Taiwan–Vietnam relations

Dutch Formosa

Vietnamese slaves were taken by the Dutch East India Company to Taiwan when it was under Dutch rule, and the Dutch on Taiwan conducted trade with Vietnam. The Nguyễn lords-ruled Đàng Trong was known to the Dutch as Quinam.^[7] The Dutch had Pampang and Quinamese slaves on their colony in Taiwan, and in 1643 offered rewards to aboriginal allies who would recapture the slaves for them when they ran away.^[8] Eighteen Quinamese and Javanese slaves were involved in a Dutch attack against the Tammalaccouw aboriginals, along with 110 Chinese and 225 troops under Governor Traudenius on 11 January 1642.^[9] Seven Quinnamese and three Javanese were involved in a gold hunting expedition along with 200 Chinese and 218 troops under Serior Merchant Cornelis Caesar from November 1645 to January 1646.^[10] The Dutch sided with the Trịnh lords of Tonkin (North Vietnam) against the Nguyễn lords during the Trịnh–Nguyễn War and were therefore hostile to Quinam (South Vietnam).^[11]

Aftermath of World War II

Following World War II, under an Allied mandate, had 200,000 Chinese troops, led by General Lu Han, sent by Chiang Kai-shek to Indochina north of the 16th parallel to accept the surrender of Japanese occupying forces. The troops remained in Indochina until June 1946.^[12] The Chinese supported the Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng and Việt Nam Cách mệnh Đồng minh Hội to put pressure on the communist-led Việt Minh.^[13] Nevertheless, Chinese occupational forces allowed Ho Chi Minh's Democratic Republic of Vietnam (established in 1945) more influence than their British counterparts in the south.^[14] Chiang Kai-shek threatened the French with war to force them to negotiate with Ho Chi Minh. In February 1946, Chiang forced the French colonists to surrender all of their concessions in China and to renounce their extraterritorial privileges in exchange for withdrawing from northern Indochina and for allowing French troops to reoccupy the region.^{[15][16][17][18]} The Ho–Sainteny Agreement was signed to affirm these arrangements.

Relationship with South Vietnam

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South Vietnam–Taiwan relations

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The State of Vietnam and its successor, the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), had diplomatic relations with the Republic of China (which the regime was driven in 1949 to Taiwan, the island formerly under Japanese rule from 1895 to 1945) due to the two countries' common anti-communist policies.^[19] Ngo Dinh Diem's government established formal relations with the ROC in 1955. The relationship between the two governments was quite close, far better than the Republic of China's relations with other decolonized countries in southeast Asia; Taipei received more presidential visits from South Vietnam than it did from any other country in the region.^[20]

Students from South Vietnam studied in Taiwan, and Taipei provided material and logistical support to Saigon during the Vietnam War.^[21] The Republic of China sought to provide Southeast Asian countries with its own hard-earned and bitter expertise in anti-communist affairs, and South Vietnam was a major recipient of these lessons. ROC's ambassador to Saigon from 1964 until 1972 was Hu Lien, a ROC Army general with significant military experience during the Chinese Civil War.^[22] Taipei and Saigon were even sister cities.^[23] However relations were occasionally strained, especially over the issue of overseas Chinese in the country, many of whom held Republic of China nationality, estimated by Taipei at 1.2 million.^[24] Taipei was offended by Saigon's low estimates of their population, among other things.^[25] After an initial period of challenges, relations between the Republic of China and the Republic of Vietnam improved as both countries shared an anti-communist stance, fostering various educational and cultural exchanges centered on Confucian traditions, East Asian culture, and Mandarin language study.^[26]

Just before the fall of Saigon, President of the Republic of Vietnam Nguyen Van Thieu fled to Taipei, where his brother, Nguyen Van Kieu, was serving as ambassador.^[27] An aircraft of Air Vietnam, the South Vietnamese airline, was abandoned at Taipei Songshan Airport, and eventually became the property of a ROC-based airline.^[21]

Collapse and reopening of relations

After the collapse of its South Vietnamese ally, Taipei initially maintained a policy of zero contact with Vietnam, not even private trade and postal contact; furthermore followed by the 1987 Lieyu massacre with innocent Vietnamese refugees suffered. Furthermore, it was revealed that those Vietnamese boat people were overseas Chinese families. This left it ill-placed to take advantage of the rapid deterioration in relations between Hanoi and Beijing, even during the Sino-Vietnamese War and its aftermath. For its part, Vietnam, like other socialist states, expressed displeasure with Beijing in foreign relations by siding more closely with its rival in the Communist bloc, the Soviet Union; for a socialist country to have contact with capitalist Taiwan was unthinkable. However, in the late 1980s, as the Cold War thawed, contact between Hanoi and Taipei slowly resumed; indeed, observers saw this as one of the key events indicating the end of the Cold War in the region.^[28]

In 2015, Taiwanese legislator Chung Chia-pin of the Democratic Progressive Party, whose constituency in Pingtung is home to Vietnamese expatriates in Taiwan, founded a Taiwan-Vietnam parliamentary friendship association.^[29]