When the US Supported a Brutal Chinese Conquest of Taiwan
In the Western imagination, Taiwan is cast almost exclusively as a flourishing democracy under siege by a totalitarian neighbor, a moral clarity that fuels calls for military defense and ideological solidarity. Sulmaan Wasif Khan’s magisterial new history, The Struggle for Taiwan – published in 2024 – does not deny the island’s democratic vibrancy or the threat posed by the People’s Republic of China. However, Khan, a professor of international relations and history at the Fletcher School, complicates this tableau with a darker, more unsettling narrative. He unearths a history in which the United States was not the defender of Taiwanese self-determination, but the primary sponsor of its conquest by a brutal Chinese regime. Khan argues that the current peril in the Taiwan Strait is the bitter fruit of Japanese and American imperial map-making, a century of cynical maneuvering where the United States participated in the exploitation of China and then handed Taiwan over to a dictatorship that terrorized its population for decades.
Khan forces the reader to confront the reality that Taiwan’s status is not a simple matter of ancient sovereignty but a product of empire and war. He begins by dismantling the simplistic nationalist narratives emanating from Beijing, noting that Taiwan was not always part of China. For centuries, the island was populated by Austronesian indigenous peoples, largely ignored by mainland dynasties. It was not until 1683 that the Qing Empire – itself a conquering Manchu dynasty that had subjugated China – annexed Taiwan. Khan notes that the Qing emperor Kangxi initially debated whether the island was even worth keeping, ultimately deciding to hold it not out of a sense of sacred territorial integrity, but for maritime security, fearing it might be used as a base by foreign powers. Taiwan was incorporated as a frontier of empire, a buffer zone rather than an integral core.
Yet, Khan is careful to note that while Beijing’s claims are contestable, they are not baseless; they are rooted in the trauma of the “century of humiliation”, when China was subjugated by Western powers and Japan. While Americans like to remember their role in 19th-century China as benevolent, Khan details how the U.S. opportunistically rode the coattails of British imperialism. Following the Opium Wars, the United States compelled the Qing to sign the Treaty of Wangxia in 1844, securing trading privileges similar to those Britain had won by force. During the Taiping Rebellion – the largest civil war in history – the US, Britain and France supported the Qing Empire with weapons and helped it brutally crush the Taiping rebels. When the Boxer Rebellion erupted in 1900 against foreign domination, American troops marched alongside European and Japanese forces to brutally suppress the Chinese peasantry. The U.S. “Open Door” policy, often framed as a defense of China, was less about protecting Chinese sovereignty than ensuring American merchants got their slice of the imperial melon.
This era of exploitation culminated in 1895, when a rising imperial Japan defeated the Qing and seized Taiwan as war booty under the Treaty of Shimonoseki. Khan provides a nuanced portrait of the Japanese colonial era. While the Japanese occupation of mainland China and the rest of Asia during the 1930s and 40s was characterized by apocalyptic brutality and destruction – a nightmare that remains the emotional engine of modern Chinese nationalism – Taiwan was treated differently. It was a “model colony” where the Japanese Empire sought to demonstrate its capacity for governance. It was a brutal and racist occupation where Taiwanese were second-class citizens without political rights. They were forced to speak the language of their conquerors. Yet, Khan notes the uncomfortable truth that under Japanese rule, Taiwan experienced significant modernization. Hydroelectric power, railways, and a public health system were established, and literacy rates soared to levels far exceeding those on the Chinese mainland. This divergence created a distinct Taiwanese consciousness; while mainland China was being ravaged by Japanese aggression, Taiwan was being integrated into the Japanese imperial project, creating a “complex feeling” toward the colonizer that persists to this day.
It was in the ashes of World War II that the United States made its most fateful error regarding Taiwan. During the war, the U.S. had poured support into Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist regime KMT, viewing it as a vital ally against Japan. Khan details how American pilots like Claire Chennault trained the “Flying Tigers” to fly for Chiang, and how General Joseph Stilwell was dispatched to command Chinese forces. Yet, despite this massive investment, Chiang reserved his best troops for blockading the Communists rather than fighting the Japanese, a corruption of purpose that Stilwell bitterly noted.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, treating Taiwan as a bargaining chip at the Cairo Conference in 1943, promised the island to Chiang Kai-shek. Khan depicts this as an act of imperial arrogance: without consulting the Taiwanese people, Roosevelt assigned their land to a Chinese regime that Khan describes as spiritually insolvent. The U.S. continued to back Chiang during the subsequent Chinese Civil War, even as his regime’s corruption, mismanagement, heavy-handedness and brutality alienated the Chinese populace and drove them into the arms of Mao Zedong’s Communists.
The tragedy of the American decision to hand Taiwan to Chiang became horrifyingly clear in 1945. When KMT troops arrived on the island aboard American ships, they did not act as liberators but as a conquering army, looting infrastructure and treating the locals with suspicion and contempt. Tensions boiled over on February 28, 1947 – the “228 Incident” – when government agents pistol-whipped a woman selling contraband cigarettes. The ensuing protests were met with indiscriminate slaughter. Khan details how Chiang’s governor, Chen Yi, feigned negotiation while secretly requesting military reinforcements. When the troops arrived, they unleashed a campaign of terror, systematically hunting down and executing thousands of Taiwanese elites, students, and civic leaders.
The “White Terror” that followed established a police state that lasted for decades. Dissidents were executed, jailed and tortured. Taiwan – like the Communist mainland – was a totalitarian society riddled with spies, where martial law was permanent, and criticizing the government was a capital offense. Khan highlights the bitter irony that the first modern movement for Taiwanese independence and democracy was not directed against the Communist Party in Beijing, but against the Chinese occupation imposed by Chiang Kai-shek and underwritten by the United States. He documents the violent and non-violent struggle against the KMT-regime. American officials on the ground filed reports detailing atrocities and noting that the Taiwanese would prefer UN trusteeship or independence. They watched as the weapons and logistical support provided by Washington were used to crush a population that had petitioned the US embassy for help. Yet, the Truman administration, paralyzed by the brewing Cold War, and a commitment to Chiang as a bulwark against communism, chose to look away.
Khan’s analysis explains why Chinese nationalism remains so uniquely sensitive to the issue of Taiwan. It is not merely a matter of territory; it is a festering wound of the colonial era, the civil war and foreign intervention. For decades, Chiang Kai-shek used Taiwan not just as a refuge, but as a base from which to bomb Chinese coastal cities, blockade ports, conduct raids and infiltrate agents, all under the protection of the U.S. Seventh Fleet and jet bombers. Khan describes how the KMT, emboldened by U.S. support, choked the life out of cities like Xiamen and maintained a fantasy of reconquering the mainland. The United States found itself in the absurd position of protecting a dictatorship in Taipei that claimed to be the legitimate government of all China and was serious about reneweing the civil war. The U.S. refused to recognize the communist government in Beijing that actually controlled the mainland. Khan explains the CCP perspective: “Chiang remained unprepared to countenance anything other than the complete destruction of the CCP. Wherever he was, if he retained armed forces and American support, Chiang would be a threat. So when Taiwan became the KMT’s last foothold in the civil war, it was inevitable that the Communists would turn their attention to it. Chiang was not content to sit quietly on the island and lick his wounds. Chiang was using Taiwan as a base from which to wage naval war against the CCP. For the Communists the problem was not Taiwan itself but the hostile enemy that held it.”
Chinese fears were heightened by the threat of nuclear war. Khan exposes the terrifying degree to which American “toughness” repeatedly brought the region to the brink of nuclear annihilation. During the Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur’s insubordination was fueled by a desire to expand the conflict into China, specifically advocating for the use of nuclear weapons to destroy the Communist regime, a “reckless” escalation that eventually cost him his command. The specter of atomic warfare returned even more acutely during the First Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1955, when President Eisenhower explicitly informed Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that he was willing to use atomic weapons to defend the strategically negligible islands of Kinmen and Matsu. Khan illustrates how close the world came to atomic warfare over rocks that Chiang Kai-shek refused to abandon, driven by a fantastical belief that he would one day reconquer all of China. The U.S. leadership, trapped by domestic anti-communist hysteria and the fear of losing credibility, allowed itself to be manipulated by a client state into risking global conflagration. This horrific calculus was revisited during the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1958, when Dulles again floated the use of nuclear bombs, chillingly suggesting that “small-scale” nuclear detonations might be executed without provoking unmanageable public “revulsion”. Khan writes: “Once again, a single miscalculation was all that lay between a crisis and a general Sino-American war”.
US general Douglas MacArthur referred to Taiwan as “an unsinkable aircraft carrier”. To Beijing, Taiwan represents a lethal threat to its sovereignty, a beachhead where a rival regime, propped up by a hostile global superpower, threatened the very existence of the People’s Republic. It also represents the last territory that was taken by force – first by the Japanese than by the US – and needs to be returned to the motherland. To the Chinese elites and people Taiwan is about both national security and dignity.
It is against the backdrop of historical trauma that Khan evaluates the diplomatic breakthroughs of the 1970s. Contrary to the views of modern hawks, Khan portrays the rapprochement engineered by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger as a masterpiece of necessary pragmatism. He argues that the “One China” policy – a diplomatic fudge where the U.S. acknowledged Beijing’s position that Taiwan was part of China – was essential for global stability. By normalizing relations, the U.S. and China were able to move away from the brink of nuclear war. Khan views leaders like Jimmy Carter, who finalized normalization, as decisive statesmen who understood that peace required recognizing the reality of the People’s Republic.
However, history took an unexpected turn with the democratization of Taiwan, a process Khan chronicles with gripping detail. The transition was not a gift from the KMT but a hard-won victory by the Taiwanese people. Khan highlights the role of Lee Teng-hui, the “father of democracy,” who worked from within the KMT to dismantle its authoritarian machinery. Lee leveraged the “Wild Lily” student movement in 1990 to force the retirement of the aging mainlander parliamentarians who had held their seats since 1947, finally allowing for full elections in 1996. This transformation from a police state to a vibrant democracy created a new Taiwanese identity that fundamentally rejects unification with the PRC, not merely out of political preference, but as a matter of existential survival.
Khan illustrates how the “Asian Tiger” Taiwan achieved high economic growth rates before the mainland. Its capital and expertise subsequently became indispensable engines for the People’s Republic’s own economic miracle during the reform era. Khan suggrests that the deep commercial integration might help maintain the fragile peace, as the immense costs of disrupting the impressive trade links act as a deterence to conflict. But he also delineates how this economic embrace became a source of profound domestic anxiety in Taiwan, particularly during the presidency of Ma Ying-jeou. The fear that economic dependence was becoming a Trojan horse for political capitulation to Beijing exploded in 2014 with the Sunflower Movement, where students occupied the legislature to block the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement, effectively signaling that for a new generation of Taiwanese, the promise of mainland riches was not worth the price of their sovereignty.
The book takes a turn toward the ominous as it chronicles the unraveling of the delicate cross-strait peace in the twenty-first century. Khan is scathing in his critique of the bipartisan hawkish consensus and the black-and-white thinking in Washington. He identifies the first presidency of Donald Trump as a pivotal moment of deterioration, where the “One China” policy was treated not as a foundation of stability but as a bargaining chip in a trade war. This transactional recklessness was matched by a profound shift in Beijing, where Xi Jinping dismantled the “One Country, Two Systems” model in Hong Kong, destroying the credibility of a peaceful unification offer for Taiwan.
Khan argues that the Biden administration, rather than correcting course, has doubled down on belligerence and unnecessary provocations. He cites the “Indo-Pacific Strategy” and repeated statements by President Biden regarding the defense of Taiwan as essentially reviving a defense treaty that was supposed to have been terminated in 1979. Biden has even compared Taiwan to NATO allies: “We made a sacred commitment to Article Five that if in fact anyone were to invade or take action against our NATO allies, we would respond. Same with Japan, same with South Korea, same with Taiwan.”
Khan is particularly critical of performative gestures like Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in 2022, which he characterizes as domestic political theater that provoked a massive Chinese military escalation without effectively enhancing Taiwan’s security. He notes that the U.S. has normalized a state of military friction, with warships and aircraft operating in dangerous proximity, increasing the statistical probability of an accidental collision spiraling into war. Once more Washington has begun to treat Taiwan less as a partner and more as a weapon to be wielded against a rising China, revisiting the logic of containment that first militarized the island in the 1950s. Khan writes: “When deterrence, toughness, and pride drive policy, the room for error diminishes to virtually nil. The three countries are at a point where the choices they make could spell the difference between peace and nuclear holocaust.”
Ultimately, The Struggle for Taiwan is a plea for a return to diplomacy. Khan demonstrates that the “deterrence” championed by Washington is failing, merely hardening Chinese resolve and confirming Beijing’s darkest suspicions about U.S. encirclement. He suggests that the U.S. has forgotten the lessons of its own history: that it was diplomatic ambiguity, communication and compromise, not brinkmanship, that kept the peace for forty years. Khan urgently calls for the reestablishment of communication lines and a step back from the “edge of chaos,” arguing that a conflict between these nuclear-armed powers would leave Taiwan not liberated, but reduced to a pile of ash and rock. He issues a stark warning: “This was where the accumulated weight of the past had brought the United States, China, and Taiwan. They had walked right up to the edge of a war that could go nuclear several times in the past: in 1954-1955, in 1958, and then again in 1996. Now, they seemed to be living on that edge permanently.”
Khan’s narrative is animated by a profound sympathy for the people of Taiwan. Yet, this empathy does not blind him to the perspective of the mainland. He contends that the truest friendship the West can offer to Taiwan is not reckless brinkmanship, but a policy of wisdom and prudence that prioritizes diplomatic compromise to ensure the island’s survival alongside its colossal neighbor.
In recovering the history of how the U.S. once sacrificed Taiwan to a tyrant, Khan urges us to see that true responsibility today lies not in preparing for the next war, but in the difficult, unglamorous work of preventing it. His book shows that “luck, as much as deterrence, kept America and China from tumbling into cataclysm.”
Michael Holmes is a German-American freelance journalist specializing in global conflicts and modern history. His work has appeared in Neue Zürcher Zeitung – the Swiss newspaper of record – Responsible Statecraft, Psychologie Heute, taz, Welt, and other outlets. He regularly conducts interviews for NachDenkSeiten. He has reported on and travelled to over 70 countries, including Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, Ukraine, Kashmir, Hong Kong, Mexico, and Uganda. He is based in Potsdam, Germany.
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