Shelley Rigger

They're defeated on the mainland.

The only place left that they control is Taiwan.

And that's where they go.

They set up the government there.

They take the legislators who were elected from all over China in 1947.

They become the legislature of the Republic of China.

But their chamber and their offices are in Taiwan.

And they cannot go back to China.

Mingyue!

They're going to go back to China.

They're convinced that they will because the mission the nationalist government sets for itself and for the people of Taiwan is we're going to fight back to the mainland.

We're going to drive out communism and reestablish a real legitimate Chinese state over all of China, including Taiwan.

Land reform in Taiwan had a little bit of a capitalist flair to it because you had to pay for it and the price was very low.

And the government gave farmers a lot of support to be successful in agriculture.

And then the people whose land was appropriated were also paid.

Again, not as much as they would have liked to have been, but enough that it wasn't like the same vibe as in the mainland where it was a violent appropriation of land

Yes.

And one of the things they did was they paid some of the landlords, not only in cash, but also in shares in companies.

So they're already thinking ahead to industrialization, right?

So that unleashed a huge explosion of agricultural productivity, and a lot of rural families very quickly began to accumulate money.