Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
the time could tell that the United States would eventually recognize
the PRC. Chiang Kai-shek did not live to see the final break with the
Americans. He died a deeply frustrated and disappointed man in
1975, probably knowing that his government would end up forsaking
his dream of recovering the mainland.
On December 15, 1978, President Jimmy Carter finally announced
the United States' break with Taiwan and pending normalization of
relations with mainland China, which would be effective on January 1,
1979. The abrupt, unceremonious break with Taiwan led to wide-
spread anger and fear in Taiwan. Anti-American riots broke out, and
some Americans were beaten for their country's “betrayal” of Taiwan.
A mob of protesters went to the Chiang Kai-shek Airport to throw
eggs at the U.S. envoys who had flown to the island to speak with
Chiang Ching-kuo about the derecognition.
Taiwan was essentially a police state from 1949 until Chiang Kai-
shek's death in 1975. During the 1950s Taiwan's White Terror contin-
ued internally, and the island was in something of a constant state of
alert for a counter-attack against the mainland, which never did hap-
pen. The United States did not support Chiang Kai-shek's military
ambitions and even actively opposed them for a while during the de-
cade. Chiang Kai-shek stubbornly held the islands of Quemoy and
Matsu off the shore of mainland China, despite U.S. misgivings. By
the early 1960s, in the wake of the disastrous Great Leap Forward on
the mainland, Chiang once again made plans for attacking the main-
land, but these came to nothing.
THE KAOHSIUNG INCIDENT
After the death of Chiang Kai-shek in 1975 there were a few brief
years of relative openness, and it appeared for a time that more popu-
lar elections were in the offing and that there would be broader toler-
ance for dissent. By the late 1970s, however, these hopes were
dashed. The Kuomintang would not loosen its stranglehold on politi-
cal power without direct popular action and political rallies and
protests.
In the summer of 1979 political dissidents Shih Ming-teh and Huang
Hsin-chieh began publishing Formosa (Meilidao), a magazine critical of
the Kuomintang government. The government tolerated its publica-
tion and distribution, but rogue right-wing opponents, possibly the
“Iron Blood Patriots” or the “Anti-Communist Heroes,” damaged
