Taiwan

[frogwoman]

I know very little about the place, apart from when I was at school I had a friend whose parents had come over here because they disagreed with the Chinese communist party while many of them had gone over to Taiwan.

Can anyone give me some background history about it, and also what is the political situation like there now? Who is the prime minister etc? What are the relations with China like these days, I know for a long time they didn't recognise each other. I had the impression years ago from stuff Iread about it that it was largely made up of rich expats who had disagreed with Mao but I'm 100% certain this is bollocks.

Cheers!

 

[frogwoman]

JimW

 

[Idris2002]

They still don't recognize each other as far as I know.

Also when the KMT took refuge in Taiwan after 1949 the first thing they did was have a massacre of the locals.

 

[frogwoman]

Were they all killed? I had the impression there weren't many "locals" left?

 

[JimW]

There's local and local - you get the aboriginal peoples, descended from the non-Chinese groups who've lived on the island longest, then the mostly Min-speaking Chinese settlers who came from the 17th (?) century on (Hakka people too, not sure when they came), and these are contrasted with the mainland incomers who followed the rump nationalist government when it fled there in 49. The subsequent (happened in 47 actually https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/228_Incident )massacre killed a lot of activists etc but not everyone by a long chalk.
There are numerous 'cross-straits' (as its called liaison bodies) even if neither thinks the other is technically a legitimate China. Been something of a rapprochement recently with direct flights etc allowed. There's long (post-reform at least) been a lot of Taiwanese capital invested, especially in Min speaking areas of south-east (Fujian) and the two groups of capitalists have business to conduct.
Don't want to be too reductionist about post-49 Taiwanese politics, as I'm only a general reader on it and like anywhere there's plenty of it, but broadly you get its role as anti-Communist bulwark with an authoritarian incomer government under Chiang Kai-shek (who interestingly did implement land reforms on the island as one lesson they learned from failure on the mainland) so struggles for democracy and also native language/culture rights (aborginal and for non-mandarin Chinese languages like Minnan and Hakka) which start to be realised under his son Chiang Jingguo in the late 70s/80s (?).
Now you get parliamentary politics divived into what are called pan-blue and pan-green camps - former is nationalists, want to maintain ties with mainland and maybe some rapprochment, more conservative I think, and pan-green which is nativist and for independence. Some independent leftist agitation too, small though.
You'd be better off with Wikipedia I reckon

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

I know very little about the place, apart from when I was at school I had a friend whose parents had come over here because they disagreed with the Chinese communist party while many of them had gone over to Taiwan.

Can anyone give me some background history about it, and also what is the political situation like there now? Who is the prime minister etc? What are the relations with China like these days, I know for a long time they didn't recognise each other. I had the impression years ago from stuff Iread about it that it was largely made up of rich expats who had disagreed with Mao but I'm 100% certain this is bollocks.

Cheers!

There's a historical drama that came out in 2011, called Seediq Bale, that's well worth watching.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warriors_of_the_Rainbow:_Seediq_Bale

 

[JimW]

There's a historical drama that came out in 2011, called Seediq Bale, that's well worth watching.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warriors_of_the_Rainbow:_Seediq_Bale

I enjoyed that - sort of a Taiwanese Apocalypto. This earlier film is well worth the watch on the 2/28 incident: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_City_of_Sadness