Changing relations: China and Taiwan, 1931--1947

This dissertation examines the ways in which Taiwan and its relations with the nation of China were defined discursively and behaviorally across China's territorial acquisition of Taiwan of 1945. It employs Etienne Balibar's distinction between the "internal border"---the conceptual contour of a nation---and the "external border"---the territorial boundary of the land in which a nation inhabits---to study the demarcation of China as a nation and its relations with Taiwan.; This dissertation finds that the ways Taiwan was defined as outside China's internal border in both narratives and practice before 1945 or defined as inside China's internal border in narratives after 1942 were positively correlated to China's actual or projected external border. This process of changing definitions of Taiwan and its relations with China's internal border showed that the definition of China as a nation and the Taiwan-China relations were contingent upon what I call the "institutional conditioning" by China's external border.; Furthermore, this dissertation finds that in practice, the persistence of the pre-1942 internal border of China after 1945 prevented the hardening of a new postwar internal border that would define Taiwan as inside. The result was that the Taiwanese became treated as lesser national denied of right in legal and political affairs under the KMT rule and as the "internal other" inside China's external border but deprived of rights of nation. It showed that the "institutional conditioning" was highly effective in discursive realm, but in practice it was much less effective since the internal border of a nation was not necessarily defined in full congruence with the institutional boundary or the external border of a nation. Such constraint of the institutional boundary in defining national boundaries showed the limit of "institutional conditioning" in practice, or what I call the "institutional constraint". The "institutional constraint" of nation-formation created a significant disjuncture between narratives and practices that defined the Taiwan-China relations, perpetuated the ambivalence of Chinese nationalism, and eventually paved way for the February 28 Event in Taiwan in 1947 and the ensuing conflict between Taiwan and China that continued beyond 1947.