The Enduring Influence of the Republic of China on Taiwan Today

Taiwan's society today has been shaped primarily by four streams of influence: the traditional China stream, the Japanese stream, the Republic of China stream, and the cosmopolitan stream. The traditional China stream gave the people of Taiwan their language and their basic culture and customs. After 1895 the Japanese stream flowed into Taiwan for 50 years, causing many significant modifications to its society and cutting the people of Taiwan off from the critical changes that occurred in Chinese mainland society during that period. In 1945 the Republic of China (ROC) took over Taiwan, bringing from the mainland its ideology, its educational system; its constitutional structure, its political and social institutions, and a governing elite, most of whom spoke a different dialect of Chinese from the people of Taiwan. The purpose of this article is to identify the principal elements of this ROC stream of influence. The cosmopolitan stream, representing primarily the influence of the West, flowed into all the other streams, to some extent influencing traditional China before the fall of the Qing dynasty, but much more powerfully influencing the ROC on the mainland and Japan. Since 1945 the cosmopolitan stream, at first largely American, has also poured into Taiwan, gaining momentum and diversity with each passing year.