Politics of Battlefield Tourism in Kinmen, Taiwan

The island of Kinmen was a military stronghold of the Kuomintang’s Nationalist Army after its forces retreated from Mainland China (PRC) during the Civil War with the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Liberation Army in 1949.

Strategically located between Taiwan and PRC, Kinmen was intended to be the “stepping stone” for Chiang Kai-shek’s forces to “reclaim the mainland”. Failure of earlier attempts by the PRC to re-capture Kinmen, together with the American doctrine of containment in the theatre of Cold War geopolitics, secure the island’s status as Taiwan’s first line of defence.

After the abolition of martial law in 1992 and gradual de-militarisation of the island, tourism is regarded as critical to replace the economic void left behind by the garrison. Today, Kinmen is being developed into a tourist destination, attracting tourists from both Taiwan and PRC. Many defunct military installations and infrastructures are converted into tourist attractions. The battlefield landscape thus offers a fertile ground to study the political dimensions and multiple geographies of tourism.

In view of the still on-going conflict between PRC and Taiwan, it would be interesting to explore how macro and micro politics interact and interweave into Kinmen’s tourism fabric. Preliminary observation shows that both nationalist ideologies and post-war reconciliation mentality co-exist to form the geopolitical intricacies behind the presentation and re-presentation of historical events. Furthermore, tourists are also embodiments of political realities and their practices and behaviour shape tourism spaces too.

Indeed, if place is ‘order’ and space is ‘freedom’ (Yi-fu Tuan, 1970), other than merely a place that is imbued with ideals and ideologies, meanings and memories, Kinmen can also be a space that embraces freedom of thoughts and countless possibilities in terms of future directions in development.