KMT’s external image were indeed great. One important strategy applied by the hard-pressed Nationalists was to promote limited, local-level political reforms. To legitimatize the Republic of China as the central government for all China, the Taipei-based Nationalist government needed elected representatives for all China. In 1947 more than one thousand mainlanders in Nanjing were elected by the Chinese people as members of the National Assembly, Legislative Yuan, and Control Yuan. After coming to Taiwan, these representatives were permitted to hold their seats until the next election could be held on the mainland, thus legitimizing the Republic of China’s control of the island.48
While seats of the representatives at the central level were frozen for the purpose of political legitimacy, CRC leaders were convinced that local elections should be allowed to promote Taiwan’s image as a democratic country. In January 1951, the first election for county and city council seats were held. In April, other elections followed for county and municipal offices. In December, the Taiwan Provisional Provincial Assembly was organized, its members having been appointed by county and municipal assemblies.49 With the implementation of local elections, the party’s nomination system increased its control over the island’s local politics. Because the party nominees were almost guaranteed to win, local elites with political ambitions clamored to join the party. This had both positive and negative results. On the one hand, local elections enabled the party to work closely with local Taiwanese elites and strengthened its claim of being a legitimate party representing the people. On the other hand, party involvement in local electoral affairs encouraged factionalism within the KMT. Although local party branches tried to co-opt the new factional leaders, over time that became difficult.50
To the Nationalists, a successful continuation of land reform on Taiwan was critical to winning the support of the islanders. In February 1951, with the rent reduction initiated by Chen Cheng in May 1949 nearing completion, a CRC resolution was adopted offering one-fifth of the island’s arable land for sale to tenant farmers for a price well below market. Buyers then had ten years to buy their land by means of produce rather than cash and without interest.51 Land assessment and agricultural extension offices were established by the government’s land bureau, which oversaw the startup of farmers’ and irrigation associations, quasi-government organs that helped local farmers follow government guidelines. According to one U.S. investigation report, by July 1952, 114,000 acres of the total 160,000 acres of public land had been sold, and more than 150,000 tenant farm families bought land under the program.52 In early 1953, the Land-to-the-Tiller Act limited the amount of land that could be owned by landlords. Landlords who lost land were compensated with land bonds and stock shares from four privatized, government-owned enterprises. Meanwhile, the new landowners were eligible for loans that could be repaid, with no interest, in ten years. They also received funds so they could modernize their farms and irrigation operations. More than one million Taiwanese gained property rights
under the land reform program, and the income of farmers nearly doubled in the decade after 1949.53 The implementation of land reform between 1949 and 1953 thus helped further popularize Nationalist governance in Taiwan, leading to a gradual transformation of the relationship between the ruling mainlanders and the native islanders. Those early reforms, coupled with the massive aid the Nationalists received from the United States, paved the way for the island’s huge economic takeoff.
In retrospect, Chiang’s party reform movement, along with his attempts to deepen the Nationalist political and social base in Taiwan, helped consolidate the political legitimacy of the KMT and accelerate the accidental formation of the island state. Less well known is that those reform measures were also driven by an implicit political competition with, if not a challenge from, his rivals abroad. After the Communist takeover in 1949, a large number of anti-Communist, anti-Chiang Third Force Chinese became refugees in Hong Kong. These Third Force Chinese were of diverse backgrounds, ranging from former south Chinese warlords and former Nationalist soldiers, to Chiang’s political rivals and liberal intellectuals.54 With the twists and turns in the U.S. military position in Korea, Washington hoped that covert support of the Third Force guerrillas on the mainland would divert Beijing’s attention from Korea and indirectly assist the U.S. war efforts. Meanwhile, State Department policy designers also believed that covert support of the development of any resistance movement would serve as “a natural influence exercising pressure on the Nationalist Government on Formosa to adopt more effective policies.”55
Beginning in late 1950, Washington began paying more attention to the Third Force Chinese in Hong Kong. Secret contacts were undertaken between unidentified Americans, including a Mr. Hartman, and such prominent Third Force elements as General Zhang Fakui, Xu Chongzhi, and Tong Guanxian. The Americans agreed to give substantial funds to the Third Force group, and promised a base of operation for the liberal leaders in the Philippines.56 In mid-1951, a CIA-operated secret training program was mounted in Okinawa, and about eighty young Third Force members were sent there for intelligence technique training under the guise of working for the Far East Development Company in Guam. The project aimed at producing skilled Chinese agents and then parachuting them into Guangdong and Hainan Island. As it turned out, most of the agents who had been parachuted into southern China were either killed or captured. By late 1952, it was clear that the Third Force project was a total failure.57
Perceivably, Taipei viewed the American covert support of these anti-Chiang Third Force Chinese with extreme uneasiness. Chiang Kai-shek personally regarded the CIA-backed, militarily-oriented training program as a potential threat to his political legitimacy, when he learned through secret channels that one reason why Washington was helping the Third Force was its mistrust of the Nationalist government. In other words, given the unreliability and incapability of the government under Chiang, Washington deemed it imperative to cultivate a new, Chiang-free political force in the event the Chinese Communist regime collapsed.58
The Third Force Chinese might be irksome, but to Chiang Kai-shek the gravest potential enemies were on the island. In the face of the pro-independence Taiwanese, the Nationalist government resorted to a carrot-and-stick approach. On the one hand, the massive arrest of chief leaders of the Formosa League for Re-emancipation (FLR) was undertaken just before the war broke out in Korea. After the Truman statement of June 1950, secret police action was undertaken throughout the island against those who were potentially opposed to the Nationalist rule, generally labeled as “communist spies.”59 In mid-August 1950, Premier Chen Cheng publicly admitted that around 15,000 people in Taiwan were taken prisoners in 1949 for “political reasons,” and up to mid-1950, 23,000 were arrested for the same rationale.60 This marked the beginning of a decade-long “white terror” on the island.
On the other hand, Chiang was willing to take a softer, conciliatory approach to pro-independence Formosans abroad. Around May 1951, a close associate of Thomas Liao named Frank Lim informed the SCAP authorities that Chiang had sent Qiu Niantai, an old “half-mountainer” from back in the wartime era who was now serving faithfully under Chiang, to make overtures to former FRL members in Tokyo. According to Lim, Chiang showed goodwill by soliciting Thomas Liao, now chairing the Tokyo-based “Formosan Democratic Independence Party,” and his associates, to rejoin the Nationalists. Chiang guaranteed the security of their lives once they returned to Taiwan.61 A recalcitrant Liao responded by issuing a public letter in August 1951, in which he vehemently denounced the legitimacy of Nationalist rule on Taiwan and, once again, advocated holding a UN plebiscite on Formosa to determine the island’s future.62 However, shifts in the East Asian political landscape after June 1950 marginalized Liao, making it very unlikely he could successfully challenge Chiang’s leadership. In hindsight, Chiang’s overture in 1951 might have triggered the gradual collapse of the Taiwan independent movement under Liao.63 In 1955 several of Liao’s closest associates decided to break with him and return to Taiwan, although it took until May 1964 for Liao to give up his political career in Tokyo and head back to Taiwan himself.
Externally, as a relatively shielded environment became attainable, Chiang Kai-shek equally targeted his imagined rivals within the party and the government. Sun Liren, always an American favorite, was not surprisingly Chiang’s prime target. In the weeks immediately following the outbreak of the Korean War, there was a sudden increase of reports that Sun was “sheltering” communist spies in the Nationalist army.64 These reports were largely the result of a political commissar system, created and chaired by Chiang Ching-kuo, and much despised by Sun. Adding to Chiang Kai-shek’s uneasiness about Sun was a proposal from the MAAG around late 1951 that a joint operations center be created to coordinate military activities on Taiwan and the adjacent areas, with the chief of MAAG, General William Chase, and Sun Liren leading the command. Chiang categorically rejected this idea, viewing such an arrangement as a virtual surrender of his ultimate authority to the Americans and American-favored Sun.65
Although the Chiangs were eager to get rid of Sun, they also fretted over the resultant unfavorable reaction from the United States. It was not until 1955, after the military alliance was legally formed between Taipei and Washington that misfortune finally descended upon the much loathed general. In June 1954, Sun was first removed from his post as commander-in-chief of the Nationalist Ground Forces and made personal chief of staff to Chiang Kai-shek, a position without any real responsibility. In August 1955, charges were suddenly filed against him in connection with the activities of a trusted subordinate who had confessed to being a communist agent and to having plotted a coup against Chiang. Thereafter, Sun was under house arrest for more than three decades until exonerated in March 1988, shortly after the death of Chiang Ching-kuo. It now became apparent that the entire episode was fabricated in order to sap Sun Liren of all his remaining authority and influence.66
The other target which the Chiangs, particularly Ching-kuo, intended to remove was K. C. Wu, another American favorite. If Chiang Kai-shek’s removal of Sun Liren stemmed largely from the immense military influence Sun had enjoyed and the unique relations he had with the Americans, then their desire to get rid of Wu was primarily based on the incompatible political ideology between the Chiangs and Wu. Like Sun, Wu was once a powerful figure whom the Americans found a promising candidate for reforming Taiwan, and whom the island-based Nationalist government desperately depended on in order to obtain U.S. aid. Because massive U.S. assistance to Taiwan was practically guaranteed after the Korean War began, Wu gradually lost his importance. Meanwhile, his animosity toward Ching-kuo intensified, when the latter was striving to expand the reach of the secret service throughout the island, thereby overshadowing Wu’s provincial administration.67 In October 1952, the KMT completed its “party reform” and held its seventh national congress. A new power structure was built around the Chiang father and son, with nearly three-fourths of the party congress members belongin
g to Ching-kuo’s faction. In 1953, having sensed that his days in the Nationalist bureaucracy were only going to get more difficult, Wu resigned from the provincial governorship and flew to the United States.68 But the story did not end here. Around early 1954, rumors began to circulate that Wu had embezzled a large sum of government funds and lived a life of luxury in the United States. In March, Wu answered the accusations by publicly breaking with the Nationalist government, stating that the undemocratic policies in Taiwan were alienating other countries from supporting its efforts to regain mainland China. Wu specifically defamed Ching-kuo, denouncing his use of secret police on the island and criticizing the harmful effects of political pressures on the military.69 The political battles across the Pacific lingered for quite a while, deeply hurting the images of both the Nationalist government and a onetime promising political star.
THE NATIONALIST MILITARY TRANSFORMED
During the crucial months surrounding the outbreak of hostilities in Korea, both Charles Cooke’s privatized policy guidance and the subsequent U.S. military assistance at an official level played a crucial part in reconfiguring the Nationalist military in Taiwan. At first glance, this U.S.-driven transformation improved Chiang Kai-shek’s military, a prerequisite for the success of future military operations. From a critical historical perspective, however, a gradually transformed Nationalist military buildup inadvertently led to the making of a Nationalist China, whose scope of territorial control, in retrospect, would be perpetually precluded from stretching beyond its current island bases.
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