Formosa Quotes
In the Chinese Civil War, the Communist forces under Chairman Mao had ousted the Kuomintang forces from the mainland. Most of the Kuomintang army retreated to Formosa and established Nationalist China. But an entire Kuomintang army moved into Burma without any consent of the Burmese. In effect, they had invaded. The Kuomintang army was stronger than the entire Burmese army and in effect controlled whatever part of the country they wished to. Further, they were growing opium poppies and were deep in the illegal international drug trade. Burma asked the UN to pressure Chaing Kai Chek and the nationalists on Formosa to transport the army out of Burma and to Formosa. However, the American conservatives were staunch allies of the Nationalists and blocked any efforts to pressure them to do anything which they did not wish to do. So the US official policy was that the Nationalist troops should be withdrawn but there was little pressure behind the policy. Thein, observed that solution could be easy of the United States so wished it. Finally, the troops were withdrawn and Burma was free.
Koxinga had an overwhelmingly superior force, and wanted the Dutch to surrender and avoid bloodshed. The Dutch with their typical European colonial attitude, had great difficulty surrendering to “natives” even if outnumbered. Finally, the Dutch Commander agreed to surrender. Koxinga then established a Chinese Government on the Island and became a great hero of the Ming Dynasty. Note the graphic of the statue to him which is one of the very few Chinese memorial statues to a military hero showing him in action—very similar to European statues. Already Koxinga’s massed wooden junks with small cannon and fire torches had sunk one of the Dutch warships (they were not iron but had some iron plates on the deck to protect the gunners) and there were so many junks that the other Dutch ships sailed out to sea to avoid the Chinese huge number of junks.
Koxinga had an overwhelmingly superior force, and wanted the Dutch to surrender and avoid bloodshed. The Dutch with their typical European colonial attitude, had great difficulty surrendering to “natives” even if outnumbered. Finally, the Dutch Commander agreed to surrender. Koxinga then established a Chinese Government on the Island and became a great hero of the Ming Dynasty. Note the graphic of the statue to him which is one of the very few Chinese memorial statues to a military hero showing him in action—very similar to European statues.
Den was a liberal reformer. There were many liberal politicians in Japan until the right wing militarists took over. Most Japanese were extremely racist and wanted education to be segregated, not unlike the American South at the time. Den’s action described in this quotation was earthshaking to many Japanese. Integration of the schools was to them bad enough, but assimilating Chinese into the Japanese society was much worse.
Formosa was invaded and occupied by Japanese troops and made a Japanese Colony.
This quotation illustrates that without political freedom, many people are dissatisfied even if their standard of living has been increased by an occupying colonial power.
