2031

The War of Independence and its consequences have affected every facet of life on Taiwan. Over the course of the two year war, almost 100,000 Taiwanese citizens--over half of them noncombatants--lost their lives, amounting to almost 0.5% of the island's entire population. Hundreds of thousands more were injured. There is not a single person on Taiwan who does not know someone who died in the war. A family member. A coworker. A classmate. A neighbor. A student.

But the devastation of the war extends far beyond the dead and wounded. Concerted bombing campaigns by the People’s Liberation Army destroyed city blocks in some of Taiwan’s largest metropolitan areas. Changhua County, the location of the heaviest fighting on the main island, was almost fully militarized at the end of the war, with most of its 1.3 million inhabitants fleeing eastwards to escape the fighting, only to be replaced by hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese soldiers swarming the single Chinese beachhead. In Taipei, almost a third of the city’s buildings have sustained some sort of structural damage from Chinese bombing. Those that remain are often without power, without consistent water, and without residents, as more and more people fled south and east to the country’s greener pastures. Throughout the country, highways are lined on either side by hundreds of abandoned civilian vehicles, pushed aside by military engineers to clear the thoroughfare after they had been stranded on bombed-out stretches of highway, destroyed by an overzealous Chinese drone operator, or simply left behind when they ran out of fuel.

Taiwan is free, but badly damaged. Rebuilding the country is a monumental task--one that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Healing the wounds of the war will take years of hard work and perseverance. The scars may never leave.

To organize the rebuilding of the country, the Legislative Yuan has signed off on the creation of a new government agency, to exist for the next three years (2031-2034) the Taiwan Reconstruction Authority. The TRA occupies a unique station in the current executive structure of the Republic of Taiwan; it reports directly to the President and attends cabinet meetings, as though it were its own government ministry, but it is not really a cabinet ministry. Instead, it occupies a space between the Presidency and the Ministries, where it will operate with the full authority of the President and the Executive Yuan on matters pertaining to the reconstruction of Taiwan--second only to the President herself. The TRA has been provided a great slew of special powers to enable it to perform this task, including the ability to subpoena experts and government employees to testify before the body, to issue final judgements on competing claims of jurisdiction and competency between government ministries (meaning that if the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Transportation cannot agree who is responsible for a given project, the TRA can resolve the dispute and assign the work to one or the other), to, in cooperation with the Central Bank, issue bonds and assume debt, and to issue orders to military personnel engaged in rebuilding or relief efforts.

Below is an outline of the conditions in some of the worst-affected areas of the country, as well as initiatives by the TRA and other entities to address them.

The Outlying Islands

Nowhere is the devastation of the war more acutely felt than in the Kinmen and Matsu Islands. Stationed well within the range of artillery based on the Mainland, these islands were subjected to horrific bombing campaigns for the war's entire duration.

In both counties, casualties have been catastrophic. Of Kinmen County's roughly 140,000 residents in 2027, over 17,000 were wounded, with a further 22,000 wounded. Those 100,000 that survived the war unscathed did so hidden away in the vast tunnel complexes and bomb shelters dug throughout the island. For many, the end of the war in 2030 marked the first time they had seen the surface in almost three years. The island they found when they surfaced, home to many of them for generations, was entirely alien: the PLA had been given orders to "return the island to the Stone Age," and by God, they had. Almost 99 percent of the buildings on the island had been damaged in some capacity--over three quarters of them reduced to rubble.

The scale of the devastation in the Matsu Islands is scarcely comprehensible. When the Matsu Islands finally fell in 2029, their residents were put to the sword, executed en masse by the PLA as retribution for the garrison's attacks on Fuzhou, but the invaders would find few civilians left to murder: most had died well in advance of the landings, either as a direct result of Chinese bombings, or from wounds sustained from the bombings that could not be adequately treated by the island's sparse medical infrastructure. Of their roughly 13,000 residents in 2027, only 2000 survived the war--mostly military-aged men and women who had been on deployment elsewhere in Taiwan when the fighting started and those wealthy and paranoid enough to leave the island when Chinese drills started in the lead-up to the war. The rest, almost 85 percent of the county's population, or 95 percent of the people present on the island when hostilities began, were murdered, their remains shoveled unceremoniously into mass graves when the few graveyards scattered across the islands quickly overfilled.

The scars of the war run deep, shifting the psyche of the island's inhabitants. Historically, Kinmen and Lienchiang Counties were the places in Taiwan most similar to the Mainland. Simplified Chinese was common, given the islands' reliance on tourists from the Mainland, and residents frequently relied on goods from the Mainland rather than goods from Taiwan, since China's proximity drew down prices. This translated to staunch opposition to Taiwanese independence: support for the KMT was so strong in Kinmen and Lienchiang that the DPP didn't even bother to run candidates. The war changed that: in the elections immediately following the war, voters in both counties fled from the KMT in droves, delivering victory to the upstart Taiwan People's Party in a close contest over the DPP. If you have to find the strongest supporters of independence and Taiwanese nationalism today, your best bet is in Kinmen and Matsu.

With the war over, the government’s primary concern is providing immediate aid to the civilians still residing on those islands, as well as relieving those army units currently stationed there. Using the agreed-upon transit corridors in the Treaty of Singapore, the Armed Forces will relieve the approximately 7000 military personnel (of the 25,000 originally stationed) on Kinmen and whatever scant survivors remain in Lienchiang County over the course of two weeks, transferring them back to the main island for well-earned rest and recuperation (for volunteers who still have time left on their service terms) or discharge (for conscripts whose terms of service ended during the war, but who were just shuffled to the reserves instead--and with the reserves fully mobilized, there was basically no difference between the two). They will be replaced on Kinmen by a new 25,000 man garrison, in Lienchiang by a new 10,000 man garrison, and on Wuqiu by a new 600 man garrison, equipped in compliance with the Treaty of Singapore, whose primary responsibility is to assist in rebuilding the islands [S] and their underground military tunnel networks [/S]. Among the garrisons on both islands is an oversized detachment of combat engineers and explosive ordnance disposal technicians, whose primary mission is to identify and dispose of any unexploded ordnance fired by the PLA. Given the length and severity of the bombardment, this is expected to be a daunting task, but is of great necessity if the island is ever to return to some sort of normalcy.

For the civilian population, the Taiwanese government has agreed to cooperate with non-government humanitarian organizations like Red Cross Society of Taiwan (which was only just recently fully admitted to the International Committee of the Red Cross, upon Taiwan’s independence and the corresponding name change) and Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation to establish temporary residential facilities (read: refugee camps) for civilians wishing to remain on the island. For those unable to remain on the island for any reason, such as medical concerns (due to the constant bombardment, the medical infrastructure in Kinmen and Liancheng Counties is nonexistent, meaning that anyone needing any sort of acute treatment or long-term care needs to move elsewhere), or for those who wish simply wish to relocate to somewhere else in Taiwan, transportation will be provided to temporary residential facilities on the main island. Most Kinmeners are expected to take this opportunity and relocate to camps in southern or eastern Taiwan--at least temporarily. Of course, those who wish to leave the country are permitted to do so--Taiwan is a free country, after all--but the cold reality is that most of the people on these islands who survived lost everything, and have little, if any, savings with which to start a new life somewhere else.

Unlike in other areas of Taiwan, where homes and businesses are mostly still intact (but in dire need of repairs and renovations), there are effectively none left on the outlying islands. Without homes for people to live in and businesses for people to work at, it is near impossible to envision any economic recovery on the island. To help assist in the reconstruction, the TRA has authorized the issuance of ultra low interest, long-term mortgage and small business loans to people residing in Kinmen and Lienchiang counties during the war, as well as flat cash transfers worth thousands of dollars--making the two counties easily the largest recipients of government aid dollars per capita, which has been met with some backlash in hard-hit communities in northern Taiwan. Residents of the islands have also been guaranteed employment in the reconstruction effort if they desire it, though the small remaining labor supply on the island and the advancing age of Taiwanese society means that outside labor will still be required.

Government efforts for the time being are directed into three primary outlets: ensuring that those residents that chose to remain in Kinmen and Lienchiang have domiciles to return to; ensuring that they have access to employment opportunities that are not entirely dependent on the government; and rebuilding the infrastructure necessary for modern life (water treatment, power plants, focusing on the urban and coastal areas before moving inland.

Less related to the actual economic recovery of the region, the TRA has also begun efforts to exhume, identify, and rebury the bodies of those in the mass graves of Lienchiang and and Kinmen counties, as well as those who died buried beneath rubble or trapped inside of military tunnels of bomb shelters. The work is expected to be slow going--tens of thousands of bodies will need to be exhumed, compared against Taiwanese and Chinese records, and then reburied (likely on the main island due to space concerns). Those who cannot be identified for whatever reason will be reburied in the newly-built Cemetery of the Unknown Martyrs, a national cemetery in central Taiwan [M] which will be described in a later post [/M].

The Taipei Metropolitan Area

Located at the northern edge of the main island, the Greater Taipei Area has been the hub of the island’s economic and political life for decades. Encompassing an area just under 1000 square miles, the Greater Taipei Area nevertheless is home to over one-third of Taiwan’s population--a stunning seven million people. It is easily the wealthiest region in the country, with a GDP per capita greater than anywhere other than nearby Hsinchu City, the seat of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry.

It is also the city on the main island most devastated by the war. From the earliest days of the war, Taipei was a military target, with H-20 bombers demolishing the Ministry of Defense and other key strategic and governmental buildings throughout the city, but that devastation was a shadow of what was to come.

After Major Hsieh’s illegal and insubordinate attack against Fuzhou, the PLAAF launched a similarly illegal attack against the city of Taipei, including dozens of bombers and hundreds of thousands of tons of ordnance. While the brave pilots of the ROCAF were able to ward off the bombers before they could drop all of their ordnance, and the city received enough advance warning for its remaining residents to take shelter underground, the damage to the city was still massive. Over 23,000 civilians lost their lives in the bombings, with another 30,000 wounded. Emergency services, even supplemented as they were by military responders, were overwhelmed for the next two weeks, digging survivors and casualties alike out of mountains of rubble.

When the dust finally settled, and a full accounting of the damage was done, it proved staggering. While far from the terror strategic bombings employed by the Allies during World War II, both in terms of ordnance dropped and the scale of destruction, the total devastation was perhaps the worst seen since then: almost one-third of the city’s buildings had sustained structural damage of some sort. 15 percent had been outright destroyed or rendered unfit for human habitation (requiring future demolition). The damage was the worst in downtown Taipei, where the bombing had been concentrated; almost everything within a two-block radius of Taipei 101 had been demolished when the upper half of the tower collapsed.

Though the actual loss of life in the bombing of Taipei was blessedly low, it nevertheless resulted in a massive humanitarian crisis. Fearful of future Chinese bombing attacks against the city, millions of residents fled south and east with whatever they could carry, ending up in temporary residential facilities in those counties. With the war over, the TRA is now left with the difficult task of returning those residents to Taipei, or otherwise locating adequate housing and employment opportunities for them in their new communities.

With the assistance of military units and international humanitarian aid organizations, the TRA’s primary goal is to perform a full analysis of the building stock within the Greater Taipei Area, officially assessing the damage to each and every building in areas hit by ordnance. Buildings that are located in areas that were not bombed will immediately be cleared, with their owners (and it is mostly owners: 85% of Taiwanese households own their place of residence) provided relocation assistance to help them return home--though in some areas, they may be without full utility service for a period of time.

In areas that were hit, buildings will be classified into four different categories based on the amount of damage sustained, Groups A, B, C, and D.

Group A buildings are those buildings that sustained damage during the war, but are still fit for human habitation. Maybe they had some windows blown out, or the facade of the building was damage, but they’re still functional as domiciles. By and large, owners and residents of these buildings will be provided no special relocation assistance--the military will transport them from their temporary housing facility to the building, and they are still entitled to general government assistance (including general programs made for the war), but they won’t be receiving massive cash transfers or anything. These people should count themselves lucky.

Group B buildings are those buildings that are not currently fit for human habitation, but can be made habitable again with “some effort”--they don’t require major retrofits or massive reconstruction efforts, but do need some work done to restore their utilities, remove rubble, and ensure things are generally up to code. Or maybe the building is fine, but it’s a residential building in a neighborhood where all of the nearest grocery stores are worse off. In the early days of reconstruction, a great deal of effort will be put towards making these buildings habitable again--the idea being that the sooner these buildings can be made habitable, the sooner their residents can be moved out of temporary housing (and, more importantly, the sooner the government and aid organizations can stop subsidizing their cost of living!).

Group C buildings are those buildings that sustained heavy damage during the bombings, and will require extensive repairs and renovations in order to be made habitable. Many buildings in downtown Taipei are classified in Group C: they haven’t completely collapsed, but damage to their foundations or nearby buildings have made them unstable enough that they are too dangerous to inhabit without significant repair efforts. The government will work with the owners of Group C buildings to ensure they are repaired in a timely manner, providing a mixture of low-interest loans and government grants to finance portions of the reconstruction efforts. However, the government also reserves the right to assume ownership of Group C buildings and the land they are built on in the event that the owner does not make the necessary progress towards the repair of the building--so you can’t have your unsafe building sit in downtown Taipei for the next several years without doing anything about it, for example.

Group D buildings are the worst-hit. They range from buildings that have been completely and utterly destroyed by bombing attacks (literally just piles of rubble on the ground) to those that are still technically standing, but would cost more to repair and reinhabit than they would to demolish and rebuild. For residential units in Group D, the government has agreed to provide low-interest loans to finance the reconstruction of the units.

Changhua County

Though Changhua County is the only part of the main island where actual fighting happened (that is, where ground forces fought against other ground forces), it is, ironically, one of the best places where it could have happened, from the government’s perspective. Changhua County is sparsely populated as a whole, having only 1.3 million residents. The actual landing site of the PLA, the rural township of Fangyuan Township, is even more sparsely populated, with only ~35,000 residents.

These factors combined ensured that the actual damage to buildings in Changhua County was relatively low--at least, lower than it was in Taipei or Kinmen. However, the county is far from untouched. Most of its 1.3 million residents were forced to flee the fighting, and now reside in temporary residential facilities elsewhere in the country. Most buildings in the county, outside of the cities in the north of the county, were also occupied by soldiers on one side or the other during the course of the war, who were desperate for any sort of cover in the vast, open farmland that comprises most of the county. Changhua City and Taichung City were also subjected to some terror bombing by the PLA towards the end of the war, but these attacks were mostly from artillery pieces on the beachhead, meaning they had much lower explosive yields than the bombs dropped on Taipei (compare an artillery shell to a 2000 pound bomb, and you’ll see). Moreover, firing at civilian targets meant they had less ammo to fire at military targets, speeding up the final defeat of the PLA beachhead and preventing further casualties and damage.

Rather than damaged buildings, the primary issue in Changhua County is one of unexploded ordnance. Between drone strikes, artillery fire, close air support, and tank battles, it is estimated that there are tens of thousands of tons of unexploded ordnance buried in the fields of Changhua County, posing a massive threat to the lives and livelihoods of local farmers desperate to return to their fields. To help clear this issue, the Army has deployed numerous units of combat engineers to Changhua County, who have been tasked with removing the ordinance.

The Rest of the Country

Oftentimes, a tragedy in one place is a boon in another. So too is it in post-war Taiwan. While the north of the country has been devastated by the war, the south and east of the main island and the entirety of Penghu County have been largely untouched, other than some small attacks against SAM installations, power infrastructure, etc--which are nothing compared to the terror bombing campaigns launched elsewhere in the country. The TRA”s efforts in these counties are largely contained to assisting local governments and utilities companies restore service, and providing humanitarian aid to residents in the meantime.

The greatest impact of the war in these southern and eastern counties is the massive influx of refugees from the north of the country, with millions residing in temporary residential facilities on the outskirts of cities like Kaohsiung, Tainan, Hualien, and Taitung. With the war over, these facilities are expected to see a massive decrease in occupants soon, with most residents able to relocate to their homes within a year of the war’s end. However, it is expected that many of these residents will choose to stay in the south and east of the country long-term, buying houses, finding jobs, and otherwise integrating themselves into the communities of the south. They bring with them valuable skills, expertise, and connections from the north (which has long been the more prosperous part of the country), which the government expects they will use to help build new businesses and build up new economic sectors in the south. Housing sales in Kaohsiung are already far above their pre-war levels, indicating that there may be some truth to this prediction, but ultimately, only time will tell.