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China's Transition, by Andrew J. Nathan
written with Helena V.S. Ho
In March 1986 President Chiang Ching-kuo launched a dramatic political reform which marked a shift from gradual liberalization under a regime of "soft authoritarianism" to the beginning of what seems to be a process of democratic transition. 1 Within four years this process had achieved or facilitated, among other things, the lifting of martial law, the legalization of opposition parties, a smooth constitutional transition of political power after Chiang's death, a marked freeing up of the print media, and the invigoration of the electoral arena--all substantial moves in the direction of democracy.
This chapter seeks to analyze Chiang Ching-kuo's motives for launching the reform at the time that he did, in the context of the theory of democratic transitions. The focus on Chiang is appropriate because the available evidence (some of it reviewed in the section on "party renewal" below) supports the conventional wisdom that the reform decision was Chiang's and Chiang's alone. This does not gainsay the fact that he took the decision in response to conditions at home and abroad; it is these conditions and his response to them that this chapter seeks to analyze. But it is easier to identify these surrounding conditions than to figure out what Chiang made of them. To the limited extent that we can clarify Chiang's calculations and motives, our findings will be of historical and biographical interest, enriching our understanding of the political goals and style of this little-known and elusive political leader, and to some extent helping us decipher his vision for Taiwan's future.
In addition, such an investigation has a contribution to make to theory. A reform leader's motives are only part of the total story of a political reform, but they are an important part of it from the perspective of the transitions literature, which tends to focus on elite motives and strategies. 2 We will argue that Taiwan's experience, like Spain's in the 1970s, fits into Alfred Stepan's "Path 4a" ("redemocratization initiated by the civilian or civilianized political leadership"), but that it also differs from Spain's in some interesting respects. Comparing this case to the model and to the similar case should help clarify both the Taiwan case and the theory.
The dating of the reforms from March 1986 refers to the meeting that month of the Third Plenum of the KMT's 12th Central Committee. Chiang, as party chairman, called on the delegates to make stepped-up progress toward the party's long-standing goal of constitutional democracy. Not much was accomplished on this task at the session, so in early April Chiang appointed a twelve-man task force, which he charged with framing reform proposals to solve four specific issues: how to lift the ban on formation of new parties, how to lift martial law, how to revise the Taiwan Provincial Government Organization Law, and how to reform the Legislative Yuan and National Assembly. 3 The task force made its first report in June. In October, the President informed Katharine Graham of the Washington Post of his intention to lift the martial law decree and legalize opposition parties. Formal lifting of the martial law decree occurred in July 1987, followed by other reform measures. Meanwhile, in September 1986 the opposition had already formally established its own political party, which the regime tolerated even though it was at first still illegal. 4
This chapter will not seek to analyze President Chiang's choice of reform tasks, because there was little ambiguity or controversy over what the initial steps of reform would involve when and if they were taken. Taiwan was ruled under a constitution promulgated in mainland China in 1947, modified by "Temporary Provisions" that had come into effect on that island in 1948 and under which various martial law provisions were enacted. Given the commitment of the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) since its founding to "constitutional government and democracy," the initial agenda for political reform inevitably involved lifting the martial law decree and moving toward fuller implementation of the constitution. 5 Given the rapid rate at which old mainland-elected members of the national representative bodies were dying off, "renewal" of these bodies was inescapably high on the agenda. And given the opposition's insistent and widely supported demand for more press freedom and more electoral competition, so too was removal of the bans on newspapers and new political parties. There was room for disagreement about the details of these steps and what would follow them, but most of these issues did not come up for decision until after Chiang Ching-kuo's death in January 1988.
Nor do we attempt to analyze the conditioning factors making this democratic transition possible. They have been elucidated by Tun-jen Cheng, among others. First, Taiwan had reached a socioeconomic level that fulfilled the precondition for democracy; e.g., high per-capita income, relatively equitable income distribution, high educational levels, and a high proportion of citizens identifying themselves as members of the middle class. Second, specific features of Taiwan's class structure helped make democratization easier: the lack of landlords and big capitalists and the cross-cutting nature of political and economic cleavages. Third, the regime's constitutionalist and prodemocratic ideology, strong liberal-technocrat faction, deep roots in society, and substantial legitimacy and organizational strength facilitated reform. Fourth, Cheng emphasizes the importance of elections and the pressure from a maturing opposition in encouraging the KMT to reform.
But, as Cheng points out, "the actual decisionmaking process of the democratic breakthrough in 1986 is yet to be studied." 6 This is the focus of our analysis. We cannot weigh the relative importance of the leader's decisions as against the permissive conditions, because such an evaluation, if it is possible at all, would require a broader study. We assume that socioeconomic conditions and leadership factors are both important in some way. Even if conditions are the more important of the two in determining whether a democratic transition will take place, political leadership is crucial in influencing the timing of the transition, its smoothness, the order in which transition measures are taken, and the type of institutional structure toward which the reform at least initially moves. In the case of Taiwan, socioeconomic conditions for democratization had been ripe for at least ten or fifteen years, and the domestic opposition and foreign critics had been pressing for change for an equal length of time, before Chiang Ching-kuo made his decision to allow the process to move forward.
It turns out that the question of why the leader acted when and as he did is hard to answer in Taiwan's case; this is probably why it remains the least studied aspect of the story. CCK (as he was often called) cultivated a populist image, but he kept his personality and his motivations to himself. The Asian Wall Street Journal reported in November 1987, "The reason for the democratic turn is a mystery. . . . Mr. Chiang is in no hurry to shed light on these events. He hasn't written about his life and has declined to cooperate with biographers. In answering written questions submitted by the Asian Journal, he ignored an invitation to talk about himself. . . ." 7 Chiang's public statements were usually couched in a hackneyed Confucian phraseology which--however sincerely he meant it, and we will argue that he probably did--tended to deter analysis. He listened to many different opinions, but even his close subordinates apparently did not know how he put the information together. Since he encouraged his aides to imitate his reticence in speaking both about him and about their roles with him, 8 even after his death those around him revealed relatively little about his thinking during the time the reform decision was made. As Tillman Durdin had written earlier, "The cult of concealment that surrounds the personal life of this shy and wary man . . . make[s] him something of an unknown quantity to the world at large." 9
We have scrutinized each factor that appears likely to have influenced his reform decision, examined how this influence might have worked, and marshalled whatever evidence is available to help clarify whether this factor really did play a role in his thinking. For ease of exposition we have ordered the factors roughly in narrowing concentric circles around Chiang, looking first at two international factors, then at two in the sphere of Taiwan, and finally at two pertaining to Chiang himself. In each case, we examine how the factor in question may have appeared to Chiang and may have influenced his decision. The ordering is meant to imply nothing about the relative importance of the factors, since we have no way to measure this.
Although the result of this analysis is inconclusive, we hope it gives a relatively plausible reconstruction of Chiang's motives and sharpens issues for further research, which might be conducted if more presidential papers become available or if further interviews can be carried out with President Chiang's colleagues and subordinates.
International Pressure
Martial law had long been an embarrassment to Taiwan in its international relations. For example, in a 1983 interview with Der Spiegel , President Chiang confronted a number of sharp questions. He was told, "Never before in modern history has there been a country as long under martial law as Taiwan." The interviewers asked when martial law would be lifted, and also "Why is Taiwan so slow in democratization?" The President's answers showed that he did not find it easy to answer such questions. As to martial law, he confessed, "This is indeed a dilemma," then stated both that martial law was needed to defend Taiwan from the communists and that its effect was extremely slight. On democracy, he argued that Taiwan was already quite democratic without an opposition party, but also acknowledged that "No political party can maintain its advantage forever if it does not reflect the public opinion and meet the people's demand." 10
According to CCK's long-term chief secretary, Wang Chia-hua, Chiang, even before becoming president, was frequently embarrassed in this way. When foreign visitors asked him, as Taiwan's premier, why Taiwan still had martial law, he had to answer that Taiwan really didn't have martial law because there was no curfew and no troops were in the streets. Chiang more than once asked Wang to read him the emergency decree (chieh-yen ling ) and explain whether, if the decree were lifted, the legal basis would still exist to reimpose it if needed. "So I think," Wang stated, "that the President's first priority was to lift the state of emergency so long as the premise could be assured that no damage would be done to national security." 11
Wang's reminiscences accord with the account of Ma Ying-jeou, Chiang's English-language secretary during the years in question. Although Ma judged that the pressure of international public opinion was not the main factor in the reform decision, he recalled that as early as 1984 CCK asked him to gather materials on how Westerners understood Taiwan's chieh-yen . 12
The issue of martial law was particularly galling in Taiwan's relations with its intrusive and self-righteous ally, the United States, especially after the murder of writer Henry Liu in California in 1984 by gangsters hired by Taiwan's military intelligence authorities. The Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA), an organization of Taiwan-born U.S. residents and citizens, became highly effective as a political lobby after its founding in 1982, and gained several important congressional allies including senators Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and representatives Jim Leach (R-Iowa) and Stephen Solarz (D-N.Y.).
Also setting the scene for CCK's reform decision was the wave of democratic transitions which started in Southern Europe and Latin America in the mid-1970s and spread to South Korea and the Philippines in the 1980s. After the fall of Marcos, the opposition in Taiwan raised the slogan, "Why is it that the Philippines can, and Taiwan can't?" However, we have not found any evidence about what CCK specifically thought of these events.
The PRC Factor
The rival regime across the Taiwan Strait presented a growing threat to Chiang's regime in several ways, and political reform can be understood partly as a response to each of them.
First, the perceived PRC threat to Taiwan's security was increased by the breaking of U.S.-ROC relations by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. As CCK told a German reporter, "President Carter has repeatedly emphasized that the establishment of U.S.-communist bandit relations will not create any threat to our people's prosperity, security, or welfare. But if we look at Carter's public statements on the 'normalization' of relations with the Chinese communists, the U.S. has no clear arrangements for guaranteeing the security of the Taiwan area after the establishment of U.S.-bandit relations; they just proceed on the basis of the American hypothetical judgment that the bandits 'have no intention' and 'have no capability' to invade Taiwan. This kind of hypothesis is very dangerous." 13 The PRC followed up their normalization breakthrough by launching a campaign to induce Taiwan to accept peaceful unification. Beijing offered Taipei the right to keep its own political, social, and economic system under the formula of "one nation, two systems." The PRC campaign gained added force when the Reagan administration agreed to the 1982 Shanghai communiqué promising gradually to decrease the quantity and quality of U.S. arms supplies to Taiwan, and in 1984 when China and Britain signed an agreement on the future of Hong Kong that provided for using the one-nation/two systems formula there.
KMT political concessions to the native Taiwanese population had long been linked with PRC pressure. As Hung-mao Tien wrote in 1975, "The party leadership has been compelled by the disheartening diplomatic events [like expulsion from the UN in 1971] to undertake measures for the purpose of fortifying internal solidarity and to pacify discontented Taiwanese." 14 These measures included recruiting increasing numbers of Taiwanese into the ruling party and into high positions in government, increasing the number of locally elected ("supplementary") seats in the Legislative Yuan and National Assembly, and allowing the nonparty opposition (Tang-wai, or TW) more freedom to compete.
As detailed below, derecognition brought a temporary halt in the reform process that was already slowly getting under way in the late 1970s. But in a longer time perspective, CCK's subsequent decision to resume and accelerate political reform may be interpreted as an attempt to strengthen the KMT's ability to survive on Taiwan after derecognition. As CCK told a Spanish reporter in April 1979 when asked what would happen if America ceased to supply weapons to Taiwan, "A nation's defense strength does not rely on weapons. More important is to firm up our faith in and will for freedom." 15 By increasing the party's staying power in its Taiwan base, the reforms would signal that the KMT was not to be forced into negotiations with the CCP at a time not of its own choosing, that it intended to survive and prosper as long as necessary in Taiwan in order to reunify China on its own terms. Such a signal would also serve to reassure the local population that no sell-out of their interests was imminent, thus further increasing the regime's domestic security, and would disabuse the mainland authorities of any overoptimism about their prospects for easily enticing KMT-ruled Taiwan into the motherland's embrace.
Second, CCK's reforms appear to have responded not only to the PRC political-diplomatic offensive against Taiwan, but also to the threat to Taiwan's image as the freer of the two Chinas that was presented by political events in the mainland. These events included Democracy Wall (1978-79), the promulgation of a new and ostensibly more liberal PRC Constitution in 1982, the first and second rounds of direct elections of county-level people's congresses (1979-81 and 1984), the progressive liberalization of the PRC media, and Deng's licensing of discussion of political reform in 1986. Deng Xiaoping's picture appeared twice on the cover of Time magazine in the 1980s, and he was widely hailed in the West as leading China into an era of freedom and, some said, capitalism. 16
On the other hand, CCK insisted that the mainland regime had not changed its spots. He told Katharine Graham of the Washington Post , "There are certain changes taking place. But they are cosmetic. The essence of communism remains the same." 17 He seemed to believe that the communist regime was bankrupt and making superficial concessions in order to retain its hold on power. Even so, his remarks seemed to imply that PRC democratization initiatives posed a challenge which Taiwan had to answer. For example, he stated in 1981, "Especially today when the communist bandit regime is near the end of its road, with its vile reputation known to everyone, and the communist system has been proven a total failure . . . it is more important than ever for us to strengthen the construction of constitutional government to demonstrate clearly that the strong contrast between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait is basically due to the fact that one side has implemented a constitution based on the Three People's Principles while the other has not." 18
Third, CCK's statements indicate not only that did he not intend to negotiate a surrender to the communists, but also that he actually believed the KMT would eventually recover the mainland through political means. In 1979 he told a German reporter, "The late President Chiang [Kai-shek] used to say that recovering the mainland depended on '70% political, 30% military.' . . . We are going to use our achievements in building a democratic and free society on Taiwan based on the Three Principles of the People, to exert a strong political influence on the Chinese people on the mainland. . . . So long as our actions [in recovering the mainland] receive the warm support of the mainland compatriots, they won't lead to a world war." 19 The achievement of prosperity on Taiwan under the Three People's Principles, he told a KMT party plenum the same year, "has established a good model for the future construction of a free, peaceful, strong, and unified modern China. We have established an unbeatable position in our struggle to the death with communism!" 20
Even when the CCP regime in the mainland was as weak as it had ever been, such reasoning seemed unrealistic to most observers. Yet it may have played a part either in Chiang's thinking about reform or at least in his ability to persuade more conservative forces in the party to accept reform. In his October 1986 interview with Graham, he stated, "Abolishing the emergency decrees is for the purpose of speeding up democratic progress here. We must serve as a beacon light for the hopes of one billion Chinese so that they will want to emulate our political system." 21
Ma Ying-jeou recalled in an interview after Chiang's death, "He felt at the time that the domestic conditions were mature. [This was the main point.] But also, strengthening democratic politics was an important step for improving our international image and appealing to the mainland brethren. We had a saying that the mainland should emulate Taipei in politics, but what in our politics should they emulate? If our level of democratization was insufficient, did that mean we wanted them to emulate our use of martial law? President Chiang was perfectly clear about this point." 22
Opposition Pressure and Election Timing
In explaining the need for reform, CCK often stressed the maturity of social conditions, stating that thirty years of peace and prosperity and the spread of education had raised the people's demands on the government for opportunities for political participation. 23 As we read them, these statements did not so much reflect a social-scientific analysis of preconditions for democracy as refer to the outcome of a complicated history of "transactions" (to adopt the term recommended by T. J. Cheng) between Chiang and the opposition over the course of a decade or more. Through these transactions--some public and some probably secret and still unknown--CCK and the opposition found their way to a mixed relationship of conflict and compromise that made the reforms possible. This dramatic record of conflict and cooperation included some sharp clashes, but ultimately led to the creation of sufficient common ground to enable CCK to manage his reforms successfully. That the reform did not occur either sooner or later than it did appears to have had much to do with this interaction.
The nascent opposition first entered the electoral arena in 1969 in the shape of a few non-KMT independents, when K'ang Ning-hsiang and Huang Hsin-chieh were elected respectively to the Taipei City Assembly and the Legislative Yuan. In the early 1970s, CCK tried and ultimately failed fully to coopt the emerging Taiwanese political elite into the KMT. 24 People like Chang ChÄn-hung, Hsu Hsin-liang, and Su Nan-ch'eng got started as promising young KMT members but broke away from the party either because the rules of party life frustrated their ambitions or because they could not accept the limits the party set on their political views. Other future leaders of the opposition like K'ang Ning-hsiang and Yao Chia-wen never joined. The KMT was no longer able to absorb all the aspiring participants into its own ranks.
In 1977 the non-KMT made a breakthrough and began to take shape as a real opposition rather than as a congeries of independents. Opposition candidates won two county magistracies and two mayorships, and did well also in the polling for the Taiwan Provincial Assembly (other local posts were also elected at the same time). The KMT handled relatively mildly a riot in Chungli triggered by a dispute over the balloting. The opposition geared up strongly for December 1978 elections for National Assembly and Legislative Yuan supplementary seats. According to one observer, "It seemed as if Taiwan had reached the threshold of a multiparty system." 25
But the December 1978 elections were canceled, the reason given being Carter's recognition of the PRC. The TW split into a moderate and a radical faction, the former committed to electoral politics, the latter to mass action. Frustrated members of the opposition tried to step up pressure on the KMT, founding Mei-li-tao magazine and mounting mass meetings and demonstrations. The confrontation culminated in the Kaohsiung Incident of December 10, 1979, and the jailing of eight opposition politicians for long terms.
The impetus toward gradual political change resumed a year later. The elections delayed from 1978 were carried out in December 1980 under a new election law administered by a new election commission. They were deemed reasonably fair, although the KMT did better than before. 26 Through the 1980s, the KMT made gradual concessions while the TW leaders not in jail stepped up their challenge. The TW developed the posture of a somewhat loyal opposition within somewhat stable rules of the game, campaigning hard in elections while constantly criticizing the unfair aspects of the electoral system.
In the mid-1980s, demands within the TW to organize a political party grew stronger. The opposition needed a party or party-like organization for several purposes: to gain legitimacy, to channel financing, to seek agreement on issues, to arrange for cooperation during campaigns, and most importantly, to negotiate the coordination of candidacies in order to avoid undercutting one another under the rules of Taiwan's "single-vote multi-member" (SVMM) electoral system (see chapter 8). In 1980 the TW formed an electoral assistance association (hou-yuan hui ). In 1985 they organized a TW Central Election Assistance Association (Tang-wai hsuan-chÄ chung-yang hou-yuan hui ) and produced a common electoral platform, which included the demand for formation of a new party. TW-KMT relations became tense as the TW increased pressure in late 1984 and 1985.
CCK had authorized a number of informal contacts (kou-t'ung ) with the opposition, first via newspaper publisher Wu San-lien in 1978. In 1985, right after the founding of the Tang-wai Research Association on Public Policy (TRAPP) and of the radical Editors' and Writers' Association (Pien-lien hui ), four professors (Hu Fu and others) on their own initiative spent several months mediating to prevent the KMT from cracking down on these organizations. Not long after, the liberal senior KMT politician T'ao Pai-ch'uan came back from overseas and got CCK's blessing for another stage of kou-t'ung . 27
The timing and character of the 1986 reforms was crucially affected by the relationship that the two sides had arrived at through a process of mutual testing. The opposition was neither weak and disorganized like that in mainland China and many other socialist states in the late 1980s, nor was it armed and antisystem like many of those in Latin America in the 1960s. Rather, it was a relatively strong, fairly well organized, ambitious and aggressive movement which was, nonetheless, basically nonviolent, semi-loyal to the system, and willing to play within, or around the edges of, the rules of the game even as it challenged and tried to change some of them. It was an opposition that used the legal system, the electoral system, the public opinion system, even street demonstrations, but which after extended internal debate, and numerous arrests at the hands of the government, had decided to abjure systematic violence. By 1986 the opposition CCK faced was at the same time one that was putting enormous pressure on him and one that he could talk to. That he faced this sort of opposition is a key factor for explaining both how he was able to make the reforms that he did and the fact that he felt it necessary to do so.
Just as the opposition differed from oppositions in the socialist and Latin American examples, so CCK's regime differed from those models. It was neither ideologically and financially bankrupt, as were many of the socialist regimes of the late 1980s, nor was it as repressive as those regimes or as the Latin American military and corporatist regimes of the 1960s. CCK used police powers not to eliminate the opposition but to set limits to it--specifically, in an only partly successful attempt to deter it from raising the issue of Taiwan independence and from using the tactics of street violence or insurrection--and to induce it to accept his regime's rules of the game. His selective resistance to the TW and intermittent use of repression forced the TW to go through a long process of internal struggle which ultimately gave rise to its broad internal consensus to play more or less by the rules of the game. That the reforms did not occur earlier may have been partly due to the time consumed in this process of shaping a more acceptable opposition, although it is probably equally true that the long delay in reform helped to fire the determination of the opposition's more radical wing.
In any case, by 1986, CCK and the more moderate TW leaders understood one another well and were moving, with or without conscious coordination, in such a way as to outflank together both the KMT conservatives and the TW radicals.
At the time of CCK's reforms, important elections were in the offing. Scheduled for December 6, 1986, they would fill seats in the Legislative Yuan and National Assembly. By getting reform under way before these elections, CCK could seize credit for the KMT and improve its electoral performance. As James Soong stated in an interview after CCK's death, "There wouldn't be another election for three years after that, and Mr. [Chiang] Ching-kuo hoped that the KMT could do its preparatory work well and could do so on its own initiative, rather than being led by the nose by others. This doesn't mean that Mr. Ching-kuo hadn't been thinking about these matters earlier, but now he felt the time was becoming more and more ripe. It was necessary to break through all difficulties and to move as fast as possible." 28
At the same time, the prospect of elections had caused the opposition virtually to make up its mind to organize a political party even before it was legal to do so, in order to provide the organizational resources it needed to perform well against stiff KMT competition (after having done relatively poorly in 1983). The decision by the exiled opposition politician Hsu Hsin-liang to organize a party abroad also stimulated the in-island politicians to do so before they were outflanked from abroad.
Toward the end, Chiang and the TW got into a race to the finish line. Chiang may have hoped that he could preemptively announce the prospective legalization of the inevitable new party and thus avoid an ugly confrontation. But with CCK moving in the direction of legalization, the TW politicians for their part could not afford to wait for him, lest they be viewed as timid creatures of the ruling party. So the TW won the race; the party was established in September 1986 before Chiang had made his intentions clear, leading to a brief period of concern lest he authorize the arrest of those who had participated in the founding.
Chiang's response, however, was typical of his transactional style of dealing with the opposition. In his October 1986 interview with Graham, while stating that permission to form new parties would be announced soon, he also gave a negative evaluation of the newly established DPP, stating that the party lacked a "concept of the nation" and had failed to include the policy of anticommunism in its party charter. In effect, he was telling the DPP what conditions it would have to meet to enjoy the benefits of legalization--inviting DPP to the negotiating table and giving them the opening bid. 29 Chiang's subsequent behavior was in the same vein--declaring the DPP illegal but not arresting its members, warning against advocacy of Taiwan independence, and including in the draft civic organizations law the three conditions of anticommunism, non-advocacy of separatism, and loyalty to the constitution. All this put the burden on the DPP either to fit within the framework Chiang was establishing or to take on the risks of challenging the framework. 30
It is often argued that opposition pressure forced CCK to reform. 31 This analysis is true as far as it goes. Had the opposition been weaker, Chiang might not have undertaken the reforms despite the existence of other factors we have identified as pushing him toward change. However, we can also say that had the opposition been substantially more aggressive than it was, the reforms might also not have been feasible, or at least might not have unfolded as smoothly as they did. Equally, had CCK been less skillful, the opposition might not have been induced to play as constructive a role as it did. Also less often noted is the way in which Chiang and the opposition mainstream helped each other in dealing both with anti-reform forces within the KMT and with more radical forces in the opposition.
The Need for Reinvigoration of the Ruling Party
Reviewing the events of the year before CCK's reform decision, James Hsiung wrote, "An eerie sense of crisis, at the start of the year [1985], hung over the open trials of the principals charged with the murder of Henry Liu, a Chinese-American writer in California [murdered in 1984]. Then came the collapse, in tandem, of the Tenth Credit Cooperative, a big-name savings and loan institution, and its sister investment outfit, Cathay Investment and Trust Co. A number of ranking government officials were implicated in the failures, which victimized numerous creditors. These, plus other mishaps . . . generated a momentary aura of doom. . . ." 32
Whether Chiang Ching-kuo shared in the sense of doom is not known, but there is some evidence that these events--as well as others that had accumulated earlier such as the murder of three relatives of TW personage Lin Yi-hsiung in 1980 and the death in police custody in 1981 of Ch'en Wen-ch'eng, an American professor of Taiwanese origin--convinced him that the ruling party was losing its revolutionary élan and needed to renew itself. The Henry Liu incident cut especially close to Chiang because his son, Hsiao-wu, was widely accused of being the man behind the murder (an accusation that has never been proven). The Tenth Credit incident involved KMT Secretary-General Chiang Yen-shih, a close Chiang adviser, who resigned in its aftermath. Both the Ch'en Wen-ch'eng incident and the Henry Liu incident also led to increased criticism of the KMT in the United States. And both were mistakes committed by the security apparatus, which Chiang had virtually built in the 1950s.
Chiang may have felt that subjecting the ruling party to more media and electoral oversight and to increased political competition would revitalize its sense of mission, help get rid of some incompetent people, strengthen the party's image, and improve its links to the people. The party's victories over the opposition in the semi-open elections of the late 1970s and early 1980s showed that it had strong organizational roots and substantial public support. This was not a party that would collapse at the first breath of challenge but one that had the resources to rise to the challenge. As stated by K'ang Ning-hsiang, not a Chiang intimate but a close observer, "The KMT's strongman era was coming to an end. If they wanted their third generation to continue ruling Taiwan, they had immediately to adjust their relations with Taiwan society or suffer severe problems. . . . The question of foreign evaluations and the international situation was secondary. If they could get good international reviews while guaranteeing the survival of their regime, so much the better." 33
According to Ma Ying-jeou, "I believe he was very grieved that things like this [Henry Liu and Tenth Credit] had occurred during his second term as president. That was why he decided to hold the Third Plenum. Although there was no clear declaration, the comrades inside the party knew that 'although it will not be called an overhaul (kai-tsao ), it will be an overhaul in effect.' " 34 (The term kai-tsao evokes major personnel reshuffles in KMT history such as the purging of the communists in 1927 and the party reorganization in 1949 after defeat on the mainland.)
At a conference of the KMT Standing Committee on October 15, 1986, which endorsed CCK's reform policy, CCK said (using a phrase that was much quoted from then on), "The times are changing, the environment is changing, the tides are also changing. To meet these changes the ruling party must adopt new concepts and new methods and on the basis of the democratic and constitutional political order, push forward measures of reform and renewal. Only in this way can we link up with the tides of the times, only in this way can we remain forever at one with the people." In the same speech he stressed the need for the ruling party to maintain a constant attitude of self-criticism and to have the courage to make the necessary changes in itself. 35 While these phrases were typically vague and formulaic, they seem to have referred to the need to revitalize the party.
The reforms suited the interests of members of the KMT's so-called "young Turk" wing (shao-chuang p'ai ), people like Chao Shao-k'ang whose careers depended on winning elections rather than on bureaucratic promotions within the party machine. There is no reason to think that this group had enough clout to pressure the President. But the fact that it existed presumably made it more possible for CCK to contemplate reform, since his own party had within it the kind of personnel it would need to respond successfully in a more competitive political environment.
On the other hand, "The opposition to reforms from the right wing of Chiang's ruling party is so strong that only a leader of his standing is likely to be able to bring even the beginnings of meaningful change." 36 As we will argue in the next section, the very strength of the party's conservative faction may have been one consideration motivating Chiang to undertake the reform, knowing that if he did not do so, his weaker successors would have a hard time doing it themselves. Also, since both the Ch'en Wen-ch'eng and Henry Liu incidents involved the security-military sector, these events may have weakened the political influence of this sector or may have helped persuade CCK to decrease his reliance on them.
Health and Succession
CCK had long suffered from diabetes. He was 60 when he took the office of president in 1978 for a six-year term. In 1981 and 1982 he underwent eye surgery for retinal bleeding, and in 1985 he had cataract removal surgery. Both conditions were connected with his worsening diabetes. Also in 1985, according to Newsweek , he had a pacemaker implanted. Describing his appearance at Katharine Graham's October 1986 interview with him, Newsweek said that Chiang "moves slowly, with apparent pain, and his hands tremble." 37
In 1983 CCK had demoted the second most powerful man in his regime, Wang Sheng, head of the military's political warfare department, to the post of ambassador to Paraguay. It is generally believed that he did so because Wang had been acting too independently and challenging the President's power. His heir apparent, the popular and able Prime Minister Sun Yun-suan, suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in 1984. Also in 1984, when accepting his second term as president, Chiang chose Lee Teng-hui as his vice president and hence constitutional successor should he die in office.
These events, especially the state of CCK's health, brought the sensitive succession problem into the realm of public debate. 38 Although CCK's second term ran until 1990, speculation about his plans for succession was frequent in the early 1980s. He addressed these concerns for the first time in a Time magazine interview published in September 1985, stating that he had "never given any consideration" to the possibility that he might be succeeded by a family member and that the succession would be handled in accordance with "democracy and the rule of law." 39 Chiang gave a still more unambiguous statement of his position on Constitution Day, December 25, 1985, when he said that members of the Chiang family "could not and would not" (pu-neng yeh pu-hui ) run for the office of president and that military rule "could not and would not" take place either. (Although Chiang did mention in this short speech that his health was not as good as it used to be, from the context it appears that he was not expecting to die in office but meant to suggest that he would not be a candidate for a third term; although the constitution allowed only two terms, this provision was suspended under the Temporary Provisions.) 40
There is no direct evidence as to why he took this position against family succession. It may be significant that he made his statement not long after the reputation of his second son, Hsiao-wu, was damaged by charges that he had given the order for the murder of Henry Liu. (The eldest son, Hsiao-wen, was chronically ill; the third son, Hsiao-yung, was a businessman who had never been seriously involved in politics. CCK also had a younger half-brother, Wei-kuo, whom some had regarded as a potential successor. The two had been political rivals in the past; we do not know what CCK's attitude toward Wei-kuo was in the 1980s.) The public discussion of the succession issue had revealed widespread distaste for a family succession, articulated especially strongly by the opposition press.
The succession issue may have affected Chiang's thinking on political reform in two ways. First, with his retirement or death the political system would lose a popular leader whose personal legitimacy (derived from a mix of family heritage, connections, and political skill) was important to bolster the regime. Chiang may have wished to begin the process of giving that regime greater long-term security based on its ability to win competitive elections. Since he had decided for whatever reasons that he could not be succeeded by a family member, a collective leadership of KMT oligarchs, or a military man, he may have felt that only democratic political reforms could give his civilian, non-Chiang successor, whoever he might be, a good chance to consolidate power. As a "foreign observer" told Daniel Southerland of the Washington Post in October 1986, "Chiang wants in his final years in office to bequeath some kind of stable, lasting system, and has concluded that the only way he can do this is to invite broader participation in the political process." 41
Second, insofar as implementing constitutional government was his goal (as we argue below), Chiang probably realized that it would be harder for a successor to implement reforms over the opposition of conservative forces in the KMT and the military than for him to do so himself. If reforms were to have a good chance of success, he would have to initiate them, which in view of his health gave him little time to act.
We have uncovered no direct evidence on these points. But in any case Chiang acted as if reform were a matter of special urgency as his health deteriorated. During 1986, in public statements to party organs charged with reform tasks, he frequently urged rapid action. 42 James Soong recalled that after the Third Plenum Chiang "expressed himself very urgently and clearly" on the issue of reform. 43 According to Ma Ying-jeou, the day before his death CCK asked Party Secretary Li Huan whether the CEC meeting at which parliamentary reform would be discussed was scheduled for the next day. "The impression he gave me," Ma recalled, "was that he was in a big hurry, probably because he knew about his health situation. . . . One can say that ever since the Third Plenum, he had been hoping for reform extremely urgently." 44
The succession problem may have affected not only CCK's calculations but also those of the TW and hence the challenges with which CCK had to contend. According to one contemporary report, "TW personalities figure that the TW camp has to get a party organized while CCK is still alive; only in this way can they avoid another big wave of political arrests or even bloodshed. Otherwise, it will be hard to predict the attitudes of the authorities in the post-CCK era toward a TW political party." 45 If, as we argued earlier, the threat of an impending TW party organization was one of the forces that pressed Chiang to act, then this threat in turn may have been partly a result of the succession crisis.
CCK's Political Values and Sense of Mission
CCK's reform decision was dramatic and surprised many both abroad and in Taiwan. Yet it was not a sudden decision. Preparation for it went back a long way--to the values of "constitutional government and democracy" always espoused by the KMT; to values long voiced by CCK himself; to years of opposition demands; and to earlier CCK policies.
In his early years on Taiwan, CCK played a very tough role. He served as head of the General Political Warfare Department of the army, where he installed a Soviet-style commissar system, established the China Youth Anti-Communist National Salvation Corps to control youth, and became the head of the regime's National Security Bureau and, in Edwin A. Winckler's phrase, its "security czar." According to Tillman Durdin, "operating in the shadows, CCK became one of the most feared men in the leadership. He had no apologies for the repression that went on well into the 1970s." 46
But either then (as he insisted) or some time later, democratization also became one of his long-term goals. From the time he became premier in 1972, if not earlier, the regime began gradually to liberalize, allowing more participation, recruiting more Taiwanese to party membership and government posts, and allowing somewhat more freedom of speech. All the same kinds of factors we adduced above for the 1986 reform decision probably played a role in this series of gradual reform measures--PRC and international pressure, the rise of the opposition, and so forth. In addition, however, his words and actions reveal an orienting set of values behind his political strategies.
In April 1975, Chiang Kai-shek died and Ching-kuo, serving as premier, became the top leader. In a speech to the National Assembly on Constitution Day, December 25, CCK affirmed his commitment to the goals of "democracy and legal system, and full implementation of the constitution," and said, "We have already established an excellent basis for putting democratic politics into effect in the recovery base [Taiwan]. Five days ago we smoothly completed the election for supplementary Legislative Yuan members. In this election, not only did the election organs fulfill the requirements of 'fair, just, and open,' but also we could see from the candidates' excellent political comportment and the voters' enthusiasm that our citizens are full of keenness for political participation and concern for national affairs, and that they have a high level of commitment to electing virtuous and capable candidates that a democratic country's citizens should have when they exercise their citizens' rights." 47
As we have seen in many quotations adduced earlier, Chiang constantly referred to Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles and to the long-term party program of moving from tutelage to democracy. For example, in his speech on Constitution Day (December 25) 1973, Chiang stated, "We have now implemented the constitution for half of our republic's 72-year history. In the first 36 years our nation suffered internal rebellion and external invasion, yet in the midst of blood and tears we still bravely persisted in carrying forward the steps laid down in our National Father's [Sun Yat-sen's] Outline for Nation-Building (Chien-kuo ta-kang), moving from military rule, through tutelage, into the stage of constitutional rule. In the second 36 years the full-scale implementation of constitutionalism was impeded by communist rebellion and the fall of the mainland, but we made a brilliant success of carrying out construction of democracy and constitutional government in the recovery base." 48
Without mentioning CCK's name, Arthur Lerman argued in a 1977 article that Taiwan's "national elite" (the mainlanders) "felt a deep commitment to democracy"--which they understood, in Lerman's words, as "liberating the energies of the people and channeling them into public affairs; disciplining the energies of the people; [and] orderly discussion in search of a unified general will." 49 Lerman's portrayal of the elite view of democracy fits CCK well, to judge by his public statements. For example, in 1975 CCK said, "As President Chiang Kai-shek used to say, 'The basic nature of democracy is equality and freedom, and the spirit of freedom means obeying the law and performing one's role [shou-fa shou-fen ].' Thus the concept of rule by law is the core entity of democratic politics." 50 In 1976 he said, "The most important thing in politics is that the government should understand the people, and the people should trust the government." 51 In the same year he said that, thanks to the government's construction measures of the last three years, "the masses and the government have united together, our wills are concentrated, the people are stimulated to a spirit of struggle, their spirits are high." 52
"When I go to the countryside on a visit," he told a group of American newspaper people, "it is to hear the people's opinions in order to understand deeply their difficulties and their needs. During the visit I do not make any immediate administrative decisions, but take what I have heard and seen back to my office to serve as reference material as I implement policy. These visits also serve to increase good feelings between government and people." 53
There is no way to prove that such quasi-Confucian jargon is meaningful. But it fits well with two other leading themes in our analysis--the transaction model of relations between CCK and the opposition, in which he wants to give them space to operate but also wants to lead them into a law-abiding form of oppositional behavior; and the competition with the mainland regime in which CCK uses democratization to strengthen the competitiveness and fighting trim of his own political system against its rival. Since CCK's rhetoric seems to fit in well with his pattern of action, we had best take it into account in analyzing his motives for reform.
Findings and Theoretical Implications
The evidence we have been able to gather gives a better picture of CCK's probable motives than has been available before in one place and may contribute something to our understanding of his motives and style as a political leader. But because of data limitations our account is not definitive. As far as we could determine, all the factors we have considered seem to have influenced CCK's decision for reform to some extent. No single factor seems to have been decisive, and we have not seen any way even to try to weigh the relative importance of the different factors. Nor have we tried to evaluate the relative importance of "conditions" versus leadership decisions. Nothing we have discovered leads us to doubt that the ripeness of socioeconomic conditions was important for the reform. Nor does our analysis do anything to derogate from the importance of the TW role, despite our chosen focus on the choices made from the top down by CCK.
We selected this focus in order to contribute to the recent literature on democratic transitions in authoritarian regimes, a literature which eschews the "macro-oriented focus on objective conditions" in favor of a concentration on "political actors and their strategies." 54
The Taiwan case confirms some of the axioms of this literature--for example, that a democratic transition is initiated to resolve a legitimacy problem, and that the regime that undertakes it gives up some measure of political control in the hope of improving its ability to survive. The transition is undertaken in order to increase the regime's ability to win allegiance from the citizens with reduced reliance on coercion.
More specifically, many of our findings conform to observations made by Alfred Stepan about what he calls "Path 4a," or "redemocratization initiated by the civilian or civilianized political leadership." Stepan's main example of this path is the case of Spain. According to him, this path has the best chance of being followed:
(1) the more there are new socioeconomic and political demands from below or from former active supporters, (2) the more there is doubt or conflict about regime legitimacy rules (especially among those who have to enforce obedience), and (3) the more there is the chance that the power-holders will retain and ratify much of their power via competitive elections.
Stepan further points out that in this path, "the military-as-institution is still a factor of significant power. Thus the civilian leadership is most likely to persist in its democratizing initiative (and not to encounter a military reaction) if the democratic opposition tacitly collaborates with the government in creating a peaceful framework for the transition." 55
This model fits Taiwan fairly well. One especially important area of fit is in the role of the opposition in both keeping pressure on the regime and cooperating with it. A second parallel is the existence of "doubt about regime legitimacy rules," although in Taiwan's case this doubt came not from the ruling party's loss of faith in its ideology, but in the long-standing conflict between this ideology and the authoritarian realities which the regime had always labeled as temporary.
Taiwan, however, differs from Spain in several ways. For one thing, the leader of the old regime did not have to die before the transition started; he started it himself, for reasons we have tried to investigate. Second, this fact in turn dictated that the military was a much less serious potential challenger to the reform, at least during its early phase when CCK was still alive, and even after his death so long as the ongoing reform could continue to carry the mantle of Chiang's blessing. Third, the cooperation provided to the reformist regime by the opposition came about in Taiwan through a long and difficult process of internal struggle within the opposition and between opposition and regime.
The fourth, and perhaps most important, way in which the Taiwan case differs is in the existence of the mainland factor in the Taiwan reform. Among nations that have begun democratic transitions, only South Korea and Taiwan are parts of divided nations. (East Germany might also be cited, but it is doubtful whether the "transition to democracy" literature is intended to apply to the breakdown of communist regimes.) In both cases, and in contrast to all other nations studied in the transitions literature, competition with the other regime has provided a key motive for democratizing reform. This motive has had two related components: the need to improve domestic legitimacy in order to create a political basis for a more effective defense capability; and the need to create a stronger political appeal to the nation's citizens on both sides of the dividing line.
Of course, the confrontations between North and South Korea and Taiwan and mainland China had been going on for forty years before the phase we are identifying as democratic transition began. Thus a full analysis of how the "divided-nation" factor operates would require looking at the changing international environment and, again, at the always-important factors of domestic social, economic, and political conditions. But the point here is only that, given permissive conditions at home and abroad, the divided-nation factor enters the reformers' calculations of potential benefit and cost on the reform side of the ledger.
In the case of Taiwan this presents a double paradox. First, the opposition, many or most of whose members are motivated in part by the desire to assure that Taiwan never comes under mainland control, can thank the looming and threatening presence of the mainland for making their transactions with Chiang Ching-kuo more successful than they probably would have been otherwise--since, we have argued, this looming presence provided Chiang with one of his important motives for accommodating the opposition, however reluctantly. (Probably detailed research on the opposition's behavior during the reform process would show that they, too, were pushed toward more moderate and constructive behavior by the existence of the mainland threat, thus making them more acceptable to Chiang than they otherwise might have been.) Second, a democratization which was initiated to some extent because Taiwan was part of a larger China seems to be leading to Taiwan's increasingly well-established and irreversible de facto separation from that China, as the island's politics become more and more responsive to the preferences of the majority. 56
Note *: This is a revised version of a paper presented at the Conference on Chiang Ching-kuo, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, March 16-18, 1990. The authors would like to thank Columbia University's Taiwan Area Studies Program for financial support; Szu-chien Hsu for research assistance; Hsu Lu for comments; and Edwin A. Winckler and other members of the Conference for criticisms and suggestions.Back.
Abbreviations for Chapter 7 Notes
CCKHCYLC: Chiang Tsung-t'ung Ching-kuo hsien-sheng hsien-cheng yen-lun chi (Taipei: Kuo-min ta-hui mi-shu-ch'u, 1984).
CCKYLHP: Chiang Tsung-t'ung Ching-kuo hsien-sheng yen-lun chu-shu hui-pien , 15 volumes (Taipei: Li-ming wen-hua shih-yeh ku-fen you-hsien kung-ssu, 1981-1989).
CYJP: Chung-yang jih-pao .
HHW: Hsin Hsin-wen .
Note 1: The characterization of the regime as soft authoritarian as of the mid-1980s is borrowed from Edwin A. Winckler, "Institutionalization and Participation on Taiwan: From Hard to Soft Authoritarianism?" The China Quarterly 99 (September 1984), pp. 481-499, although Winckler's argument is that the regime was just beginning to enter soft authoritarianism at the time he was writing. He characterizes the regime as still soft-authoritarian in "Taiwan Politics in the 1990s," in Harvey Feldman, Michael Y. M. Kau, and Ilpyong J. Kim, eds., Taiwan in a Time of Transition (New York: Paragon House, 1988), p. 234. Back.
Note 2: E.g., the essays by Whitehead, Przeworski, Stepan, and Cardoso in Guillermo O'Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, eds., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Comparative Perspectives (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). Back.
Note 3: Interview with James Soong, HHW, January 2-8, 1989, p. 17; also see interview with Ma Ying-jeou, ibid., p. 27. Back.
Note 4: Yangsun Chou and Andrew J. Nathan, "Democratizing Transition in Taiwan," Asian Survey 27:3 (March 1987), pp. 277-299; reprinted as Chapter 8 in Andrew J. Nathan, China's Crisis: Dilemmas of Reform and Prospects for Democracy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). Back.
Note 5: Taiwan academic, party, and legal circles had been involved for years in public discussions of some of the key issues pertinent to the future reform, including the legal status of the martial law decree and of the various martial law provisions adopted under it, ways of reforming the representative structures prior to retaking the mainland, and how to legalize the formation of new parties. It is plausible that these debates influenced CCK, but we have not been able to locate evidence of this influence. At a minimum it seems probable that when he made the decision to adopt reform policies, this discussion had prepared a broad consensus as to what the reform would have to minimally involve. Back.
Note 6: Tun-jen Cheng, "Taiwan in Democratic Transition," in James W. Morley, ed., Driven by Growth: Political Change in the Asia-Pacific Region (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1993), pp. 211-212. Back.
Note 7: Julia Leung and Barry Wain, "Chatty Chiang Sheds No Light on Motives Behind His Push for Democratic Reform," Asian Wall Street Journal , November 2, 1987, p. 16. Back.
Note 8: Interview with Ma Ying-jeou, HHW, January 2-8, 1989, pp. 28-29. Back.
Note 9: Tillman Durdin, "Chiang Ching-kuo and Taiwan: A Profile," Orbis 18:4 (Winter 1975), p. 1024. Back.
Note 10: "President Chiang Ching-kuo's Interview with an Editor of Der Spiegel , May 16, 1983," Parliament Monthly 14:6 (June 1983), pp. 3-4. Back.
Note 11: Interview with Wang Chia-hua, HHW, January 2-8, 1989, p. 21. Back.
Note 13: CCKYLHP 12:423. Back.
Note 14: Hung-mao Tien, "Taiwan in Transition: Prospects for Socio-Political Change," China Quarterly 64 (December 1975), p. 617. Back.
Note 15: CCKYLHP 12:438. Back.
Note 16: On Deng's image in the West, see Nathan, China's Crisis , ch. 4. Back.
Note 17: Daniel Southerland, "Taiwan President to Propose End to Island's Martial Law," Washington Post , October 7, 1986, p. A18. Back.
Note 18: CCKHCYLC, p. 19. Back.
Note 19: CCKYLHP, 12:434. Back.
Note 20: CCKHCYLC, p. 84. Back.
Note 21: Chung-yang jih-pao 1986.10.13.1; English version in Newsweek , October 20, 1986, p. 31. Back.
Note 22: Ma interview, HHW, January 2-8, 1989, p. 28. Back.
Note 23: E.g., CCKYLHP 15:419-420. Back.
Note 24: The story through the 1983 election is recounted by Winckler, "Institutionalization and Participation," pp. 494-499. We have also drawn upon Li Hsiao-feng, T'ai-wan min-chu yun-tung ssu-shih nien (Taipei: Tzu-li wan-pao, 1987), and John F. Copper with George P. Chen, Taiwan's Elections: Political Development and Democratization in the Republic of China , Occasional Papers/Reprints Series in Contemporary Asian Studies, No. 5-1984 (64) (Baltimore: University of Maryland School of Law). Back.
Note 25: Jürgen Domes, "Political Differentiation in Taiwan: Group Formation within the Ruling Party and the Opposition Circles 1979-1980," Asian Survey 21:10 (October 1981), p. 1012. Back.
Note 26: John F. Copper, "Taiwan's Recent Election: Progress Toward a Democratic System," Asian Survey 21:10 (October 1981), pp. 1029-1039. Back.
Note 27: Li Hsiao-feng, T'ai-wan min-chu yun-tung , pp. 1029-1039. Back.
Note 28: Soong interview, HHW 89.1.2-8, p. 17. Back.
Note 29: Chung-yang jih-pao October 9, 1986, p. 2; English version in Newsweek, October 20, 1986, p. 31. Our thanks to Hsu Szu-chien for suggesting this analysis of Chiang's statement. Back.
Note 30: Analyzed in Chou and Nathan. Back.
Note 31: For example, Tun-jen Cheng, "Democratizing the Quasi-Leninist Regime in Taiwan," World Politics 61:4 (July 1989), pp. 471-499. Back.
Note 32: James C. Hsiung, "Taiwan in 1985: Scandals and Setbacks," Asian Survey 26:1 (January 1986), p. 93. Back.
Note 33: Tobari Haruo (Hu-chang Tung-fu), Chiang Ching-kuo ti kai-ke (Hong Kong: Kuang-chiao ching ch'u-pan she, 1988), pp. 77, 79. Back.
Note 34: Ma Ying-jeou interview, HHW, January 2-8, 1989, pp. 28-29. Back.
Note 35: Chung-yang jih-pao , October 16, 1986, p. 1. The significance of this meeting is explained in Chou and Nathan, p. 289. Back.
Note 36: Daniel Southerland, "Chiang Envisions Change for Taiwan," Washington Post , October 13, 1986, p. A18. Back.
Note 37: Ch'en P'ei-k'un, "T'ai-wan ti chieh-pan wei-chi," Kuang-chiao ching No. 157, October 16, 1985, p. 56; Newsweek , International Edition, October 20, 1986, pp. 28-29. Back.
Note 38: Ch'en P'ei-k'un, "T'ai-wan ti chieh-pan wei-chi," p. 56; Parris Chang, "Taiwan in 1982: Diplomatic Setback Abroad and Demands for Reforms at Home," Asian Survey 23:1 (January 1983), p. 42. Back.
Note 39: Time, September 16, 1985, p. 46. That this was Chiang's first comment on this issue is stated by Ch'en P'ei-k'un, "Taiwan ti chieh-pan wei-chi," p. 54. Back.
Note 40: CYJP, December 26, 1985, p. 1. Back.
Note 41: Daniel Southerland, "Taiwan President to Propose End to Island's Martial Law," Washington Post , October 8, 1986, p. A18. Back.
Note 42: E.g., at a meeting of the Central Standing Committee on October, 15 reported in CYJP, October 16, 1986, p. 1; and in a charge to the KMT members in the Executive Yuan involved in drafting certain reform bills, reported in CYJP, October 30, 1986, p. 1. Back.
Note 43: Soong interview in HHW, January 2-8, 1989, p. 17. Back.
Note 44: Interview with Ma Ying-jeou, HHW, January 2-8, 1989, p. 28. Back.
Note 45: Li Yi-an, "Taiwan ti yue-yang ta t'iao-chan," Kuang-chiao ching No. 165 (June 16, 1986), p. 56. Back.
Note 46: Edwin A. Winckler, "Elite Political Struggle 1945-1985," in Winckler and Susan Greenhalgh, eds., Contending Approaches to the Political Economy of Taiwan (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1988), p. 157; Durdin, "Chiang and Taiwan," p. 1032. Back.
Note 48: CCKHCYLC, p. 30. Back.
Note 49: Arthur J. Lerman, "National Elite and Local Politician in Taiwan," American Political Science Review 71:4 (December 1977), pp. 1408-1409. For the broader Chinese tradition of democracy into which this view fits, see Andrew J. Nathan, Chinese Democracy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). Back.
Note 51: CCKYLHP 10:537. Back.
Note 52: CCKYLHP 10:544. Back.
Note 53: CCKYLHP 10:537. Back.
Note 54: Przeworski in O'Donnell, et al., eds., Transitions , p. 47. Back.
Note 55: Stepan, "Paths Toward Redemocratization: Theoretical and Comparative Considerations," in O'Donnell et al., eds., Transitions , pp. 7375. Back.
Note 56: As Andrew J. Nathan has argued in "The Effect of Taiwan's Political Reform on Mainland-Taiwan Relations," in China's Crisis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), Ch. 9. Back.
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