During that period it offered a haven to the many Fujianese who travelled, traded and settled abroad in defiance of their country’s closed – door policy (see p 58). Most of these were Hokkien-speaking emigrants from Quanzhou and Zhanzhou, with a smaller proportion of Hakkas (who became some 16 per cent of Taiwan’s population by the 1920s). Much of the island was too mountainous for easy settlement, but its extensive alluvial lowlands to the west and south proved a great draw to migrants prepared to brave the resistance of the aborigines to develop rice and cane sugar production for export to the mainland. Migration accelerated when the island came under the control of the anti- Qing forces of Zheng Chenggong (see p 49), for whom it served as a refuge. The island was named a full province in 1885, and ceded to japan by the terms – so disastrous for the defeated China – of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, 1895.