There were left-leaning political parties for Taiwan independence, such as the Taiwanese Communist Party during the period of Taiwan under Japanese rule. The Taiwan independence movement under Japan was supported by Mao Zedong in the 1930s as a means of freeing Taiwan from Japanese rule,[6] but he changed this position only after the Nationalists started claiming Taiwan with the Cairo Declaration.
Taiwan under Republic of China rule
Taiwan independence activists and leftists have been the main victims of "white terror" by the Kuomintang-led ROC government in the past.[7]
The Democratic Progressive Party was left-wing in its early days, but it turned to a moderate Taiwanese nationalist party; The DPP does not support strict left-wing views on labor issues, and supports Huadu rather than Taiwanese independence.[1][8][9]
Opposition among the Left
While the majority of the Taiwanese left supports an independent, democratic Taiwan and is opposed to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), some Taiwanese leftists view the cross-strait relationship through a lens of historical Chinese nationalism and opposition to Western imperialism, often aligning with the People's Republic of China's (PRC) narrative of national unification. They argue that the PRC's push for unification is an anti-imperialist struggle for national sovereignty and that the current Taiwanese government is a client regime of the United States. They often criticize the dominant pro-independence left for adopting what they see as a Western-friendly, anti-communist stance and often acting recklessly and provocatively. This perspective is often found in specific academic or activist circles and publications, such as articles from the Monthly Review or the Qiao Collective.[10][11]
Media
The New Bloom Magazine is an online publication and activist collective based in Taipei that provides a progressive perspectives on Taiwanese and Asia-Pacific politics and culture and on the independence movement. It was founded in 2014 by activists from the Sunflower Student Movement.[12]
12"Viewing Taiwan From the Left". Jacobin magazine. 10 January 2020. Archived from the original on 26 December 2020. Retrieved 6 May 2020. Broadly speaking, the political left has been pro-independence; their notion of independence was historically shaped, particularly in the postwar period, by the wave of anticolonial uprisings across the world, as well as elements of Leninist conceptions of self-determination. ... and the DPP and other more pro-independence Taiwanese political parties bank on US imperialism as a way to ward off China.
12Mei-ling T. Wang (1999). The Dust that Never Settles; The Taiwan Independence Campaign and U.S.-China Relations. University Press of America. p.256. ... the "Taiwan Revolutionary Party" that openly advocated a Marxist and Leninist approach to independence.
