Taiwan Today

A century of the ROC’s political development has seen a bumpy yet forward-moving process toward true democracy.

As a hard-won result of revolutionary efforts led by Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925), the Republic of China (ROC) was formed in 1912 to replace imperial Qing court (1644–1911) rule in China. Institutional remnants of the Qing and regional influences proved hard to overcome, however, and the first republic in Asia entered a prolonged state of instability due to struggles among ambitious local warlords. This turbulent era of antagonisms found a significant solution in 1928 when the various politico-military forces nationwide formally became unified under the Nationalist government led by Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975), Sun Yat-sen’s successor in the Chinese Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT). Based in southeastern China’s Nanjing City, the KMT government announced a draft of the ROC Constitution on May 5, 1936 and started to organize meetings to create the constitution. This so-called May 5 Constitution Draft, however, did not acquire sufficient consensus among different political parties and groups, and it continued to be debated during the war of resistance to Japanese invasion that began in mid-1937, according to Hsueh Hua-yuan, a professor at National Chengchi University’s (NCCU) Graduate Institute of Taiwan History. Hsueh spoke at a centennial forum on the history of the development of the ROC held in January this year at his school in Taipei. The professor says that the establishment of the ROC following the successful revolution against Qing court rule a century ago can be attributed in great part to the court’s reluctance to create a constitution or form a national parliament as members of the royal family sought to hold on to power. Still, the early years of the republic also saw a number of short-lived constitutions and futile constitution-making efforts.

The eight-year war against Japanese invaders also postponed the passage into law of the ROC Constitution, which was not promulgated until 1947 in Nanjing. Chiang Kai-shek became the first president of the new constitutional ROC government in 1948. In the following year, the ROC government relocated to Taiwan. During this unstable period and in the shadow of the great threat of communist China, Taiwan saw the rule of martial law start in May 1949. “The long rule of martial law in Taiwan is a unique phenomenon in the world’s constitutional history,” Hsueh says. “It also affected the implementation and consolidation of the constitution.” At the same time, the ROC’s political development in the postwar era was intertwined with the global confrontation between democracy and communism. Notably, shortly after the Korean War broke out in June 1950, the United States sent its Seventh Fleet to safeguard the Taiwan Strait. In 1954, the ROC’s ambassador to the United States, Wellington Koo (1888–1985), and Foreign Minister George Yeh (1904–1981) negotiated the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, which was signed by Yeh and US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in Washington D.C. The treaty, together with major humanitarian assistance from the United States, provided essential support for Taiwan’s national security and facilitated stable social development in the ensuing decades.

In 1950, Taiwan saw the budding of democracy, namely the emergence of its first directly elected county magistrate in Hualien. Local elections then followed throughout the island, although they expressed limited political freedom as the polls produced only a handful of incumbents who were not affiliated with the ruling KMT. The move from these local elections to the progressive, multi-party elections of today marks a central aspect of the ROC’s political development, according to Liu I-chou, the vice chairman of the government’s Central Election Commission and a professor of political science at NCCU.

During the last years of Qing court rule, the royal house, forced to compromise, promulgated a series of constitutional outlines and formal articles that included the concept of limited popular elections. Similar texts released in the first decades of the ROC also stipulated the rights of the people to elect government officials and to be elected. These were often prompted by intellectuals who had been exposed to Western political ideas, but as Liu I-chou points out, a wide gap existed between theory and practice. During the initial republican years in China, the development of sound electoral systems and holding of regular polls were prevented from taking place by the political chaos that resulted from a weak central government and regional control by powerful warlords on the one hand and people’s low level of education on the other. Moreover, in the early stages of democratic reform, the right to vote was anything but universal. More often than not, the entitlement to cast a ballot was restricted to well-off, educated older men. Similar standards for voters were also applied in the elections for local government council members held in the 1930s in Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule (1895–1945).

Despite flawed, infrequent elections in the republic prior to 1949, government authorities did establish comprehensive regulations covering election details such as the layout of voting stations and size of ballot boxes, according to Liu. “Taking a look back at the history of ROC elections, most of the significant progress took place in Taiwan,” the professor says.

No Backward Movement

“Yet, even taking the pre-1949 process of ‘learning by doing’ into account, generally speaking there have been no signs of backward movement,” Liu says. Among other things, the gradual improvements in voting procedures mean that election results have become less and less likely to trigger controversies. Advances include the introduction of only partially enclosed voting booths—the booths were formerly fully enclosed—which protect a voter’s privacy, but prevent cheating such as one voter casting multiple votes. Counting the ballots by reading them aloud one by one in public was another development.

Nowadays, Taiwan’s sophisticated, reliable electoral system and its high credibility among the general public, as well as a political sphere that includes multiple parties, indicate a vibrant, healthy democracy. “Elections are now a part of everyday life,” Liu says. “Electoral maturity in Taiwan comes as a result of the absence of war, a peaceful environment, economic growth and the population’s high level of education.”

Elections of the highest level of government officials began in 1996, when Lee Teng-hui of the ruling KMT became the first directly elected ROC president, defeating opposition candidate Peng Ming-min of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The DPP was established in 1986, albeit with no formal status, shortly before the lifting of the ban on forming political parties. In 2000, the DPP’s Chen Shui-bian defeated the KMT’s Lien Chan and former KMT heavyweight James Soong, who ran as an independent, to stage a historic power shift after more than half a century of KMT rule in Taiwan. Chen was reelected to another four-year term as president in 2004. Another power shift occurred in 2008 when Ma Ying-jeou reclaimed the presidency for the KMT and became the 12th-term ROC president.

Before Lee Teng-hui was directly elected as the ninth-term president of the ROC, he had already served as vice president and then head of state following the death of President Chiang Ching-kuo (1910–1988) in 1988. Two years later, Lee was elected as the eighth-term ROC president by the National Assembly. According to the ROC Constitution promulgated in Nanjing, mainland China in 1947, the National Assembly was responsible for constitutional amendments and the election of the president and vice president. The assembly was comprised of members elected from counties and provinces nationwide.

The first ROC president, Chiang Kai-shek, except for being forced to step down briefly during a critical moment of the Chinese Civil War, continued as the leader of the ROC government until he passed away in 1975. He was succeeded as president by Vice President Yen Chia-kan (1905–1993). In 1978, the National Assembly elected Chiang Kai-shek’s son, Chiang Ching-kuo, as president. The National Assembly was formerly one of the two representative bodies at the national level, a status it shared with the Legislative Yuan. The two organizations had been formed in mainland China, and while they had recruited a few additional members through elections in Taiwan, their mainland China-elected members were allowed to stay in office indefinitely. That rule thus made both bodies a major target of democratic reform.

By the 1980s there were increasingly loud calls for a more liberal society and a democratic political system, to which the government responded over time. In 1987, President Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law. During the 12-year administration of his successor, Lee Teng-hui, the ROC Constitution underwent six rounds of amendments. These notably included amendments requiring all members of the National Assembly and the Legislative Yuan to be elected in Taiwan, enabling direct presidential elections, which first took place in 1996, and streamlining the Taiwan Provincial Government, a body with jurisdiction covering some 80 percent of the nation’s territory and people. In 2000, the National Assembly agreed to become an ad-hoc organization, while in 2005 it was abolished via a constitutional amendment and with the consent of its members. This move wrapped up the decades-long process of gradually shifting all national legislative responsibilities to the Legislative Yuan.

Right to Referendums

The constitutional amendments of 2005, which were proposed by the Legislative Yuan and were the final items reviewed by the National Assembly, also cut the number of legislators from 225 to 113, adopted a new electoral system for the legislature and required future constitutional amendments to be approved by Taiwanese voters through referendums. Earlier, in 2003 the Legislative Yuan passed the Referendum Act that, despite some controversy on some of its stipulations, granted Taiwanese people the right to hold referendums, a right that social and political activists had demanded for many years.

The development of both representative politics in the ROC’s national legislature and the people’s right to referendums represent important political landmarks in the republic’s journey toward its centennial anniversary, according to Hsieh Chen-yu, a professor in the Department of Political Science at Soochow University in Taipei. At the NCCU’s centennial forum on the ROC’s history, Hsieh pointed out that, for the past six decades, the ROC on Taiwan has undergone a “quiet revolution.” The professor emphasized the peaceful, rational manner in which reform has been carried out, including the removal of life terms in office in the legislature and the several rounds of constitutional amendments.

With respect to the current ROC Constitution, NCCU professor Hsueh Hua-yuan says that the document does not fully reflect political realities in Taiwan as it was originally designed to rule a far larger territory. Nevertheless, Hsueh believes that, through reforms aimed at liberalization and democratization, Taiwan has worked with the ROC Constitution to emerge as one of the few advanced, free democracies in Asia. “This is a painstakingly acquired, significant achievement,” the professor says.

Write to Pat Gao at kotsijin@gmail.com