Taiwanese People's Party
Encyclopedia
Pinyin
Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...
: Taiwan Minzhongdang), founded 1927, was nominally Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
's first political party, preceding the founding of the Taiwanese Communist Party
Taiwanese Communist Party
The Taiwanese Communist Party was a revolutionary organization active in Japan-ruled Taiwan. Like the contemporary Taiwanese People's Party, its existence was short, a mere three years, yet its politics and activities were influential in shaping Taiwan's anti-colonial enterprise...
by nine months. Initially a party with members holding moderate and conservative views, by the time of its banning, on February 18, 1931, it had become a solidly leftist, workers-oriented party. In a political atmosphere increasingly dominated by the rise of Japanese
Japanese fascism
Statism in Shōwa Japan was a political syncretism of Japanese right-wing political ideologies, developed over a period of time from the Meiji Restoration...
fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
, the party never participated in electoral politics.
The party grew out of the conflict within the Taiwanese Cultural Association
Taiwanese Cultural Association
The Taiwanese Cultural Association , founded 1921-10-17, was an important organization during the Japanese rule of Taiwan. Founded by Chiang Wei-shui in Dadaocheng, Taipei....
. By the late 1920s that organization had become largely socialist-dominated. A group of its founders met during the first half of 1927 to plan an alternative, more moderate organization. After several of their proposals had been rejected by the Japanese authorities, they finally settled on "Taiwanese People's Party" and a much diluted, vaguely worded party program. Specifically the new party officially disavowed any ambition to promote "national struggle" and declared its intention to use legal means to "affirm democratic politics", establish "reasonable economic organization" and reform "defects in the social institutions". In terms of policy it advocated the rights of Taiwanese to publish newspapers, the need to teach Taiwanese in public schools, abolition of a system of informers known as "Baojia Zhidu", removal of the need for passport when travelling to China, and reform of the farmers' associations and government monopolies.
The party grew quickly; by the end of 1927 it had 15 branches and 456 members, among them many prominent elites, including landowners, lawyers, doctors. The vague party charter soon presented problems, however. On the one hand the charter had apparently managed to placate the wary authorities; on the other the vague wording had the effect of hiding away some of the divisive ideological differences among the most powerful players. During the party's short existence its internal politics was dominated by the struggle between the left-wing, led by Chiang Weishui (蔣渭水), and the right-wing, represented by Peng Huaying (彭華英), to define the party's core values, particularly its position on "the class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
question". Whereas Chiang's faction sought to define the party as representing the interests of workers and peasants, Peng's faction took the moderate position of "working to improve their quality of life". After Chiang set up the Taiwanese Workers' Alliance as a party affiliate in February 1928, Peng resigned in protest. By early 1930 a number of conservatives had left the party (see Taiwanese Alliance for Home Rule).
By the third party congress later that year Chiang had won control of the executive committee. His proposal for a revision of the party charter was passed the following year. It admonished "bourgeoise" and "reactionary" members for not heeding the international climate, which had "strengthened the consciousness of struggle within the island's masses". The revised charter characterized the party as one to work toward the political freedom and interests of workers, peasants, the urban proletariat, and all similarly oppressed. Chiang believed that the time was ripe for a strategy that combined class and national (anti-colonial) movements.
For the most part the party was not effective in achieving its goals. On July 7, 1927 it put forward a "Statement of Recommendations", given to Prime Minister Hamaguchi Osachi
Hamaguchi Osachi
was a Japanese politician and the 27th Prime Minister of Japan from 2 July 1929 to 14 April 1931. He was called the "Lion prime minister" due to his physical features.-Early life:...
, that demanded local autonomy for the island and urged freedom of speech. The following year it demanded that the colonial governor institute popular, proportionally representative ballot for some councils. Its singular triumph was in forcing the authorities to set aside budget for establishing treatment centers for opium
Opium
Opium is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy . Opium contains up to 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The latex also includes codeine and non-narcotic alkaloids such as papaverine, thebaine and noscapine...
addicts. The party successfully created international pressure by filing complaints to the League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
(of which Japan remained a member until the early 1930s), which then sent a representative to investigate.
As civilian rule gave way to a new, harsher phase of all-consuming militarism
Militarism
Militarism is defined as: the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests....
in Taiwan and elsewhere in the Empire
Empire of Japan
The Empire of Japan is the name of the state of Japan that existed from the Meiji Restoration on 3 January 1868 to the enactment of the post-World War II Constitution of...
, the fate of the party was sealed. Ironically the result was essentially as P'eng Hua-ying had predicted in his objection to Chiang's more radical vision: No sooner had the fourth party congress passed the revised charter, the authorities proceeded to ban the organization. Chiang Weishui and other party leaders were arrested. In its statement the authorities accused "leftist, nationalist members" of controlling the party and secretly working on independence
Taiwan independence
Taiwan independence is a political movement whose goals are primarily to formally establish the Republic of Taiwan by renaming or replacing the Republic of China , form a Taiwanese national identity, reject unification and One country, two systems with the People's Republic of China and a Chinese...
for the colony, as well as alerting the international community of Japan's use of chemical warfare
Chemical warfare
Chemical warfare involves using the toxic properties of chemical substances as weapons. This type of warfare is distinct from Nuclear warfare and Biological warfare, which together make up NBC, the military acronym for Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical...
in suppressing the Musha Rebellion
Wushe Incident
The Wushe Incident or Wushe Event or Wushe Revolution / Rebellion / Uprising / Insurrection of 1930 was the last major uprising against colonial Japanese forces in Taiwan...
(1930). Chiang himself came to be disillusioned with legitimate political means of reform. The party never recovered after his death in 1931.