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Pacific Affairs: An International Review of Asia and the Pacific
Taiwan's Democratization and the Rise of Taiwanese Nationalism as Socialization to Global Culture
By Daniel Lynch
Abstract
Democratization and democratic consolidation entail the successful socialization of state-society units into a rationalist global culture that esteems bureaucracy, markets, and formal equality of actors. Taiwan's experience is a good illustration. The authoritarian Republic of China (ROC) state sent students abroad for higher education beginning around 1960 to help facilitate economic development and turn Taiwan into a model Chinese province. But while abroad, many students unexpectedly absorbed the democratic values of global culture and then returned to agitate for Taiwan's democratization. Some were also motivated by a nascent Taiwanese nationalism, which envisioned democratization as the triumph of a centuries-long struggle to achieve freedom from a series of foreign oppressors. The delicate interplay of domestic and global ideational factors is in this way likely to prove central to the democratization process in all Asian countries.