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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 ...
The purpose of this book is to examine the strategies and practices of the Han Chinese Nationalists vis-à-vis post-Qing China’s ethnic minorities, as well as to explore the role they played in the formation of contemporary China’s Central Asian frontier territoriality and border security. The Chinese Revolution of 1911, initiated by Sun Yat-sen, liberated the Han Chinese from the rule of the Manchus and ended the Qing dynastic order that had existed for centuries. With the collapse of the Qing dynasty, the Mongols and the Tibetans, who had been dominated by the Manchus, took advantage of the revolution and declared their independence. Under the leadership of Yuan Shikai, the new Chinese...
In this ground-breaking study, Hsiao Ting Lin demonstrates that the Chinese frontier was the subject neither of concerted aggression on the part of a centralized and indoctrinated Chinese government nor of an ideologically driven nationalist ethnopolitics. Instead, Nationalist sovereignty over Tibet and other border regions was the result of rhetorical grandstanding by Chiang Kai-shek and his regime. Tibet and Nationalist China's Frontier makes a crucial contribution to the understanding of past and present China-Tibet relations. A counterpoint to erroneous historical assumptions, this book will change the way Tibetologists and modern Chinese historians frame future studies of the region.
"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.
The two Taiwan Strait crises took place during a particularly tense period of the Cold War. Although each incident was relatively brief, their consequences loom large. Based on analyses of newly available documents from Beijing, Taipei, and Washington, Pang Yang Huei challenges conventional wisdom that claims Sino-US misperceptions of each other’s strategic concerns were critical in the 1950s. He underscores the fact that Washington, Taipei, and Beijing were actually aware of one another’s strategic intentions during the crises. He also demonstrates conclusively that both “crises” can be understood as a transformation from tacit communication to tacit accommodation. An important cont...
This book explores the challenges which faced the United States and Taiwanese alliance during the Cold War, addressing a wide range of events and influences of the period between the 1950s and 1970s. Tackling seven main topics to outline the fluctuations of the U.S.–Taiwan relationship, this volume highlights the impact of the mainland counteroffensive, the offshore islands, Tibet, Taiwan’s secret operations in Asia, Taiwan’s Soviet and nuclear gambits, Chinese representation in the United Nations, and the Vietnam War. Utilizing multinational archival research, particularly the newly available materials from Taiwan and the United States, to reevaluate Taiwan’s foreign policy during t...
Beyond the Book is the first book dedicated to studies of rare East Asian materials collected by individuals and institutions in North America. It sheds new light on the two centuries of cultural exchanges between East Asia and North America and provides fresh clues for East Asian studies scholars in their hunt for raw research materials.
The People's Republic of China claims to have 22,000 kilometres of land borders and 18,000 kilometres of coast line. How did this vast country come into being? The state credo describes an ancient process of cultural expansion: border peoples gratefully accept high culture in China and become inalienable parts of the country. And yet, the "centre" had to fight against manifestations of discontent in the border regions, not only to maintain control over the regions themselves, but also to prevent a loss of power at the edges from triggering a general process of regional devolution in the Han Chinese provinces. The essays in this volume look at these issues over a long span of time, questioning whether the process of expansion was a benevolent civilizing mission.
This book shows that Taiwan, unlike other countries, avoided serious economic disruption and social conflict, and arrived at its goal of multi-party competition with little blood shed. Nonetheless, this survey reveals that for those who imagine democracy to be the panacea for every social, economic and political ill, Taiwan's continuing struggles against corruption, isolation and division offer a cautionary lesson. This book is an ideal, one-stop resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of political science, particuarly those interested in the international politics of China, and the Asia-Pacific.