Republic of China

The Republic of China (ROC) which rules Taiwan is a bourgeois comprador state for the US Empire. It was established by the revolutionary nationalist and socialist Dr. Sun Yat-Sen and his KMT, but Sun was overthrown and the KMT and ROC became reactionary.

In the end, the Republic of China is a case study in the ultimate betrayal of the revolution by the national bourgeois. Only the proletariat can complete the national-democratic revolution.

1912-1949

See also: China

Dr. Sun Yat-Sen founded the Republic of China in 1912, governing based on his Three Principles. The vanguard party of this revolution was Sun's Guomindang, also romanized as Kuomintang (KMT), meaning Citizens' Party, but often mistranslated as "Nationalists".

The bourgeois-democratic revolution took inspiration from past struggles such as the Taiping Rebellion and the Boxer Rebellion. The establishment of the Republic of China, destroying the corrupt Qing Dynasty, was a beacon of hope.

But he was soon overthrown by the warlord Yuan Shikai, and the country fell back into disarray. Yuan Shikai was a feudal warlord, allied with Tibetan slave-owners.

In 1926-1928, General Chiang Kai-Shek led the KMT to reunify China in the Northern Expedition.

At first, the Chinese communists worked within the KMT, as it had nationalist revolutionary potential. However, in 1927, Chiang, representing the reactionary comprador bourgeois, suddenly began the Shanghai Massacre against the left wing of the KMT.

The Communists were not prepared. The Soviets under Stalin were partially responsible for this mistake, as they had not expected this and had told the CPC to work within the KMT as a nationalist coalition.

Haz:

"The great conflict with Stalin in antagonizing Mao, the seeds that led to the collapse of relations, was because he was a student of Realpolitik. He actually did not want to see a unified China... Stalin had close ties to the KMT for two reasons: one, in the 1920s the KMT was a popular front, wasn't inherently anti-communist — all of that changed in 1927 during the Shanghai massacre."

Eventually, the CPC initiated the Chinese Civil War. It worked with the KMT against the Japanese, then resumed the civil war in 1945. Finally in 1949, with the liberation of the mainland and establishment of the People's Republic of China, Mao exiled Chiang Kai-shek to Taiwan, where he established an anticommunist dictatorship.

Exile to Taiwan

White Terror

See also: Spanish White Terror, Russian White Army

The White Terror period saw intense repression against the communists and left-wing of Taiwan. It only ended in 1992 with the end of the Soviet Union.

Leaders

Chiang Kai-Shek continued to lead the ROC until his death in 1975.

After him came Yen Chia-Kan, KMT technocrat, caretaker president of Taiwan 1975-78.

Chiang Ching-Kuo, son of Chiang Kai-shek, continued the White Terror while beginning the ROC's moves away from Chinese unification. Ironically, in his youth he had studied in the Soviet Union in his youth and, upon the Shanghai Massacre, was sent to work in a steel mine. He was deported back to China in 1937 on the eve of war with Japan.

The KMT thus far had been chauvinist for Chinese mainland emigrants, known as waishengren, oppressing the indigenous benshengren (including Han, but mainly non-Han). Chiang Ching-Kuo was the first to allow benshengren into power.

In 1986 liberals founded the Democratic Progressive Party, which ultimately formed Taiwanese two-party system, with a benshengren anti-Han chauvinist DPP and waishengren Han chauvinist KMT.

President Lee Teng-Hui (1988-2000) was benshengren and began moving towards bourgeois democracy. He ended martial law in 1987. Even after allowing opposition parties like the DPP, he did not ease up on the communists until September 1992, just to be "sure" the Soviets were gone.

Today

Haz: "The just struggle of China to maintain its territorial integrity and combat Taiwan separatism" is entwined with Palestine and Donbass — "if some activist waves the flag of Palestine but also the Taiwan flag or the Ukraine flag, throw them in a dumpster where they belong. Those are liberals trying to be at peace with their own [empire]."