Going back in time - Taiwanese and Chinese history explored

Google has recently launched a new service that indexes archived news of the past 20 decades. This service allows easy searching of the Internet's news archive database, reading more about happenings in world's history.

News and history junkies take heart: Google's new News Archive Search lets you search back over twenty decades worth of historical content, including scads of articles not previously available via the search engine.

"The goal of this service is to allow people to search and explore how history unfolded," said Anurag Acharya, [...] "Much like news, we are grouping related articles together from a given time period" [...]

One of the most interesting features of the new service is how it automatically creates a timeline that shows how an event or topic played out over time. Clicking the "timeline" link reorders results in chronological order; you can then drill down to get content from specific dates simply by browsing. There's also an option to limit search results to a single day via the advanced search page, according to Acharya. (Searchenginewatch.com)

Let's see what this tool could give me about Taiwan. Opening Google news archive page, punching in "Taiwan", looking for news before 1995…  Here we go, Taiwan at the 1970s. First article highlighted in the 1970s - "TIME Magazine Archive Article — Cheers in Peking,Trauma in Taiwan …" (TIME Magazine - Time Inc. - Mar 13, 1972 ) over Richard Nixon's visit to China signing a communiqué referring to the "Taiwan question"  :

CHINA'S Premier Chou En-lai had hardly finished seeing off Richard Nixon at Shanghai airport, waving goodbye with evident weariness and perhaps relief, when he flew back to Peking. There, in pronounced contrast to the quiet scene that had greeted Nixon's arrival a week earlier, Chou received a hero's welcome of unprecedented proportions. As he stepped from his plane wearing a heavy blue overcoat against a biting winter wind, he was met by the entire top echelon of his government, delegations of students, workers and soldiers, and some 5,000 "spectators" who waved bouquets and shouted slogans hailing "Chairman Mao's revolutionary diplomatic line."

Just to make sure that not much has changed in the past 30 years, the next article highlighted is "Taiwan: Shock and Fury" (TIME Magazine - Time Inc. - Dec 25, 1978)

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Before the 1970s? let's go back to the 1940s, with the big battle between KMT and the communists, Mao vs. CKS.  "So Cold" (TIME Magazine - Time Inc. - Dec 27, 1948) :

Barring miracles, Chiang Kai-shek was beaten. Most (if not all) of China would soon be added to the eleven countries or parts of countries run by the Communists. Control of all China, together with the areas he already held, would place 40% of the world's population in Stalin's grasp.

Last week Chiang still held (nominally) far more territory than he had in the worst years of the Japanese war. Then, however, most Chinese wanted him to keep on resisting the enemy. Now, it seemed, most Chinese wanted him to quit.

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Not going far enough? Since I'm now reading "Mao – the unknown story", then how about Mao in the 1930s? Here's the "Chinese Reds" (TIME Magazine - Time Inc. - Jan 10, 1938) :

But the Red leader who made the greatest impression on Snow was 44-year- old Mao Tse-tung, "Lincolnesque" Chairman of the Chinese People's Soviet Government, a peasant who turned classical scholar, organized the Communist Party in China, and became as well-known to Chinese as Chiang Kai-shek when Chiang Kai-shek put a price of $250,000 on his head.

History is a fascinating subject, don't you think?

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(All quotes are from Time magazine, though other resources and abstracts are available)

 
tags: archived_news, China, google, new_service, Taiwan