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| 1959, Oct. 7 |
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| U.S. undersecretary of state Douglas C. Dillon stated that if the Chinese Communists attacked Taiwan and the offshore islands, they would be risking “total” world war. | 1 |
| Over the course of the 1950s, help from the U.S., particularly via the Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction, facilitated a program of land reform whereby rents were reduced and land was sold to those who could till it. Extreme inflation from the 1940s was brought under control by the early 1950s. These undertakings helped lay the groundwork for rapid development in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1960s, the government moved to reorient the domestic economy to produce for export markets. Electronics, textiles, and chemicals, among other products, dominated Taiwan's industry. | 2 |
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| 1960, March 21 |
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| Gen. Jiang Jieshi was reelected for his third presidential term by the National Assembly. | 3 |
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| 1961, March 19 |
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| At the urging of the U.S., the Nationalist government announced the opening of Operation Hurricane to remove Chinese irregulars from the Thailand, Burma, and Laos border regions. These irregulars had fled from China in 1948–49, at the time of the Communist takeover. | 4 |
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| 1962, June 27 |
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| U.S. president John F. Kennedy stated that the U.S. “would not remain inactive” if a Communist Chinese attack on Quemoy and Matsu appeared to threaten Taiwan. On June 10, a large buildup of troops and planes had begun in Fujian Province, opposite the offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu. | 5 |
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| 1962–71 |
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| The Republic of China, with its 13 million inhabitants, remained throughout this period the representative of China in the UN, occupying a permanent seat on the Security Council and claiming authority over all mainland China, with its 600 million people. Year after year the effort was made to have the PRC elected to the UN, and indeed the vote in favor grew from year to year. But a solution was all but impossible because Communist China would hear nothing of a “two Chinas” solution. It demanded that Nationalist China be expelled and the permanent seat assigned to the Beijing government. The U.S., bound by treaty to the Republic of China, was unwilling to desert an ally, so the situation, although less tense in 1970 than it had been a decade before, remained open. It was finally resolved in the next year (1971). | 6 |
| Because of the greater newsworthiness of both the rift between the Soviet Union and the Communist Chinese regime, and the Cultural Revolution in China (1965–68), developments in Nationalist China were often overlooked and received little international attention. However, great progress was being made along economic and social lines: important land reforms, notable advances in popular education, development of industrialization, introduction of family planning, and the like were instituted. Politically, affairs remained basically unchanged. | 7 |
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| 1966 |
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| The Nationalist government established Export Processing Zones (the first one at Gaoxiong (Kaohsiung)) with special economic privileges, to enhance growth and industry. Two more such zones were introduced in 1969. | 8 |
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| 1969, June |
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| Jiang Jingguo (1909–88), the son of the president, was appointed vice premier and was thus informally designated as the probable successor to his father. | 9 |
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| 1971–72 |
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| Riots erupted against both the U.S. and the harshly undemocratic, rigid Jiang government. Tensions grew as well between the native population of Chinese on the island and those who had come with Jiang Jieshi in the late 1940s. The emerging movement for an independent Taiwan was anathema to the Nationalist regime. It was recurrently crushed by the government. | 10 |
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| 1973–74 |
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| The international oil crisis (See Oct) temporarily undermined Taiwan's economy, which was heavily dependent on oil imports. The problem did not reach destructive proportions because the government controlled imports closely to protect domestic industry and produce, and it forcefully encouraged exports, to build foreign reserves. | 11 |
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| 1975 |
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| Jiang Jingguo succeeded his father as president of the Republic of China. | 12 |
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| 1979 |
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| When the U.S. and the PRC normalized relations and those between the U.S. and Taiwan were broken off (See 1979, Jan. 1), contacts between the latter were carried on through two “institutes” (in Taibei and Washington, D.C.). Military ties were also scaled back. In April, the Taiwan Relations Act was passed by the U.S. Congress; it promised effectively to protect Taiwan from being overrun by the PRC. The economy of Taiwan continued to develop without interruption. | 13 |
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| 1980 |
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| The government built an industrial park devoted to scientific development. Taiwan's per capita income was in Asia second only to Japan. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank took their “China” seats from Taiwan and gave them to the PRC. | 14 |
| As PRC policy shifted from engendering change through radical ideology to stressing rapid economic development, Taiwan's great economic successes seemed to temper PRC rhetoric. Both sides' earlier shared belief in reunification was beginning to be rethought. | 15 |
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