Mr. George H, Kerr has written a booktwhich ‘makes a complete mokery of the U.S. Government's attempt to dress up Chiang Kai-shek as one of the defenders of democracys Formosa Betrayed, is as its title implies an angry book which is designed to expose one of the most monstrous regimes on the face of the earth today. Mr. Kerr knows his subject well = he lived an teught there from 1937-1940 and then he was at the American consulate in Taipei during the first years of the Chinese Nationalist occupation of that unhappy island, He watched the Nationalist soldiers being forced ashore in October 1945 becatse they were frightened of the surrendered Japanese soldiers on the islmd, He saw the massacres in 1947 when the Chiang Kai-shek forces killed over 10,000 of the inhabitants. He describes in detail a system of corruption so bad that the Formosan economy was reduced to a worse state than when China ceded the island to Japan in 1895. He traces the increasing disillusionment of the islanders, first with Chiang Kai-shek and then increasing so with America, ~ Of great interest is the way he documents the manner in which ‘the United States and Chiarg Kai-shek created the "Formosa". problem, As late as 1950, the legal status of Formosa had not been firmly settleds according to President Truman it had to “await the restoration of security in the Pacific, a peace settlement with Japan or consideration by the United Nations." Some years before, Mao Tse=tung had told Edgar Snow that Formosa should be given independence, like Korea, But in the Cairo declaration President Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill had promised it to Chiang Kai-shek, and at the end of the war the Chinese were given the signal to take over, The tone of the occupation was set in the first speech made the future Civil ‘Commissioner, General Keh, when he referred then. to as "a degraded penple” beyond the pale of Chinese civilisation, when Governox Chten Yi arrived in Taipei, he found that fifty years of Japanese occupation had produced a people more literate, and an economy more advanced and prosperous, than most of mainland China, So he and his men set out to milk-it dry, ‘/ithin months conffscated Japanese property and. military supplies valued at £1,000 million had disappeared, Food and fuel reserves were sold and shipped out by Chinese officers, which created shortages where they had been surpluses. Factories and public services ceased functioning under inexperienced Chinese administrators and were dismantled for quick sales in Shanghai, Prices rocketed as the Chinese set up monopolies of all major produce with mainland officials as private investors, Relief supplies from the United Nations were syphoned off into private stores, Native Formosan businesses, restricted in their use of credit and squeezed by licensing regulations and official monopolies,began to close down. Unemploy= ee mounted and strikes and demonstrations occurred with increasing frequency.
Pa On February oath7an incident began with the abuse of a cigarette vendor by monopoly bureau agents and developed overnight into demonstrations by . Formosans and wild shooting by mainland soldiers. Within a week, the Formosans had effective control over most of the island and a taettlanent Committee was negotiating with the Governor, Mr. Kerr remarks on the extraordinary restraint of the Formosans at this time, when they night have pushed the Nationalists into the sea, On March 7th the Committee presented the Governor with 32 demands for reform, On March 8th the Governor replied by landing 13,000 troops. For the next month terror reigned and 5,000~ 10,000 Formosans are estimated to have been hunted down and murdered all leaders of the reform movement, government critics, students, anyone who had offended the mainland Chinese, A generation of leaders was eliminated * Formosa Betrayed, by George H. Kerr, Eyre & Spottiswoode. 50 shillines