When he returned from the second world war he found Taiwan not so much liberated as under a reign of terror
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskIn 1895 Taiwan had been ceded “in perpetuity” to Japan by decaying imperial China, in an effort to placate Japanese expansionism. Mr Peng’s father, the fourth generation of the family on the island, was a successful doctor and set great store by academic success. Ming-min did not disappoint.
On going home Mr Peng found Taiwan not so much liberated as under a reign of terror. Chiang’s Nationalist troops were “a rabble of scavengers”, for whom the native Formosans were a “conquered people”. In February 1947, after the police beat up an old woman selling cigarettes without a licence, local resentment boiled over into an island-wide insurrection, put down at the cost of thousands of lives, including many members of the local social and intellectual elite.
This became untenable. An authority on international law, how could he lend his prestige to the government’s nonsense about recovering the mainland, and connive in its discrimination against Formosans like himself? In 1964 he and two friends drafted a “Declaration of Formosan Self-Salvation” insisting that the world must recognise the truth “that there is one China and one Formosa”. It is as simple as that: Taiwan is its own country.
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