A short story for those of u whitemen who dunno the taiwan situation.
I was born in taiwan, 1968.
My dad and mom was born in china.
my dad's sister, aged few months, died in shanghai during jp bombing.
China had civil war, before ww2.
Communist party (CPC) vs the nationalist party aka kuomingdang (aka KMT).
KMT started the Republic Of China 🇹🇼 (aka ROC, now more known as taiwan) in 1912.
CPC started the People's Republic Of China 🇨🇳 (aka PROC, Mainland China) in 1949. (this is after ww2)
During ww2 (1939 to 1945), the two kinda agreed to fight the jp together (but lots backstabbing).
After ww2, civil war resumed. Far more bloody than american civil war.
The communist is supported by russia. The nationalists is supported by usa.
CPC won. The nationalist escaped to taiwan (around 1949).
That is, my parents escaped to taiwan.
The communist would chase over and finished the job, except, usa ran its warships over taiwan strait (the sea between china and taiwan). Year 1950.
The nationalist, is basically a dictatorship, and did not treat taiwan people well. (usa helped its suppression of dissents)
Dissents are put to death or jail. (most famous example is historian Li Ao, who got in jail for several years. (he died some 4 years ago))
There were also mass killings of taiwan people, the 228 incident, some 18k killed.
By the way, Taiwaness has many meanings.
It can mean the chinese living in taiwan before the nationalist came. (this is called “Taiwaness” in my generation.)
It can mean the nationalist who escaped to taiwan. (e.g. My parents)
We are called “foreign province people” (waishengren 外省人, aka mainlanders)
the distinction between Taiwaness (Originally in Taiwan) vs Mainlanders (Escaped to Taiwan), was the most important political distinction, in my generation.
Either way, we are all Han Chinese. 98% or such of people living in taiwan, are all Han Chinese.
It can also mean, aboriginals or natives taiwan (a western concept, e.g. redskin or the na'vi of Avatar movie), which are 0.01% or such.
For 30 years, us considered china 🇨🇳 belongs to ROC taiwan 🇹🇼 , till 1979.
(Mao created nukes in 1964.)
United Nations (UN) also began recognizing China at the time.
Chiang Kai-shek 蔣介石 (the leader of KMT), rage quit UN at the time.
Since y2k, taiwan gradually became multi-party. In particular, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) gained power.
(the DPP, and the KMT, are the 2 large fighting powers, very similar to us's Democratic Party vs Republican, in clawing each other's eyes out.)
The DPP, began good in 2000s, but today became extremely corrupt, lead by Tsai Ing-wen 蔡英文 (who, slaves on twitter posting in english singing “democracy” everyday. A pet of usa).