Taiwan's importance in East Asia

  "East Asia Peace Forum" was held on March 4th in Taipei, Taiwan.
Besides Taiwan, congresspersons (MPs) from many Asian nations including Korea, Japan and Philippines also participated.
The discussion was basically about Security, mainly China and North Korea's military threats.

  Taiwan is a democratic country now, but has a complicated history.
At the very beginning, the island was inhabited by aboriginal tribes. It was occupied by Netherlands a couple hundreds of years ago, and after that mass immigrants began to arrive from mainland China, resulting in its dominant Chinese culture today.
Like Korea, Taiwan was also occupied by Japan. It lasted for 50 years (1895 - end of WW2, 1945).
Japan left many infrastructure and technology, and the education style deeply influenced the people.
Today Taiwan still has good ties with Japan.

  Similar to Korea, Taiwan also suffers from the threat of Communism.
4 years after the liberation from Japan, in 1949, Chinese Nationalist regime (Kuomintang) led by Chiang Kai Shek was defeated by Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Ze Dong, and left from mainland to Taiwan. Chiang protected the island from Red power, but in a somehow authoritarian way, similar to the strategy of Korea's presidents SyngMan Rhee and Park Chung Hee. Taiwan shares much similarities with South Korea in terms of modern politics and economy.

Chiang Kai Shek (left) and SyngMan Rhee (right)

  Modern Taiwan has become one of Asia's most democratic nations, with people enjoying freedom of expression and participation in politics. Taiwan is located in the midst of many important players in Asia-Pacific region, and its location is very important for the geo-politics in this area. It faces between Communist power (mainland China, North Korea) and Democratic countries (Korea, Japan, USA, Philippines). Taiwan, also known as Republic of China (ROC), was originally an important member of UN. 5 countries who won WW2 became Permanent members of UN after the war, with big decision-making power, and Nationalist China was 1 of them. However, ROC was replaced by PRC (Communist China) during Nixon regime, creating a burden for USA's own future and the entire Asia-Pacific region.

  Since ROC's loss of decision-making power in world politics, PRC has never failed to meddle in the issue, continuously intervening Taiwan's participation in international matter by coercive means. China always prohibits Taiwan from participating in international, large-scale associations. Like North Korea, China also frequently use military threats to intimidate its opponents. The 2 Communist forces pose big threat to the current order and peace in Asia-Pacific. Observing this situation, it further requires strong collaboration among the region, as people always say "united we are strong".