History
Main article: History of Taiwan
Taiwan's indigenous population was first joined and intermarried with male traders and seasonal workers from Mainland China primarily during a brief period of Dutch control between 1624 and 1662. The Dutch were ousted from the island in 1662 by Cheng Cheng-Kung (also known as Koxinga), a former pirate who styled himself as a Ming loyalist, who hoped to marshal his troops on the island. Following the defeat of Cheng's grandson to an armada led by Admiral Shi Lang, Cheng's followers were expatriated to the furthest reaches of the Qing empire leaving approximately 7000 Chinese on Taiwan. The Qing government wrestled with its Taiwan policy to reduce piracy and vagrancy in the area, which led to a series of edicts to manage immigration and respect aboriginal land rights. Illegal immigrants continued to enter Taiwan as renters of the large plots aboriginal lands under contracts that usually involved marriage, while the border between tax paying lands and "savage" lands expanded east. Following the Sino-Japanese War in 1895, China was forced to cede Taiwan to Japan in perpetuity allowing a grace period for those wishing to remain Chinese subjects to sell their property and return to the mainland.
Following the end of World War II in 1945, under the terms of the Instrument of Surrender of Japan, Japan accepted the Potsdam Declaration which referenced the Cairo Declaration under which the island was to be transferred to China. The ROC troops were authorized to come to Taiwan to accept the surrender of Japanese military forces in General Order No. 1 issued by General Douglas MacArthur on September 2, 1945, and were later transported to Keelung by the U.S. Navy. The ROC troops and were initially hesitant to accept the surrender of the Japanese garrison and undertake military occupation of the island.
A series of severe clashes between a mainland military administration under Chen Yi and native Taiwanese then led to the bloody 228 incident in which government troops massacred 30,000 protestors. In the San Francisco Peace Treaty which came into force on April 28, 1952 and the Treaty of Taipei which came into force on August 5, 1952, Japan formally renounced all right, claim, and title to Formosa (Taiwan) and the Pescadores (a.k.a. Peng-hu). The treaty remained silent about who the island would be transferred to, in part to avoid taking sides in the ongoing Chinese Civil War. This has been used by advocates of Taiwan independence to justify self-determination.
The Kuomintang (Nationalist Party), which at the time controlled the government of the ROC, retreated to Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China ended in the Communists' favor in 1949, bringing with them some 2 million refugees from Mainland China. Since then, Taiwan has developed a prosperous and dynamic economy, becoming one of the East Asian Tigers.
Taiwan remained under martial law for 4 decades until 1987 and one-party rule until 1991 when President Chiang Ching-kuo gradually liberalized and democratized the system. Upon his death, Vice-President Lee Teng-hui succeeded him as President of the ROC and Chairman of the KMT and made great strides in developing democracy in Taiwan. Lee became the first native Taiwanese to become the president during the KMT rule in Taiwan. KMT rule over Taiwan ended with the election of Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party in 2000.
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