number of nuclear bombs, heightened the tension
in the new millennium. In the face of the threat
Japan has not sought to shelter in neutrality in
place of reliance on the US alliance but is anxious
to play a role in cooling tensions in the region.
The ‘other’ China, the Republic of China on
Taiwan, was founded when the remnants of
Chiang Kai-shek’s army withdrew to the island
in 1949. Some 20,000 Taiwanese who resisted
Kuomintang rule were killed that year and martial
law was imposed. Under American protection and
with American forces stationed in Taiwan, Chiang
Kai-shek and the ageing Kuomintang party and
military leaders were able to rebuild a formidable
military force of half a million men, ruling over
the native Taiwanese with only the façade of a
constitutional process. Security police ensured
that no opposition could make itself felt for long.
Despite American influence, civil liberties and
democracy were given no real opportunity to take
root. Politically, Taiwan was an ally, and as such
the Kuomintang acted internally as it thought
best. Taiwan was poor, but even under the
Kuomintang economic progress was achieved in
the production of textiles and simple electronic
goods such as transistor radios. Chiang Kai-shek
died in 1975, and after an interval was succeeded
by his eldest son, Chiang Ching-kuo, in 1978.
The rapprochement of the US and the
People’s Republic of China gradually led to the
withdrawal of US troops (in 1979) and of US
diplomatic recognition. Chiang Ching-kuo had to
readjust Taiwan’s international stance. He cau-
tiously improved relations with the People’s
Republic, and trade and other links expanded.
The leaders in Beijing, meanwhile, had no inten-
tion any longer of attempting to unify China by
force. At home Chiang Ching-kuo likewise grad-
ually followed a reforming policy, having to carry
with him the gerontocracy of Chiang Kai-shek’s
former political and military companions. He
finally lifted martial law in 1987 and permitted a
multi-party system to evolve. On his death, Vice-
President Lee Teng-hui, the first Taiwanese to
head the Kuomintang, became president and con-
tinued the reforms of the fragile democratic
process. Taiwan’s human rights record had previ-
ously been lamentable; in contrast, its economic
growth was another of the so-called economic
miracles, giving it an income per head twenty
times greater than mainland China’s.
Lee Teng-hui won the elections of 1988, and
continued to move away from the old authoritar-
ian style. The most important foreign issue was to
regularise relations with mainland China and
democratise politics at home. He encouraged
family visits with the mainland and economic
links. When in the spring of 1996 he campaigned
against the ‘one China’ formula, he brought the
wrath of Beijing on his head. Missiles were fired
into the Taiwanese Straits as a warning that China
would invade if independence was declared and
the US countered by moving two aircraft carriers
within striking distance. The crisis passed to be
repeated during the presidential election cam-
paign of 1999. After the elections both sides
cooled their rhetoric once again.
The changes in Taiwanese politics had begun
in 1987 when martial law, in existence for more
than three decades, was lifted. Reforms to create
a multi-party state were introduced. On 1 May
1991 Taiwan declared the forty-two-year ‘com-
munist rebellion’ at an end, code for recognising
the regime in Beijing. Reform at home made
possible a historic change in July 2000 when
the opposition candidate of the Democratic
Progressive Party Chen Shui-bian won the presi-
dential election. Talk of declaring independence
receded. Taiwan, too, had to adjust to the eco-
nomic crisis in Asia of 1997 and meet the chal-
lenges of the new millennium.Another Chinese ‘miracle’ is Hong Kong, which
has no resources except the ingenuity of its
merchants and the enterprise of its Chinese
population. Capitalist Hong Kong adjoins the
communist mainland of China, on which it is
dependent for water and food imports. Its geo-
graphical position makes it, in practical terms,
indefensible. Hong Kong island was seized by
Britain in 1841, and more territory was forcibly
secured in 1860. Then in 1898 the Chinese were
made to lease the so-called New Territories for
ninety-nine years, in what then looked like
becoming a ‘scramble for China’. The lease