Language, Society, and the State by Gareth Price

Language, Society, and the State by Gareth Price

Author:Gareth Price
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Published: 2019-03-15T00:00:00+00:00


4.5 KMT Rule and Martial Law (1945–1987)

The Second Sino-Japanese war concluded in 1945 with Japan’s defeat and, under the provisions of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, Japan agreed to cede control of Taiwan. However, this is a complex area of international relations (Chen and Reisman 1972). It is not at all clear to which entity control was in fact ceded, since Article 2(b) of the Treaty only specifies that “Japan renounces all right, title and claim to Formosa and the Pescadores”. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) did not exist until 1949 and so could not have been the controlling power, thus undermining current claims by the PRC that Taiwan is a “renegade province”. The KMT took de facto control on behalf of the then-ruling Republic of China (ROC), but de jure control is not specified in the ceding instruments, and thus the often-used term “retrocession” is technically inaccurate, because Taiwan was not legally “returned” to China. One legal theory holds that the United States, as the allied occupying power, took legal control, and thus the US can ultimately determine Taiwan’s sovereignty; a more fringe version of this theory is that Taiwan is or should be the fifty-first state of the USA (Chen 2010: 162–172, 184–186, 198–99). US courts have declined to make a judgment on the issue, citing the political dimensions of the case that are more the preserve of the executive branch. Taiwan’s status in international law remains muddled, and this has structured its internal and external politics up until the contemporary era.

Perhaps in part cognizant of their tenuous legal control of the island, and thus the implications for legitimacy, the KMT would operate Taiwan under martial law for almost four decades. The stated nationalistic logic – emphasized in inverse correlation to the soundness of its legal basis – was that Taiwan was being rightfully returned to the motherland of China. Initially, this was welcomed by at least some Taiwanese, though the enthusiasm rapidly dissipated in the face of the KMT’s brutality and ineptitude. The broader cultural, social, and political project was the Sinification and de-Japanization of Taiwan, of which Mandarin language-spread was an integral part. In the remainder of this chapter, I discuss the political sociology of language under the KMT regime on Taiwan. I begin by contextualizing the political rise and fall of Nationalist China on the mainland after the dissolution of the Qing dynasty in 1911, and the KMT’s flight to Taiwan after defeat in the civil war by Chairman Mao’s Communist forces in 1949. I then give a sociolinguistic sketch of Mandarin and language policy in Nationalist China, before turning to language policy during the KMT period in Taiwan. Temporally, the narrative shifts around somewhat, so Table 4.1, below, lists some significant dates for guidance.

Table 4.1: Significant dates in the history of the KMT.

Date Event

1912 Foundation of the Republic of China (ROC) and the Kuomintang (KMT)

1921 Foundation of the Communist Party of China (CCP)

1925 Sun Yat-sen’s death; Chiang Kai-shek (CKS) takes over the KMT

1927



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