ABSTRACT
In the last century, the political fate of Taiwan, like that of Korea, was ultimately linked with the outcomes of the competition among the great powers for dominance over East Asia. At each juncture of a major shift in the region’s overarching order, Taiwan was always at the epicenter of strategic conflict on the scale of titanic clashes. China’s ceding of Taiwan to Japan after the 1895 Sino-Japanese War epitomized the meteoric fall of the Chinese empire from the apex of regional hierarchy and, at the same time, signified the dawn of an era of Japanese imperialist expansion. The retrocession of Taiwan to Nationalist China came with the abrupt end of the Japanese imperium and the beginning of an era of U.S. hegemonic presence in the region. Soon after the formal partition of Vietnam in 1954, the United States institutionalized its security commitment to Taiwan by signing the U.S.–ROC Mutual Defense Treaty. Thus, a new security demarcation in East Asia gave the Nationalists (Kuomintang/KMT) a breathing space and a historic chance to consolidate a one-party authoritarian regime on new social soil. The political survival of the island was thrown into doubt after Washington sought rapprochement with the PRC during the 1970s. At each dramatic turn in the island’s political fortunes, the dynamics of Taiwan’s internal politics bore little significance. But that was before Taiwan became democratized and the island’s power structure thoroughly indigenized.
