Between Assimilation and Independence: The Taiwanese Encounter Nationalist China, 1945–1950. By Steven E. Phillips. [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. 272 pp. $55.00. ISBN 0-8047-4457-2.]

Extract

In recent years the sub-field of Taiwan studies has begun to take off and Steven E. Phillips' excellent study of local elite political activities and Nationalist state-building in Taiwan during the highly charged period following the island's retrocession to China is evidence that this process is now extending into the realm of historical research on the Nationalist period. Using a wide array of Chinese, English and Japanese language primary sources, Phillips examines the tensions between local, provincial forces and centralizing, national forces as he traces the question of local self-government through Taiwan's evolution from colony to province to province/nation in the period between 1945 and 1950. He argues that, given the different experiences of Taiwan's elite and the Nationalists, some sort of clash was inevitable, and both groups acted between 1945 and 1950 in ways that were consistent with their past actions and experiences. He further argues that the February 28 incident of 1947 was a turning point after which the Nationalists took over the drive for local self-government in Taiwan and Taiwan's local elite were increasingly politically marginalized.