By Li Thian-hok
3F Newletter of April 15, 1956

   Formosa was discovered to the Western world in 1590 by the
Portuguese voyagers who gave the island its present name. The
aborigines from the South Sea Island were the earliest settlers.
Then the portuguese attempted a short lived settlement at Kee-
lung. The Dutch built Fort Zeelandia in 1624 and was the first
country to colonize the island. Two years later, the Spaniards
occupied the northern part of Formosa. They built Fort San
Salvador off Keelung, and in 1629 built Fort Domingo on a hill-
top commanding the prsent Tamsui Harbor. In 1642, the Spaniards
were completely evicted from the island by the Dutch. Meanwhile,
there was a struggle between the Dutch authorities and the
Chinese settlers and their descendants mixed with other elements.
Unlike the aborigines, the Chinese Formosans wanted land owner-
ship, which right the Dutch alwanys refused. They wanted to
grow more than sugar-cane, but the Dutch preferred sugar to
rice. In view of the ever-increasing number of Chinese elements,
the Dutch in 1651 began to collect poll-tax from every Formosan
of Chinese extraction above six years of age. Unable to bear
taxation and oppression, the Formosans in 1652 launched an open
rebellion. With more than 4,000 men, women, and children mas-
sacred the rebellion was crushed almost immediately. By forces
of circumstances was the island thus destined to become a spot
for racial contact and conflict from the beginning; its history
being nothing other than a continuous struggle of poineering and
freedom-loving people for liberty and prosperity agianst unwanted
instruders and unjust rulers.

   In 1661, when the Manchus conquered China, Ming Dynasty expa-
triates under the leadership of Cheng Cheng-kung, known to the
Occidentals as Koxinga, appeared on the Formosa shore. All the
malcontents responded from inside and helped terminate the 38
years of Dutch rule on the island. Formosa was thus an indepen-
dent soveign state from 1661 to 1683, when it was absorbed into
the empire of the Manchu Dynasty.

   Yet the Manchus were never concerned much about Formosa;
neither did they exert effective government control on the
island's life. The exploitation of nature and maintenance of
public order were left to the Formosans themselves. Isolated
from the central government in Peking, and their term of office
being limited to three years, the officials in the new adminis-
tration saw in Formosa a chance for enriching themselves. From
the highest to the lowest, every Chinese official in Formosa had
an itching palm, and the exercise of official funtions was always
corrupt by money bribes and exertions. Partly because of the
inefficiency and corruption of the Chinese administration and its
negligence of the people's welfare, and partly because of the
frontier conditions, where no fixed pattern of life had been set,
and where heterogenous social, cultural, and racial groups had
been brought together, the Formosans were constantly turbulent.
They continued to defy the authority of the Chinese administra-
tion by "launching one disturbance every three years and on
rebellion every five years."

   Throughout its two centures of nominal reign over Formosa, the
Chinese authority never succeeded in completely pacifying the
island, nor was there any indication that the central government
in Peking considered Formosa as an integral part of China, as
some people in the United States seem to be led to believe now.
This fact was born out in a series of foreign expeditions to
Formosa, to which the Chinese Government showed a hands-off
attitude. In June, 1867, an American naval expedition under the
command of Captain Belknap made an ineffectual attempt to take
punitive measurs against the Formosan aborigines, who had often
inflicted outrageous acts on the survivors of American and other
foreign vessels wreched off the shore of Formosa. In 1871, a
Ryukyu (Okinawa) vessel was wreched off the shore of Formosa, and
54 members of its crew were murdered by Botan tribesmen. The
Japanese government presented official protest to Peking, and
unable to get satisfaction there, dispatched the famed expedition
under the command of General Saigo in 1874. In both of the above
mentioned cases the reply of the Chinese government was that it
could not assume responsibility, because the outrage had been
committed outside the territory occupied by the Chinese. The
Japanese forces spent several months on the island and evacuated
it only after the friendly intervention of other powers.

   In April 1895, after being defeated by the Japanese in the
Sino-Japanese war, the Chinese envoy, Li Hung-chang, ceded Formosa
to Japan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki. Resenting the Chinese
robbery of Peter to pay Paul, the Formosans protested in vain
vain the unjust and arbitrary action of their age-long enemy.
Determined to oppose the territorial chang against their wishes,
the Formosans declared independence and established the first
Republic in the Far East--The Formosan Democratic Republic. The
Formosans fought their War of Independence bravely and openly for
half a year, and then adopted querilla tactics after organized
resistance came to an end. Describing the querillar war, Yosaburo
Takekoshi says, "Whenever our troops were defeated, the inhabi-
tants of the surrounding villages instantly became our enemies,
every one, even the young women, arming themselves and joining
the ranks with shouts of defiance. Our opponents were very stub-
born and not at all afraid of death." Despite the brutal Japan-
ese policy of suppression the Formosans continued their struggle
for liberation by launching 15 armed uprisings within half a
century.

   With their habitual industry and patience the Japanese con-
verted the hither to medieval colony by turning it first into a
rice basket, then into a workshop, and finally in to warmachine.
To have docile farmers and efficient workers, they stares regi-
menting all the people into civic groups, improving their living
and sanitary conditions, and training their able-bodied men. To
increase agricultural productions they facilitated all means of
irrigation, fertilization, and communication; to promote indus-
tries they gave Japanese capitalists and experts special privi-
leges whil training Formosan mechanics and workmen, all for prac-
tical purposes. As a result, the sugar industry, for example,
progressed by leaps and bounds, till it reaches the maximal pro-
duction of 1,400,000 tons in 1940-41 and Formosa became the fifth
sugar producing country in the world.

   An economic success as it was, it amounted to a moral failure.
Like the Chinese, the Japanese were guilty of the master-race
theory and practice. To the Formosans, whose hearts they never
succeeded in winning, gain of material properity could hardly
compensate for loss of spiritual liberty. The last and biggest
war of independence against the Japanese broke out in 1915. It
took the Japanese seven months and several regiments to quell
the rebellion through the worst astrocities. Giving up the idea
of armed struggle against alien rulers, enlightened elements,
inspired by Wilson's doctrine of racial self-determination,
launched a self-government movement in 1921. As early as 1918,
Formosan students in Tokyo organized the Domeikai, which was
permitted to publish a daily paper, the Taiwan Shin-min-po (
Formosa Citizen's Report), until 1933. In 1921, the Taiwan Bunka
Kyokai (Formosa Cultural Association) was established, and it
became the center of a nationalist movement. Successive petti-
tions were presented to the Japanese Diet asking for the esta-
bloishment of a representative government. The only result was
that in 1924 many Formosans were arrested in connection with the
petitions, and the leader of the movement was sentenced to four
months imprisonment. According to Japanese accounts, the govern-
ment was forced to arrest hundreds of others in order to stop the
representiative government movement. After 1928 there began in
Formosa a new era of suppression, which had as its aim the com-
plete elimination of native intellectual leadership. In 1931 the
government dissloved the Minseito (Democratic Pary), Formosa only
modern political party, and imprisoned its leaders. The party,
whose 800 members were mostly professional and business men, had
made an issue of the profiteering of the Japanese government in
the operation of the Opium Monopoly.

   Because of the lack of social and political freedom, police
terrorization and thought control under the Japanese, the Formo-
sans welcomed with enthusiasm the occupation of the island by
the Nationalist Government in the fall of 1945, following the
surrender of japan. They did not realize that they were cultu-
rally more advanced than the Chinese, and were politically naive
enough to take the feigned propaganda of democracy and freedom
by the new administration literally. They expected to be united
with the Chinese on terms of equality, and looked forward to a
realization of their aspirations for self-rule and to taking
over the management and enjoying the profits of the enterprises
developed largely through their toil and energy. However, their
expectations for an era of peace, freedom, and prosperity were
short-lived, for it soon became apparent that Formosa was to be
treated as war booty, and the Formosans as a subjugated people.
In so much as the greater part of the productive enterprises on
the island was Japanese owned and operated, and moreover, since
the Chinese Government proceeded on the assumption that most
Formosan of any standing under the Japanese regime had been
Japanese collaborators, the applying of policy called for com-
prehensive expropriation of business undertakings. The Chinese
administration took over an estimated 90% of all economic enter-
prises of the island, and reorganized them into a system of
government-controlled monopolies. But instead of developing them
and restoring war-time damage, the carpet-bagging administration
were intent on achieving quick profits through systematic plunder,
selling basic raw materials and manufactured goods in the starved
mainland markets and leaving productive resources to deteriorate.

   Massive dismissal of Formosans who had become skilled under
Japanese management became common to make way for unskilled rela-
tives and friends from the mainland, or the one-time Formosans
who had emigrated to the mainland, referred to derisively by the
Formosans as "half mountain men", many of whom had ingratiated
themselves with Chen Yi's clique during their stay in China. A
licensing system was introduced that required permits for all
business activity of private individuals. This system of "squeeze"
proved so efficient that the Formosan merchants and professional
classes were soon reduced almost to beggary. Shortage developed
in the supply of rice due to shipments of the grain went to feed
the Nationalist armies on the mainland. The draining away of
wealth was quickly reflected in soaring prices. Cholera epidemics
and bubonic plague after an absence of almost a generation reap-
peared. Educational standards fell, and public morals deteriorated.

   Tension between Formosans and Chinese mounted until, on
February 27, 1947, an incident took place involving killing of a
Formosan woman hawking tax-not-paid cigarettes by Chinese police.
This incident precipitated a series of events thoughout the
island which culminated in the presentation of demands by respon-
sible Formosan spokesmen. By March 6 most of the island was in
the hands of Formosan leaders headed by a Settlement Committee.
The Chinese Governor who then lacked the necessary military forces
to cope with a revolt, accepted in principle a series of demands
of economic and political reform. He entered into an agreement
whereby, in return for a commitment by the Formosans to cease
from violence, he would move no more troops from the mainland and
would eliminate the hands of roving police patrols.

   Meanwhile the Chinese Governor had sought reinforcement from
the mainland. On March 8, the reinforcement said to have numbered
over 50,000 arrived and the notorious March massacre in which some
20,000 unarmed Formosans were slaughtered, began.

   The events of March created bitter hostility toward the Nation-
alists and Chiang Kai-shek. Conservative leadership has been
destroyed and the younger radical Formosans have gone underground
or abroad, and are irreconcilably anti-nationalists. With full
support of the eight million Formosans, they are dedicated to the
destruction of any regime from China, and the establishment of a
free, independent sovereign state of Formosa.

   As early as 1946 there were many Formosan leaders who advo-
cated local autonomy through provincial federation with the rest
of China. Some of the outstanding leaders were killed during and
following the February 28th incident. Others were pretty largely
forced into exile, at first in Shanghi, then after the advent of
Coommunists, largely in Hong Kong and Tokyo. Toward the end of
1947, with the Nationalist despotism at its peak, they give up
their hope for any realization of democracy and local autonomy
and demanded full independence.

   Amanifesto demanding independence a plibiscite was issued in
Tokyo on August 23, 1948. It was signed by the following: Thomas
Liao, Formosan League for Re-emancipation; Y.T. Tsong, Youth
League; K.C. Young, Democratic Reconstruction Association; Mrs.
S.L. Chao, New formosan Women's Association; Frank S. Lim,
Students' League; K.K. Lim, Economic research League; P.L. Khu,
Literray Association; and G.T. Tang, People's League.

   Various efforts were made by these groups to form a stronger
organization with a more coherent program. In May, 1950, a
Formosan Democratic Independence Party was organized in Tokyo,
including among its leaders Dr. Thomas Liao, General Wilfred
Wong, James H. Chen, Gordon Tan, Y.T. Tsong and Frank Lim. Since
then the Formosan Democratic Independence Party has unremit-
tingly strived to appeal the aspirations of the Formosan people
for freedom and independence to the world. It has been sending
petitions and memoranda to the United Nations, the Geneva
Conference, the Bandung Conference and the friendly democratic
governments of the world. Despite heavy sacrifices of life and
many hardships the F.D.I.P. has also organized an ever-growing
underground independence movement on the island. On September 1,
1956, twenty-four representatives of the prefectures and munici-
palities of Formosa, who have been successfully smuggled out of
the island and assembled in Tokyo with the help of the under-
ground organization, declared the establishment of the Provi-
sional National Congress of Formosa. Under the authorization of
"The Rules for the Organization of the Provisional Government of
the Republic of Formosa" adopted by the Congress on November 27,
1955 the Provisional Government was founded on December 18, 1955,
with Dr. Thomas W.L. Liao as its President.

   Thus, true to their historical aspiration for freedom, which
promoted their ancestors to declare independence in 1661 and
1895, the present generation of Formosans have again proclaimed
their determination to fight for peace, freedom, and independence.