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Kaohsiung, Taiwan is the second largest city on the island of Taiwan and one of the busiest ports in the world. This year, in fact, the Kaohsiung port expects to handle over 8 million container TEU's. That's a lot of containers! (Do you know what a TEU is? It's a shipping abbreviation to count cargo containers. It stands for a "twenty-foot equivalent unit." The Boomerang Box, which is a 40-foot long container, will count for two TEU's when it arrives in Kaohsiung Harbor).
But how did Kaohsiung get to be such a busy place? If you guessed that Kaohsiung and the country of Taiwan have a long and very complicated history, well, you're right!
Taiwan is an island just a short distance off the coast of mainland China. Kaohsiung is located on the island's southwestern coast between the Taiwan Strait and Bashi Strait, a perfect location for trading. Can you find Taiwan and Kaohsiung on a map?
Taiwan was first invaded by Chinese explorers around the year 600, over 1,400 years ago. The Chinese ruled the island for hundreds of years, until Japanese troops conquered the eastern half of Taiwan between the 1100's and 1400's. But European explorers weren't far behind. You've learned from other trade topics that Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and English explorers sailed the globe during this time looking for new worlds to explore and new things to trade.
Portuguese explorers visited Taiwan in 1590 and named it Formosa ("beautiful one"). Then Spanish explorers arrived. They tried to set up permanent colonies on Taiwan, but were defeated by the next round of European explorers, the Dutch, who settled on Taiwan's southeastern coast.
Taiwan soon returned to Chinese rule, though. A group of Ming dynasty rulers from China came to Taiwan to flee the Manchu dynasty, which had just taken over in China. By the end of the 1600's the Mings and Manchus had made peace, and the island of Taiwan became part of China.
But Taiwan kept changing hands. French fighters blockaded Taiwan during the 1884-1885 war between France and China. Ten years after that, Taiwan was turned over to Japanese control after another war, the Sino-Japanese War between China and Japan.
Japan ruled Taiwan until the end of World War II. After Japan's defeat in that war, Taiwan was returned to China. But things were not peaceful in China. And so, just as in the fight between the Ming and Manchu dynasties a few hundred years earlier, Taiwan became home to a group of Chinese rulers fleeing the mainland after they were defeated.
This happened in 1949, when China had a revolution. The Communist side won, while the Nationalists - who had ruled China before the revolution - established their own government on Taiwan, which they called the Republic of China.
Ever since then the governments on Taiwan and on the mainland have disagreed about which is the "true" government of China. Both of them claim to rule all of China AND all of Taiwan. And other countries have had to choose which government to support.
China and Taiwan haven't reached agreement yet. But they have started trading. By 1998, in fact, Taiwan had become China's fifth largest trading partner. And Kaohsiung is in the middle of it all, handling cargo containers from all over the world.
Study questions
- Which of the two countries has the U.S. supported? Or has it decided not to take sides? Use the library to learn more and write a 1-page essay about what you learned.
- Learn more about the Kaohsiung Harbor at: http://www.khb.gov.tw/english/e0101.htm.
Write a short report about it.
Check out past Trade Topics entries!
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