In 1949, after the end of the three major battles and the defeat of the Kuomintang on the mainland, Chiang Kai-shek hurriedly withdrew the remnants of the Kuomintang to Taiwan, and in December of the same year, he also flew to Taiwan.
However, at this time, Taiwan's social turmoil, economic depression, and the influx of millions of mainland personnel have aroused strong dissatisfaction among the People of Taiwan.
Chiang Kai-shek
In order to maintain his position, Chiang Kai-shek imposed a dictatorship on Taiwan, and since then, the whole of Taiwan has been under the military control of the Kuomintang.
However, after 2000, the DPP came to power, but the KMT completely lost control of the army.
What exactly did the Kuomintang do during its rule? Why did the army go away?
Old photos of Taiwan
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="5" > the whole process of Chiang Kai-shek's retreat from Taiwan</h1>
As early as 1946, Chiang Kai-shek regarded Taiwan as the back garden of the Kuomintang army, and in October of that year, Chiang Kai-shek toured Taiwan by steamship.
On his return journey to the mainland, he looked at Taiwan in the distance with emotion and said: "The harvest of this inspection of Taiwan is even greater than the harvest of my inspection of the northeast, and Taiwan has not yet been infiltrated by the Communists. ”
After the three major battles, Chiang Kai-shek's defeat was already decided, so Chiang Kai-shek established a plan to retreat to Taiwan before going down, and he said at the military conference before shimno:
"If I don't go out into the wilderness and stick to Nanjing, then Taiwan will not be able to take care of both, Taiwan is extremely important to our army, even if the whole mainland is taken by the Communist Party, as long as I protect Taiwan, one day, I can still make a comeback and restore the mainland!"
Based on this idea, Chiang Kai-shek voluntarily stepped down from the wilderness and retreated to the background, secretly controlling the Kuomintang regime from behind the scenes, and gradually transferring the Kuomintang's financial and military strength to Taiwan.
In order to be able to successfully retreat to Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek set up 7 radio stations in his hometown: Fenghua Xikou, Zhejiang Province, and when he retreated to the background, he was very busy every day, and he had to remotely control the military and political actions of the Kuomintang, send several telegrams a day, and meet with military and political dignitaries who were asked for instructions from Xikou.
Economically, Chiang Kai-shek sent Chiang Ching-kuo to Shanghai and asked him to transfer property himself.
After arriving in Shanghai, Chiang Ching-kuo immediately met with Yu Hongjun, president of the Kuomintang Central Bank, and he said to Yu Hongjun: "I have come here on the orders of Chairman Chiang Kai-shek to preserve the country's glimmer of vitality and hope that the central bank will transfer cash to Taiwan for security." ”
In this way, Yu Hongjun and Chiang Ching-kuo together transferred the central bank's gold and US dollars to Taiwan, and according to statistics, during this period, the Kuomintang transferred a total of 920,000 taels of gold and 80 million US dollars, which was a huge amount and shocking.
Militarily, Chiang Kai-shek transported a large amount of ammunition to Taiwan and ordered Tang Bonn, commander-in-chief of the Shanghai-Hangzhou Garrison, to dismantle the cannons of the Jiangyin Fortress and secretly transfer the cannons to Shanghai before being transported to Taiwan.
In April 1949, Nanjing was liberated
In April 1949, after the liberation of Nanjing, Chiang Kai-shek left his hometown xikou and arrived in Shanghai, at which time he had already decided to formulate a policy for governing Taiwan, and he said with emotion at the political conference: "At this time, half of the southern part of the Jiangnan River has become very loud, and the grass and trees are all soldiers, and we must be prepared to stay in Taiwan for a long time." ”
In May of the same year, shanghai was liberated, Chiang Kai-shek once again shifted his position and retreated to Fujian, on July 23, Chiang Kai-shek held a military conference in Xiamen, this time, more than 80 senior generals of the Kuomintang were present, Chiang Kai-shek said: "Taiwan is the base for the rejuvenation of the party-state, and our National Government must be ready to withdraw from Taiwan at any time." ”
At this time, the Nationalist government was already fragmented, and many of Chiang Kai-shek's cronies held contrary views with him; after Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan, he repeatedly sent a telegram to Acting President Li Zongren to return to Taiwan, but Li Zongren ignored Chiang Kai-shek's demands.
Chiang Kai-shek's policy of retreating to Taiwan caused Taiwan to produce nearly a million more mainlanders in 1949, and some of Taiwan's indigenous residents showed a strong rejection of these outsiders.
In order to maintain his dominance in Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek sent out his confidant Chen Cheng and appointed him as the commander-in-chief of Taiwan's vigilance and took charge of Taiwan's military power.
In order to maintain the kuomintang's dictatorship and prevent the infiltration of the Communist Party, Chen Cheng promulgated the Martial Law Decree in Taiwan and adopted the most stringent military vigilance policy against Taiwan. He stipulated: Martial law is declared throughout Taiwan, restrictions are imposed on those entering and leaving the country, and those who disturb public order are directly punished by death.
In this way, the Kuomintang successfully concentrated Taiwan's military, personnel, decision-making, and other political powers on itself, which also laid a political foundation for Chiang Kai-shek, who was about to retire to Taiwan, and enabled Chiang Kai-shek to have supreme power in Taiwan.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="66" > the Kuomintang to impose a "dictatorship" rule in Taiwan</h1>
On March 1, 1950, Chiang Kai-shek resumed his post as a "The President of the Republic of China" in the Taipei area.
At this time, Taiwan's material shortage, the wind and rain are fluctuating, many rich people have secretly fled Taiwan, as far as the United States, Britain and other countries, in the face of rising prices, many Taiwan people's hands of the funds have been devalued, the entire country's lower-level organizations are almost paralyzed, can be described as the people's livelihood.
In addition, at this time, there were many factions within the Kuomintang, corruption was breeding, and the entire Kuomintang army retreating to Taiwan was untrained and had no combat effectiveness to speak of; under such pressure, Chiang Kai-shek embarked on a pro-US road of no return to the far continent.
He also launched a two-year-long Kuomintang reform campaign, which squeezed other factions of the Kuomintang out of the political ruling circle and made the entire Kuomintang a hall of words for the "Chiang family."
Truman
On June 7, 1950, U.S. President Harry S. Truman issued a statement in which he emphasized the importance of Taiwan, in which Truman said that the occupation of Taiwan by Communist forces would threaten the security of the Pacific region.
In this way, the United States began to send its own troops and fleets to the vicinity of the Taiwan Strait under a crude pretext, turning Taiwan into its own military base.
For the arrival of the United States, Chiang Kai-shek seemed to see hope, opened the door to the United States, and let the US Seventh Fleet arbitrarily patrol the strait near Taiwan, because it was too dependent on the US military, which also led to the decline of Taiwan's later military strength.
In August 1954, in order to legitimize its military protection of Taiwan, the United States signed the Mutual Defense Treaty with Taiwan. What the Taiwan authorities did not expect was that after signing this treaty, the United States overhauled its attitude toward Taiwan before it overhauled it and began to meddle in Taiwan's military affairs from the surface in an attempt to achieve "rule by drawing a gap" and regarding Taiwan as the territory under its rule.
Since then, the United States has sent people to talk with Chiang Kai-shek many times in an attempt to exert pressure on Taiwan and get the Kuomintang to withdraw its troops from Kinmen and Matsu, thus achieving a plan to isolate Taiwan and separate Taiwan from Chinese mainland.
This US policy has also completely extinguished Chiang Kai-shek's hope of "counterattacking the mainland." He never imagined that the US military in Taiwan would be so arrogant and arbitrarily meddle in Taiwan's military and political affairs.
After experiencing the shelling of Kinmen, the Taiwan authorities were forced to reform their policy toward the mainland and changed the slogan of "counter-attacking the mainland" to "restoring the mainland."
In the late 1950s, the one-party autocratic policy of the "Chiang family" forces aroused dissatisfaction among people from all walks of life, so the forces dissatisfied with the Chiang family united to form an opposition opposition to the Chiang family.
Using many well-known newspapers and periodicals in Taiwan as the mouthpiece of public opinion, they vigorously published in the press remarks criticizing dictatorship and advocating Western politics.
In order to calm down the storm, the Kuomintang authorities arrested all these opposition parties, shut down a number of newspapers and periodicals, and strengthened public opinion control.
These practices of the Kuomintang were not popular with the people, and many non-Kuomintang members were ostracized from participating in political affairs; in the decade or so since, the entire political atmosphere in Taiwan has fallen into depression and rigidity, causing Taiwan's political and economic development to be slow.
In this way, the "Chiang family" maintained a dictatorial rule in Taiwan for more than three decades, until in 1984, after the assassination of the American writer Jiang Nan, Chiang Ching-kuo, then chairman of the Kuomintang, was forced by pressure at home and abroad to order the lifting of the "party ban."
Chiang Ching-kuo
< h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="71","> National Party release "Party prohibition"</h1>
The American writer Jiang Nan once wrote "The Biography of Chiang Ching-kuo," in which he revealed the factional struggle within the Chiang family and the Kuomintang, which made the truth about the Chiang family's dictatorship ruling Taiwan public, and for a time, it caused quite a stir in Taiwan and the United States.
Since this internal situation was exposed, the Taiwan Intelligence Bureau has targeted Jiang Nan, believing that Jiangnan's works are slandering Taiwan's leaders, so in order to prevent Jiang Nan from revealing more inside information, the Taiwan Intelligence Bureau sent agents to assassinate him.
After Jiangnan's death, relations between Taiwan and the United States fell to a freezing point, and the voices of taiwan's domestic clamor for democracy also grew louder, and Chiang Ching-kuo, under pressure, issued the Presidential Decree in 1987 and lifted the Kuomintang's 38-year-long martial law and party ban.
With the contact of the party ban, a large number of parties opposed to the kuomintang dictatorship and autocracy immediately appeared in Taiwan, and the emergence of these parties impacted the dominance of the Kuomintang and brought about earth-shaking changes in Taiwan's political arena.
However, the emergence of these parties was not enough to overthrow the decades-long autocratic rule of the KMT, and what really brought down the KMT was a series of measures taken by Lee Teng-hui after he came to power in 1988.
Lee
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="73" > Lee Teng-hui came to power to suppress the "Chiang family" forces</h1>
Since Lee Teng-hui came to power, he has begun to comprehensively suppress the chiang family's forces, and he has focused almost all his work on weakening the strength of the KMT, which is a nightmare memory for the KMT.
In July 1988, Lee Teng-hui reorganized the Executive Yuan in order to disintegrate his pro-Chiang Kai-shek power and replaced most of chiang ching-kuo's remaining members.
In order to win the next term of "president," Lee Teng-hui began to support the non-mainstream parties and implemented a policy of splittism toward the KMT, describing the KMT as a foreign political power within Taiwan.
Lee Teng-hui's measures plunged the KMT into an unprecedented crisis, and the core personnel of the KMT defected one after another, causing the KMT to fall apart and plunge into a period of chaos.
In addition, the KMT was also caught up in the public opinion of political corruption, and due to the long-term bureaucracy, many officials within the KMT began to become corrupt, and as a result, the KMT lost the hearts and minds of the people in Taiwan, which also became one of the main reasons why the KMT lost to the DPP and lost its ruling power in the future.
Lien chan
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="77" > the DPP came to power and the period of KMT rule ended</h1>
In March 2000, Lee Teng-hui stepped down, Taiwan elected a new leader, and the DPP became the ruling party with a narrow vote.
Later, after Lien Chan took office as chairman of the Kuomintang, he pointed out the five major root causes of the KMT's loss of power, and Lien Chan said:
One is undemocratic, the second is aging, the third is the boss of work style, the fourth is the corruption of black gold, and the fifth is that the leaders deviate from their own ideas.
It can be said that the Kuomintang was doomed to the failure of its rule from the very beginning, and chiang kai-shek, after retreating to Taiwan, stuck to his own views and implemented a dictatorial policy, making the Kuomintang a monopoly.
The vitality and bureaucracy that left the entire party without innovation soon breeds corruption, and as Lien Chan analyzed, when the party continues to age and violate its original development concept, it will embark on a failed path.