When the Nationalists lost the civil war to the communists and, like the Ming loyalist Zheng Chenggong, retreated to the island to set up their Republic of China in exile, the political and social division between the Taiwanese and the newly arrived Chinese grew significantly larger. First, there were the sheer numbers: in just a few months during 1949 and 1950, two million mainland refugees fled to the island, which theretofore had a population of approximately six million.
Taipei
City of Displacements
page 10
by Joseph R. Allen
University of Washington Press
Seattle, Washington
2012