FOR CENTURIES, Asian and Western sailors shipwrecked in Chinese waters got a nice surprise. The Chinese government had a rescue policy. Sailors would be given free food and clothing. They would be helped with ship repairs, or even transported home.
This applied to everyone in China’s coastal waters and Chinese islands such as Taiwan—but the policy was particularly useful to the people of the Kingdom of Ryūkyū, a nation of small islands which depended on the sea for food and trade.
“In fact, the Qing system for repatriating Ryūkyūan shipwreck victims on the shores of China (including Taiwan) settled 401 incidents over the course of the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries,” said historian Paul Barclay in a book on the region (1).
The system grew into a two-way policy with other groups in the China Seas.
“Reciprocal agreements with neighboring powers returned Chinese shipwreck survivors to the Qing realm from Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and the Ryūkyūs in over 700 incidents during the same period,” Barclay wrote.
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A TRAGIC ERROR
However, when a group of Ryūkyū people were shipwrecked by a typhoon on the southern tip of Taiwan in 1872, they made a fatal mistake.
Instead of staying on the Han-dominated west coast of Taiwan, the 66 survivors travelled inland and encountered aboriginal tribes. While sometimes welcoming, native clusters were small and fragile—and sometimes reacted in a hostile manner if they felt threatened.
After an encounter with indigenous Taiwanese, they ran in fear for their lives. The Ryūkyū shipwreck survivors were given shelter in a trading post run by a Han Chinese man named Old Weng, 73.
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THE MASSACRE
But the native people tracked them down. Two tribes, Paiwan and Gaishifo, accused the seafarers of disrespecting them.
They massacred 54 Ryūkyūans in the front yard of the trading post.
The remaining 12 survivors were hidden and protected by Old Weng (who was a Guangdong Hakka named Deng Tianbao) and his son-in-law Yang Youwang. They were kept safe until tensions in the area gradually dissipated.
The Chinese government returned them safely to the Ryūkyū Kingdom, seven months after the typhoon.
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A JAPANESE PLOT
Two years later, Japanese government officials realized that they could exploit the incident as a casus belli (“excuse for war”) and gain multiple advantages—they wanted control of both Taiwan and the Ryūkyū island kingdom.
They declared the massacred Ryūkyū sailors to be de facto Japanese citizens and said they had no choice but to invade the Chinese island of Taiwan to “avenge” them.
Referring to the indigenous people on the island, the Japanese Commander said: “As sure as the sun rises in the East and sets in the West every man of these wicked people should surely die by our hands.”
The Japanese army was at first resisted by the Chinese, and did not fully take over Taiwan until 1895, but even then they struggled to control the people they saw as primitive savages, and unrest continued.
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THE FIVE YEAR PLAN
In 1910, Japan announced the “Five-year Plan to Control the Aborigines”.
This had two simple aims – to kill, remove, or subdue the indigenous people of Taiwan, and to take their land and resources for Japan’s own use.
This was remarkable for its cynicism and frankness. Earlier attempts by China’s Qing Dynasty officials to settle the ungovernable parts of the island at least claimed to have mutual benefit in mind: development would help the natives.
“But in this case, the human beings in the targeted area were not considered sources of labor power or entrepreneurial skill but were seen instead as obstacles (unless they could be mobilized to subdue other indigenes),” Barclay said.
Modern people may see this as being remarkably like the plot of the first movie in James Camerons Avatar series: the unashamed slaughter of “savages” so that land and resources could be taken by force.
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THE UNDERDOG WINS
But (also as in the movie), the “savages” were more resourceful than expected, and shocked the well-armed, wealthy invaders with powerful resistance.
The Japanese started by attacking the Atayal people in the north, in April 1910. They proved much harder to subdue than expected, and far more troops had to be summoned. This process was repeated with other tribes.
From the Japanese side, massacres and vicious atrocities followed, leading to partial success, slowly achieved.
Japanese governor Sakuma Samata reported the end of the campaign to the Japanese emperor in 1915 and then resigned as governor general of occupied Taiwan.
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ADOPTING THE FIVE-YEAR PLAN
Ironically, both Russia and China would adopt the notion of the “five year plan” but transformed it into something positive: a system in which major government agencies worked together to hit development targets which would provide measurable per capita benefits.
On October 25, 1945, western forces and the Chinese government officially recognized the end of Japanese rule and the return of the island of Taiwan to Chinese sovereignty.
The people in the former Kingdom of Ryūkyū were not so fortunate. Many residents still consider themselves separate to Japan, but the area is now largely known as a US military hub generally known as Okinawa.
Both Taiwan and Okinawa are key elements in O Plan 5077, a Pentagon operational plan to attack China, using Taiwan as a “casus belli”. Japanese and American military leaders often think alike.
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[1. There are many records of these incidents, but the most comprehensive is an academic study, Outcasts of Empire: Japan’s Rule on Taiwan’s “Savage Border,” 1874–1945, by US scholar Paul D. Barclay]