The Taiwanese Communist Party (; ) was a revolutionary organization active in Japanese-ruled Taiwan. Like the contemporary Taiwanese People's Party, its existence was short, only three years, but its politics and activities were influential in shaping Taiwan's anticolonial enterprise. Inception The party was officially formed on 15 April 1928 in the Shanghai French Concession. Its planning went back to as early as 1925, when Moscow-trained Taiwanese students began to contact likeminded individuals in China and Japan. By late 1927, the Comintern had instructed Japanese communists, who had been organized since 1922, to draft political and organizational charters () for a "Japanese Communist Party, Taiwanese National Branch". Following the draft, and Hsieh Hsueh-hung secretly met in Shanghai with seven others, three of whom represented the Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Communist Parties, respectively, to form the nascent organization. The TCP's first headquarters were located in the Shanghai French Concession. In 1931, the Comintern elevated the group's status from party branch to that of a full-fledged party, which was directly answerable to it. Organization and ideology The 1928 charter subjected the organization of the Taiwanese communists to the Japanese party. Politically, the party described the "Taiwanese nation" () as the descendants of Koxinga's army and later settlers from southeastern China. Both Koxinga and other Manchu rulers established a feudal system, which, in its view, began to disintegrate with the introduction of 19th-century Western capital into the island. The Republic of Formosa represented a revolutionary movement of feudal landowners, merchants and radical patriots, but it was doomed to failure given the immaturity of the native capitalist class. It saw Taiwan's capitalism to be utterly dependent upon its Japanese counterpart. The proletarian revolution would be driven by the contradiction between the dominant Japanese capital and the native (and poorly-developed) capital and rural feudalistic elements. The goal of the party was to unite the workers and the peasants. Toward that goal, the party would use the left-leaning Taiwanese Cultural Association as a platform and legal front, and expose the "lies" of the Taiwanese People's Party, which had been moving toward the left under Chiang Wei-shui's leadership. Although Japanese communists had been entrusted with the task of guiding the Taiwanese branch, massive repression in Japan proper, starting in 1928, left the Taiwanese adrift. Some leftist students were also forced to return to Taiwan. Leadership fell to Hsieh Hsueh-hung to reorganize in light of that development. Activities The