Official name Republic of China
Local name T'aiwan Timezone GMT +8 Area 36 000 km²/13 896 sq mi population total (2002e) 22 457 000 Status Republic Date of independence 1949 Capital Taipei Languages Mandarin Chinese (official), various dialects including Taiwanese and Hakka also spoken Ethnic groups Han Chinese (98%), small (Polynesian) aboriginal minority Religions Taoist, Buddhist, Christian (Protestant and Roman Catholic) Physical features Consists of Taiwan I and several smaller islands c.130 km/80 mi off the SE coast of mainland China; mountain range runs NS, covering two-thirds of the island; highest peak, Yu Shan 3997 m/13 113 ft; low-lying land mainly in the W; crossed by the Tropic of Cancer. Climate Tropical monsoon-type climate; hot, humid summers, mild, short winters; wet season (MaySep); typhoons common (JulSep); average daily temperature 1219°C (Jan), 2433°C (Jul) in Taibei; average annual rainfall 2500 mm/98 in. Currency 1 New Taiwan Dollar (TWD) = 100 cents Economy Progressed from agriculture to industry since 1950s; high technology, textiles, electronics, plastics, petrochemicals, machinery; natural gas, limestone, marble, asbestos; sugar, bananas, pineapples, citrus fruits, vegetables, tea, fish; affected by SARS outbreak, 2003. GDP (2001e) $386 bn, per capita $17 200 History Taiwan (Formosa) visited by the Portuguese, 1590; conquered by Manchus, 17th-c; ceded to Japan following Sino-Japanese War, 1895; returned to China, 1945; Nationalist government moved to Taiwan by Jiang Jieshi (Chang Kai-shek); government still maintains claim to legal jurisdiction over mainland China and continues to designate itself as the Republic of China; protected by US naval forces during Korean War, 19503; signed mutual defence pact with USA, 195479; end of state of civil war with People's Republic of China declared by President Lee Teng-hui, 1991; governed by a President, who appoints a premier, National Assembly and Legislative Yuan; elections held for a reformed National Assembly, 1991; Yuan voted in favour of major constitutional change, 2004. "Taiwan" is also commonly used to refer to the territories administered by the Republic of China (ROC), a state whose effective area of administration consists of the island of Taiwan, Lanyu (Orchid Island) and Green Island in the Pacific off the Taiwan coast, the Pescadores in the Taiwan Strait, and Kinmen and Matsu off the southeast coast of the territories administered by the People's Republic of China (PRC).The main island of Taiwan, sometimes also referred to as Formosa (from Portuguese, meaning "graceful"), is located at 22°57′N 120°12′E, off the coast of the territories administered by the People's Republic of China, south of Japan and north of the Philippines. It is bounded to the east by the Pacific Ocean, to the south by the South China Sea and the Luzon Strait, to the west by the Taiwan Strait and to the north by the East China Sea.
By the end of major fighting in the Chinese Civil War in 1950, the ROC had lost control of mainland China to the PRC. Since then, the ROC has been restricted to its present effective area of administration consisting of Taiwan and some neighbouring islands. For more information on this dispute, see Political status of Taiwan.
History
Prehistory and early settlement
Evidence of human settlement in Taiwan dates back thirty thousand years, although the first inhabitants of Taiwan may have been genetically distinct from any groups currently on the island. About four thousand years ago, ancestors of current Taiwanese aborigines settled in Taiwan. Han Chinese began settling in the Pescadores in the 1200s, but Taiwan's hostile tribes and its lack of the trade resources valued in that era rendered it unattractive to all but "occasional adventurers or fishermen engaging in barter" until the sixteenth century.
Records from ancient China indicate that Han Chinese might have known of the existence of the main island of Taiwan since the Three Kingdoms period (third century), having assigned offshore islands in the vicinity names like Greater and Minor Liuqiu (Ryūkyū in Japanese), though none of these names have been definitively matched to the main island of Taiwan. It has been claimed but not verified that the Ming Dynasty admiral Cheng Ho (Zheng He) visited Taiwan between 1403 and 1424.
In 1544, a Portuguese ship sighted the main island of Taiwan and dubbed it "Ilha Formosa", which means "Beautiful Island." The Portuguese made no attempt to colonize Taiwan.
Dutch and Spanish rule
In 1624, the Dutch East Indies Company, headquartered in Batavia, Java, established the first European-style government ever on the soil of Taiwan, and inaugurated the modern political history of Taiwan. Documents there show that they even set up orphanages on Taiwan at that time (a rare occurrence in East Asia then). Today, their visible legacy in Taiwan is limited to a castle in Anping District of Tainan City. The Dutch had its colonial capital at Tayoan City (source of modern name "Taiwan", and present day Anping). The Dutch colonialists also used the aborigines to hunt the native Formosan Sika deer (Cervus nippon taioanus) that inhabited Taiwan, contributing to the eventual disappearance of a small subspecies in the wild.
The Spaniards occupied the northern part of Taiwan for seventeen years before finally being driven away by the Dutch. Today the only visible Spanish legacy is the reddish, solid-looking San Domingo Castle, (dubbed the "Red-Hair Castle" by Taiwanese) that was used by the British consulate until the United Kingdom severed ties with the KMT regime and its formal relationship with Taiwan. His bones were unearthed and brought back to France in the 1960s after France severed ties with the KMT regime, and along with it any formal relationship with Taiwan.
Koxinga and Imperial Chinese rule
Naval and troop forces of Southern Fujian defeated the Dutch in 1662, subsequently expelling the Dutch government and military from the island. Following the fall of the Ming dynasty, Koxinga retreated to Taiwan as a self-styled Ming loyalist and established the Kingdom of Tungning (1662–1683).
In 1683, following the defeat of Koxinga's grandson by an armada led by Admiral Shi Lang of Southern Fujian,the Qing Dynasty formally annexed Taiwan, placing it under the jurisdiction of Fujian province. The Qing Dynasty government wrestled with its Taiwan policy to reduce piracy and vagrancy in the area, which led to a series of edicts to manage migration and respect for aboriginal land rights. Migrants mostly of Southern Fujian continued to enter Taiwan as renters of the large plots of aboriginal lands under contracts that usually involved marriage, while the border between taxpaying lands and "savage" lands shifted eastward, with some aborigines 'Sinicizing' while others retreated into the mountains. The bulk of Taiwan's population today claim descent from these migrants.
In 1887, the Qing government upgraded Taiwan's status from that of being a prefecture of Fujian to one of province itself, the twentieth in the country, with its capital at Taipei. The move was accompanied by a modernization drive that included the building of the first railroad and the beginning of a postal service in Taiwan.
Japanese rule
Japan also sought to claim sovereignty over Taiwan (known as Takasago Koku, or "country of High Sand," a complimentary term in Japanese) since 1592, when Toyotomi Hideyoshi undertook a policy of expansion and extending Japanese influence overseas. Korea, to the west, was invaded, but attempts to invade Taiwan turned out to be unsuccessful due mainly to endemic and epidemic diseases that had no cure at that time such as cholera and malaria, and fierce resistance by aborigines on the island.
In 1871, an Okinawan vessel shipwrecked on the southern tip of Taiwan and the crew of fifty-four were beheaded by the Paiwan aborigines. When Japan sought compensation from Qing China, the court rejected the demand on the ground that Taiwan was outside its jurisdiction. This open renunciation of sovereignty led to Japan's invasion of Taiwan.
Following its defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895), by signing the Treaty of Shimonoseki, Qing China ceded Taiwan and the Pescadores to Japan in perpetuity, on terms dictated by the latter.
On May 25, 1895, a group of pro-Qing high officials proclaimed the Republic of Formosa to resist impending Japanese rule. Japan spent the first 10 years to eradicate the endemic diseases from Taiwan, setting up a public hospital for each chō, an Japanese administrative unit between the town and village. Among those who worked to improve the condition of Taiwan was Nitobe Inazo. He and his, American wife, a Quaker, lived in Taiwan for two years, to improve the sugarcane quality of Taiwan. The first plantation scale sugar industry was thus established on Taiwan. Japanese also introduced the "Horaimai" into Taiwan, which was Japanese rice seeds planted in Taiwan's soil. Some products were so good that they were submitted by the Taiwan governor to the emperor in Tokyo for the imperial family's consumption. Taiwan quickly became the jewel of the Yamato crown, yielding profits for the Japanese. Taiwan supplied the empire with rice, sugar, banana, pineapple, and high-class timber, hinoki, which was used by all the major Buddhist temples (otera) and Shinto shrines (jinja) in Japan. Before annexation of Taiwan, sugar in the form of snacks (okashi) was for the nobles only.
Despite the otherwise relatively friendly relationship between Japanese and Taiwanese in Taiwan, Japan had some lingering suspicion of Taiwanese as Chinese, and did not draft Taiwanese as soldiers before the war. Some women from Taiwan, like their counterparts from the Japanese mainland and Korea, were forced to serve as "comfort women" (sex slaves) for the Japanese Imperial Army during the Second World War.
Japan was forced to draft Taiwanese only after Pearl Harbor. By 1945, just before the end of World War II, desperate plans were put in place to allow entry of Taiwanese into the Japanese Diet to make Taiwan an integral part of Japan proper.
The signing of the Instrument of Surrender on August 15, 1945, put Taiwan under Allied occupation. General MacArthur then ordered the ROC troops into the island as the occupation force of Taiwan, pending final resolution of Taiwan's status internationally. The ensuing military occupation of Taiwan was however conducted on behalf of the "conqueror" and "principal occupying power," which was/is the United States. However, due to the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communists, the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty between Japan and the Allies stipulated the United States as the principal occupying power of Taiwan while not naming the recipient of Taiwan's sovereignty.
Supporters of Taiwanese independence claim that based on technicality, documents and treaties left the legal sovereignty of Taiwan ambiguous, and that the ruling KMT government of the ROC have merely exercised stewardship control over the island, as there are no international legal documents proving that the sovereignty of Taiwan has ever been transferred to China. The People's Republic of China, on its part, says that Taiwan's sovereignty was transferred to China under the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, which Japan necessarily accepted by surrendering to the Allies. Some but by no means all Pan-Blue supporters in Taiwan are of a similar opinion. See Political status of Taiwan for more information.
Kuomintang rule
The ROC administration, led by Chiang Kai-shek, announced October 25, 1945, as "Taiwan Retrocession Day" (臺灣光復節). At first, they were greeted as liberators by the people of Taiwan. However, the ROC military administration on Taiwan under Chen Yi was generally unstable and corrupt;
In 1949, on losing the Chinese Civil War to the CPC, the KMT retreated from Mainland China and moved the ROC government to Taipei, Taiwan's largest city, while continuing to claim sovereignty over all of China and Greater Mongolia. On the mainland, the Communists established the PRC, claiming to be the sole representative of China including Taiwan and portraying the ROC government on Taiwan as an illegitimate entity. Some 1.3 million refugees from Mainland China, consisting mainly of soldiers, KMT party members, and most importantly the intellectual and business elites from the mainland, arrived in Taiwan around that time. In addition, as part of its retreat to Taiwan, the KMT brought with them literally the entire gold reserve and foreign currency reserve of mainland China. This unprecedented influx of human and monetary capital laid the foundation for Taiwan's later dramatic economic development. From this period on, Taiwan was governed by a party-state dictatorship, with the KMT as the ruling party.
Taiwan remained under martial law and one-party rule, under the name of the "Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion" (動員戡亂時期臨時條款), from 1948 to 1987, when Presidents Chiang Ching-kuo and Lee Teng-hui gradually liberalized and democratized the system.
Geography
The island of Taiwan lies some 200 kilometers off the southeastern coast of China, across the Taiwan Strait, and has an area of 35,801 square kilometers (13,823 square miles). The island is characterized by the contrast between the eastern two-thirds, consisting mostly of rugged mountains running in five ranges from the northern to the southern tip of the island, and the flat to gently rolling plains in the west that are also home to most of Taiwan's population. Taiwan's highest point is the Yu Shan at 3,952 meters, and there are five other peaks over 3,500 meters. This makes it the world's seventh-highest island
The shape of the main island of Taiwan is similar to a sweet potato seen in a south-to-north direction, and therefore, Taiwanese people, especially the Min-nan division, often call themselves "children of the Sweet Potato".
Taiwan's climate is marine tropical.
Taiwan is a center of bird endemism; see Endemic birds of Taiwan for further information.
Environment and pollution
With its high population density and many factories, some areas in Taiwan suffer from heavy pollution. In the past, Taipei suffered from extensive vehicle and factory air pollution, but with mandatory use of unleaded gasoline and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency, the air quality of Taiwan has improved dramatically. The motor scooters which are ubiquitous in Taiwan, especially older or cheaper two-stroke versions, also contribute disproportionately to air pollution in Taiwan.
Land and soil pollution has decreased as Taiwanese industry moves out of heavy industry; Nearly 90% of sewage waste in Taiwan is dumped into waterways untreated.
Natural resources
Because of the intensive exploitation throughout Taiwan's pre-modern and modern history, the island's mineral resources (eg.
Camphor oil extraction and cane sugar production played an important role in Taiwan's exportation from the late nineteenth century through the first half of the twentieth century.
Nowadays, few natural resources with significant economic value are retained in Taiwan, which are essentially agriculture-associated. Domestic agriculture (rice being the dominant kind of crop) and fishery retain importance to a certain degree, but they have been greatly challenged by foreign imports since Taiwan's accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. Consequently, upon the decline of subsistent importance, Taiwan's agriculture now relies heavily on the marketing and exportation of certain kinds of specialty, such as banana, guava, lychee, wax apple, and high-mountain tea.
Energy resources
Taiwan has significant coal deposits and some insignificant oil and gas deposits. Nearly all oil and gas for transportation and power needs must be imported, making Taiwan particularly sensitive to fluctations in energy prices. Because of this, Taiwan's Executive Yuan is pushing for 10% of energy generation to come from renewable energy by 2010, double from the current figure of approximately 5%. Taiwan is rich in wind-energy resources, both on-shore and off-shore, though limited land area favors offshore wind resources. By promoting renewable energy, Taiwan's government hopes to also aid the nascent renewable energy manufacturing industry, and develop it into an export market.
Society
Ethnic groups
The ROC's population was estimated in 2005 at 22.9 million, most of whom are on Taiwan. and the Hakka (15% of the total population), who originally migrated south to Guangdong, its surrounding areas and Taiwan, intermarrying extensively with Taiwanese aborigines. As Taiwan's birthrate is among the lowest in the world, this contingent is playing an increasingly important role in changing Taiwan's demographic makeup.
The other 2% of Taiwan's population, numbering about 458,000, are listed as the Taiwanese aborigines (Chinese: 原住民;
Languages
About 80% of the people in Taiwan belong to the Holo (河洛) or Hoklo (福佬) ethnic group and speak both Standard Mandarin (officially recognized by the ROC as the National Dialect) and Taiwanese (a variant of the Min Nan dialect spoken in Fujian province). English also features on several of Taiwan's education exams.
Although Mandarin is still the language of instruction in schools and dominates television and radio, non-Mandarin dialects have undergone a revival in public life in Taiwan.
Most aboriginal groups in Taiwan have their own languages which, unlike Taiwanese or Hakka, do not belong to the Chinese language family, but rather to the Austronesian language family.
The national phonetic system of the ROC is Zhuyin Fuhao (Traditional Chinese: 注音符號;
The romanization of Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan is inconsistent. Taipei, Taiwan's largest city, has adopted Hanyu Pinyin, replacing earlier signage, most of which had been in a bastardized version of Wade-Giles. Kaohsiung, Taiwan's second-largest city, has adopted Tongyong. Elsewhere in Taiwan, signs tend to be in a mixture of systems, with the most common overall being MPS2, which was official before the adoption of Tongyong Pinyin. Because romanization is not taught in Taiwan schools and there has been little political will to ensure that it is implemented correctly, romanization errors are common throughout Taiwan; As the Pan-Blue bloc has largely aligned itself behind Hanyu Pinyin and the Pan-Green bloc has largely backed Tongyong Pinyin, Pan-Blue victories in the 2005 county elections are likely to result in an expansion of the use of Hanyu Pinyin, especially in northern and central Taiwan.
Most people in Taiwan have their names romanized using a modified version of Wade-Giles. This, however, is generally not out of personal preference but rather a tendency to use the system that most reference materials in Taiwan have employed to date.
Religion
Over 93% of Taiwanese are adherents of a combination of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism;
Confucianism is a philosophy that deals with secular moral ethics, and serves as the foundation of both Chinese and Taiwanese culture.
One especially important goddess for Taiwanese people is Matsu, who symbolizes the seafaring spirit of Taiwan's ancestors from Fujian and Guangdong.
Culture
Taiwan's mainstream culture is primarily derived from traditional Chinese culture, with significant influences also from Japanese and American cultures, especially in the areas of politics and architecture.
After the retreat to Taiwan, the Nationalists took steps to preserve traditional Chinese culture and suppress the local Taiwanese culture.
Since the Taiwan localization movement of the 1990s, Taiwan's cultural identity has been allowed greater expression.
The status of Taiwanese culture is a subject of debate. Along with the political status of Taiwan, it is disputed whether Taiwanese culture is a segment of Chinese culture (due to the Han ethnicity and a shared language and traditional customs with mainland Chinese) or a distinct culture separate from Chinese culture (due to the long period of recent political separation and the past colonization of Taiwan).
One of Taiwan's greatest attractions is the National Palace Museum, which houses more than 650,000 pieces of Chinese bronze, jade, calligraphy, painting and porcelain. The KMT moved this collection from the Forbidden City in Beijing in 1949 when it fled to Taiwan.
Popular sports in Taiwan include basketball and baseball.
Karaoke, drawn from contemporary Japanese culture, is extremely popular in Taiwan, where it is known as KTV.
Taiwan has a high density of 24-hour convenience stores, which in addition to the usual services, provide services on behalf of financial institutions or government agencies such as collection of parking fees, utility bills, traffic violation fines, and credit card payments.
Taiwanese culture also has influenced the West: bubble tea and milk tea are popular drinks readily available around city centers in Europe and North America.
See also: Cinema of Taiwan, Literature of Taiwan, and Taiwanese photography
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