{"id":631,"date":"2007-08-28T07:47:43","date_gmt":"2007-08-28T06:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=631"},"modified":"2007-08-28T07:47:43","modified_gmt":"2007-08-28T06:47:43","slug":"forgotten-world-97-taiwan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=631","title":{"rendered":"Forgotten World (97): Taiwan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When is a country not a country? perhaps when it is the island of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Taiwan\">Taiwan<\/a>. Legally Taiwan &#8211; which formally calls itself the Republic of China (ROC) &#8211; is a province of the People&#8217;s Republic of China (PRC) and most nations &#8211; and the United Nations &#8211; acknowledge the position of the Chinese government that this is the case. Therefore Taiwan has formal diplomatic relations with only two dozen countries &#8211; Pacific, South American and African states in the main &#8211; and no seat at the UN. However, for all practical purposes, Taiwan has been an independent country for some 50 years and, in that time, its 23 million citizens have seen spectacular economic growth and enjoyed rising prosperity.<br \/>\nHow has this happened? In 1949, following a bitter civil war, the Chinese nationalist government of President Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan ahead of the advance of the communists under Mao Zedong . The government-in-exile then established Taipei as its capital and for decades hoped to reclaim control over the mainland. Eventually, in the early 1990s, Taiwan made the transition from an authoritarian one-party state to a democracy. Meanwhile economic liberalisation, strong investment and substantial exports have driven a successful, high-tech economy.<br \/>\nToday China is as strong as ever in its insistence that &#8211; like Hong Kong &#8211; Taiwan must be returned to its control and it has sanctioned the use of force against Taiwan if it moves toward declaring statehood. It also insists that no state can have formal ties with both mainland China and Taiwan. Some 600 Chinese missiles aimed at the island and periodic military exercises back up China&#8217;s stance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When is a country not a country? perhaps when it is the island of Taiwan. Legally Taiwan &#8211; which formally calls itself the Republic of China (ROC) &#8211; is a province of the People&#8217;s Republic of China (PRC) and most nations &#8211; and the United Nations &#8211; acknowledge the position of the Chinese government that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}