Why Taiwan Became Democratic in Later 20th Century - Essay Example

Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Class Name: Date Assignment is due: Why Taiwan became democratic in later 20th century In the past Taiwan used to go by the name Formosa, a term of Portuguese origin which means an island. Taiwan is an island which is found in East Asia, southeast of the mainland China. Since 1950, Taiwan has been referred to as ROC (Republic of China). It is separated by 160 km from Asian continent and it borders Japan’s main islands in the northeast, while in the south lies the Philippines’ island of Batanes. Taiwan lies in the Tropical of Cancer hence being covered by subtropical and tropical vegetation. From 1895 to 1945, Taiwan was under the rule of Japan’s emperor. After the first 1895 Japan and China war, Qing Empire under Shimonoseki treaty, gave it to Japan only for it to be freed from the Japanese rule back to the ROC after the Second World War. In 1949, ROC lost control of the mainland China after China civil war thereby being forced to resettle its government in Taiwan. When Japan renounced control claim of Taiwan, it did not categorically state whom Taiwan should be allocated. The Taiwan political status has been disputed since then as PRC’ (People’s Republic of China) claims that it succeeded the ROC hence Taiwan fall under its mandate. Since the end of the Second World War, Taiwan has dramatically risen to become an economic giant which is mentioned alongside the other four tigers of Asia. This industrial development has been labeled ‘Taiwan Miracle’ and World Bank and IMF have categorized her economy as a high income and advanced one respectively (Tien 16 ). Taiwan’s highly developed technology industry contributes in a big way to the world economy and she has being the leading producer of consumer electronics. There are many factors that contributed to Taiwan being left behind in opening up the democracy space. The main one is the fact that the autocratic rule that stifled the opposition by making sure that those who organized any form of opposition were dealt with in a ruthless manner like being incarcerated with trial and to some extent others were executed. Democratically, Taiwan took along time to come of age for the GMD (Guomindang) government made sure that national elections remained suspended, and genuine and organized political opposition were banned for forty years from 1948 (Ooi 57). Political opposition ignored the 1948 Temporary Provisions and thy formed DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) in 1986 (Tien 20).The party with the help of international pressure group played a major role in the development of democracy in the island. Another factor that contributed to democratization of Taiwan was the fact that her United Nation’s seat was taken way in 1971. The prestige that comes with such a responsibility in the United Nation was not forthcoming and it was a high time Taiwan put her house in order so as to reclaim her lost glory. There was no other better way of demonstrating that she was a changed nation other than putting measures to ensure that a majority rule through the popular vote was on track. For a very long time Taiwan had been living in perpetual fear that her neighbor mainland China world have attacked her any time. The military tension that used to exist between these two countries made it easy for the rules of Taiwan to make sure that any form of opposition was contained for if not checked it could have resulted to disunity in Taiwan something she did not like to have on the face of the eminent attack from mainland China. The Nationalist government always feared subversion and communist infiltration and it was in 1954 that Taiwan faced an armed invasion from mainland China. Four years later she was again attacked by Peking, which had vowed to ‘free’ Taiwan even if it was to be through military force (Ku 12). When the military tension between the two countries was reduced in late 70s, Taiwan’s siege mentality was gradually replaced by the need to legitimize electoral institutions. For a long time Taiwan behaved mainland China, she failed to recognize the need of having her citizens determine their political destiny, through the use of votes. The GMD leadership was not in a hurry to democratize Taiwan, for it saw that all was well with the system that it was using. Taiwan was developing at a higher rate and other nations respected her and this had encouraged the GMD regime to carry on with its mandate. But things started to change, when Taiwan noted that mainland China was giving her a run for her money in terms of economical development. So as to be more competitive than China, Taiwan opted to change tact by introducing democracy so as to attract the attention of the western countries who were her major trading partners. The international community was not very ken in doing business with a country, whose human rights and democratic records were questionable, and therefore for Taiwan to be seen on a different light, democratic space had to be expanded. In 1979, Taiwan had dealt with the opposition ruthlessly and the Gaoxiong episode left a sour taste to many western countries. Even the Taiwanese themselves were not happy, and this made them to increase pressure to the GMD regime, so as to bring the much needed liberalization. Taiwanese realized that their government was to no go and they resolved to fight for democracy come what may. They were encouraged by the Carter administration which applied the isolation policy where other countries kept away from any dealings with Taiwan. According to Ooi the deteriorating of ROC-US relationship made the GMD leadership to avoid dealing with the opposition in a manner to suggest that it never valued democracy and that is why, when the DPP was formed in 1986, there was no repeat of what had taken place in 1979 (59). GMD regime had not been able to resolve the question of Taiwan sovereignty which was contested at that time and up to now (Ooi 59). Therefore this situation acted as a catalyst in the delegitimation of GMD authoritarian regime for the people of Taiwan could not see the reason as to why the regime had not resolve the issue. GMD’s failure to tackle the sovereignty question for a long time made the Taiwanese to become angry and the boiling point of their anger reached in the 1986 and they demonstrated that they it was not business as usual with their government through the formation of the DPP. Failure to tackle Taiwan national sovereignty once and for all by the GMD regime, was its Achilles’ heel for it over depended on United States when it came to the question of military and politics. When it went to the bad books of the international community due it its poor records in rule of law, United States took advantage of the situation by threaten that it was to take away it military and political support and this pressure made the GMD leadership to come to realization that they had better style up or face the eminent danger of loosing the power to lead Taiwan. The study by Ooi has it that apart from the top down pressure there was also the bottom up pressure which was initiated by the Taiwanese young elites who started to question the political failures of the GMD leadership’s foreign policy of the 1970s (60). When Taiwan was isolated by the international community, social and political activists took that opportunity to attack the weakened GMD leadership. The opposition group of Taiwan had played an important part in the democratizing the country even long before the DPP was formed. Earlier on the GMD regime politically repressed the political opposition in such a way that the international community was not aware of. This was detrimental on the part of the opposition for it was made powerless and that is how the GMD leadership was able to quell any threat from the opposition. To make matters worse the opposition was cash strapped and so any advance of driving the reform agenda forward was highly unlikely. The GMD regime made sure that the opposition and the international community did not coalesce for it they did come together then the GMD government would have been exposed. This situation did not last long for the opposition went on to feed the international community with the information about Taiwan’s political situation and on the other hand the opposition received the much needed cash and other resources from the international community. The GMD leadership could not put out with the political price it would pay for the globally visible opposition repression. This situation, according to Ooi afforded the opposition an opportunity to flout the draconian provisos of martial rule thereby going on to form DPP (61). Frankly speaking, it was not easy for democracy to thrive in Taiwan considering the long duration that the martial law was exercised in the island starting form 1948 to 1987 (Ku 12, Copper 9). Under this period it was very hard to form political parties for the military made sure that no new parties came into existence. To complicate the matter the flow of information was curtailed for the Garrison Command of Taiwan, censored all the publications and no new newspapers were registered. In addition to these, for people to old a public gathering they had to seek permission from the government and this would have taken long to come forth due to the stringent measures that had to be fulfilled before one gets the permission. Ku observes that the process of obtaining permission was a discouraging from the word go, for one had to fulfill very many and unnecessary conditions so as to qualify to hold a public meeting and many a times very few people became lucky to be given the chance of organizing the meetings (12). The Taiwan nationalist government was against the formation of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) for they would have given people an excuse of meeting something that was abhorred by the GMD regime. Any one interested to form an NGO had to again face a myriad of conditions, for the government strictly limited the formation of the NGOs. Any person who was caught marching was put into prison, for the matches had been banned by the government. If workers of any company felt that they had been unfairly treated, they should have looked for other avenues of making their grievances known rather than through the use of strikes, which had been outlawed (Ku 12). Ku says that the GMD party was in control of National Assembly, Control Yuan and Legislative Yuan which made up the parliament (12). All normative change or reform was practically closed.. Martial law was put in place by the government so as to control the people on top of denying legitimacy any movement that posed risk to the absolute power of GMD regime (Copper 14). One aim of the Taiwan government was to open up the political space and attract the opposition but after a while suppress it. The idea was brought up by Jiang Jingguo introduced some changes in the system and the opposition was given room to operate so that the regime could absorb the increasing participation crisis. The GMD leadership claimed that the mainland was also under its control though only applied only on paper but the regime use that propaganda to show the Taiwanese that it had much control and power. GMD regime didn’t stop at that but went on to repeatedly say that sooner rather than later it would solve the sovereignty problem with the mainland China. This kind of propaganda worked to the GMD advantage and to make sure that it enjoyed total support, the regime made sure that the representatives of townships and provinces of mainland China sat in the Taiwan government and it was said the representatives were waiting for a time when the GMD regime would take over the mainland and hence they would be in a potion to recover their constituency in the mainland. This gave them the chance of holding power for life and from the general elections of 1947, Taiwan’s elective bodies happened to occupied by the aged people. So as to be guaranteed their power and authority, the people in leadership made sure they gave the government the total support of effectively destabilizing the opposition. Another factor that contributed to Taiwan taking long before democratizing was the fact that there were only two official minority parties, before the late 1970s; China Youth Party and Democratic Socialist Party. These opposition parties used to operate in unfavorable condition, for their leadership were in constant feud with the aged politicians, and to weaken these parties even more the government made sure that they received limited electoral and membership support. Even though the two parties had seats in Legislative Yuan and Control Yuan, the limited representation worked against them. The elections that were held in 1980 resulted to the two parties being severely defeated. In fact they got a combined vote of 1% and 1.3% for Legislative Yuan and National Assembly respectively. To make matters worse only a single nominee of the Democratic Socialist Party made it to the National Assembly (Tien 19). The only viable avenue of people expressing their dissatisfaction with the one party rule came in the form of a journal known as Free China Fortnightly, and the main contributors were prominent scholars like Lei Zhen. He was Jiang Jieshi’s former aide and also the editor of the journal, Yin Hakuang and Hu Shih (Copper 12). From 1949 the journal went on to become a prominent political reform’s platform, and expressed views which criticized anti-communist myth, martial law and the high corruption practiced by the GMD regime (Copper 14). When the three men and other mobilized other two minority parties into the formation of another new party, Taiwan leader Jiang Jieshi ordered the arrest of Fu Cheng Lei Zhen among others, and they were charged with treason and sedition, which made them to stay in prison for a long time. This took place in the early 60s and for a long time Taiwan went without an opposition leader who was worth his salt. In conclusion, due to the very many factors that played against the establishment of the political reforms from 1949 to 1986, Taiwan went on to become a democracy long after other neighboring nations had become full democracies. The internal and external pressure, made the GMD regime to give up its hard-line position of using martial law, and suffocating any form of opposition, through using state machinery. Not to mention how flow of information was closely monitored. Works Cited Copper, John F. ‘Ending martial law in Taiwan: implications and prospects’, Journal of Northeast Asian Studies, summer, 7.2 (1988): 3-19. Ku, Yen-lin. ‘The feminist movement in Taiwan, 1972-87’, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 20.1(1989):12-22. Ooi, Su-Mei. “The transnational protection regime and Taiwan's democratisation”. Journal of East Asian Studies, 9.1( 2009):57-85 Tien, Hung-mao. ‘Social change and political development in Taiwan’, in Feldman, Harvey; Michael Y.M. Kau and Kim, Ilpyong J. (ed.),. Taiwan in a time of transition, New York: Paragon House, 1988. p. 1-37. Tien, Hung-mao. ‘Taiwan's evolution toward democracy: a historical perspective’, in Simon, Denis Fred and Michael Y.M. Kau (ed.), Taiwan beyond the economic miracle, Armonk, N.Y. and London: M.E. Sharpe, 1992. Read More

Another factor that contributed to democratization of Taiwan was the fact that her United Nation’s seat was taken way in 1971. The prestige that comes with such a responsibility in the United Nation was not forthcoming and it was a high time Taiwan put her house in order so as to reclaim her lost glory. There was no other better way of demonstrating that she was a changed nation other than putting measures to ensure that a majority rule through the popular vote was on track. For a very long time Taiwan had been living in perpetual fear that her neighbor mainland China world have attacked her any time.

The military tension that used to exist between these two countries made it easy for the rules of Taiwan to make sure that any form of opposition was contained for if not checked it could have resulted to disunity in Taiwan something she did not like to have on the face of the eminent attack from mainland China. The Nationalist government always feared subversion and communist infiltration and it was in 1954 that Taiwan faced an armed invasion from mainland China. Four years later she was again attacked by Peking, which had vowed to ‘free’ Taiwan even if it was to be through military force (Ku 12).

When the military tension between the two countries was reduced in late 70s, Taiwan’s siege mentality was gradually replaced by the need to legitimize electoral institutions. For a long time Taiwan behaved mainland China, she failed to recognize the need of having her citizens determine their political destiny, through the use of votes. The GMD leadership was not in a hurry to democratize Taiwan, for it saw that all was well with the system that it was using. Taiwan was developing at a higher rate and other nations respected her and this had encouraged the GMD regime to carry on with its mandate.

But things started to change, when Taiwan noted that mainland China was giving her a run for her money in terms of economical development. So as to be more competitive than China, Taiwan opted to change tact by introducing democracy so as to attract the attention of the western countries who were her major trading partners. The international community was not very ken in doing business with a country, whose human rights and democratic records were questionable, and therefore for Taiwan to be seen on a different light, democratic space had to be expanded.

In 1979, Taiwan had dealt with the opposition ruthlessly and the Gaoxiong episode left a sour taste to many western countries. Even the Taiwanese themselves were not happy, and this made them to increase pressure to the GMD regime, so as to bring the much needed liberalization. Taiwanese realized that their government was to no go and they resolved to fight for democracy come what may. They were encouraged by the Carter administration which applied the isolation policy where other countries kept away from any dealings with Taiwan.

According to Ooi the deteriorating of ROC-US relationship made the GMD leadership to avoid dealing with the opposition in a manner to suggest that it never valued democracy and that is why, when the DPP was formed in 1986, there was no repeat of what had taken place in 1979 (59). GMD regime had not been able to resolve the question of Taiwan sovereignty which was contested at that time and up to now (Ooi 59). Therefore this situation acted as a catalyst in the delegitimation of GMD authoritarian regime for the people of Taiwan could not see the reason as to why the regime had not resolve the issue.

GMD’s failure to tackle the sovereignty question for a long time made the Taiwanese to become angry and the boiling point of their anger reached in the 1986 and they demonstrated that they it was not business as usual with their government through the formation of the DPP. Failure to tackle Taiwan national sovereignty once and for all by the GMD regime, was its Achilles’ heel for it over depended on United States when it came to the question of military and politics.

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