Becoming a civilian: Mainland Chinese soldiers/veterans and the state in Taiwan, 1949--2001

When the Nationalists (or KMT) were defeated by the Communists in the Chinese Civil War in 1949, they retreated to Taiwan, followed by more than half a million Mainland soldiers. Owing to the extension of the Civil War that overlapped with the Cold War, Mainland soldiers/veterans were forced to settle in Taiwan. This dissertation explicates how the KMT state made Mainland soldiers/veterans a group of "exploited honored citizens" to consolidate its rule in Taiwan, where the economy had to be reconstructed and the majority Taiwanese were new to the KMT. I argue that it was the contradictory status of Mainland soldiers/veterans in economic and symbolic realms (poor but honored) that forged a unique trajectory for their role in state building and socioeconomic stability in post-WW II Taiwan. Historical analysis, supplemented by ethnography, is the primary method employed in this dissertation. The historical materials include archives and primary/secondary sources.;The KMT's budget-consciousness in the administration and settlement of Mainland soldiers/veterans aimed at preventing the enterprise from extracting too much from the society; by so doing, the KMT secured the support of the Taiwanese. I demonstrate this by examining marriage restrictions in the military and the entrepreneurship and thriftiness of VACRS, the government institute in charge of demobilization. As a result, Mainland veterans who lacked kinship, social networks and a common dialect with most of the people became the most economically disadvantaged group in Taiwan. Nevertheless, their economic grievances did not grow into social turmoil because of their strong emotional and ideological ties with the KMT. Dubbed as rongmin (honored citizens), they were the exalted group in the symbolic realm of the imagined nation created by the KMT state to claim sovereignty over the lost Mainland.;While I draw from the deduced logics of comparisons of early Europe, Latin America and Sub-Sahara, I also expand the theoretical spectrum to better explain the case of Taiwan. The important and uncommon role that Mainland soldiers/veterans played in state building/consolidation provides a unique historical case that enriches current perspectives and comparative studies of the military and war in relation to state formation.