Editing Taiwan independence movement (section)

=== Martial law period ===
[[File:228 by Li Jun.jpg|thumb|300px|Woodcut print by [[Huang Rong-can]], "The Terrible Inspection" describing the [[February 28 Incident]] massacre in 1947]]
[[File:Terror In Formosa (The Daily News, Perth, 1947).jpg|120px|left|thumb|"Terror In Formosa", a news article from ''[[Daily News (Perth, Western Australia)|The Daily News]]'' of [[Perth]], reported the status in March 1947.]]
The modern-day political movement for Taiwan independence dates back to the Japanese colonial period, but it only became a viable political force within Taiwan in the 1990s.{{citation needed|date=February 2023}} Taiwanese independence was advocated periodically during the Japanese colonial period, but was suppressed by the [[Japanese government]]. These efforts were the goal of the [[Taiwanese Communist Party]] of the late 1920s. Unlike current formulations, and in line with the thinking of the [[Comintern]], such a state would have been a [[proletarian]] one. With the end of [[World War II]] in 1945, [[Taiwan under Japanese rule|Japanese rule]] ended, but the subsequent autocratic rule of the ROC's Kuomintang (KMT) later revived calls for local rule. However, it was a movement supported by the Chinese students who were born on the Island and not associated with KMT. It found its roots in the US and Japan. In the 1950s, a Republic of Taiwan Provisional Government was set up in Japan. [[Thomas Liao]] was nominally the President. At one time it held quasi-official relations with the newly independent [[Indonesia]]. This was possible mainly through the connections between [[Sukarno]] and the Provisional Government's [[Southeast Asia]]n liaison, [[Chen Chih-hsiung]], who had assisted in Indonesia's local resistance movements against Japanese rule.

After the Kuomintang [[Retrocession of Taiwan|began to rule the island]], the focus of the movement was as a vehicle for discontent from the native Taiwanese against the rule of "[[waishengren|mainlander]]s" (i.e. mainland Chinese-born people who fled to Taiwan with KMT in the late 1940s). The [[February 28 Incident]] in 1947 and the ensuing [[Martial law in Taiwan|martial law]] that lasted until 1987 contributed to the period of [[White Terror (Taiwan)|White Terror]] on the island, persecuting not only indigenous leftists, but liberals and democracy advocates as well. 

Between 1949 and 1991, the official position<ref>{{cite journal|author=Li, Thian-hok|journal=Foreign Affairs|year=1958|title=The China Impasse, a Formosan view|volume=36|issue=3|pages=437–448|url=http://www.taiwandc.org/hst-jloo-fa58.pdf|doi=10.2307/20029298|jstor=20029298|access-date=28 May 2006|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060615133131/http://www.taiwandc.org/hst-jloo-fa58.pdf|archive-date=15 June 2006|url-status=live}}</ref> of the ROC government on Taiwan was that it was the legitimate government of all of China and it used this position as justification for authoritarian measures such as the refusal to vacate the seats held by delegates elected on the mainland in 1947 for the [[Legislative Yuan]]. The Taiwan independence movement intensified in response to this and presented an alternative vision of a sovereign and independent Taiwanese state. This vision was represented through a number of symbols such as the use of [[Taiwanese Minnan|Taiwanese]] in opposition to the school-taught [[Standard Mandarin|Mandarin Chinese]].

Several scholars drafted various versions of a [[constitution]], as both political statement or vision and as intellectual exercise. Most of these drafts favor a [[bicameral]] [[parliament]]ary rather than presidential system. In at least one such draft, seats in the upper house would be divided equally among Taiwan's established ethnicities. In the 1980s the [[Kuomintang|Chinese Nationalist]] government considered publication of these ideas criminal. In the most dramatic case, it decided to arrest the pro-independence publisher [[Cheng Nan-jung]] for publishing a version in his [[Tang-wai]] magazine, ''[[Liberty Era Weekly]]'' ({{lang|zh-Hant-TW|自由時代週刊}}). Rather than giving himself up, Cheng [[self-immolation|self-immolated]] in protest. Other campaigns and tactics toward such a State have included soliciting designs from the public for a new national [[flag]] and [[anthem]] (for example, ''[[Taiwan the Formosa]]''). More recently the [[Taiwan Name Rectification Campaign]] ({{lang|zh-Hant-TW|台灣正名運動}}) has played an active role. More traditional independence supporters, however, have criticized name rectification as merely a superficial tactic devoid of the larger vision inherent in the independence agenda.

Various overseas Taiwan independence movements, such as the Formosan Association, [[World United Formosans for Independence]], United Young Formosans for Independence, Union for Formosa's Independence in Europe, United Formosans in America for Independence, and Committee for Human Rights in Formosa, published "The Independent Formosa" in several volumes with the publisher "Formosan Association." In "The Independent Formosa, Volumes 2–3", they tried to justify Taiwanese collaboration with Japan during World War II by saying that the "atmosphere covered the whole Japanese territories, including Korea and Formosa, and the Japanese mainlands as well", when Taiwanese publications supported Japan's "holy war", and that the people who did it were not at fault.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HtlwAAAAMAAJ&q=formosa+china+partial+same+race |title=The Independent Formosa, Volumes 2–3 |year=1963 |author=Formosan Association, World United Formosans for Independence, United Young Formosans for Independence, Union for Formosa's Independence in Europe, United Formosans in America for Independence, Committee for Human Rights in Formosa |publisher=Formosan Association. |page=14 |access-date=20 December 2011 |quote=newspapers with the help of Roman letters within one month's learning." To be sure, Roman letters are a very effective means to transcribe Formsan. On this point Mr. Ozaki seems to mean that it is against the "Racial style", which is misleading...atmosphere covered the whole Japanese territories, including Korea and Formosa, and the Japanese mainlands as well. So quite naturally works to applaud the "holy war" were not infrequently produced. But who could blame them and who had a right to throw a stone at |archive-date=10 April 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230410213125/https://books.google.com/books?id=HtlwAAAAMAAJ&q=formosa+china+partial+same+race |url-status=live }}Original from the University of Michigan</ref>{{Promotional source|date=March 2023}}

The anti-communist Kuomintang leader [[Chiang Kai-shek]], President of the [[Republic of China]] on Taiwan, believed that the Americans were going to plot a coup against him in collusion with Taiwan independence activists. In 1950, Chiang Ching-kuo became director of the [[secret police]], which he remained until 1965. Chiang also considered some people who were friends to Americans to be his enemies. An enemy of the Chiang family, [[Wu Kuo-chen]], was kicked out of his position of governor of Taiwan by [[Chiang Ching-kuo]] and fled to America in 1953.<ref name="bare_url">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AW9yrtekFRkC&q=sun+li+jen+americans+chiang&pg=PA302|title=Opposition and dissent in contemporary China|author=Peter R. Moody|year=1977|publisher=Hoover Press|page=302|isbn=0-8179-6771-0|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130606072130/http://books.google.com/books?id=AW9yrtekFRkC&pg=PA302&dq=sun+li+jen+americans+chiang#v=onepage&q=sun%20li%20jen%20americans%20chiang&f=false|archive-date=6 June 2013|url-status=live}}</ref> Chiang Ching-kuo, educated in the Soviet Union, initiated Soviet style military organization in the Republic of China Military, reorganizing and Sovietizing the political officer corps, surveillance, and Kuomintang party activities were propagated throughout the military. Opposed to this was [[Sun Li-jen]], who was educated at the American [[Virginia Military Institute]].<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_5R2fnVZXiwC&q=sun+li+jen+americans+chiang&pg=PA195|title=The Generalissimo's son: Chiang Ching-kuo and the revolutions in China and Taiwan|author=Jay Taylor|year=2000|publisher=Harvard University Press|page=195|isbn=0-674-00287-3|access-date=28 June 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130606040723/http://books.google.com/books?id=_5R2fnVZXiwC&pg=PA195&dq=sun+li+jen+americans+chiang#v=onepage&q=sun%20li%20jen%20americans%20chiang&f=false|archive-date=6 June 2013|url-status=live}}</ref> Chiang orchestrated the controversial court-martial and arrest of General [[Sun Li-jen]] in August 1955, for plotting a coup d'état with the American [[CIA]] against his father Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang. The CIA allegedly wanted to help Sun take control of Taiwan and declare its independence.<ref name="bare_url" /><ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YoB35f6HD9gC&q=sun+li+jen+americans+chiang&pg=PA181 |title=Patterns in the dust: Chinese-American relations and the recognition controversy, 1949–1950 |author=[[Nancy Bernkopf Tucker]] |year=1983 |publisher=Columbia University Press |page=181 |isbn=0-231-05362-2 |access-date=28 June 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130606141033/http://books.google.com/books?id=YoB35f6HD9gC&pg=PA181&dq=sun+li+jen+americans+chiang#v=onepage&q=sun%20li%20jen%20americans%20chiang&f=false |archive-date=6 June 2013 |url-status=live }}</ref>

During the [[History of Taiwan#Taiwan under martial law|martial law era]] lasting until 1987, discussion of Taiwan independence was forbidden in Taiwan, at a time when [[Project National Glory|recovery of the mainland]] and [[Chinese unification|national unification]] were the stated goals of the ROC. During that time, many advocates of independence and other dissidents fled overseas, and carried out their advocacy work there, notably in [[Japan]] and the [[United States]]. Part of their work involved setting up think tanks, political organizations, and lobbying networks in order to influence the politics of their host countries, notably the United States, the ROC's main ally at the time, though they would not be very successful until much later. Within Taiwan, the independence movement was one of many dissident causes among the intensifying democracy movement of the 1970s, which culminated in the 1979 [[Kaohsiung Incident]]. The [[Democratic Progressive Party]] (DPP) was eventually formed to represent dissident causes.<ref>{{Cite news |date=2019-12-10 |title=The Formosa Incident: a look back |url=https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2019/12/10/2003727276 |access-date=2023-05-19 |work=Taipei Times |archive-date=19 May 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230519082111/https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2019/12/10/2003727276 |url-status=live }}</ref>