Accidental State : Chiang Kai-shek, the United States, and the Making of Taiwan

The existence of two Chinese states one controlling mainland China, the other controlling the island of Taiwan is often understood as a seemingly inevitable outcome of the Chinese civil war. Defeated by Mao Zedong, Chiang Kai-shek s Nationalists fled to Taiwan to establish a rival state, thereby creating the Two Chinas dilemma that vexes international diplomacy to this day. "Accidental State" challenges this conventional narrative to offer a new perspective on the founding of modern Taiwan. Hsiao-ting Lin marshals extensive research in recently declassified archives to show that the creation of a Taiwanese state in the early 1950s owed more to serendipity than careful geostrategic planning. It was the cumulative outcome of ad hoc half-measures and imperfect compromises, particularly when it came to the Nationalists often contentious relationship with the United States. Taiwan s political status was fraught from the start. The island had been formally ceded to Japan after the First Sino-Japanese War, and during World War II the Allies promised Chiang that Taiwan would revert to Chinese rule after Japan s defeat. But as the Chinese Civil War turned against the Nationalists, U.S. policymakers reassessed the wisdom of backing Chiang. The idea of placing Taiwan under United Nations trusteeship gained traction. Cold War realities, and the fear of Taiwan falling into Communist hands, led Washington to recalibrate U.S. policy. Yet American support of a Taiwan-based Republic of China remained ambivalent, and Taiwan had to eke out a place for itself in international affairs as a de facto, if not fully sovereign, state." "Accidental State explores the historical formation in the late 1940s and early 1950s of a de facto state on Taiwan separate from the de facto state ruling the Chinese mainland. The peculiar status of the Republic of China on Taiwan as an independent state but not quite a nation-state is important for our understanding of modern East Asia. Too often we have tended to view the existence of the two political entities across the Taiwan Strait as a logical and most likely consequence of the Chinese civil war fought bitterly after World War II between Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong. This book offers a new historical outlook, arguing that the making of the separate Taiwan state was by no means the result of deliberate forethought and planning either by the United States, the Nationalists, or the Communists. The process of this statemaking was intriguing, contingent, and inadvertent, and was never intended when the fate of Taiwan was first planned by FDR, Chiang Kai-shek, and Winston Churchill in the middle of World War II."--Provided by publisher Defeated by Mao Zedong, Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists fled to Taiwan to establish a rival state, thereby creating the Two Chinas dilemma that vexes international diplomacy to this day. Hsiao-ting Lin challenges this conventional narrative, showing the many ways the ad hoc creation of this not fully sovereign state was accidental and serendipitous.