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This chapter centers on Taiwanese identity and cross-Strait relations at a time when the ascent of China has proven to be the greatest sustained story of international relations in the new millennium. It pays attention to the developments prior to the flight of the Kuomintang, the losing side in the Chinese Civil War, to the island of Formosa in 1949. The chapter also highlights events since that time and especially in recent years, which have witnessed dramatic changes in the capabilities of the People's Republic of China. It considers especially the pull between ideological and self-interested motivating factors on shaping identity. The chapter explicates the recent developments in cross-Strait relations and explores the rise of China in connection with evolving identity for Taiwan and the role of the United States.

Yuan-tsung Chen writes her memoir in the midst of growing unrest when in 2019 the Communist rulers try to pass an extradition law in Hong Kong’s Legislative Council. To begin with, they set about “reforming” middle schoolers’ education— for instance, through the Orwellian rewriting of the history of the Cultural Revolution, from the ten-year-long “cataclysm” (Hao Jie—浩劫‎) to the ten years of “arduous exploration and development achievement.” Even according to the official death toll, 1.7 million people perished in the Cultural Revolution. The dead had families or relatives, friends or lovers, so how many more lives were ruined? Yuan-tsung simply cannot accept such a whitewashing without a guilty conscience. She is fully aware of the consequences of confronting the untruth. Nevertheless, she decides to write what she witnessed, saw, and understood as truth.

Chinese women in Australia’s Northern Territory in the early twentieth century were more actively involved in business than current scholarship suggests. This was in spite of Chinese cultural norms, such as patriarchal business structures. Local, national and international factors influenced Chinese women’s business opportunities in the Territory, including existing businesses owned and run by women in the Territory, shifts in Chinese families as merchant pioneers died, and changing Chinese attitudes towards women with the rise of Sun Yat-sen and the Kuomintang. Archival material and comparisons to Chinese women elsewhere in Australia and overseas demonstrate the significant business involvement of the Territory’s Chinese women.

The party's activities in Hong Kong entered a new phase in 1927 when Chiang Kai-shek embarked on the Party Purification Movement against Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members all over China. The Japanese invasion from 1937 to 1945 is described. The chapter particularly highlights the Eighth Route Army Hong Kong Office, guerrillas, and war. The Chinese people were exhausted after eight years of Japanese occupation. The war had disrupted their lives enormously. Hong Kong, under British administration, was useful during the civil war to the CCP primarily because it was not under Kuomintang (KMT) control. To the CCP, Hong Kong's relatively liberal political environment provided significant strategic value. One of the most important decisions made by the CCP in relations to Hong Kong was to create the Xinhua News Agency, Hong Kong Branch in November 1946—the agency's first office outside the Mainland. A guiding principle of the CCP's work in Hong Kong during the civil war period was that, while facilitating the party's activities on the Mainland, it should avoid conducting any activities harming the interests of Hong Kong.

This chapter demonstrates the influence of the Korean War on Hong Kong and a range of incidents that were a direct legacy of continuing conflicts between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Between 1949 and the eve of the Cultural Revolution, the colony of Hong Kong was an active united front and propaganda centre of the CCP. The CCP's policy to leave Hong Kong in British hands and to maintain good relations with Britain could be seen right from the time when the communists were about to win the civil war. CCP's Hong Kong policy apparatus is first introduced in this chapter. Although the CCP showed flexibility on the question of Hong Kong's sovereignty, it was not without limits. The CCP did not distinguish between the secession of Hong Kong and Kowloon to Britain and the lease on the New Territories. In addition, there were occasional rumblings despite the generally cordial Sino-British relations. Moreover, the CCP work in Hong Kong is reviewed here. It then deals with united front work, propaganda and party mouthpieces, intelligence gathering, and mainland campaigns. Furthermore, Hong Kong survived the disruptions suffered during the Korean War.

Naval power had a huge impact on the rise of Mao Zedong and the Communists in China from 1926 to 1949. Despite this, scholars have often marginalized its role because Mao himself wrote very little about the topic. This chapter by Francis Gricerebuts the belief that naval power was unimportant by providing an extensive account of the different ways that Mao and the Communists were affected by naval power during three main periods: their early struggles with the Kuomintang and foreign powers, the war against Japan, and the subsequent Civil War. The chapter asserts that Mao paid little heed to naval issues because he lacked strategic vision and because he was determined to provide a "victor" narrative that emphasized the strengths of the Communist movement and marginalized its weaknesses. The chapter links the absence of naval components within Mao's writings with the surprising dearth of attention to maritime issues within modern counter-insurgency literature, including the recent U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. Finally, the chapter argues that the omission of naval power from Mao's writings helps to demonstrate that his relevance for later insurgencies was considerably lower than is conventionally assumed.

Recounts nationalist soldiers and civilians, in defeat, realizing they are stuck on Taiwan and their attempts to mingle with locals, marry and make a place for themselves amidst the dread of loss and isolation from their place in history.

This chapter shows how the British left was mobilised in support of China during the Chinese Nationalist movement (KMT) in its confrontation with Britain during 1925–1928. The May 30^th incident in 1925, when Chinese strikers were shot dead by British-officered police in Shanghai, represented a turning point for both Anglo-Chinese relations and the interest of the British left in China. The chapter explores the ‘Hands off China’ movement of this period, and places it in the context of the tensions between Communists and non-Communists on the left in Britain. A concluding section deals with the period 1928-31, when relations improved between Britain and China, but when the Chinese Communists began to control substantial rural ‘Soviets’.

This chapter examines the roots of the May 30, 1925 incident in Shanghai in the power struggle in Kwantung Province. It was there that the heirs of Sun Yat-sen were struggling to control his Kuomintang Party and where the growing communist influence on the cadets of the Whampoa Military Academy led by Chiang Kai-shek was evident. This chapter discusses the Asiatic Fleet's confrontation with the Whampoa cadets in June 1925.

This chapter examines the 1927 incidents at the major lower Yangtze Valley city of Nanking following the Nationalist occupation of the Chinese sections of Shanghai. The first alert came on March 24 stating that Nationalist forces were converging on the city and that the southerners (Kuomintang) were looting throughout the city and killing foreigners. This chapter discusses several important factors that distinguished Nanking from other Chinese cities where the U.S. Navy was called upon to protect American lives and property.

This chapter examines Japanese aggression and communist unrest in China during the 1930s. It explains that the clashes between the Chinese and Japanese in Manchuria and at Shanghai proved to be the beginnings of the road to full war between China and Japan in 1937 and to Pearl Harbor in 1941. These events also overshadowed the domestic troubles in China including the factionalism at Kuomintang and the continued activities of communist bands. This chapter discusses the U.S. Navy's response to these Chinese problems.

After a year in Hong Kong, the whole of mainland China, with the exception of the province of Tibet, was liberated by the Communists, and the Kuomintang headed by Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan. By this time a conviction had been well established in their minds. Preparations were made to leave Frances Wong's two children with her parents and her and her husband resigned from their teaching posts. The trains between Hong Kong and Guangzhou had stopped and in going to Guangzhou they had to walk for a week. This chapter describes their life and journey through Beijing where Wong worked under her role model Gong Peng, a visit from the in-laws, political movements, a broken heart, the Princess Kashmir incident, anti-rightist movement.

Chapter Three discusses the ways in which the communist takeover of the Chinese mainland and China’s involvement in the Korean War shaped Chinese American politics between 1949 and 1951. Leaders of the American KMT sought alternatives to Chiang Kai-shek, while American members of the anti-communist and anti-Nationalist Third Force continued their quest to shape American policy towards China. While the Korean War eventually unified the American KMT, it hardly silenced Chiang Kai-shek’s critics in New York and San Francisco.

Chapter Four explores the rapidly diverging politics of Chinese American New York and San Francisco in the early and mid-1950s. In New York, KMT activists and officials infiltrated almost every Chinese American organization, but their factionalism and disregard for community welfare frustrated many residents. In San Francisco during the same period, Chinese Americans increasingly focused on American domestic politics, which not only proved safer than Chinese politics but also touched their lives more directly. Growing numbers registered to vote, and a group of younger men and women participated in the liberal Democratic club movement, forging valuable ties to regional politicians.

This chapter examines the mainland's use of interest transformation as a strategy to alter Taiwan's definition of its own interests. It considers how China executed its strategy of interest transformation by focusing on the spring 2005 visit of Lien Chan, chairman of the Kuomintang Party (KMT), to the mainland and the subsequent elimination of tariffs on Taiwanese fruit. It shows how mainland authorities worked together with Taiwan's opposition parties and began to target Taiwan's fruit exports for further expansion as part of China's shift to an economic statecraft strategy based on interest transformation. It argues that the mainland's trade concessions to the support base of Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian was part of a successful electoral effort to mitigate Taiwan's aspiration for independence.

This chapter looks at the implications of the presence of Nationalist Chinese (Kuomintang or KMT) forces in northern Burma. Forced out of China by the advancing Communist army, they created enormous difficulties for Burma in its relations with the PRC (People's Republic of China). Although the American embassy in Rangoon condemned the KMT activities and wanted strong U.S. intervention to end them, the U.S. government seemed unable to force a troop withdrawal. This was because the CIA, with approval at the highest level, covertly supported the KMT. The decision to support the KMT showed that containment of communism and resistance to the PRC were at the center of American goals across the region. However, doubts quickly emerged about whether such a decision advanced these goals.

This chapter studies a series of angry telegrams pertaining to the Kuomintang (KMT) issue. Ambassador William Sebald reported that the KMT was a constant threat to security, since it creates an excuse for invasion by Communist China and detracts from the efforts of the Burmese Army to defeat the communist insurgents. In Thailand, Ambassador Stanton was equally forceful in his condemnation of the KMTs, accusing them of cooperating with Karen insurgents, of overthrowing local Shan officials, and engaging in hostile actions against the government. These irate reports forced the issue to the highest levels of the government. It was discussed at the CIA on the last day of the Truman administration. The new administration then decided to address the KMT problem vigorously. With negotiations to end the Korean War underway, American interest in supporting the KMT in Burma weakened over time.

This chapter explains that although the United States had assisted in the withdrawal of the Kuomintang (KMT) troops, the American objective of preventing communist domination of Burma remained fully intact. The United States was interested in providing economic and military aid to strengthen the government's ability to take on the communist rebels, and to maintain its independence from China. In December 1954, President Eisenhower stated that the administration's interest in Asia was to stop the “Communist menace.” During his time, however, the “menace” remained, so the United States continued to be involved in Asia, including Burma. Because of Burma's determined adherence to nonalignment, it insisted that whatever aid was provided had to come without conditions. Since U.S. law often did require conditions, the bargaining was quite difficult. The chapter shows how Burma's ethnic rebellions also posed unique challenges for the United States.

This chapter examines Taiwan's impressive record of rural development. In Taiwan, the defeated Kuomintang regime (KMT or Chinese Nationalist Party) sought to regain control of mainland China by transforming the island into a model province that would legitimize its right to rule. The KMT carried out a comprehensive land reform program in the early 1950s, which led to the creation of a smallholder farm economy with extremely low levels of inequality. In addition to land reform, the KMT built up a rural extension system to provide technical education and production inputs to farmers. These institutions resulted in nearly two decades of accelerated growth. According to Taiwan's former president Lee Teng-hui, agriculture played a textbook role in Taiwan's development. It met the domestic demand for food, accounted for a substantial share of exports, and provided capital and labor for industrialization. As one of the first countries in the post-World War II period to achieve industrialized nation status, Taiwan stands out as an exemplary case of successful development. The chapter then sheds light on what happened after the government's urban-biased policies were reversed in the 1970s.