Taiwan

• 1. Introduction

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  Taiwan sits in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, tucked between the East and South China Seas, with the People's Republic of China to its northwest, Japan to its northeast, and the Philippines to the south. It is a place of striking physical contrasts: mountain ranges dominate the eastern two-thirds of the main island, while the western third, a broad coastal plain, holds the bulk of a population of around 23.9 million people.

  The island has been inhabited for at least 25,000 years. Portuguese sailors who passed by in 1542 wrote two words on their maps: Ilha Formosa. Beautiful island. The name stuck across European languages for centuries. Yet today Taiwan is officially called the Republic of China, a title that carries the full weight of the 20th century's most consequential civil war.

  How did a government that once ruled mainland China end up on a 35,808-square-kilometer island? How did that island become one of the fastest-growing economies in history, a democracy born from martial law, and the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage? And how does Taiwan keep operating as a functioning state in a world where only a handful of governments formally recognize it exists? Those are the questions this documentary will follow.

• 2. An Island Before Nations

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  Human remains and Paleolithic artifacts dated between 20,000 and 30,000 years ago have been found on the island. The people those remains belong to appear to have resembled Australo-Papuan populations similar to Negrito groups in the Philippines. Slash-and-burn agriculture was underway at least 11,000 years ago.

  Around 6,000 years ago, a new wave of settlers arrived: farmers of the Dapenkeng culture, most likely from what is now southeast China. These are the ancestors of modern Taiwanese Indigenous peoples, and their descendants are also understood to be the originators of the Austronesian language family, a family whose branches today spread from Madagascar to Hawaii. Trade with the Philippines persisted from the early 2nd millennium BCE, including the use of Taiwanese jade in what archaeologists call the Philippine jade culture.

  The Dapenkeng were followed by many distinct cultures across the island. The Yuanshan culture was associated with rice harvesting. Later cultures showed iron tools, with the influence of trade from China and Maritime Southeast Asia. The Plains Indigenous peoples lived mainly in permanent walled villages, practicing agriculture, fishing, and hunting. Their societies were traditionally matriarchal.

  The first written account of a visit to Taiwan by a Chinese observer dates to 1349, when Wang Dayuan recorded his journey there in the Daoyi Zhilüe, calling the island by a name then also used for the Ryukyu Islands. Portuguese sailors would give the island its enduring European name nearly two centuries later, in 1542.

• 3. Colonizers and Kingdoms

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  In 1624, the Dutch East India Company established Fort Zeelandia on a coastal sandbar called Tayouan, in what is now the city of Tainan. At the time, southwestern Taiwan was home to roughly 1,500 transient Chinese residents and a collection of Indigenous chiefdoms. The VOC actively encouraged Chinese immigration; by the 1660s, between 30,000 and 50,000 Chinese were living on the island.

  Just two years after the Dutch arrived, Spain entered from the north. In 1626, the Spanish Empire occupied northern Taiwan as a trading base, first at Keelung and then in 1628 building Fort Santo Domingo at Tamsui. That Spanish colony lasted until 1642, when the last Spanish fortress fell to Dutch forces, leaving the Dutch in control of both coasts.

  The Dutch hold did not last. After the fall of the Ming dynasty on the mainland in 1644, the military commander Koxinga, also known as Zheng Chenggong, kept fighting for the overthrown dynasty. In 1661, under mounting Qing pressure, he moved his forces from his base at Xiamen to Taiwan, expelling the Dutch the following year. He established what became known as the Kingdom of Tungning, proclaiming loyalty to the fallen Ming while ruling the island independently. The Dutch briefly retook the northern fortress at Keelung in 1664, but left for good in 1668 in the face of Indigenous resistance.

  The Kingdom of Tungning fell in 1683, when an armada led by Admiral Shi Lang defeated Koxinga's grandson. The Qing dynasty formally annexed Taiwan in May 1684, making it a prefecture of Fujian province and retaining the administrative seat, now Tainan, as the capital.

• 4. Two Centuries of Qing Rule

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  After the Kingdom of Tungning's population was largely sent back to the mainland, the official count in Taiwan stood at only 50,000, including 10,000 troops. The Qing government's instinct was to keep that number low; officials believed Taiwan could not sustain a large population without generating conflict. A permit system officially recorded in 1712 restricted entry to those who owned property on the mainland, had family in Taiwan, and were not accompanied by wives or children.

  The policy did not hold. Officials in Taiwan solicited settlers despite the restrictions, and tens of thousands arrived annually by 1711. Many male migrants married local Indigenous women. In 1732, families were formally allowed to relocate. By 1811, more than two million Han settlers lived on the island, sustaining profitable sugar and rice industries. Restrictions on entering Taiwan were repealed entirely in 1875.

  The Qing kept tight control over settler-Indigenous relations. In response to the Zhu Yigui settler rebellion in 1722, the administration erected 54 stelae to officially mark the frontier boundary between settlers and Indigenous peoples. Those markings were shifted four times over the latter half of the 18th century as settlers kept crossing the line anyway. The common saying of the period was: "every three years an uprising, every five years a rebellion."

  Modernization came late and was costly. Under the governor Liu Mingchuan, the island received electric lighting, a railway, telegraph lines, steamship service, and industrial machinery. Taiwan's status was upgraded to a province in 1887, and Taipei became the permanent capital in 1893. A military campaign to subjugate the Indigenous peoples of the mountains ended with the loss of a third of the army after fierce resistance from the Mkgogan and Msbtunux peoples. Liu resigned in 1891. By the time the Qing era closed, the western plains were fully developed farmland with about 2.5 million Chinese settlers, while the mountainous interior remained under Indigenous control.

• 5. Japan's Island

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  Taiwan was ceded to Japan by the Treaty of Shimonoseki following the Qing defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. On the 25th of May 1895, a group of pro-Qing officials proclaimed the Republic of Formosa to resist Japanese takeover. Japanese forces entered the capital at Tainan and put down that resistance on the 21st of October 1895. About 6,000 inhabitants died in the initial fighting, with some 14,000 more dying in the first year of Japanese rule.

  The colonial period reorganized the island's economy around Japan's needs. Sugar production was dramatically expanded, diverting land that had grown rice. By 1939, Taiwan was the seventh-greatest sugar producer in the world. Railways and sanitation systems were built, and a formal education system was established. Han and Indigenous residents were classified as second- and third-class citizens, blocked from prestigious government and business positions.

  Armed resistance continued into the 20th century. The Beipu uprising of 1907, the Tapani incident of 1915, and the Musha incident of 1930 all demonstrated sustained opposition to Japanese rule. Around 1936, Governor-General Seizō Kobayashi launched an island-wide assimilation project: Chinese-language newspapers were abolished, Shinto was promoted, and traditional temples were targeted. By late 1940, the number of native temples had fallen by a third. Families were encouraged from 1940 onward to adopt Japanese surnames; by August 1945, possibly about 7 percent had done so.

  During the Second World War, Taiwan served as a naval and air base for Japanese operations in Southeast Asia. In October 1944, American carriers and Japanese forces fought the Formosa Air Battle. More than 200,000 Taiwanese served in the Japanese military, with over 30,000 casualties. Over 2,000 women were forced into sexual slavery for Imperial Japanese troops. After Japan's surrender, most Japanese residents were expelled.

• 6. The Making of a Nation-State

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  On the 25th of October 1945, Japan surrendered Taiwan to the Republic of China, which had been fighting for its life on the mainland throughout the war. The initial welcome was cautious, then turned bitter. Formosans grew dissatisfied with exclusion from higher positions, postponed local elections, smuggling of valuables off the island, and hyperinflation. On the 28th of February 1947, the shooting of a civilian triggered island-wide unrest. The government suppressed it with military force in what became known as the February 28 incident; mainstream estimates put the death toll between 18,000 and 30,000.

  Two years later, the mainland was lost. A series of Communist offensives in 1949 ended with the capture of Nanjing on the 23rd of April. On the 7th of December 1949, Chiang Kai-shek evacuated the Nationalist government to Taiwan and declared Taipei the temporary capital. Some 2 million people followed, mainly soldiers, Kuomintang members, and intellectual and business elites, joining an existing population of approximately 6 million. These people and their descendants became known as waishengren.

  The government brought with it national treasures, much of China's gold reserves, and foreign currency. Most of the gold went to pay soldiers' salaries; the remainder helped issue the New Taiwan dollar as part of a price-stabilization program. Martial law was declared in May 1949 and would remain in force until 1987. During what Taiwanese call the White Terror, 140,000 people were imprisoned or executed for perceived anti-KMT or pro-Communist sympathies. An entire generation of political and social leaders was destroyed.

  Yet even under martial law, the economy was transforming. American aid stabilized prices by 1952, and the Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction turned agriculture into the foundation of later industrial growth. Agricultural production increased at an average annual rate of 4 percent from 1952 to 1959. By the 1970s, Taiwan was the second-fastest-growing economy in Asia, with real GDP growth averaging over 10 percent. By 1980, foreign trade had reached $39 billion per year.

• 7. Democracy and Identity

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  Chiang Ching-kuo, Chiang Kai-shek's son, served as premier from 1972 and rose to the presidency in 1978. He began moving authority toward bensheng ren, residents who had been in Taiwan before Japan's surrender. After the Democratic Progressive Party was founded illegally as the first opposition to the KMT in 1986, Chiang announced he would allow the formation of new parties. On the 15th of July 1987, he lifted martial law on the main island of Taiwan.

  After Chiang Ching-kuo's death in 1988, Lee Teng-hui became the first president of the ROC born in Taiwan. His administration abolished the Temporary Provisions against the Communist Rebellion and allocated congressional representation exclusively to the Taiwan Area. In 1996, Lee was re-elected in the first-ever direct presidential election.

  By the early 2000s, Taiwanese identity had become the axis of the island's politics. In 1992-17.6 percent of respondents in surveys identified as Taiwanese, 25.5 percent as Chinese, and 46.4 percent as both. By June 2021-63.3 percent identified as Taiwanese, and only 2.6 percent as Chinese. A July 2009 survey found that 82.8 percent of respondents considered the ROC and PRC to be two separate countries.

  In 2014, university students occupied the Legislative Yuan and blocked ratification of the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement in what became known as the Sunflower Student Movement. The movement gave rise to youth-based third parties and contributed to the DPP's victories in the 2016 elections, which produced the first DPP legislative majority in Taiwanese history. On the 24th of May 2017, the Constitutional Court ruled that existing marriage laws violated the constitution by denying same-sex couples the right to marry. Two years later, on the 17th of May 2019, Taiwan's parliament approved a bill legalizing same-sex marriage, making Taiwan the first country in Asia to do so.

• 8. Taiwan in the World

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  On the 25th of October 1971, UN Resolution 2758 was adopted by 76 votes to 35 with 17 abstentions, recognizing the People's Republic of China as the sole representative of China in the United Nations. The ROC lost the seat it had held as a founding member, including its place on the Security Council. Since 1993, the ROC has petitioned the UN for entry; none of those applications have advanced past committee stage.

  The ROC today maintains official diplomatic relations with only 11 UN member states and the Holy See. Many other countries maintain unofficial ties through representative offices, mostly called Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Offices, which function as de facto embassies. In international competitions, Taiwan participates under the name "Chinese Taipei," a compromise stemming from the Nagoya Resolution approved by the International Olympic Committee in 1979. Under IOC rules, ROC flags cannot be flown at any official Olympic venue.

  The United States is one of the main supporters of Taiwan. Through the Taiwan Relations Act, the US continues to sell arms and provide military training to the Republic of China Armed Forces. About 30,000 US troops had been stationed in Taiwan until the United States established diplomatic relations with the PRC in 1979. The ROC military itself has shifted focus over the decades: its primary mission from 1949 through the 1970s was to retake mainland China through what was called Project National Glory. As the relative military strength of the PRC grew, that mission gave way to defense.

  Taiwan's total trade reached US$1.12 trillion in 2025, with exports totaling US$640.75 billion and imports US$479.4 billion. Both figures were records. The island's economy, built on steel, machinery, electronics, and chemicals, is the 21st-largest in the world by nominal GDP. The question of what Taiwan is, politically, remains one of the most consequential unresolved issues in international affairs, with the PRC's Anti-Secession Law explicitly threatening non-peaceful means if Taiwan formally declares independence.