ABSTRACT
This chapter contains a brief section on Taiwan’s colonial era (1896-1945) and concentrates on Taiwan cinema from the KMT takeover in 1945 to the eve of New Taiwan Cinema in 1978. Japan’s defeat in the Second World War resulted in the return of Taiwan to China’s sovereignty in 1945, thus terminating fifty years of Japanese rule in the island. But the postwar transition was not peaceful. The KMT military forces cracked down on the popular revolts against government corruption and hefty taxes, best exemplified in the 28 February Incident of 1947, which claimed tens of thousands of Taiwanese lives and remained a taboo subject in Taiwan history until the late 1980s. Due to its large-scale military setbacks in the mainland, the KMT relocated its ROC regime to Taiwan in 1949 and brought in a large population of mainlanders. In the 1950s, the KMT mobilized its propaganda machinery in support of the campaign to reclaim the mainland, but as time went by the government switched its attention to developing the economy and building Taiwan as a legitimate site of the Chinese nation and culture. A police state under martial law was gradually transformed into a modernizing society, eventually to become an economic power in the AsiaPacific region.
