Political Background--(For the status of Taiwan before the Japanese occupation, please refer to the paragraph of History And Geography through our homepage.) At the end of World War II in 1945, Japan surrendered her sovereignty over Taiwan without specifying to whom. On behalf of the Allied powers, Ching Kei-Shek's Kuomintang (Nationalist Party--KMT) occupied Taiwan. Due to extremely harsh treatment of native Taiwanese by greedy and corrupt Chinese administrators, a revolution on Taiwan (called the "228 Revolution") broke out on February 28, 1947. It was believed that at least 50,000 people were cruelly massacred by the Chinese army and military police in the revolution; more than one third of those killed were Presbyterian Christians. In 1949, KMT lost the civil war in China and some 2 million predominantly military, government, and business refugees fled from China to Taiwan. The KMT leader, Chiang Kai-Shek, set up his "provisional" capital in Taipei and viewed Taiwan as a base for retaking China. At this time, he declared martial law on Taiwan and ruled the Taiwanese as harshly as the Japanese had before him. Disregarding the ban on the establishment of political parties, the first opposition party--the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)--was created in 1986. After nearly four decades, martial law and the ban on opposition parties were lifted in July 15, 1987. Since then a large variety of political ideas have been allowed to circulate in Taiwan. But even now the ruling party (KMT) still uses "Republic of China" as the official name of the country, and KMT still claims to represent all of China, Tibet, and Mongolia, which is opposed by DPP.

Current Political Conditions--After a long struggle for freedom and democracy of opposition and some clergies from Presbyterian churches, many political reforms have been accomplished. The KMT's 40-year political monopoly on Taiwan has been broken and there are currently more than ten political parties. The three major parties are the KMT, DPP, and the New Party (NP). The NP was established in 1993 by breakaway members of the KMT. The main conflicts among these three parties are the issue of Taiwan's future -- either being independent from or unified with China-- and the issue of Taiwanese identity vs. Chinese identity. The debate over independence has grown so heated that it is now a major issue in each national election. The DPP openly advocates independence of Taiwan and receives 35%-40% of vote in national elections with increasing supports. China has become irritated by the increasing power of the Taiwan Independence movement and launched a military threat against Taiwan since July, 1995. Contrary to China's claim, Taiwan is NOT part of China. The Chinese government has been insisting that it will never give up the option of using military force to invade Taiwan.

Today, Taiwan is a democratic country. The Taiwan government has been trying to join the United Nations. However, Taiwan has not succeeded because of objections from China.

(Written by Dr. P.L. Wu, 1996, TSA)

MAJOR POLITICAL PARTIES IN TAIWAN

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)
Nationalist Party (Kuomintang--KMT)
New Party (NP)
Taiwan Independence Party (TAIP -- site in Taiwan. )