US-ROC Alliance Period

The US established a Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG, 美軍顧問團) in the Republic of China (ROC) in 1951. Military cooperation expanded following the Mutual Defense Treaty (中美共同防禦條約), signed in 1954 and entering into force the following year alongside the establishment of the United States Taiwan Defense Command (USTDC, 美軍協防臺灣司令部). Thousands of US service members were stationed in the ROC at any one time, and hundreds of thousands more passed through on rest-and-recreation leave from the Vietnam War.

Alongside the military presence, extensive economic aid flowed through the Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (JCRR, 農復會), the Mutual Security Agency and its successors, and eventually USAID, totalling roughly 1.5 billion USD between 1951 and 1965. These funds underwrote land reform, rural extension, and infrastructure projects like the Xiluo Bridge. Together with the security treaty, they also materially sustained the KMT’s authoritarian rule through the martial law era.

The official US presence in Taiwan formally ended with American recognition of the People’s Republic of China in 1979. The Mutual Defense Treaty was annulled and superseded by the Taiwan Relations Act (台灣關係法), which remains in effect today. Former US facilities were turned over to ROC equivalents, and many such as Dingyuan Radio Station have since been abandoned or demolished.