I was just thinking. Was the practice of slavery ever present on the island at any point in history?
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I see where this is leading⊠reparations!
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Thereâs quite a few articles about it. Some stuff may depend on definitions, and I guess you were asking about historically.
There are an estimated 12,000 people living in modern slavery in Taiwan (GSI 2018). human traffickers subject foreign men and women to forced labor and sex trafficking in Taiwan, and traffickers subject local men and women to forced labor and local women and children to sex trafficking. Taiwan women and children are subjected to domestic sex trafficking, including as part of an increasing trend in which traffickers induce and exploit Taiwan and foreign womenâs and childrenâs drug addictions. Taiwan traffickers increasingly use the internet, smartphone apps, livestreaming, and other such online technologies to conduct recruitment activities, often targeting child victims, and to mask their identities from law enforcement. Traffickers lure women from China and Southeast Asian countries to Taiwan through fraudulent marriages and deceptive employment offers for purposes of sex trafficking. Many trafficking victims are migrant workers from Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and, to a lesser extent, individuals from China, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka. Taiwan is host to more than 700,000 foreign workers, most of whom are hired in their home countries through recruitment agencies and brokersâincluding some from Taiwanâto perform low-skilled work as home caregivers and domestic workers, or in farming, manufacturing, meat processing, construction, and fishing⊠Source
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There is slavery now. The conditions of the immigrant workers on the fishing fleet are horrible apparently.
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Weird question. Was there any place in the world where slavery never took place?
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Since nobody has answered the question, instead choosing to denounce modern-day forced labour (which is indeed terrible) the answer isâŠmaybe.
I donât know enough about pre-Han aborigines to say, but I imagine it was like other native peoples- captives in wars or raids, classes of inheritable compulsory labour etc.
Under both the Ming and Qing slavery was legal, but uncommon, and the Qing embarked on a policy of emancipation of what few slaves there were- mostly for practical reasons; slaves donât pay taxes. As well, the western idea of slavery doesnât map exactly on to the Chinese idea of various conditions of bond-servants.
So, there may have been a few of what were technically âslavesâ as personal property of Chinese Ming and Qing officials, but no large class of slave labour. Doesnât mean aborigines and Chinese peasants alike didnât have compulsory corvee labour or debt servitude.
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You should have seen my first bossâ face when I used to talk to him about modern slavery at his office. One day he shouted at me â⊠and I donât want to hear anymore anything about modern slavery!â. I suspect he used to think I was retarded or something 
Ah, the old good days when I was bolder than balder.
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According to the US Department of Labor, the answer is: yes.
Guy
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