In a modest lecture hall in Taipei, a group of historians and political activists gathered this week to exhume a ghost that has long haunted the island's complex identity politics. The forum, centered on the history of the Taiwan Communist Party (TCP) during the Japanese colonial era, aimed to strip away layers of historical revisionism that have obscured the movement’s origins for nearly a century. By focusing on the 1920s left-wing anti-colonial struggle, organizers sought to provide a counter-narrative to both the old Nationalist censorship and modern separatist interpretations.
At the heart of the discussion was Qi Jialin, a prominent historian and honorary chairman of the Taiwan Unity Alliance Party. Qi’s recently published research, based on primary archives, traces the TCP from its 1928 founding in Shanghai—under the guidance of the Comintern and the Chinese Communist Party—to its clandestine operations within Taiwan. He argues that the TCP was the vanguard of a broader social movement that combined labor rights with a fierce resistance to Japanese imperialism, a legacy that he claims has been systematically distorted by successive regimes.
For decades under the Kuomintang’s 'White Terror,' the TCP’s history was demonized as a subversion of the state, its members often facing execution or life imprisonment. However, Qi and other scholars at the forum pointed to a more contemporary shift in historiography. They contend that the modern pan-green political camp has attempted to misappropriate the TCP’s story, framing it as an early movement for Taiwanese independence rather than part of a unified Chinese revolutionary struggle against foreign occupation.
The figure of Xie Xuehong, a founding member of the TCP, served as a focal point for this debate. Speakers noted that her activism in Shanghai and Guangzhou during the mid-1920s was deeply influenced by the same anti-imperialist fervor that fueled the mainland’s revolutionary movements. This connection, according to Lin Shenjing of the Haichao Think Tank, serves as historical evidence that the 'spirit of struggle' on both sides of the Taiwan Strait was once intrinsically linked by a shared ideological and national goal.
By revisiting these archives, the forum participants are not merely engaging in academic exercise but are actively contesting the foundations of Taiwanese identity. They argue that the TCP’s leadership in the island's anti-colonial worker and peasant movements proves that Taiwan's modern history is an inseparable branch of the broader Chinese narrative. This perspective seeks to bridge the ideological gap across the Strait by highlighting a period of shared revolutionary heritage and common enemies.