Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
[Minmeng] at the beginning of my file, and it seemed like I had found a
small clue. With this I sobbed and said, “I participated in the Chinese
Democratic Alliance [Zhongguo minzhu tongmeng].”
“There now,” Liu Chan-hua said with a friendly smile. “Dear
Poyang, if you had said this earlier, how could we have had our misun-
derstanding just now? Actually, we have all your materials at hand. We
just wanted you to confess on your own.”
(Poyang 1996, 267-69)
Poyang remained a political prisoner on Green Island until 1978, when
pressure from Amnesty International finally secured his release. After
his return to freedom he continued with a distinguished writing
career. During the 1990s Poyang began to write in Taiwan's newspa-
pers about his years as a political prisoner, and his erstwhile tormen-
tor, Liu Chan-hua, was so upset about it all that he threatened to sue
Poyang for defamation. But Liu Chan-hua's day had passed. In 1996
Chiang Ching-kuo's younger brother, retired Kuomintang general
Chiang Wei-kuo (1916-1997), publicly apologized to Poyang on behalf
of his deceased brother for how the Nationalist government had mis-
treated him. Poyang died on Taiwan in 2008, and his passing was
widely noted and mourned on the island. His ashes were scattered
off the shore of Green Island.
Incredibly, many countries supported Chiang's fiction of being the
only legitimate government of all China, of which Taiwan was a part,
until well into the 1960s and 1970s. Britain, never a fan of Chiang
Kai-shek's government, had recognized the People's Republic
immediately after its founding, but most other major countries contin-
ued to recognize the Nationalists. In 1964 France extended diplomatic
recognition to the People's Republic of China regime on the mainland,
and in response Chiang Kai-shek quickly severed diplomatic relations
between France and his Republic of China on Taiwan. Canada recog-
nized the People's Republic in 1970, followed by Japan in Septem-
ber 1971. The next month, Chiang Kai-shek's Republic of China on
Taiwan withdrew from the United Nations. Chiang Kai-shek was
enraged that the PRC was allowed into the United Nations and angrily
predicted that the UN would soon collapse as a result. By the mid-
1970s most of the industrialized democracies of the world had, with
the exception of the United States, faced up to reality, broken off rela-
tions with Chiang's Nationalist regime on Taiwan, and recognized
the People's Republic of China and its claim to be the only legal
government of China, of which Taiwan was a part. In the early 1970s
the Americans made tentative overtures to the Chinese Communists,
and anyone who could sense the directions of the political winds of
