RETREAT OF KUOMINTANG TO TAIWAN

thelivyjr
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Re: RETREAT OF KUOMINTANG TO TAIWAN

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Retreat of the Government of the Republic of China to Taiwan, continued ...

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Reinventing a new political party

In August 1950, the KMT held its first Central reform Committee meeting to launch the party's reforms.

In late 1949, having been almost destroyed by the Chinese Communists, the Kuomintang relocated to Taiwan and reinvented itself.

Not only did the KMT leadership build a new party, but it built a new polity on Taiwan that created economic prosperity.

From August 1950 to October 1952, more than four hundred working meetings were held almost four times a week to discuss how to build a new political party and implement Nationalist government policies.

On August 5, 1950, Chiang chose the Central Reform Committee (CRC) to serve as the party's core leadership for planning and acting.

The CRC members were on average young with an average age of 47 and all had college degrees.

The new CRC had six goals:

* Make the KMT a revolutionary democratic party.

* Recruit peasants, workers, youth, intellectuals, and capitalists.

* Adhere to democratic centralism.

* Establish the work team as the basic organizational unit.

* Maintain high standards of leadership and obey the party's decisions,

* Adopt Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People as the KMT's ideology.

All CRC members took an oath to fulfill the party's ultimate goals which is to get rid of the Communists and recover the Chinese mainland.

TO BE CONTINUED ...
thelivyjr
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Re: RETREAT OF KUOMINTANG TO TAIWAN

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Retreat of the Government of the Republic of China to Taiwan, continued ...

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Expanding the Party's social foundation

Having organized a cohesive, loyal party, Chiang Kai-shek wanted to extend its influence deep into Taiwan's society in order to broaden its social base.

One way to do that was to select new members from different socioeconomic groups.

Various party branch members were ordered to recruit new members, especially students and teachers.

New members had to show loyalty to the KMT party, understand what the party represented, obey party principles, and perform services for the party.

In return, the CRC promised to pay attention to society's needs, which helped the CRC define a clear political purpose.

Party policy also targeted ways to improve ordinary people's living conditions.

Having new party branches made up of people of similar social status was a strategy that improved relations with workers, business leaders, farmers, intellectuals.

With the new party branches promoting the various groups of people, the KMT was able slowly to extend its control and influence into Taiwan's villages.

By October 1952, KMT membership had reached nearly 282,000, compared to the 50,000 members who had fled to Taiwan.

More significant, more than half the party members were Taiwanese.

By the late 1960s, this number had risen to nearly one million.

CRC made its work teams responsible for enforcing party policies and informing members how to behave.

They also prevented communist infiltration, and recruited new party members after investigating their backgrounds, in order to hold regular meetings to discuss party strategy.

The new party, then, behaved very differently from the way it had before 1949, with its work teams having new managerial and training responsibilities.

According to the KMT's new rules, all party members had to join a work team and attend its meetings so that the party leadership could discover who was loyal and active.

According to one report, in the summer of 1952, the KMT's Taiwan provincial party headquarters had at least thirty thousand work-team units in the field, each unit having at least nine members who worked in various state agencies, areas of Taiwan, and occupations.

Gradually, the party expanded its influence in society and in the state.

TO BE CONTINUED ...
thelivyjr
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Re: RETREAT OF KUOMINTANG TO TAIWAN

Post by thelivyjr »

Retreat of the Government of the Republic of China to Taiwan, continued ...

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Local political reforms

An important KMT tactic was to promote limited, local-level political reforms to enhance the party's authority with the Taiwanese people.

To legitimize the Republic of China (ROC) as the central government for all China, Taiwan's Nationalist government needed elected representatives for all China.

Thus, in 1947 more than one thousand mainlanders in Nanking were elected by the Chinese people as members of the National Assembly, Legislative Yuan, and the Control Yuan.


After coming to Taiwan, those representatives were permitted to hold their seats until the next ROC election could be held on the mainland, thus legitimizing the ROC's control of Taiwan.

In this new political environment, the reformed KMT and the ROC government were able to propose their new power.

Chiang Kai-shek believed that, in this authoritarian polity, local elections could promote Taiwan's eventual democracy.

People did not believe that the KMT would ever not interfere with such elections.

However, having so many local elections in a year, many voters became convinced that the KMT wanted to advance political pluralism.

Party leaders tried to broaden their influence, while only slowly allowing opposing politicians to compete, by giving political lessons to teach voters how democracy should work.

In January 1951, the first elections for county and city council were held.

In April, other elections followed for county and municipal offices.

In December 1951, the Taiwan Provisional Provincial Assembly was organized.

Its members were appointed by county and municipal assemblies.

Through martial law and the control of local election rules, the KMT won most of those local elections but claimed that free elections had been held.

Chiang believed that enough liberty had been granted.

Therefore, party leaders continued to emphasize that martial law was still necessary.


The new approach of the party also extended to its approach to education.

Initially, the party had seen public schools as a necessary instrument of assimilation and nation-building.

Private schools, seen as unwanted competition, were therefore suppressed.

However, as education needs on the island began to outstrip government resources, the party reevaluated their approach.

Starting in 1954, private schools were not only tolerated, but backed by state funding.

Simultaneously, steps were taken to secure the obedience of private schools, such as ensuring the placement of party loyalists on school boards and the passing of strict laws to control the political content of the curricula.


TO BE CONTINUED ...
thelivyjr
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Re: RETREAT OF KUOMINTANG TO TAIWAN

Post by thelivyjr »

Retreat of the Government of the Republic of China to Taiwan, concluded ...

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Views on the legality of the KMT takeover of Taiwan

There are opposing views on the legality of the KMT takeover of Taiwan.

At the time of the retreat to Taiwan, the KMT maintained that they were a government in exile.

The Chinese Communist government maintains to this day that the Republic of China on Taiwan is a province that must eventually return to rule by the mainland.

According to an article published in 1955 on the legal status of Taiwan, "It has been charged that Chiang Kai-shek has no claim to the island because he is 'merely a fugitive quartering his army' there and besides, his is a government in exile."

Moreover, the Treaty of San Francisco, which was officially signed by 48 nations on 8 September 1951, did not specify to whom Japan was ceding Taiwan and Pescadores.


Despite this, the ROC was viewed by the vast majority of states at the time as the legitimate representative of China, as it had succeeded the Qing Dynasty, while the PRC was at the time a mostly unrecognized state.

Japan was, at the time of the signing of the Treaty of San Francisco, still technically under American occupation.

After full independence, Japan established full relations with the ROC and not the PRC.

According to Professor Gene Hsiao, "since the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the separate KMT treaty with Japan did not specify to whom Japan was ceding Taiwan and the Pescadores, the implication of the U.S. position was that legally, and insofar as the signatories of those two treaties were concerned, Taiwan became an 'ownerless' island and the KMT, by its own assent to the American policy, a foreign government-in-exile."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_o ... _to_Taiwan
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