Taiwan

For millennia before any state on the Asian mainland governed it, Taiwan was inhabited by Austronesian-speaking peoples, and the island is widely regarded by linguists as the homeland from which the Austronesian language family spread across maritime Southeast Asia and the Pacific. These communities lived by farming, hunting and fishing in distinct groups across the lowlands and mountains, and their descendants survive today as Taiwan's recognised Indigenous peoples. Han Chinese settlement from the mainland's coastal provinces remained limited until the seventeenth century, when European maritime trading companies began to take an interest in the island they called Formosa.

In 1624 the Dutch East India Company established a fortified trading base, Fort Zeelandia, on an islet off the southwestern coast near present-day Tainan, making Taiwan a node in the company's commerce across East Asia. The Dutch encouraged Han Chinese migration to farm sugar and rice, taxed trade and attempted to convert and administer Indigenous communities. In 1626 the Spanish, based in the Philippines, responded by occupying the northern coast, building forts at Keelung and Tamsui, but their foothold was short-lived: a Dutch expedition expelled the Spanish from the north in 1642.

Dutch rule lasted only about four decades. It was ended by Zheng Chenggong, known to Europeans as Koxinga, a commander loyal to the fallen Ming dynasty who sought a secure base after the Manchu Qing conquest of the mainland. In 1661 he landed on Taiwan with a large army and besieged the Dutch garrison; the surrender of Fort Zeelandia in February 1662 ended Dutch control of the island and opened a new chapter under Chinese-style government.

Turning points

1. 1624Colonisation

   Dutch found Fort Zeelandia

   The Dutch East India Company establishes a fortified trading base, Fort Zeelandia, on the southwestern coast near present-day Tainan, beginning roughly four decades of Dutch commercial rule over parts of the island.

   ↗See the data

   [1] [15]

2. 1626Colonisation

   Spanish settle the northern coast

   Spanish forces from the Philippines occupy northern Taiwan, building forts at Keelung and Tamsui in response to the Dutch presence in the south.

   ↗See the data

   [1]

3. 1642War & Rupture

   Dutch expel the Spanish

   A Dutch expedition drives the Spanish from their northern outposts, leaving the Dutch East India Company as the dominant European power on the island.

   ↗See the data

   [1]

4. February 1662War & Rupture

   Koxinga expels the Dutch

   After a siege begun in 1661, the Ming-loyalist commander Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga) forces the surrender of Fort Zeelandia, ending Dutch rule and founding the Zheng (Tungning) regime on Taiwan.

   ↗See the data

   [4]

Figures of the era

Zheng Chenggong died in 1662, only months after his victory, but his family carried on the regime he had founded, centred on Tainan and often called the Kingdom of Tungning. Under his son Zheng Jing the Zheng administration governed the island, promoted Han Chinese settlement and agriculture, and sustained resistance to the Qing across the strait for two further decades. The kingdom was the first state on Taiwan modelled on Chinese institutions, with a Ming-style court and Confucian administration, even as it remained a redoubt of opposition to the new dynasty ruling the mainland.

The Qing dynasty finally moved to eliminate this base of Ming loyalism. In 1683 a Qing fleet defeated the Zheng forces, and the dynasty annexed Taiwan the following year, attaching it as a prefecture of Fujian province. For most of the next two centuries Qing administration concentrated on the western plains, where Han Chinese migration from Fujian and Guangdong steadily expanded farmland and towns, while large parts of the mountainous interior remained beyond effective government control and home to Indigenous communities.

Growing strategic interest in the island, sharpened by foreign pressure on China's coast, led the Qing to upgrade Taiwan's status. In 1885 the imperial government designated Taiwan a separate province, and the reforming first governor, Liu Mingchuan, promoted railways, telegraphs and other modernising projects. This period of intensified Qing investment proved brief: within a decade the island would be ceded to a rising imperial Japan.

Turning points

1. 1683War & Rupture

   Qing conquest of the Zheng regime

   A Qing fleet defeats the Zheng (Tungning) forces, ending the Ming-loyalist kingdom; Taiwan is annexed the following year and attached to Fujian province as a prefecture.

   ↗See the data

   [4] [5]

2. 1885Politics & Power

   Taiwan made a Qing province

   The Qing government raises Taiwan to the status of a separate province, with Liu Mingchuan as reforming first governor promoting railways and modernisation.

   [1]

Japan's victory in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894 to 1895 brought Taiwan under Japanese sovereignty. By the Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed on 17 April 1895, the Qing empire ceded Taiwan and the Pescadores (Penghu) Islands to Japan along with other concessions. The cession was resisted on the island, where a short-lived republic was proclaimed in an attempt to forestall the handover, but Japanese forces suppressed armed opposition and consolidated control over the new colony.

Over the following fifty years Japan administered Taiwan as its first major overseas colony and invested heavily in it. Colonial authorities built railways, roads, ports and a public-health system, expanded sugar and rice production, and established schools, developing Taiwan as a productive and strategically valuable possession. This development was carried out under a centralised colonial government that relied on policing and surveillance and that suppressed both Han Chinese and Indigenous resistance, sometimes with considerable violence.

From the late 1930s, as Japan mobilised for war in China and the Pacific, colonial policy intensified assimilation through campaigns that promoted the Japanese language, names and customs and sought to remould Taiwanese identity. Taiwanese were conscripted and recruited into Japan's war effort. Japanese rule ended only with Japan's defeat in the Second World War in 1945, after which the island's administration was transferred to the Republic of China.

Turning points

1. 17 April 1895Colonisation

   Treaty of Shimonoseki cedes Taiwan to Japan

   Ending the First Sino-Japanese War, the treaty obliges the Qing empire to cede Taiwan and the Pescadores to Japan, beginning fifty years of Japanese colonial rule.

   ↗See the data

   [6] [7]

2. 1895Colonisation

   Japanese colonial administration

   Japan develops Taiwan with railways, ports, public health and expanded agriculture while suppressing resistance and, from the late 1930s, pursuing intensive assimilation campaigns.

   ↗See the data

   [1]

Following Japan's surrender in 1945, Taiwan's administration was transferred to the Republic of China, then governed by Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists (Kuomintang), and Nationalist authorities took over the island in October 1945. Early Nationalist rule quickly bred discontent: mismanagement, inflation, corruption and the heavy-handed conduct of the new administration alienated much of the local population, which had lived for half a century under a different state.

Tensions erupted on 28 February 1947 in the event known as the February 28 Incident, after agents enforcing a state cigarette monopoly assaulted a vendor in Taipei and then fired into an angry crowd. Protests spread across the island and were violently suppressed when Chiang sent troops, who killed thousands, many of them unarmed civilians, and targeted Taiwanese elites. The incident inaugurated decades of authoritarian repression of dissent later known as the White Terror, conducted under martial law.

Meanwhile the Nationalists were losing the resumed Chinese Civil War on the mainland to Mao Zedong's Communists, who proclaimed the People's Republic of China on 1 October 1949. Defeated, Chiang Kai-shek and his government withdrew to Taiwan, and the ROC central government relocated to Taipei in December 1949. This relocation established the present self-governing polity on the island, while the new PRC claimed Taiwan as part of its territory without ever administering it.

Turning points

1. October 1945Politics & Power

   ROC takes over Taiwan

   After Japan's surrender, the Republic of China under the Nationalists (Kuomintang) takes over the administration of Taiwan from Japan.

   [2]

2. 28 February 1947Politics & Power

   February 28 Incident

   Protests against Nationalist rule, triggered by a violent monopoly-enforcement episode in Taipei, are crushed by troops; thousands are killed, beginning the long repression known as the White Terror.

   [2] [8]

3. 1 October 1949Politics & Power

   People's Republic of China proclaimed

   Having defeated the Nationalists in the Chinese Civil War, Mao Zedong proclaims the People's Republic of China on the mainland; Chiang and his forces withdraw toward Taiwan.

   [11]

4. December 1949Formation

   ROC government relocates to Taiwan

   Chiang Kai-shek's Republic of China central government relocates to Taipei after defeat in the civil war, founding the present self-governing polity on the island; this was not a declaration of independence.

   [11] [9]

Figures of the era

For its first decades on Taiwan the ROC presented itself as the legitimate government of all China, and during the early Cold War it was recognised as such by the United States and held China's seat at the United Nations, including a permanent place on the Security Council. The PRC, governing the mainland, maintained that there was only one China and that Taiwan was part of it. This 'two Chinas' contest was decided in international forums in the 1970s: in October 1971 the UN General Assembly seated the PRC's representatives in China's place, and in the Shanghai Communiqué of 1972 the United States began moving toward Beijing.

The diplomatic shift culminated in 1979, when the United States established formal relations with the PRC, recognised it as the sole legal government of China, and ended official recognition of the ROC; the U.S. Congress simultaneously passed the Taiwan Relations Act to continue unofficial ties and provide for the island's defence. Taiwan thereby lost most formal diplomatic recognition even as it remained self-governing, and its international legal status stayed contested and unresolved between the competing claims of the two governments.

Domestically these were decades of one-party Nationalist rule under martial law, but also of extraordinary economic transformation. Through land reform and an export-led industrial strategy, Taiwan grew rapidly from a largely agricultural society into a manufacturing and trading power, becoming one of the 'Four Asian Tigers'. Among the cultural legacies of the era was the National Palace Museum in Taipei, opened in 1965 to house a vast collection of Chinese imperial art and antiquities, many crates of which had been moved from the mainland around 1948 to 1949.

Turning points

1. 1965Culture & Ideas

   National Palace Museum opens in Taipei

   A permanent home opens in Taipei for a vast collection of Chinese imperial art and antiquities, much of it relocated from the mainland around 1948 to 1949.

   [14]

2. October 1971Politics & Power

   UN seat transferred to the PRC

   The UN General Assembly votes to seat the People's Republic of China in China's place at the United Nations; the ROC's representatives lose the seat. The resolution does not address Taiwan's sovereignty.

   [12]

3. 1972Politics & Power

   Shanghai Communiqué

   During President Nixon's visit to China, the United States and the PRC issue the Shanghai Communiqué; the U.S. acknowledges the position that there is but one China, beginning normalisation.

   [12]

4. 1979Politics & Power

   U.S. switches recognition to the PRC

   The United States establishes formal diplomatic relations with the PRC as the sole legal government of China and ends recognition of the ROC; Congress passes the Taiwan Relations Act to sustain unofficial ties.

   [13]

Taiwan's political transformation began under President Lee Teng-hui, who succeeded Chiang Ching-kuo and ended martial law in 1987 along with the ban on travel to the mainland. Over the following years he advanced constitutional reform and opened the political system, broadening representation and legalising opposition parties. The process reached a milestone in 1996, when Lee won Taiwan's first direct presidential election, becoming the island's first popularly elected president and completing its transition into a competitive multiparty democracy.

Since democratisation, governing power on Taiwan has alternated between the Nationalists (Kuomintang) and the Democratic Progressive Party through regular elections, and the island has remained a prosperous, high-technology economy. Throughout, the fundamental dispute over its status has persisted. The ROC continues to govern Taiwan, the Penghu (Pescadores), and other islands; the PRC claims Taiwan as a province and states that it seeks unification, by force if necessary, while never having administered the island.

As of 2026 this cross-strait question remains internationally unresolved. No peace treaty has ever formally ended the state of conflict between the two governments, most states maintain official relations with the PRC rather than the ROC, and the parties continue to advance opposing positions on Taiwan's status. The factual situation is that the ROC governs the island and the PRC claims but does not control it; the de jure status is contested, and this entry describes the positions of the parties without endorsing any of them.

Turning points

1. 1987Politics & Power

   Martial law lifted

   President Lee Teng-hui ends nearly four decades of martial law and the ban on travel to the mainland, opening the way to democratic reform.

   [10] [3]

2. 1996Politics & Power

   First direct presidential election

   Lee Teng-hui wins Taiwan's first direct, popular presidential election, becoming its first democratically elected president and completing the democratic transition.

   [10] [3]

3. to 2026Politics & Power

   Ongoing cross-strait dispute

   Into 2026 the dispute remains unresolved: the ROC governs Taiwan while the PRC claims it as a province without controlling it, and no peace treaty has settled the question.

   [1] [13]

Figures of the era