Following their defeat in the Chinese Civil War, on December 7, 1949, the remnants of the Nationalist government of the Republic of China (ROC), alongside many refugees, retreated to the island of Taiwan (Formosa). The exodus is sometimes called the Great Retreat (Chinese: 大撤退) in Taiwan. The Nationalist Kuomintang party (KMT), its officers, and approximately 2 million ROC troops took part in the retreat, in addition to many civilians and refugees, fleeing the advance of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP, who now effectively controlled most of mainland China, spent the subsequent years purging any remnant Nationalist agents in western and southern China, solidifying the rule of the newly established People's Republic of China (PRC).

Nanjing → Canton (Guangzhou) → Chungking (Chongqing) → Chungtu (Chengdu) → Taipei and Sichang (Xichang)
Retreat of the government of the Republic of China to Taiwan | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Traditional Chinese | 中華民國政府遷臺 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Simplified Chinese | 中华民国政府迁台 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Traditional Chinese | 大撤退 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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ROC troops mostly fled to Taiwan from provinces in southern China, in particular Sichuan Province, where the last stand of the ROC's main army took place. The flight to Taiwan took place over four months after Mao Zedong had proclaimed the founding of the PRC in Beijing on October 1, 1949. The island of Taiwan remained part of Japan during the occupation until Japan severed its territorial claims in the Treaty of San Francisco, which came into effect in 1952. In addition, some of the ROC troops in Yunnan also fled to Burma, where the insurgency lasted until 1961.
After the retreat, the leadership of the ROC, particularly Generalissimo and President Chiang Kai-shek, planned to make the retreat only temporary, hoping to regroup, fortify, and reconquer the mainland. This plan, which never came into fruition, was known as "Project National Glory" and constituted the national priority of the ROC on Taiwan. The ROC did not abandon the policy of using force for reunification until direct exchanges between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait began in the 1990s.
Background

In 1895, the Qing dynasty was defeated by the Empire of Japan in the First Sino-Japanese War, forcing the Qing dynasty to cede Taiwan and Penghu to the Japanese Empire, which began its 50-year long colonial rule. As World War II ended, the Republic of China, who ousted the Qing dynasty in 1911, regained control of Taiwan in 1945 after the surrender of Japan and placed it under military occupation.
The civil war between the Nationalist Party of China (Kuomintang, or KMT for short) under Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under Mao Zedong traced back to KMT's Shanghai Massacre in 1927, which triggered Communist insurgencies such as the Nanchang Uprising and the Autumn Harvest Uprising, as well as the formation of the Chinese Red Army. The first major conflict occurred in the middle of the Northern Expedition when both parties were supposed to work together to topple the Beiyang government and subdue various warlords in northern China (1926–28), effectively ending the First United Front. The KMT then conducted a series of encirclement campaigns against the Communist-controlled regions, eventually succeeding in the fifth one and forced the surviving Red Army on a strenuous retreat north towards the barren Shaanbei region. Chiang's insistence on purging the Communists continued despite increasing Japanese threat after the Jinan incident in 1928 (which first showcased the sheer arrogant brutality of the Japanese), the Mukden Incident in 1931 (which started the Japanese invasion of Manchuria) and the Shanghai Incident in 1932 (in which the Japanese openly displayed the ambition to conquer East Asia), leading to the Xi'an Incident in 1936 when disgruntled officers led by Zhang Xueliang kidnapped Chiang and forced him to agree to a Second United Front with the Communists against the Japanese. This animosity however continued through the Second Sino-Japanese War (1932–45), during which vast portions of China fell under the occupation of the invading Japanese Empire. This peaked in the New Fourth Army Incident in early 1941, in which an 80,000-strong KMT force ambushed a 9,000-men Communist division and killed most of the latter's officers and soldiers, citing that "the Communists attacked first", effectively ending any trust and further cooperation between the KMT and the CCP.[citation needed]
The civil war between KMT and CCP forces, which took a de jure hiatus during the Japanese invasion, entered its final stage in 1945 following the Japanese surrender. Both sides sought to defeat the other and control all of China, and this need to eliminate the other party was seen as necessary by both Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek, but for completely different reasons. For Mao, the elimination of the "old society" dominated by clans of wealthy oligarchs would forever end the feudal system in China, encouraging and preparing the country for socialism and communism, which he deemed to be the future for humanity; for Chiang, other warlords and political opponents were simply a great threat to his personal dominance within the central government, as evident in Chiang's long-held political philosophy of "[one] must quell the domestic before resisting the foreign" (攘外必先安內). While Chiang relied heavily on foreign assistance from the United States under President Harry Truman and the China Lobby, Mao had support from the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, as well as popular support from the impoverished rural population of China. The ideological unity of the CCP, and the experience acquired in guerilla warfare fighting the Japanese, prepared them for the people's war against the Kuomintang. Though Chiang's forces were well equipped by the US, they lacked effective leadership, political unity and sufficient ideological willpower among their ranks.[citation needed]
The conflicts between the KMT and CCP resumed in 1946. As the tide of war turned with the Communist victory in Manchuria, Chiang concluded in late 1948 that he needed to move to Taiwan; by end 1948 he had started shipments of China's important cultural artefacts and financial reserves to Taiwan. By 1948–1949, most of the northern mainland fell to the communists after the three decisive campaigns of Liaoshen, Pingjin and Huaihai. In January 1949, Chiang Kai-shek stepped down as leader of the KMT and was replaced by his vice-president, Li Zongren. Li and Mao entered into negotiations for peace, but Nationalist hardliners rejected Mao's demands.[citation needed] When Li sought an additional delay in mid-April 1949, the Chinese Red Army — now called the People's Liberation Army — crossed the Yangtze River and captured the Nationalist capital Nanjing and the major city of Shanghai, later Guangzhou, followed by Chongqing and then Chengdu. Mao proclaimed the establishment of a new republic in Beijing on October 1, while Chiang fled to the island of Formosa (Taiwan), where approximately 300,000 soldiers had already been airlifted.
Relocation of forces and people

Future Chinese Cultural University founder Chang Chi-yun was the first to propose moving to Taiwan in 1948. Throughout four months beginning in August 1948, the ROC leaders relocated the Republic of China Air Force to Taiwan, taking over 80 flights and three ships. Chen Chin-chang writes in his book[which?] on the subject and that an average of 50 or 60 planes flew daily between Taiwan and China transporting fuel and ammunition between August 1949 and December 1949.
Chiang also sent the 26 naval vessels of the Nationalist army to Taiwan. The final Communist assault against Nationalist forces began on April 20, 1949, and continued until the end of summer. By August, the People's Liberation Army dominated almost all of mainland China; the Nationalists held only Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands, some parts of Guangdong, Fukien, Zhejiang and a few regions in China's far west.
Institute of History and Philology director Fu Ssu-nien spearheaded a rush to persuade scholars to flee to Taiwan, as well as bringing books and documents. Institutions and colleges like Academia Sinica, National Palace Museum, National Tsing Hua University, National Chiao Tung University, Soochow University, Fu Jen Catholic University and St. Ignatius High School were re-established in Taiwan.
In total, according to current estimates, a migration of between 900,000 and 1,100,000 people must have taken place to Taiwan from the Chinese mainland between 1945 and 1955. The prior population of the island, at the end of Japanese rule, is estimated as 6,500,000 (see also Population of Taiwan). Of these, the Japanese subpopulation of about 500,000 were mostly repatriated by 1946. The number of immigrants is not known for certain, however, since no precise census was made before or during Japanese rule. The census of 1956 counts 640,000 civilian migrants from the mainland. The size of the army was secret at the time. Taiwanese documents found much later count 580,000 soldiers. American contemporary intelligence, however, put the number at only 450,000. Additionally, some army personnel were discharged before 1956 and are therefore (or for other reasons) included in both numbers, while others were drafted locally and were not immigrants. Such considerations led scholars to the above estimate. It is noted that upper estimates of up to two or three million immigrants are commonly found in older publications. Immigration on a similar scale took place in Hong Kong at the time.
Liquid assets and artifacts

As the defeated Nationalists fled to Taiwan, they stripped China of liquid assets including gold, silver, and the country's dollar reserves.
Chiang Kai-shek's mission to take gold from China was held secretly because, according to Wu Sing-yung, the entire mission was operated by Chiang himself. Only Chiang and Wu's father, who was the head of Military Finance for the KMT government, knew about the expenditure and moving of gold to Taiwan and almost all orders by Chiang were issued verbally. Wu stated that even the finance minister had no power over the final expenditure and transfer. The written record was kept as the top military secret by Chiang in the Taipei Presidential Palace and the declassified archives only became available to the public more than 40 years after his death in April 1975. It is a widely held belief that the gold brought to Taiwan was used to lay the foundations for the Taiwanese economy and government. Some also believe that after six months of the gold operation by Chiang, the New Taiwanese dollar was launched, which replaced the old Taiwanese dollar at a ratio of one to 40,000. It is believed that 800,000 taels of gold were used to stabilize the economy which had been suffering from hyperinflation since 1945. However, these beliefs turned out to be mistaken. According to a memoir written by Zhou Hong-tao, a long-term aide-de-camp of Chiang, the gold was consumed very fast after being brought to Taiwan and in less than two years 80% was already consumed for the funds and provisions for the troops.

The KMT also retreated with artifacts kept mostly in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan. The National Palace Museum claims that in 1948 when China was going through its Civil War, executive director Chu Chia-hua and others (Wang Shijie, Fu Ssu-nien, Xu Hong-Bao (Chinese: 徐洪宝), Li Ji, and Han Lih-wu) discussed shipping masterpieces to Taiwan for the artifacts' safety. Other institutions, such as the Henan Museum, also evacuated their collections of cultural relics to Taiwan during the war.
The plan was not fully implemented and completed due to insufficient cabin space and differing opinions on the relocation of artifacts to Taiwan. Some historians believe that Taiwan is still part of Chinese sovereign territory so relocation is not an issue.
Immediate ROC military actions
KMT forces attempted to destroy industrial sites, but workers were able to stop them at many such locations.
From Taiwan, Chiang's air force attempted to bomb the mainland cities of Shanghai and Nanking, but to no effect. Chiang's ground forces aimed to return to the mainland, but had no long-term success. Communist forces were left in control of all of China except Hainan Island and Taiwan.[citation needed]
As a whole, the Civil War had an immense impact on the Chinese people. The historian Jonathan Fenby proposes that "hyperinflation [during the Chinese Civil War] undermined everyday lives and ruined tens of millions, hampered by a poor taxation base, increased military spending and widespread corruption."
Plans to retake mainland China
Originally, the Republic of China planned to reconquer the mainland from the People's Republic. After the retreat to Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek established a dictatorship over the island with other Nationalist leaders and began making plans to invade the mainland.[failed verification] Chiang conceived a top secret plan called Project National Glory or Project Guoguang (Chinese: 國光計劃; pinyin: Gúoguāng Jìhuà; lit. 'National glory plan/project'), to accomplish this. Chiang's planned offensive involved 26 operations including land invasions and special operations behind enemy lines. He had asked his son Chiang Ching-kuo to draft a plan for air raids on the provinces of Fujian and Guangdong, from where many ROC soldiers and much of the population of Taiwan had origins. If it had taken place, it would have been the largest seaborne invasion in history.
Context of Project National Glory

The 1960s saw the "Great Leap Forward" in mainland China lead to catastrophic famines and millions of deaths, as well as progress by the PRC towards possible development of nuclear weapons. Thus, Chiang Kai-shek saw a crisis-opportunity to launch an attack to reclaim mainland China.
At this time, the U.S. was fighting the Vietnam War. For Project National Glory to be successful Chiang Kai-shek knew he needed US military assistance. Thus he offered to help the Americans fight the Vietnam War in exchange for U.S. support conducive to taking back his lost territory. The U.S. opposed and refused Chiang's suggestions.[citation needed] This did not stop him. Rather, Chiang went ahead with the preparations and continued to further his plan to take back their lost territory.
In 1965, Chiang's plans to strike were completed. His generals and admirals planned possible dates to deploy while soldiers and field officers prepared for battle, according to the government archives.
Chronology
April 1, 1961: The year witnessed the advent of the Project National Glory. The office was built by the Republic of China Armed Forces together with the Ministry of National Defense in the town of Sanxia, Taipei County (now a district in New Taipei City). Army Lieutenant General Zhu Yuancong took the role of governor and officially launched the project to compose a prudent plan of operations to recover the lost territories in mainland China. At the same time, the establishment of Project Juguan[clarify] came to light whereby military members began to work out a possible alliance with American troops to attack mainland China.
April 1964: During this year, Chiang Kai-shek arranged an ensemble of air-raid shelters and five military offices at Lake Cihu (Chinese: 慈湖), which served as a secret command centre. Following the establishment of Project National Glory, several sub-plans were put into place, such as the frontal area of the enemy, rear area special warfare, surprise attack, taking advantage of the counterattack, and assistance against tyranny.
However, the United States Armed Forces and the U.S. Department of Defense, together with the State Department, strongly opposed Project National Glory; rejecting the KMT plan to retake mainland China. Thus, every week American troops checked the inventory of Republic of China Marine Corps amphibious landing vehicles used by ROC and ordered American military advisory group members to fly over the Project National Glory camp to scouting missions. These flyovers infuriated Chiang Kai-shek.
June 17, 1965: Chiang Kai-shek visited the Republic of China Military Academy to convene with all mid-level and higher officers to devise and launch the counterattack.
June 24, 1965: At least ten soldiers died during a training drill to feign a Communist attack on major naval bases in southern Taiwan near Zuoying District when rough seas overturned five landing craft. The deaths that occurred during the happening were the first but not the last in Project National Glory.
August 6, 1965: A People's Liberation Army Navy torpedo boat ambushed and drowned 200 soldiers as the Zhangjiang naval warship carried out assignment Tsunami Number 1, in an attempt to transport special forces to the vicinity of the Eastern mainland Chinese coastal island of Dongshan to carry out an intelligence gathering operation.
November 1965: Chiang Kai-shek ordered two other naval vessels, the CNS Shan Hai and the CNS Lin Huai to pick up injured soldiers from Taiwan's offshore islands of Magong and Wuqiu. The vessels were attacked by 12 PRC ships, the Lin Huai sunk, and roughly 90 soldiers and sailors were killed in action. Surprised by the heavy loss of life in the naval battle at Magong, Chiang gave up all hope for Project National Glory.
After several unsuccessful feigned invasions between August 1971 and June 1973, in the lead to the main landings, the 1973 coup which witnessed Nie Rongzhen's rise to power in Beijing[clarification needed] drove Chiang to call off all further false attacks and commence full landing operations. Having said this, according to General Huang Chih-Chung, who was an army colonel at the time and part of the planning process, Chiang Kai-shek never completely gave up the desire to recapture China; "even when he died (in 1975), he was still hoping the international situation would change and that the Communists would be wiped out one day."
Failure and shift of focus to modernization
The failure of Chiang's Project National Glory changed the course of Chinese and Taiwanese history, forever altering cross-strait relations. For example, the Taiwanese "shifted the focus to modernizing and defending Taiwan instead of preparing Taiwan to take back China," stated Andrew Yang, a political scientist specializing in Taiwan-Mainland China relations at the Taipei-based Council of Advanced Policy Studies. Chiang Kai-shek's son Chiang Ching-Kuo, who later succeeded him as president, focused on maintaining peace between the mainland and Taiwan. Today, political relations between Taiwan and China have changed; as General Huang said, "I hope it will develop peacefully... There's no need for war."
Reform of the Kuomintang

After being expelled from the mainland, Chiang Kai-shek and other KMT leaders realized they had to reform the party.[citation needed]

Initially, the party had seen public schools as a necessary instrument of assimilation and nation-building. Private schools, seen as unwanted competition, were therefore suppressed. However, as education needs on the island began to outstrip government resources, the party reevaluated its approach. Starting in 1954, private schools were not only tolerated but backed by state funding. Simultaneously, steps were taken to secure the obedience of private schools, such as ensuring the placement of party loyalists on school boards and the passing of strict laws to control the political content of the curricula.
Legality
While the generally established view is that the KMT legally gained territorial sovereignty over Taiwan in 1945 (following the surrender of Japan), some have opposed this view.
According to a 1955 article, "It has been charged that Chiang Kai-shek has no claim to the island because he is 'merely a fugitive quartering his army' there and besides, his is a government in exile." Moreover, the Treaty of San Francisco, which was officially signed by 48 nations on September 8, 1951, did not specify to whom Japan was ceding Taiwan and Penghu. Despite this, the ROC was viewed by the vast majority of states at the time as the legitimate representative of China, as it had succeeded the Qing Dynasty, while the PRC was at the time a mostly unrecognized state. Japan was, at the time of the signing of the Treaty of San Francisco, still technically under American occupation. After full independence, Japan established full relations with the ROC and not the PRC.
According to Professor Gene Hsiao, "Since the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the separate KMT treaty with Japan did not specify to whom Japan was ceding Taiwan and the Pescadores, the U.S. position implied that legally, and insofar as the signatories of those two treaties were concerned, Taiwan became an 'ownerless' island and the KMT, by its own assent to the American policy, a foreign government-in-exile."
Aftermath
Once it became apparent that such a plan could not be realized, the ROC's national focus shifted to the modernization and economic development of Taiwan. After the plan to counterattack the mainland was terminated, the Kuomintang began the process of localization under the leadership of Chiang Ching-kuo. The ROC, continues to officially claim exclusive sovereignty over the now-CCP-governed mainland China till now (Both the ROC and PRC also claim the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands administered by Japan). However, after Taiwan's democratization in the 1990s, President Lee Teng-hui claimed that the sovereignty of the Republic of China only extended to Taiwan. Since 2004, the Republic of China has officially stopped using maps and administrative region codes related to mainland China, the current release of "Taiwan Complete Map" only includes Taiwan Area.
See also
- Outline of the Chinese Civil War
- Timeline of the Chinese Civil War
- Xi'an Incident
- Yan Xishan
- Chiang Ching-kuo
- Lee Teng-hui
- Conservatism in Taiwan
- Wu Sing-yung
- Two Chinas
- China and the United Nations
- United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758
- Proclamation of the People's Republic of China
References
- Han, Cheung. "Taiwan in Time: The great retreat". Taipei Times. Archived from the original on June 20, 2020. Retrieved November 9, 2018.
Starting in August 1948, the Air Force started moving its equipment and institutions to Taiwan. This operation alone was a massive one. It took what is today the Air Force Institute of Technology 80 flights and three ships over four months to relocate.
- Zhànzhēng, Jiefàng. "Civil War 1945-1949". Archived from the original on April 11, 2020. Retrieved July 20, 2018.
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- Karl, Rebecca E. (2010). Mao Zedong and China in the twentieth-century world : a concise history. Durham [NC]: Duke University Press. p. 75. ISBN 978-0-8223-4780-4. OCLC 503828045.
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- Wang Hao [in Chinese] (June 24, 2018). "汪浩觀點:蔣介石運來臺灣的黃金去哪了?" Wang Hao's View: Where Did the Gold Brought to Taiwan by Chiang Kai-shek Go?. The Storm Media (in Chinese). Archived from the original on January 13, 2022. Retrieved August 28, 2020.
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- Han Cheung (November 17, 2019). "Taiwan in Time: Spies, guerillas and the final counterattack". Taipei Times. Retrieved December 28, 2024.
- Wong, Ting-Hong (May 2020). "Education and National Colonialism in Postwar Taiwan: The Paradoxical Use of Private Schools to Extend State Power, 1944–1966". History of Education Quarterly. 60 (2): 156–184. doi:10.1017/heq.2020.25. S2CID 225917190.
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- Marc J. Cohen, Emma Teng (July 15, 2018). "Let Taiwan be Taiwan" (PDF). Taiwan Foundation. Archived (PDF) from the original on February 4, 2005. Retrieved July 15, 2018.
- Hudson, Christopher (2014). The China Handbook. Routledge. p. 59. ISBN 9781134269662. Archived from the original on April 10, 2023. Retrieved April 9, 2022.
- Rigger, Shelley (2002). Politics in Taiwan: Voting for Reform. Routledge. p. 60. ISBN 9781134692972. Archived from the original on April 10, 2023. Retrieved April 9, 2022.
- 兩岸關係定位與國際空間:臺灣參與國際活動問題研究,第215頁,祝捷,崧燁文化,2019-01-08, "李登輝、陳水扁在主張主權僅及於「台澎金馬」的同時,不忘重申治權也及於「台澎金馬」的主張。"
- 中華民國發展史: 兼論兩個中國的互動與衝突,第475頁,李功勤,幼獅文化事業股份有限公司,2002,"1996.3總統大選後李登輝接受亞洲華爾街日報專訪指出,中華民國的主權與治權僅及於臺澎金馬,臺灣是主權獨立的國家。"
- "中華民國內政部地政司全球資訊網 > 方域業務 > 編印臺灣全圖及各級行政區域圖" (in Chinese (Taiwan)). August 2, 2018. Archived from the original on April 17, 2021. Retrieved December 10, 2023.
Further reading
- Wu, Sing-yung (2021). 父親的黃金秘密 [Father's Gold Secret]. Outskirts Press. ISBN 978-1-9772-4386-7.
- Westad, Odd Arne. Restless empire: China and the world since 1750 (2012) Online free to borrow
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Following their defeat in the Chinese Civil War on December 7 1949 the remnants of the Nationalist government of the Republic of China ROC alongside many refugees retreated to the island of Taiwan Formosa The exodus is sometimes called the Great Retreat Chinese 大撤退 in Taiwan The Nationalist Kuomintang party KMT its officers and approximately 2 million ROC troops took part in the retreat in addition to many civilians and refugees fleeing the advance of the People s Liberation Army PLA of the Chinese Communist Party CCP The CCP who now effectively controlled most of mainland China spent the subsequent years purging any remnant Nationalist agents in western and southern China solidifying the rule of the newly established People s Republic of China PRC Five retreats of the ROC Government in 1949 Nanjing Canton Guangzhou Chungking Chongqing Chungtu Chengdu Taipei and Sichang Xichang Retreat of the government of the Republic of China to TaiwanTraditional Chinese中華民國政府遷臺Simplified 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after Mao Zedong had proclaimed the founding of the PRC in Beijing on October 1 1949 The island of Taiwan remained part of Japan during the occupation until Japan severed its territorial claims in the Treaty of San Francisco which came into effect in 1952 In addition some of the ROC troops in Yunnan also fled to Burma where the insurgency lasted until 1961 After the retreat the leadership of the ROC particularly Generalissimo and President Chiang Kai shek planned to make the retreat only temporary hoping to regroup fortify and reconquer the mainland This plan which never came into fruition was known as Project National Glory and constituted the national priority of the ROC on Taiwan The ROC did not abandon the policy of using force for reunification until direct exchanges between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait began in the 1990s BackgroundAs of December 1949 the Chinese Communists had controlled the entire mainland China except Hainan and de facto country Tibet CIA map In 1895 the Qing dynasty was defeated by the Empire of Japan in the First Sino Japanese War forcing the Qing dynasty to cede Taiwan and Penghu to the Japanese Empire which began its 50 year long colonial rule As World War II ended the Republic of China who ousted the Qing dynasty in 1911 regained control of Taiwan in 1945 after the surrender of Japan and placed it under military occupation The civil war between the Nationalist Party of China Kuomintang or KMT for short under Chiang Kai shek and the Chinese Communist Party CCP under Mao Zedong traced back to KMT s Shanghai Massacre in 1927 which triggered Communist insurgencies such as the Nanchang Uprising and the Autumn Harvest Uprising as well as the formation of the Chinese Red Army The first major conflict occurred in the middle of the Northern Expedition when both parties were supposed to work together to topple the Beiyang government and subdue various warlords in northern China 1926 28 effectively ending the First United Front The KMT then conducted a series of encirclement campaigns against the Communist controlled regions eventually succeeding in the fifth one and forced the surviving Red Army on a strenuous retreat north towards the barren Shaanbei region Chiang s insistence on purging the Communists continued despite increasing Japanese threat after the Jinan incident in 1928 which first showcased the sheer arrogant brutality of the Japanese the Mukden Incident in 1931 which started the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the Shanghai Incident in 1932 in which the Japanese openly displayed the ambition to conquer East Asia leading to the Xi an Incident in 1936 when disgruntled officers led by Zhang Xueliang kidnapped Chiang and forced him to agree to a Second United Front with the Communists against the Japanese This animosity however continued through the Second Sino Japanese War 1932 45 during which vast portions of China fell under the occupation of the invading Japanese Empire This peaked in the New Fourth Army Incident in early 1941 in which an 80 000 strong KMT force ambushed a 9 000 men Communist division and killed most of the latter s officers and soldiers citing that the Communists attacked first effectively ending any trust and further cooperation between the KMT and the CCP citation needed The civil war between KMT and CCP forces which took a de jure hiatus during the Japanese invasion entered its final stage in 1945 following the Japanese surrender Both sides sought to defeat the other and control all of China and this need to eliminate the other party was seen as necessary by both Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai shek but for completely different reasons For Mao the elimination of the old society dominated by clans of wealthy oligarchs would forever end the feudal system in China encouraging and preparing the country for socialism and communism which he deemed to be the future for humanity for Chiang other warlords and political opponents were simply a great threat to his personal dominance within the central government as evident in Chiang s long held political philosophy of one must quell the domestic before resisting the foreign 攘外必先安內 While Chiang relied heavily on foreign assistance from the United States under President Harry Truman and the China Lobby Mao had support from the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin as well as popular support from the impoverished rural population of China The ideological unity of the CCP and the experience acquired in guerilla warfare fighting the Japanese prepared them for the people s war against the Kuomintang Though Chiang s forces were well equipped by the US they lacked effective leadership political unity and sufficient ideological willpower among their ranks citation needed The conflicts between the KMT and CCP resumed in 1946 As the tide of war turned with the Communist victory in Manchuria Chiang concluded in late 1948 that he needed to move to Taiwan by end 1948 he had started shipments of China s important cultural artefacts and financial reserves to Taiwan By 1948 1949 most of the northern mainland fell to the communists after the three decisive campaigns of Liaoshen Pingjin and Huaihai In January 1949 Chiang Kai shek stepped down as leader of the KMT and was replaced by his vice president Li Zongren Li and Mao entered into negotiations for peace but Nationalist hardliners rejected Mao s demands citation needed When Li sought an additional delay in mid April 1949 the Chinese Red Army now called the People s Liberation Army crossed the Yangtze River and captured the Nationalist capital Nanjing and the major city of Shanghai later Guangzhou followed by Chongqing and then Chengdu Mao proclaimed the establishment of a new republic in Beijing on October 1 while Chiang fled to the island of Formosa Taiwan where approximately 300 000 soldiers had already been airlifted Relocation of forces and peopleROCA members boarding a ship during the retreat Future Chinese Cultural University founder Chang Chi yun was the first to propose moving to Taiwan in 1948 Throughout four months beginning in August 1948 the ROC leaders relocated the Republic of China Air Force to Taiwan taking over 80 flights and three ships Chen Chin chang writes in his book which on the subject and that an average of 50 or 60 planes flew daily between Taiwan and China transporting fuel and ammunition between August 1949 and December 1949 Chiang also sent the 26 naval vessels of the Nationalist army to Taiwan The final Communist assault against Nationalist forces began on April 20 1949 and continued until the end of summer By August the People s Liberation Army dominated almost all of mainland China the Nationalists held only Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands some parts of Guangdong Fukien Zhejiang and a few regions in China s far west Institute of History and Philology director Fu Ssu nien spearheaded a rush to persuade scholars to flee to Taiwan as well as bringing books and documents Institutions and colleges like Academia Sinica National Palace Museum National Tsing Hua University National Chiao Tung University Soochow University Fu Jen Catholic University and St Ignatius High School were re established in Taiwan In total according to current estimates a migration of between 900 000 and 1 100 000 people must have taken place to Taiwan from the Chinese mainland between 1945 and 1955 The prior population of the island at the end of Japanese rule is estimated as 6 500 000 see also Population of Taiwan Of these the Japanese subpopulation of about 500 000 were mostly repatriated by 1946 The number of immigrants is not known for certain however since no precise census was made before or during Japanese rule The census of 1956 counts 640 000 civilian migrants from the mainland The size of the army was secret at the time Taiwanese documents found much later count 580 000 soldiers American contemporary intelligence however put the number at only 450 000 Additionally some army personnel were discharged before 1956 and are therefore or for other reasons included in both numbers while others were drafted locally and were not immigrants Such considerations led scholars to the above estimate It is noted that upper estimates of up to two or three million immigrants are commonly found in older publications Immigration on a similar scale took place in Hong Kong at the time Liquid assets and artifactsThe New Taiwan dollar first issued in 1949 As the defeated Nationalists fled to Taiwan they stripped China of liquid assets including gold silver and the country s dollar reserves Chiang Kai shek s mission to take gold from China was held secretly because according to Wu Sing yung the entire mission was operated by Chiang himself Only Chiang and Wu s father who was the head of Military Finance for the KMT government knew about the expenditure and moving of gold to Taiwan and almost all orders by Chiang were issued verbally Wu stated that even the finance minister had no power over the final expenditure and transfer The written record was kept as the top military secret by Chiang in the Taipei Presidential Palace and the declassified archives only became available to the public more than 40 years after his death in April 1975 It is a widely held belief that the gold brought to Taiwan was used to lay the foundations for the Taiwanese economy and government Some also believe that after six months of the gold operation by Chiang the New Taiwanese dollar was launched which replaced the old Taiwanese dollar at a ratio of one to 40 000 It is believed that 800 000 taels of gold were used to stabilize the economy which had been suffering from hyperinflation since 1945 However these beliefs turned out to be mistaken According to a memoir written by Zhou Hong tao a long term aide de camp of Chiang the gold was consumed very fast after being brought to Taiwan and in less than two years 80 was already consumed for the funds and provisions for the troops The National Palace Museum in Taipei Taiwan The KMT also retreated with artifacts kept mostly in the National Palace Museum in Taipei Taiwan The National Palace Museum claims that in 1948 when China was going through its Civil War executive director Chu Chia hua and others Wang Shijie Fu Ssu nien Xu Hong Bao Chinese 徐洪宝 Li Ji and Han Lih wu discussed shipping masterpieces to Taiwan for the artifacts safety Other institutions such as the Henan Museum also evacuated their collections of cultural relics to Taiwan during the war The plan was not fully implemented and completed due to insufficient cabin space and differing opinions on the relocation of artifacts to Taiwan Some historians believe that Taiwan is still part of Chinese sovereign territory so relocation is not an issue Immediate ROC military actionsKMT forces attempted to destroy industrial sites but workers were able to stop them at many such locations From Taiwan Chiang s air force attempted to bomb the mainland cities of Shanghai and Nanking but to no effect Chiang s ground forces aimed to return to the mainland but had no long term success Communist forces were left in control of all of China except Hainan Island and Taiwan citation needed As a whole the Civil War had an immense impact on the Chinese people The historian Jonathan Fenby proposes that hyperinflation during the Chinese Civil War undermined everyday lives and ruined tens of millions hampered by a poor taxation base increased military spending and widespread corruption Plans to retake mainland ChinaOriginally the Republic of China planned to reconquer the mainland from the People s Republic After the retreat to Taiwan Chiang Kai shek established a dictatorship over the island with other Nationalist leaders and began making plans to invade the mainland failed verification Chiang conceived a top secret plan called Project National Glory or Project Guoguang Chinese 國光計劃 pinyin Guoguang Jihua lit National glory plan project to accomplish this Chiang s planned offensive involved 26 operations including land invasions and special operations behind enemy lines He had asked his son Chiang Ching kuo to draft a plan for air raids on the provinces of Fujian and Guangdong from where many ROC soldiers and much of the population of Taiwan had origins If it had taken place it would have been the largest seaborne invasion in history Context of Project National Glory Chiang Kai shek The Man who Lost China 1952 The 1960s saw the Great Leap Forward in mainland China lead to catastrophic famines and millions of deaths as well as progress by the PRC towards possible development of nuclear weapons Thus Chiang Kai shek saw a crisis opportunity to launch an attack to reclaim mainland China At this time the U S was fighting the Vietnam War For Project National Glory to be successful Chiang Kai shek knew he needed US military assistance Thus he offered to help the Americans fight the Vietnam War in exchange for U S support conducive to taking back his lost territory The U S opposed and refused Chiang s suggestions citation needed This did not stop him Rather Chiang went ahead with the preparations and continued to further his plan to take back their lost territory In 1965 Chiang s plans to strike were completed His generals and admirals planned possible dates to deploy while soldiers and field officers prepared for battle according to the government archives Chronology April 1 1961 The year witnessed the advent of the Project National Glory The office was built by the Republic of China Armed Forces together with the Ministry of National Defense in the town of Sanxia Taipei County now a district in New Taipei City Army Lieutenant General Zhu Yuancong took the role of governor and officially launched the project to compose a prudent plan of operations to recover the lost territories in mainland China At the same time the establishment of Project Juguan clarify came to light whereby military members began to work out a possible alliance with American troops to attack mainland China April 1964 During this year Chiang Kai shek arranged an ensemble of air raid shelters and five military offices at Lake Cihu Chinese 慈湖 which served as a secret command centre Following the establishment of Project National Glory several sub plans were put into place such as the frontal area of the enemy rear area special warfare surprise attack taking advantage of the counterattack and assistance against tyranny However the United States Armed Forces and the U S Department of Defense together with the State Department strongly opposed Project National Glory rejecting the KMT plan to retake mainland China Thus every week American troops checked the inventory of Republic of China Marine Corps amphibious landing vehicles used by ROC and ordered American military advisory group members to fly over the Project National Glory camp to scouting missions These flyovers infuriated Chiang Kai shek June 17 1965 Chiang Kai shek visited the Republic of China Military Academy to convene with all mid level and higher officers to devise and launch the counterattack June 24 1965 At least ten soldiers died during a training drill to feign a Communist attack on major naval bases in southern Taiwan near Zuoying District when rough seas overturned five landing craft The deaths that occurred during the happening were the first but not the last in Project National Glory August 6 1965 A People s Liberation Army Navy torpedo boat ambushed and drowned 200 soldiers as the Zhangjiang naval warship carried out assignment Tsunami Number 1 in an attempt to transport special forces to the vicinity of the Eastern mainland Chinese coastal island of Dongshan to carry out an intelligence gathering operation November 1965 Chiang Kai shek ordered two other naval vessels the CNS Shan Hai and the CNS Lin Huai to pick up injured soldiers from Taiwan s offshore islands of Magong and Wuqiu The vessels were attacked by 12 PRC ships the Lin Huai sunk and roughly 90 soldiers and sailors were killed in action Surprised by the heavy loss of life in the naval battle at Magong Chiang gave up all hope for Project National Glory After several unsuccessful feigned invasions between August 1971 and June 1973 in the lead to the main landings the 1973 coup which witnessed Nie Rongzhen s rise to power in Beijing clarification needed drove Chiang to call off all further false attacks and commence full landing operations Having said this according to General Huang Chih Chung who was an army colonel at the time and part of the planning process Chiang Kai shek never completely gave up the desire to recapture China even when he died in 1975 he was still hoping the international situation would change and that the Communists would be wiped out one day Failure and shift of focus to modernization The failure of Chiang s Project National Glory changed the course of Chinese and Taiwanese history forever altering cross strait relations For example the Taiwanese shifted the focus to modernizing and defending Taiwan instead of preparing Taiwan to take back China stated Andrew Yang a political scientist specializing in Taiwan Mainland China relations at the Taipei based Council of Advanced Policy Studies Chiang Kai shek s son Chiang Ching Kuo who later succeeded him as president focused on maintaining peace between the mainland and Taiwan Today political relations between Taiwan and China have changed as General Huang said I hope it will develop peacefully There s no need for war Reform of the KuomintangIn August 1950 the KMT held its first Central reform Committee meeting to launch the party s reforms 1950 After being expelled from the mainland Chiang Kai shek and other KMT leaders realized they had to reform the party citation needed Party flag and emblem of the Kuomintang based on the Blue Sky with a White Sun which also appears in the Flag of the Republic of China Initially the party had seen public schools as a necessary instrument of assimilation and nation building Private schools seen as unwanted competition were therefore suppressed However as education needs on the island began to outstrip government resources the party reevaluated its approach Starting in 1954 private schools were not only tolerated but backed by state funding Simultaneously steps were taken to secure the obedience of private schools such as ensuring the placement of party loyalists on school boards and the passing of strict laws to control the political content of the curricula LegalityWhile the generally established view is that the KMT legally gained territorial sovereignty over Taiwan in 1945 following the surrender of Japan some have opposed this view According to a 1955 article It has been charged that Chiang Kai shek has no claim to the island because he is merely a fugitive quartering his army there and besides his is a government in exile Moreover the Treaty of San Francisco which was officially signed by 48 nations on September 8 1951 did not specify to whom Japan was ceding Taiwan and Penghu Despite this the ROC was viewed by the vast majority of states at the time as the legitimate representative of China as it had succeeded the Qing Dynasty while the PRC was at the time a mostly unrecognized state Japan was at the time of the signing of the Treaty of San Francisco still technically under American occupation After full independence Japan established full relations with the ROC and not the PRC According to Professor Gene Hsiao Since the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the separate KMT treaty with Japan did not specify to whom Japan was ceding Taiwan and the Pescadores the U S position implied that legally and insofar as the signatories of those two treaties were concerned Taiwan became an ownerless island and the KMT by its own assent to the American policy a foreign government in exile AftermathOnce it became apparent that such a plan could not be realized the ROC s national focus shifted to the modernization and economic development of Taiwan After the plan to counterattack the mainland was terminated the Kuomintang began the process of localization under the leadership of Chiang Ching kuo The ROC continues to officially claim exclusive sovereignty over the now CCP governed mainland China till now Both the ROC and PRC also claim the Diaoyu Senkaku islands administered by Japan However after Taiwan s democratization in the 1990s President Lee Teng hui claimed that the sovereignty of the Republic of China only extended to Taiwan Since 2004 the Republic of China has officially stopped using maps and administrative region codes related to mainland China the current release of Taiwan Complete Map only includes Taiwan Area See alsoOutline of the Chinese Civil War Timeline of the Chinese Civil War Xi an Incident Yan Xishan Chiang Ching kuo Lee Teng hui Conservatism in Taiwan Wu Sing yung Two Chinas China and the United Nations United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758 Proclamation of the People s Republic of ChinaReferencesHan Cheung Taiwan in Time The great retreat Taipei Times Archived from the original on June 20 2020 Retrieved November 9 2018 Starting in August 1948 the Air Force started moving its equipment and institutions to Taiwan This operation alone was a massive one It took what is today the Air Force Institute of Technology 80 flights and three ships over four months to relocate Zhanzheng Jiefang Civil War 1945 1949 Archived from the original on April 11 2020 Retrieved July 20 2018 Jay Taylor 2009 The Generalissimo Chiang Kai shek and the Struggle for Modern China Harvard University Press pp 397 399 ISBN 9780674054714 Cheung Han December 4 2016 Taiwan in Time The great retreat Taipei Times Retrieved October 12 2024 Meng Hsuan Yang The great exodus sojourn nostalgia return and identity formation of Chinese mainlanders in Taiwan 1940s 2000s Dissertation University of British Columbia 2012 p 50 61 1 Archived August 8 2022 at the Wayback Machine Karl Rebecca E 2010 Mao Zedong and 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68790 JSTOR 443689 Archived from the original on April 10 2023 Retrieved September 2 2019 The American Occupation of Japan 1945 1952 Asia for Educators Columbia University afe easia columbia edu Archived from the original on December 12 2015 Retrieved July 17 2020 Hornung Jeffrey W March 13 2018 Strong but constrained Japan Taiwan ties Brookings Archived from the original on August 5 2020 Retrieved July 17 2020 Marc J Cohen Emma Teng July 15 2018 Let Taiwan be Taiwan PDF Taiwan Foundation Archived PDF from the original on February 4 2005 Retrieved July 15 2018 Hudson Christopher 2014 The China Handbook Routledge p 59 ISBN 9781134269662 Archived from the original on April 10 2023 Retrieved April 9 2022 Rigger Shelley 2002 Politics in Taiwan Voting for Reform Routledge p 60 ISBN 9781134692972 Archived from the original on April 10 2023 Retrieved April 9 2022 兩岸關係定位與國際空間 臺灣參與國際活動問題研究 第215頁 祝捷 崧燁文化 2019 01 08 李登輝 陳水扁在主張主權僅及於 台澎金馬 的同時 不忘重申治權也及於 台澎金馬 的主張 中華民國發展史 兼論兩個中國的互動與衝突 第475頁 李功勤 幼獅文化事業股份有限公司 2002 1996 3總統大選後李登輝接受亞洲華爾街日報專訪指出 中華民國的主權與治權僅及於臺澎金馬 臺灣是主權獨立的國家 中華民國內政部地政司全球資訊網 gt 方域業務 gt 編印臺灣全圖及各級行政區域圖 in Chinese Taiwan August 2 2018 Archived from the original on April 17 2021 Retrieved December 10 2023 Further readingWu Sing yung 2021 父親的黃金秘密 Father s Gold Secret Outskirts Press ISBN 978 1 9772 4386 7 Westad Odd Arne Restless empire China and the world since 1750 2012 Online free to borrow Portals TaiwanChinaAsia