00:00Ah, Taiwan, that small island off the coast of China that's been giving its communist
00:05neighbours a very big headache.
00:08You'd be forgiven for thinking that the Taiwan problem is relatively new, a leftover
00:14from the Chinese Civil War and the Cold War that followed.
00:18But truth be told, China's troubles with Taiwan began much earlier, albeit in a surprisingly
00:25similar form.
00:26To be clear, for most of its history, China didn't even want Taiwan.
00:32In the eyes of the Tang, Song, and Yuan dynasties, Taiwan was a barbarian backwater, inhabited
00:38by various Austronesian peoples and the occasional Chinese pirate or fisherman.
00:44It is in this sorry state of affairs that the Portuguese first found Taiwan around the
00:51year 1542.
00:52Unlike the Chinese, the Portuguese liked the island so much that they called it Formosa,
00:59or Beautiful Island, though they weren't able to establish any settlements.
01:05It was the Dutch who first laid claim to Taiwan by building an outpost on its south-western
01:11edge, quickly followed by the Spanish, who occupied a strip of coast up north.
01:17This cosy arrangement didn't last very long.
01:21After all, sharing was never a European strong suit.
01:25And so the Dutch kicked the Spanish out in 1642, just in time for the rapid collapse of the
01:33Ming Dynasty against invading Manchus from the north.
01:36In a very blunt foreshadowing of things to come, the loyalists of the now deposed Ming Dynasty
01:43fled from the victorious Manchus on the mainland to Taiwan from 1661 onwards, kicking out our
01:51Dutch friends in the process.
01:53But the Manchus weren't able to invade Taiwan immediately in pursuit.
01:58They were, after all, steppe nomads with no naval experience to speak of.
02:04Instead, they ordered the entire southern coast of China to be evacuated at least 15 kilometers inland.
02:12Close to a million people were forcibly displaced to prevent any trade with Taiwan and to starve
02:19out the Ming holdouts with questionable results.
02:23What isn't questionable, though, is the free online PvP strategy game of our dear friends,
02:30Supremacy World War III.
02:32Experience exhilarating real-time combat in the 20th and 21st centuries by leading your country
02:39against up to 99 other players in persistent week-long matches.
02:45Build a powerful war economy, expand your military, forge alliances and wage war to conquer the world.
02:53You can play with your friends across PC and mobile just in time for Season 17,
02:59set in a global nuclear winter with scarce resources.
03:04And as a special courtesy for SideQuest viewers,
03:06you'll receive a unique starter pack with a free Elite Bomber seasonal unit worth $25
03:13if you download the game using the link in the description within 30 days.
03:19So download Supremacy World War III for free today and lead your army to world domination.
03:27But back to our original story.
03:29The new Qing Dynasty ended up having to invade Taiwan anyway,
03:32which they only managed to do 20 years later after building up their navy.
03:38And so in 1683, China invaded Taiwan with over 200 ships
03:44and won one of the largest naval battles of the 17th century.
03:49Taiwan's rebel regime was definitively ended
03:53and the island was, for the first time, in formal Chinese possession.
03:58But now that they had it, the Qing weren't quite sure what to do with Taiwan.
04:04Many in the imperial court pushed for it to be abandoned,
04:08as it was, by all accounts, a poor backwater with minimal economic and cultural value.
04:14The military argued fiercely to keep Taiwan after bleeding so much to occupy it.
04:20And this was indeed what the emperor decided to do, but under strict conditions.
04:27Taiwan was to be integrated into China as a prefecture,
04:31but with heavy restrictions on settler migration.
04:34In this way, foreigners couldn't use it as an outpost
04:38and it would be too depopulated to serve as a rebel base.
04:42Taiwan would remain as this frontier military-occupied territory for the next two centuries,
04:48producing over a hundred separate rebellions, so much so that the Qing had a proverb about it.
04:57But while the Qing were busy putting down rebellions,
05:00the Japanese were getting down and dirty with industrialization.
05:04They beat up the Qing so badly with their new modernized army
05:09that China handed over Taiwan, the Liaodong Peninsula, and their supposed suzerainty over Korea,
05:16which we discussed in another recent side quest, to Japan.
05:20This time around, it was Qing loyalists that tried to resist a hostile takeover of Taiwan,
05:27and to their credit, they did proclaim Asia's first republic in the process,
05:32but they were violently put down in just under six months.
05:37Taiwan was Japan's first colony, and as an eager imperial power,
05:42Japan invested heavily in railways, schools, and a public health system
05:47to show off their colonial prowess in front of the Western great powers.
05:52In the meantime, the Manchu Qing dynasty collapsed, and China became a republic,
05:58only for it to face regional warlordism and a communist insurgency
06:03that Japan was all too eager to exploit in the lead-up to World War II.
06:09By the time Japan surrendered, and was forced to return Taiwan to China,
06:14the island was already starkly more developed and wealthy than its mainland compatriots.
06:20But now that Taiwan was with China once more, they all lived happily ever after.
06:25No, just kidding. The Republican Chinese government was notoriously corrupt
06:31and exploited Taiwan's resources to fight their war in the mainland
06:36against the warlords and the communists.
06:39When the mainland war turned against them in 1949, they fled en masse to Taiwan,
06:46just like the Ming loyalists three centuries earlier.
06:50Mao proclaimed the People's Republic of China in October of that year,
06:55but just as before, the new mainland Chinese regime had no navy
07:00with which to pursue the holdouts on Taiwan.
07:03The communists weren't even able to take a small island off their own coast,
07:07which is miraculously still ruled by Taiwan today.
07:12So it was clear that taking Taiwan itself would require a lot more preparation.
07:17Mao ordered the training of a half a million strong invasion force
07:22and the construction of thousands of ships,
07:25with MiG 15 aircraft being generously provided by the Soviet Union.
07:30This new and improved amphibious army would be put to the test the very next spring,
07:37in the invasion of Hainan, the other big Chinese island that was still under control by the Republican holdouts.
07:44This time around, the invasion was a resounding success.
07:50Over a hundred thousand men crossed the Chongzhou Strait
07:53and secured Hainan in two weeks with relatively few casualties.
07:59What was even more emboldening for Mao was the total lack of any reaction by the United States,
08:05who had, up until then, provided the Republicans with massive loans and military equipment.
08:11America had made it clear in January 1950 that Japan and the Philippines were within its protective umbrella,
08:20but Taiwan and Korea were conspicuously left unmentioned.
08:25This convinced Mao that the Americans had written off Republican China,
08:30and so he ordered the invasion of Taiwan to commence in the summer of 1950.
08:36But, just as final preparations were underway, Kim Il-sung of North Korea decided to initiate his own invasion plans,
08:46of South Korea, with Stalin's blessing and with the same expectation that the US would not intervene.
08:53Unfortunately for Kim and for Mao, the US did intervene.
09:00The fear of a communist Korea being used as a springboard against Japan was simply too great.
09:07And so, President Truman backtracked on America's non-intervention policy by sending the 8th Army to protect South Korea,
09:15and by ordering the 7th Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to prevent any further expansion by communist China.
09:23With Taiwan now under the American defense umbrella, all hopes of invasion were off.
09:29The long standoff had begun, and although America's reasons for protecting Taiwan have changed over the years,
09:36its guarantee hasn't wavered so far.
09:40And, as odd as it may sound, the man we have to thank for all this is Kim Il-sung,
09:46as without the Korean War, the US would have probably let Taiwan fall just like it had done with Hainan.
09:53In any case, I want to thank you my friends for watching.
09:57If you enjoyed our brief but exciting tour of Taiwan's survival, consider supporting us on Patreon,
10:03so that we too can survive any overwhelming invasions by the YouTube algorithm.
10:09Also, be sure to check out the free online PvP strategy game of our friends over at Supremacy World War
10:173.
10:18Follow the link in the description within the next 30 days to get a delicious starter pack
10:24with an elite bomber seasonal unit and wage your war of global domination.
10:29In the meantime, let us know what other topics you'd like us to explore next,
10:34and stay tuned for the next improbably prosperous episode of SideQuest.
10:44What's the most common blood type in Taiwan?
10:47Taipei.
