Roots of the Taiwan Troubles
James Ross
Thank you for Thomas J. Cutler’s article on the First Taiwan Strait Crisis (“Crisis in the Taiwan Strait,” December). I have a decades-long interest in Taiwan. I lived as a U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force high school dependent in Tainan during 1967–69. We lived among native Taiwanese, relocated mainland Chinese, and a large number of missionaries displaced from the mainland. In addition, much of the existing major military, industrial, and transportation infrastructure was created by the Japanese during their 50-year colonial period that ended in 1945 (Japanese was still understood by most Taiwanese over age 30).
We had (ROC) Army compounds on two sides around our housing enclave and a major university on the other two sides. It could be said that the ROC government in the 1960s was a semi-democracy: mostly democratic at the city or county level but a (benevolent?) dictatorship at the national level. Of course, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) under Mao Zedong was either a complete communist dictatorship or, at best, an oligopoly. My 1967–69 period in Taiwan came during the PRC Cultural Revolution. This period also marked the beginnings of Taiwan’s building of its export industry.
From the U.S. standpoint in the late 1960s, Taiwan was a key part of the logistics structure supporting the Vietnam War. Tainan Air Base supported U.S. Air Force EC-121 patrols along the coast of Vietnam and U.S. Navy antisubmarine warfare patrols in the Taiwan Strait and maybe farther south. Tainan was a major depot-level repair operation for aircraft damaged in Vietnam. One estimate was that a plane could be repaired in Taiwan and returned to Vietnam for the cost of fuel required to ferry a plane back to the continental United States. The company operating the repair station was Air Asia Company Ltd., a child of Claire Chennault’s Civil Air Transport and a cousin of Air America (with the CIA a semi-secret shareholder).
The real center of U.S. military presence was the Ching Chan Kuang (CCK) Air Base outside Taichung. It was a major C-130 base, with occasional KC-135s there as well (and the ROC Air Force also based F-104s at CCK). The other significant base was at Kaohsiung, a big liberty port that seemed to have a continuously anchored U.S. Navy repair tender.
So many of today’s issues concerning Taiwan’s continued freedom are the direct result of shortsighted policies and decisions by the U.S. government dating back to the Chinese Civil War. Unfortunately, despite tremendous provisions of U.S. surplus World War II equipment, the corruption and incompetence of the Nationalists allowed Mao’s forces to kick Chiang Kai-shek off the mainland (in Chinese terms, the Nationalists had lost “the Mandate of Heaven”). The PRC’s capture of Hainan in 1950 likely came under the same U.S. policy failure that basically gave North Korea the go-ahead to invade South Korea. Not only is this loss causing strategic problems now in the South China Sea, it also caused immediate problems to the French in their war against the Vietminh and complicated U.S. Navy operations on Yankee Station off Vietnam a decade later.
The next two missteps occurred under Presidents Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush. In 1979, during Carter’s presidency, the United States officially recognized the PRC government as the sole legal government of China and declared the withdrawal of diplomatic recognition for Taiwan. The next foolish act was Bush allowing the PRC to join the World Trade Organization in 2001 with only vague promises to act according to international standards.
Both those actions failed to recognize how the PRC views the world in a manner similar to that of the old emperors, with China as the “Middle Kingdom” and all others as client exterior kingdoms—with a timeline of decades or even centuries to recreate the old empire. The 1979 move created a huge gap in the first line of control running from Japan to Okinawa to Taiwan to the Philippines to Malaysia and Indonesia. And Bush simply bankrolled the PRC to be the first-rate military power it has become.
So, our present problems with the PRC in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea (even to the Tsushima Strait) have been caused by our own poorly crafted U.S. policy and too much wishful thinking dating back to President Harry Truman and certainly Presidents Carter and Bush.
Edwin Moise
Regarding Lieutenant Commander Cutler’s article, if the PRC had been enough stronger in 1954, and Chiang and his American backers enough weaker, for the PRC to pose any serious threat to Taiwan, Chiang’s decision to hold Quemoy and Matsu would have been a gross tactical error. He put a substantial fraction of his total military strength on Quemoy, a very vulnerable forward position more than 100 miles from Taiwan and within five miles of the China coast.
If China’s military had been strong enough for it to have any chance of defeating Chiang’s whole army on Taiwan, about 100 miles from the Chinese coast, it would have been strong enough easily to overwhelm a detached segment of Chiang’s army on Quemoy. Having Quemoy in Chiang’s hands would have guaranteed that a real war in the Taiwan Strait would start with Chiang’s forces suffering a disastrous defeat. This would have left the PRC well positioned to continue across the strait to Taiwan.
Today, China, much stronger than in 1954, does pose a serious threat to Taiwan. The government on Taiwan, sensibly, has chosen not to station as many troops as close to the coast of China as in 1954.
