Peace in common parlance means the absence of war. Peace should not be confined with the said definition, because peace should have a proactive definition rather than passive. Although peace is inherent from the beginning, it is an abstract thing and therefore unknown until humanity established its meaning. Governments, international bodies, non-government organizations, societies, and individual alike have different interpretations of peace but the main idea remains the absence of war. Be that as it may, humanity should not be complacent in attaining peace thinking that we already have it; rather humanity should strive for peace and seek continuously for more of it.
When Taiwan lost diplomatic support from the international community, many presumed that Taiwan would be left out in the dark. Several decades after isolation, Taiwan soars high in the international stage with the country as one of the Asian Tigers and now famously known as the Silicon Island for her success and prowess in electronics particularly in semi-conductor industry. In terms of politics, Taiwan is a quintessential example of vibrant democracy leading an example to nations with nascent democracies. Taiwan and her people exhibit optimism despite the circumstances they had faced; and as a result, Taiwan is the envy of her Asian neighbors for having healthy economy, political stability, and safe society. Taiwan interpreted peace with proactive approach and this has led the country to attain peace.
Taiwanâs centennial? What are you talking about? Its the centennial of Peanuthead Chiang the mass-murderer and his ragtag bunch of stinking, beaten carpetbaggers from China.
Heh, heh, heh! Donât forget that the KMT government brought political and economic stability to Taiwan by employing technocrats who knew what they were doing. Those technocrats employed prudent monetary and fiscal policies that helped Taiwan achieve stable economic growth. They also adopted an export formula for Taiwan that saw the islandâs surplus blossom. Not to mention implementing a benevolent land reform early on. Those technocrats like C.K. Yen and K.Y. Yin should be applauded.
Iâm not a fan of the methods used by the KMT to achieve political stability, but itâs doubtful that a Taiwan democratized in the 1950s would have achieved rapid economic growth in the years ahead.
The KMT administration in Taiwan was a significant improvement over their record in 1911-1949. They learned from that abysmal record and adjusted their policies in Taiwan accordingly.
One thing the Taiwanese could not own during the Japanese period was land. Taiwanese were basically feudal slaves under the Japanese. They had to toil the midnight oil on landlord land. And they could not sell their agricultural output on the market. The KMTâs land reform changed that by allowing farmers to become land entrepreneurs rather than feudal tenants under the Japanese system. Taiwanâs agricultural output skyrocketed because of this program.
Farmers in Taiwan had to pay 50% to 70% of their harvest as rent under the Japanese. The KMT significantly reduced their hardship by capping this rent at a max of 37.5%.
The Taiwanese couldnât vote under the Japanese. The KMT should be credited for bending to the opposition movement by moving toward democracy. Under the Japanese, such movement toward democracy would have zero chance of succeeding.
There were some principled mainlanders that came to Taiwan with the Peanut, but were repressed by the Gimo. One of them was K.C. Wu (Wu Guozhen). Wu pressed for democratic elections and the observance of civil liberties. However the Peanut kept him under surveillance. Wu almost got assassinated by the Gimoâs secret police and would have been killed had Song Meiling not found out and intervened on his behalf.
Taiwanese owned land during the Japanese. Then the KMT came and stole it from Taiwanese landowners and distributed it to tenant farmers. This had the effect of making the dispossesed landowners entrepreneurs, not the farmers. You omit the fact that most tenants were paying rent to other Taiwanese. There was some voting in Taiwan under the Japanese. There was also rule of law. Both were severely restricted under decades of martial law by the KMT dictatorship.
Has any regime anywhere in the world achieved land reform more effectively than the KMT did in the 1950s? This isnât a rhetorical question, by the way.
The Japanese stole plenty of land, and werenât above breaking their own laws when they thought it necessary. And just like the KMT, they werenât focusing on what was good for Taiwan and the Taiwanese. Read Paul R. Katzâs âWhen Valleys Turned Blood Redâ about the Tapani Incident of 1915 for some good examples: bradttaiwan.blogspot.com/2011/02 ⌠d-red.html
A lot of bones were broken and blood shed to achieve the civilized towns and cities of the 1920s and 1930s Taiwan.
You are also very misinformed. Taiwanese may have owned land under the Japanese, but the economy was dominated by Japanese controlled sugar cartels. Voting was even more restricted under the Japanese than the KMT - suffrage was limited to men meeting certain property qualifications, and elected officials had virtually no authority. The rule of law was also restricted. Discrimination against native Taiwanese was even more overt than under the KMT and opposition to the colonial regime was brutally repressed.
The issue was whether Taiwanese owned land during the Japanese era. They did. Nor were they âfeudal slavesâ under the Japanese despite the frequently harsh nature of Japanâs colonial, resource-extracting regime. And the land reform was hardly the âKMTâs land reform.â It was conducted by the Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction and was, although the KMT would never admit it, largely and American policy that was forced on the KMT as a condition for aid.
As Steve points out, it was a brilliant success for a while, but it is also responsible for many of rural Taiwanâs problems today.
South Korea and Japan also had notable and reform programs under US auspices during the same period. The US believed that land reform was the key to checking communism and the failure to reform landownership was the reason we âlostâ China.
The first decades of Japanese rule were indeed bloody. Mawvellous is trying to argue that KMT rule was an improvement on Japanese rule. If so, why did so many Taiwanese remember Japanese rule positively after the KMT took over?
Japanese rule only lasted five decades, and the most bloody massacre happened 35 years into those five decades.
Land reform was also in the interests of the KMT. The KMT recognized that it would increase agricultural production, weaken local rural elites, and consolidate their power in the countryside. Most importantly,the state was able to extract agricultural surpluses that would have otherwise gone into the hands of landlords through schemes such as the rice to fertilizer program.
The fact that most tenants were paying rent to other Taiwanese means there was no landownership by the common man. Elites with ties to the colonial authorities owned all the land. To say that the KMT stole land from the Taiwanese elite without compensating them is a bit exaggerated. I fail to see the injustice of taking land from the elite, compensating these elite with stocks, bonds, and certificates; and then redistributing this land to the common man who toiled on it.
Under the Japanese, most tenants were paying rent to other Taiwanese. After the land reform, most tenants were no longer paying rent to other Taiwanese. They owned their own land for the first time.
Also not all of the land was taken away from the elite. The aristocratic elite could keep a portion of their land under a certain limit. Anything above that limit had to be redistributed to the peasants.
Both sides gained from the land reform. The elite used the stocks and bonds that the KMT gave them to build industrial enterprises. The peasants were motivated to work harder on their own land, increasing agricultural production. One long term effect of the land reform was the flattening of Taiwanese society by creating a large middle class.
Taiwanâs land reform was modeled after MacArthurâs agrarian reform in Japan. It was in the best interests of both the US and the KMT administration to implement such a reform. The KMT realized that ignoring the plight of the peasants in China contributed to their loss in the Chinese civil war. They were determined not to repeat the same mistake in Taiwan. Hence both sides had a strong desire to see land reform succeed.
Small-scale farming (essentially gardening) gives you higher yields than plantation farming. The yields give you a surplus in which you can (1) channel into industrialization, and (2) acquire a large population wealthy enough to afford manufactured goods.
This was the idea of Soviet dissident, Wolf Ladejinsky, who became an adviser to the US during Cold War. He also gave technical advice to Americaâs Pacific allies. Japan, Korea, Taiwan implemented his advice, got rid of landlords (compensating them but only partially), so farmers could own some land, and have small plots. It worked spectacularly. The Philippines paid lip service to that method, but its government was too corrupt to implement anything.
Everybody else in Southeast Asia implemented large-scale farming, with its lower yields, some influenced by the way their former colonial masters ran plantations.
This was Economist book of the year and recommended by Bill Gates. I started wondering whether the Gates Foundation now promotes small-scale farming, and looked online to confirm that it indeed does.
