The Displacement and Relief of Chiang Kai-shek’s ‘Righteous Compatriots’ in the Global Cold War

Abstract During the First Taiwan Strait Crisis, Chiang Kai-shek ordered the evacuation of 18,000 local fishermen and their families from the Dachen and other offshore islands in Zhejiang Province. The resettlement to Taiwan was assisted by the US Seventh Fleet. In mainstream historiography, the evacuation is treated as an unimportant sideshow to the Strait Crisis. Little is known about the people who were displaced. This study explores the experiences of Dachen refugees using recently declassified archival documents and oral history. It argues that, despite the refugees being praised as model anti-communist citizens or ‘righteous compatriots’ by the Nationalists, the Nationalist–US resettlement programme in Taiwan failed miserably, due to its ‘wartime developmentalist logic’. The logic considered displaced people not as deprived human beings who needed assistance but as human resources to be utilized by the state for developing sparsely populated regions. This article also argues that the Dachen refugees were not just powerless victims of powerful nation-states. They were active agents in their own story, trying to make the best of difficult circumstances by constantly protesting and petitioning for better treatment. In doing so, they took advantage of their special status as Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s ‘righteous compatriots’.