Taiwan Today

Deep inside a granite bunker, a newly commissioned army officer is enjoying his first lunch on the offshore island of Kinmen, or Quemoy as it is known in the southern Fujian dialect. Despite the gloom and the high humidity, plain army food seems to be having no ill effects on his appetite. Suddenly there is a terrific boom. Without hesitation, the officer reacts as he has been trained to do: He hurls himself under the table, shouting, “Incoming! Take cover!”

But his prompt action, far from win­ning commendation, draws only gales of laughter. Those who have been based here for a while know that two decades have passed since shots were last fired in anger on Kinmen, and that the explosion was just a routine artillery test. Nevertheless, the officer’s response points up the fact that few people know much about the place. Because the group of islands came under fire from Mainland Chinese forces for some twenty years, and has been the sight of at least one terrible battle, there is a ten­dency on the part of visitors to believe that Kinmen is still bombarded from time to time. It is an understandable mistake. The island was closed to outsiders for more than four decades, so people on Taiwan know little of life on this offshore island fortress. There is even a slight language barrier­—the Kinmen dialect differs somewhat from that of Taiwan, although both have their roots in the southern Fujian dialect.

Kinmen means Golden Gate. It got its name in 1387, when Marquis Chou Te­ hsing (周德興) built defensive walls and earthworks there early in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). The complex of twelve granite islands, occupying an area of 150 square kilometers, guards the entrance to Fujian’s Xiamen Bay. At the nearest point, Kinmen is a mere 2,300 meters from the coast of Mainland China. The principal island boasts a number of ports, among them Liaolo Harbor, which is deep enough to accommodate ships of several thousand tons. The islands are home to some 47,000 people, not counting military personnel. For administrative purposes they are lumped together as Kinmen county, governed on a day-to-day basis by a popularly elected county magistrate and council. The main town is Kincheng, in the western part of the big island.

Kinmen county has seen many wars. The first Chinese settlers are believed to have moved there in early Chin times (265­-420), escaping from a war-torn mainland. Immigration gradually increased as the years went by. In the mid-seventeenth cen­tury, Kinmen saw the arrival of Koxinga (Cheng Cheng-kung), the legendary Ming dynasty loyalist and military leader. After failing in an attempt to seize Nanking, Koxinga used Taiwan as a base to train soldiers and build warships, which he deployed to wrest Taiwan from the Dutch. But when he transferred his forces to Taiwan, Kinmen was left with no army to defend it from the marauding pirates who have plagued the area for centuries.

The battle against piracy continued until 1949, when the ROC military moved in, but war did not stop even then. After the nationalists left the Chinese mainland, Kinmen was the only county of Fujian province to be administered by the ROC government on Taiwan. Its important stra­tegic position was a thorn in Communist China’s side. In October 1949, 12,000 mainland soldiers invaded Kuningtou, on Kinmen’s northwestern shore. ROC troops fought back bravely. In a battle last­ing seventy hours, more than 4,000 of the invading mainland forces were killed and the rest were captured.

Since the defeat at Kuningtou, Main­land China has not attempted a large-scale landing. But in the past it has tried to isolate and paralyze Kinmen with intensive shelling. One of the most severe battles began on August 23, 1958. Over a period of forty-six days, nearly half a million shells fired from six hundred communist artillery pieces rained down on Kinmen. Chen Yu-peng (陳友朋) was there. A re­tired career air force officer, he joined the military at the age of eighteen, served in Kinmen for thirty years, retired in 1979, and has lived in Kinmen ever since. “A lot of soldiers, many of them my friends, sac­rificed their lives,” he recalls sadly. “But we managed to ferry supplies over from Taiwan, and we shot back. Kinmen was neither paralyzed nor isolated.”

Apart from the contributions of brave soldiers and committed civilians, Kinmen owes its survival to its hard granite composition. In the mid-1950s the military, with the help of a civilian work force, had begun work on construction of a system of tunnels. These underground defensive earthworks spread through the island like a spider’s web. Even after the relentless shelling had turned much of the surface into a wasteland, personnel and weaponry were still well protected. Mainland China’s generals soon realized that they couldn’t knock Kinmen out, but they would lose face if they just stopped firing. The compromise solution turned out to be a two­-week cease-fire, followed by intermittent shelling every other evening for the fol­lowing twenty years. “People got used to it,” Chen says. “They could listen to the sound and judge where the shell was going to land, and whether they should take cover.” The shelling finally stopped in 1978.

Few outsiders got a chance to experience this highly-charged atmosphere. Ever since 1949, when Kinmen was declared a war zone and the military assumed full administrative responsibility, immigration was severely restricted. Native-born deni­zens of Kinmen and their spouses had right of abode, of course; but no one else was allowed to live there unless sent to Kinmen to do military service or work as a civil servant. Between the late 1940s and the early 1980s, there were about 150,000 dwellers on the island, over two-thirds of them young men doing their two or three years’ compulsory military service. There were always more soldiers than local peo­ple on the streets or in the movie theaters, and military vehicles invariably outnum­bered private ones. “Kinmen was closed to outsiders geographically, socially, economically, and politically,” says county magistrate Chern Shoei-tzay (陳水在), a member of the ruling Kuomintang. “It was as if you had a bunch of civilians living on a military base. It wasn’t a healthy, normal society.”

Under the military, Kinmen’s civilian administrative units were organized into “combat villages.” The idea was that if the enemy ever came, each of these well-trained combat villages would be able to fight as an autonomous unit, so all residents received military training, starting in high school. Students on public buses, toting their M14s to or from the practice ranges, became a common sight. And from time to time there were islandwide exercises in which all residents had to participate.

Kinmen people didn’t grumble about their restricted and artificial lifestyle, or at least, not much. Magistrate Chern Shoei­-tzay believes that in any war zone it is nec­essary to give the commanding officer full authority, not only over his military forces but also over non-military policy and decision-making. Many Kinmen residents think that the army did a good job of taking care of the island. Most of the roads, for example, were built by soldiers using basic tools. Many of the trees that shelter islanders from the strong seasonal winds were planted by soldiers. And since a lot of areas were restricted to civilians for military reasons, the natural environment and historical relics have also been better preserved on Kinmen than in most other parts of Taiwan. “If you came here ten years ago, your first impressions would probably be of cleanliness and order,” Chen Yu-peng says. “We didn’t need traf­fic lights, and every day you could see hordes of soldiers cleaning up the streets.”

Soldiers based on Kinmen were also major contributors to the local economy. Hsieh Yu-chen (謝玉真), a middle-aged resident of Hsiahsing in central Kinmen, used to run a small store. There were half a dozen similar stores in Hsiahsing, which boasts less than thirty households. Apart from cold drinks, these stores usually pro­vided snacks, recreation such as a pool­table or two, and laundry service. In Hsieh’s store, the twenty-odd seats and three pooltables were invariably occupied by sol­diers from nearby camps. “Our customers were all soldiers,” she recalls. “It didn’t matter whether it was a holiday or not, the stores were always full. Often, lots of them had to sit in the doorway or stand outside.”

Military administration lasted for more than four decades. It was formally ended in November 1992, but things had started to change long before that. In the early 1980s, with the easing in cross-straits relations, the ROC government had gradu­ally begun to reduce the number of military personnel based on Kinmen. Within about ten years, the islands’ military population had been cut down to approximately a third of its original 100,000.

Fewer soldiers might not necessarily equate with weaker defensive power, but it certainly did mean a weaker consumer base. Kinmen’s economy relied heavily on the military presence. When that was reduced, life became harder. One local resident who has driven a cab for over twenty years recalls that when the army was there in force he could make nearly NT$20,000 [US$740] every weekend, just by driving soldiers between their bases and various downtown areas. Now, he would be lucky to make one-third of that. “Local people don’t often take taxis,” he says. “Add tourists mostly come in groups and ride around in tour buses. When the sol­diers left, our golden days left with them.”

Other businesses are also facing the same difficulty. Hsieh Yu-chen and most others had to close down their neighborhood, all-purpose stores. “You can’t expect commercial activity to sur­vive on a handful of locals and a few sol­diers,” Chern Shoei-tzay says. “We need stimuli and investment, and at the moment they’re the missing link in the chain.” Chern thinks that for a small island with few natural resources, tourism is the way to go. Local people seem ready to give it a try. Hsieh Yu-chen, for one, decided to go into the hotel business. Three years ago, she converted her century-old, southern­ Fujian style courtyard home into a hotel, leaving much of the original design intact. It has a dozen rooms and can take somethirty guests. On that scale, Hsieh can han­dle all the cleaning and other necessary services by herself. “I get to take care of my house and make some money at the same time,” she says.

Many new hotels have been built over the past three years in an attempt to serv­ice the burgeoning tourist industry. Kinmen now has more than sixty hotels and hostels of varying size and standard, which between them can accommodate more than 4,000 tourists. But why would people want to visit such a small, wind-swept group of islands where most of the beaches are still closed for military rea­sons? Chen Lien-hsing (陳連興), Hsieh Yu-chen’s husband and a primary-school teacher, thinks that one answer is curios­ity. “People who did their compulsory military service here want to find out what’s changed since they left,” he says. “They’re keen to take a look at the places where they were based. First-time visitors are curious about the war relics, they want to know what a war zone feels like.”

But most of the sights can be seen in the course of a two-day trip, and Chen Lien-hsing worries that the majority of tourists will never come back. Kinmen needs something more, something to encourage repeat visits. The island group’s well-preserved cultural characteristics such as its renowned architecture and natu­ral environment, are accessible and valu­able resources that may provide part of the solution. To help maintain them, in 1995 a large tract of Kinmen was designated the ROC’s sixth national park. It occupies 3,780 hectares, 25 percent of the islands’ total area, and is divided into five zones. Each one focuses on a different element: Historic and war relics, traditional villages, defensive earthworks, coastal flora, and bird watching. “Like other national parks, we intend to educate visitors about the environment—how to preserve and develop it,” says Lee Yang-sheng (李養盛), super­intendent of the national park and a native of Kinmen. “But there’s more to this place. Here, we can help people to understand the cruelty of war and to be grateful for peace.”

Historic relics and a national park provide day-time recreations. But investors have also built a number of facilities, such as bowling alleys and karaoke parlors, to provide tourists with something to do in the evening. “Under military con­trol, there was no nightlife because no one—soldier or civilian—was allowed to go out after ten o’clock,” Chen Lien-hsing says. “But for Taiwan’s city-dwellers, life starts at ten. They don’t want to spend their evenings in a hotel room.” Evening enter­tainment has its negative side, however. There is now a sex industry. A number of Kinmen’s bars and karaoke establishments have employed girls to “entertain” guests, and magistrate Chern Shoei-tzay believes that increasing numbers of “working girls” and “businessmen” are coming to Kinmen from Taiwan. He says they have started to cater to locals as well as tourists. But this is not the only way in which Kinmen peo­ple are gradually changing. “The human touch and simple lifestyle of a typical agricultural society are being replaced by materialism,” Chern says. “I guess this is something we can’t avoid. It’s part of the development process.”

Whether it is the national park or the sex industry that provides the lure, tourism has been growing fast. In 1993, the first year after the islands were opened up, there were about 100,000 tourists. The number increased to 300,000 in the following year, and rose to 600,000 in 1995. These tour­ists have not only helped fill the gap in the economy left by the departing military, but have also generated a new source of wealth for local people by providing them with an opportunity to sell their land to Taiwan investors. Statistics show that three years ago, Kinmen residents’ savings totaled US$407.5 million. By the end of 1995, that had risen to US$778 million. Building projects and the need for staff to manage the growing number of recreational facili­ties have created new jobs, thus helping stem the tide of émigrés. Before the islands were opened up, the local civilian popula­tion was some 42,000. By the end of 1995, 47,000 people were living there.

Another important benefit of opening Kinmen to the outside world has been an improvement in its educational resources. Originally, parents who wanted to educate their children beyond senior high school or vocational high school level had to send them to Taiwan, where they would com­pete for college places with the rest of the high school population. Nowadays, how­ever, local students have a much better chance of going on to higher education. The National Kaohsiung Institute of Technology (NKIT) and the privately funded Ming Chuan College have agreed to set up branches on Kinmen. These will have departments specifically targeted at local development, such as tourism, civil engineering, construction, and business administration. Since part of the student quota will be restricted to Kinmen resi­dents—the precise numbers are still under negotiation—Chern expects these facili­ties to help keep local students from mov­ing off the islands. Students will also come from Taiwan to take up the remaining places at these institutions, and their pres­ence should have a beneficial effect on the islands’ economy. NKIT hopes to open classes as early as September 1997.

While welcoming these changes, local residents recognize that there are still considerable difficulties to be overcome. Water and electricity are both in short sup­ply. Kinmen county uses 6.4 million tons of water annually, 3.4 tons from wells, and the rest from surface-water sources. This is enough to meet the needs of residents and the military population, but it cannot keep pace with the increasing number of tourists. The electricity situation isn’t much better. Kinmen’s five thermal plants barely generate enough power to meet current demand.

Building new facilities to solve these problems will take time and be expensive, because of natural limitations: Thin annual rainfall, coupled with the absence of any big rivers, will necessitate the construction of a desalinization plant, and power plants can only use light diesel fuel, which cre­ates less pollution but is costly. As regards water, the local government has come up with what it believes to be a more efficient and less expensive solution: buy from Mainland China. Chern has taken informal soundings among Kinmen’s residents, and also among the Mainland Chinese who live across the strait in Fujian province. According to him, both sides show real interest in pursuing this route. “Put politics aside and consider it from the commercial point of view,” Chern says. “If it’s cheaper and more practical, why not buy from them?” But Chern does not believe the ROC’s central government will allow him to do this, at least not until the present political tensions ease.

There are other, even more serious problems. Kinmen county is now largely expected to pay its own way. Who is going to fund the building of a new infrastruc­ture? The decrease in the military popula­tion means not only fewer consumers, but also an end to the practice of sharing con­struction costs with the army and having a free, public-works labor force on call. Money has become a major headache, especially in those areas that used to rely heavily on shared military resources.

Medicine is a good example. In the past, local people depended primarily on army doctors and hospitals. But nowadays, the much more limited military resources can no longer be stretched to cover civil­ians as well, and for serious diseases or injuries, Kinmen residents have to fly to Taiwan for treatment. Military medical supplies are provided according to the number of soldiers actually on the islands, so every syringe or pill allocated to civilian use means one less of each for the mili­tary. “It’s not fair to the men if we use their supplies for civilians, now that Kinmen is no longer under military administration,” one army medic says. “But it’s also wrong to turn down a civilian who comes to us for help. It’s one hell of a problem.”

And the central government has little time for Kinmen’s problems—except when elections are due. “We’ve stood guard over Taiwan for decades. We’ve also been left out of the country’s economic development for decades,” Chern says. “Now that we have a chance to develop, isn’t it time for Taiwan to give something back? The [central] government doesn’t seem to think so.”

Chern backs up his argument by pointing out that Kinmen’s per capita GNP is less than two-thirds that of Taiwan proper. He also draws a pointed compari­son with another offshore archipelago, the Pescadores. They get 95 percent of their annual budget from the Taiwan provincial government, which is responsible for those islands. But Kinmen receives only a mi­serly one-third subsidy from its parent authority, the ROC’s Fujian provincial government. The reason? The Taiwan provincial government is rich. The Fujian provincial government, on the other hand, receives little in the way of tax or other income, and is poor.

In the hope of jump-starting some much needed development, the county government has been seeking ways to beef up its income. One of the most profitable ventures is sale of Kinmen’s famous liquors, distilled from sorghum. In the past, alcohol—principally various grades of kaoliang—was the country govern­ment’s major source of wealth. With its 400 staff, the Kinmen distillery generates half of the county’s annual income. In fiscal year 1995, for example, Kinmen’s to­tal budget is US$115 million. Some US$39 million comes from central government funds, US$16 million from Kinmen coun­ty’s other sources of income, and US$60 million from alcohol sales. But under a deal struck long ago with the Taiwan pro­vincial government’s Tobacco and Wine Monopoly Bureau, all the liquor had to be distributed by the provincial government, and Kinmen was given no say in either price or profit margin. After Chern was elected, he managed to more than double liquor prices by threatening to revoke the distribution rights. “Our only goal is to make money for the county’s develop­ment,” he says. “You give me reasonable profits, I give you distribution rights. It’s as simple as that.”

As Kinmen’s first popularly elected magistrate, Chern knows he has the full support of the local populace. But he be­moans the fact that Kinmen was not given enough time to make all the adjustments that were necessitated by the decision to end military administration. People were not prepared for the sudden transition to a free and open society. The hardware wasn’t ready. What this means is that over the past three years, Chern has had to push on every front, and he likens the task still facing him to a hundred-meter sprint. “Considering Kinmen’s geographical position,” he says, “it’s possible that we’ll find ourselves in the van of the big push for the three direct links [with Mainland China: communica­tion, transportation, and commerce] or even the unification of Taiwan and the mainland. That could happen ten years from now, or next year. We want to be pre­pared. But with the time frame so uncer­tain, we’ll have to be quick on our feet.”

Lee Yang-sheng, of the national park, agrees that the development of Kinmen is a race against time—but he sees it as a long-distance race, rather than a sprint. "Run too fast, and you might trip yourself up," he says. "But if you run too slow, you'll be left behind for sure. The right pace at the right time—that's the key to winning."

This difference in approach between the two men highlights the uncertainty that shrouds Kinmen's future. The old scars are healing and, despite the difficulties, the islands have potential. What is needed is a clear identity, a sense of direction, and the political will to see things through. "Kinmen is no longer a war zone, but what is it?" Chern asks. "Are we going to be a big part of the push for three links, a special economic zone, a tourist island, a model society to show mainland China? We need the central government to tell us, and tell us now."