Inventing Inseparability: How Modern Politics Rewrote Taiwan’s Historical Status

The Chinese awareness of Taiwan began not with grand designs of nationhood or conquest but in fragments scattered across the official records of early imperial dynasties. During the Sui and Tang periods, cryptic references appeared to a place called “Liuqiu,” which may or may not have referred to Taiwan itself. Even by the time of the Song dynasty in the twelfth century, Chinese contact with Taiwan remained marginal and indirect, mainly limited to the neighboring Penghu Islands, where scattered administrative posts emerged. These early centuries reveal little interest in the island beyond brief mentions of its distant and untamed character. For most Han Chinese living on the mainland, Taiwan was perceived as a remote and essentially unknowable fringe, home to pirates, exiles, and indigenous peoples who lived beyond the reach of Chinese civilization.

The mid-seventeenth century marked the first serious Chinese incursion into Taiwan’s history. Still, even this moment emerged less from a coherent imperial strategy than from the shifting tides of regional power struggles. Zheng Chenggong, better known in the West as Koxinga, was a Ming loyalist and privateer who ousted the Dutch from their colonial foothold in 1662, establishing a short-lived regime of his own. When Qing forces finally subdued the Zheng regime in 1683, it was an act of military consolidation rather than cultural or administrative ambition. The Kangxi Emperor, emblematic of the Qing’s ambivalence, dismissed Taiwan’s value with the infamous phrase, likening it to a “ball of mud beyond the sea.” Though it now belonged to the Qing, it was a possession treated more as a security perimeter than an integral part of the empire. There were moments when serious consideration was given to abandoning the island altogether or even selling it back to foreign powers, including the Dutch.

In the century that followed, the Qing presence in Taiwan remained half-hearted and fundamentally minimalist. Settlement by Han Chinese migrants was heavily regulated. Newcomers from Fujian and Guangdong needed permits, and their movements inland were restricted to prevent conflict with indigenous populations and reduce the risk of unmanageable uprisings. Administrative control extended only to the western plains of the island, where three thinly populated prefectures represented the entirety of formal Qing authority. The rest of the island remained an untamed frontier, where local aboriginal groups maintained effective autonomy, resisting both Han encroachment and Qing demands.

Taiwan became a site of frequent instability, marked by rebellion, defiance, and sporadic violence. The phrase often attributed to the period, describing the island as enduring “a small uprising every three years and a large rebellion every five,” encapsulates the precariousness of Qing control. Major revolts such as Zhu Yigui’s in 1721 and Lin Shuangwen’s in 1786 punctuated Taiwan’s Qing-era history, while indigenous communities continued their resistance through armed uprisings that required periodic military campaigns to suppress. These were not the hallmarks of a deeply integrated province but the symptoms of an uneasy and often reluctant imperial occupation.

The nineteenth century brought external pressures that began to force a change in how Qing officials viewed the island. The 1874 Japanese punitive expedition against aboriginal communities in southern Taiwan jolted Beijing into rethinking its strategic neglect. Fears that foreign powers might seize Taiwan in the broader context of imperial competition prompted the Qing government to adopt incremental reforms. Migration restrictions were lifted, and infrastructure projects were launched. In 1887, Taiwan was formally declared a whole province of the Qing Empire. Liu Mingchuan, its first governor, embarked on ambitious modernization efforts, including the construction of railways and telegraph lines. Yet these reforms came decades too late to cement Taiwan’s place within the Chinese administrative and psychological landscape.

The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, which ended in a humiliating defeat for China, brought the Qing era in Taiwan to an abrupt close. Under the Treaty of Shimonoseki, Taiwan was ceded to Japan, an event that was met with indifference by many in Beijing, who viewed the island as expendable. The brief, doomed attempt by Taiwanese elites to establish an independent Republic of Formosa, appealing for international recognition and even pleading for Qing support, ended in isolation and betrayal. Beijing had already relinquished Taiwan, and its final act was to abandon the island to its new colonial master without resistance.

Taiwan’s subsequent fifty years under Japanese rule reshaped its society, economy, and identity in ways that would reverberate long after Japan’s defeat in World War II. The return of Taiwan to Chinese control in 1945 was celebrated in nationalist circles on the mainland, but the transition proved traumatic for many Taiwanese. The Kuomintang government under Chiang Kai-shek quickly alienated the local population through economic exploitation, cultural repression, and political violence. The 1947 February 28 Incident, during which KMT forces brutally suppressed dissent and killed thousands of civilians, became a foundational trauma in Taiwan’s postwar political consciousness.

In the decades that followed, Taiwan moved along a path that diverged ever further from the mainland. The island transformed into a vibrant, pluralistic democracy, while the People’s Republic of China remained an authoritarian state. Taiwan’s distinct cultural, political, and historical trajectory only deepened the gap between it and the government in Beijing. Although the PRC now proclaims that Taiwan has been an inseparable part of China since ancient times, this narrative is retrofitted to serve contemporary political needs. The Communist Party did not even begin framing Taiwan as an “inalienable” Chinese territory until after the establishment of the PRC in 1949, and earlier Communist writings often described Taiwan in language more befitting a foreign entity.

The current political standoff between Beijing and Taipei is, therefore, not simply a question of postwar geopolitics but the latest chapter in a long and complicated history of marginalization, neglect, and contested identities. Beijing continues to insist on the sanctity of China’s territorial claims, invoking historical continuity where little existed. Taiwan’s leadership, in turn, highlights the island’s decades of separate governance and its commitment to self-determination, stressing that the PRC has never ruled Taiwan.

The more profound truth lies in the centuries of ambiguity that define Taiwan’s relationship with China. For most of its history, Taiwan existed on the edges of Chinese political awareness, claimed and administered when convenient, ignored, and abandoned when not. The modern narrative of Taiwan as an inseparable part of China is less a reflection of historical reality than a product of twentieth-century nationalism. Understanding this complex and reluctant history is essential for making sense of the island’s present and its uncertain future.