The relationship between the island of Taiwan and the states of South-East Asia during the 20th century has enjoyed only a limited temporal autonomy. Autonomy was denied during much of the first half of the century because of Japan's colonial rule over the island and because the countries of South-East Asia, with the exception of Thailand, were subject to Western colonialism. It was only with Japan's defeat in the Pacific War and the onset of decolonization, and also with the end of the civil war on the mainland of China that relations between Taiwan as a discrete expression in political geography and independent South-East Asian states began to assume a kind of autonomy.

The major task of this article is to investigate Taiwan's social changes in the 20th century. The focus is on the social rather than the economic and political dimensions, even though it is very difficult to prevent mentioning Taiwan's economic development miracle as well as recent political democratization. This article mainly discusses how economic and political structures affect social changes, and then explores some impacts of social changes in subsequent political transformation.

For much of the past half-century, Taiwan's development has been inextricably tied to the drama of the Chinese civil war and the Cold War in Asia. Both the government on Taiwan and many of its supporters abroad have sought to link the island's history with that of the mainland. The result has been partially to obscure the distinctive history of Taiwan and, with this, to ignore factors which have decisively shaped the development of the island. The bulk of the papers in this volume seek to contribute to the ongoing efforts of scholars in Taiwan and abroad to illuminate the early 20th-century portion of this history and to join it to discussions of the post-war evolution of the island.

Economic performance in the long term is the result of interaction between an economy's internal characteristics and its external environment. The internal characteristics include economic and social institutions, governmental and legal frameworks, natural and human resources, and locational factors. The external environment consists of two parts, one made up of foreign resource configurations and potential opportunities for fruitful economic relationships, and the other of power networks and “rules of the game.” These broader frameworks determine the extent to which potential economic gains can actually be realized.

The United States has separate mutual security treaties with Japan and the Republic of Korea which provide for stationing American forces and have established procedures for close co-operation. These alliances constitute the keystone of the American security position in East Asia and, possibly, the trigger for future involvement in the area.