In political science there's an iron law that "the more authoritarian a country is, the more politics is made the top priority." Politics has been the main focus of public life in Taiwan for the past half-century. Does this mean Taiwan has been authoritarian for 50 years?

Hardly. To be sure, 50 years ago, newspapers were ritually singing the praises of the leader and government, while ordinary people were afraid to open their mouths to say anything. But today, the media criticizes everybody, and taxi drivers can be heard expounding on political topics of the day.

Political change in Taiwan has been startling, gratifying, and thought-provoking.

It is the end of August. Legislator Shih Ming-te, the former chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party, has just held a press conference marking the 20th anniversary of the Formosa Incident (also known as the Kaohsiung Incident), and we interview him in his office. "Twenty years ago," he recalls, "The regime opponents who were organized around Formosa magazine were considered a subversive group, enemies of the state. Now the Formosa movement is widely recognized as a milestone in Taiwan's democratization." Shih considers himself "very lucky to have survived to see my dreams become reality."

Returning to prison as the master

Fate plays curious tricks. In 1993, when Shih had just been elected to the Legislative Yuan for the first time, he was looking for an office in Taipei City. His secretary took him to see one building, and Shih almost couldn't believe his eyes: This was the very same building were he was held by the Taiwan Garrison Command for 11 months the first time he was arrested as a so-called subversive. Three of his fellow prisoners at that time were sentenced to death, but Shih has survived to return after 30 years as the master. Nevertheless, from time to time, he can still hear the echoes of the dragging chains of those condemned to death.

In 1949, the Kuomintang government, having lost the civil war in mainland China, retreated to Taiwan, a place from which there was no further retreat. To secure this last foothold, the government declared martial law. Suddenly, every individual in this little island was at risk.

For nearly four decades, politics controlled and penetrated every aspect of life. "Protect secrets and defend against spies, this is everyone's responsibility!" was a slogan every primary school student knew by heart. "Long live President Chiang, long live the Republic of China!" shouted 100,000 well-instructed soldiers and citizens on National Day. "Rather that one household cry than one street cry"-a dogma of the Taiwan Garrison Command-caused countless families to experience terror in the middle of the night and countless leaders of society to be muzzled. The only thing that mattered in this society was the state, not the individual.

This harsh reality was in part a result of the environment. By 1949, the Communist Party controlled all of mainland China. In 1950 the Korean War broke out, a war that would kill four million people. The Vietnam War raged for many years up until 1975, when South Vietnam fell to the Communist North. The threat of "Communization" loomed large and real. Taiwan is just a lonely island, and the government declared that "retreat is the road to death."

Chu Yun-han, a professor of political science at National Taiwan University, says "it is precisely because 'retreat was death' that the government was extremely cautious." When the KMT came to Taiwan, it brought with it an estimated two million military and civil refugees. Although this greatly increased the burden on local Taiwanese, and severely curtailed the growth of opportunities for local individuals, it is undeniable that "concentrating the capabilities of the large country to manage a small island" helped Taiwan to develop rapidly.

The roots of democracy

In the early 1950s, the government's main policies were "equalization of land rights" and "land to the tiller." The government traded stocks for land, and forced Taiwan's gentry to invest their resources in industry and commerce. At the same time, it laid the foundation for the social stability and equal distribution of wealth that have characterized Taiwan over the past half-century.

Even earlier, in 1950, still in a period of uncertainty and chaos, the government began holding elections for local (county, city, and provincial) governments.

In The Thought of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, it clearly says that local government is the bedrock of the nation. Nevertheless, after the central government came to Taiwan, the jurisdiction of this small island's "central government" was virtually identical to its "provincial government." Since the central government had no intention of releasing control or delegating authority, the only thing left to local government was the formal exercise of the local elections.

An 83-year-old woman who lives in Taihsi Village in Yunlin County, recalls that when election time came around, the village or neighborhood chief would send people little gifts. In the early days these were such things as soap and towels; later on the gifts were often cash. The simple country folk were usually delighted to receive them, and could be trusted to deliver their votes to those who gave the gifts. Although the KMT's position as the hegemonic party was unassailable, over the years, candidates who were not members of the KMT won some seats in these elections. Long before Chen Shui-bian of the DPP became mayor of Taipei, Kao Yu-shu and Yang Chin-hu, running as independents, defeated the KMT nominees to win the mayoralties of, respectively, Taipei and Kaohsiung.

By the late 1970s, Taiwan's phenomenal economic growth had caught the attention of the world. Asia's "four little dragons" became the focus of study among many. But even as the economy prospered, the diplomatic situation became dire. The Republic of China, one of the founding great powers of the United Nations Security Council along with the UK, France, the US, and the USSR, ultimately could not resist the reality of international politics, and at one point was reduced to having formal relations with only 22 countries.

Yet every cloud has a silver lining. As Taiwan was sealed out of the international community, attention turned inward. Under the influence of the "nativist thought movement," the people of Taiwan woke as if from a dream, and began to look carefully at their own land for the first time. They discovered many problems and shortcomings that had been hidden behind the "Greater China myth" and the policy of "first priority to economic development." Social movements began to rise, and there was a growing clamor for loosening of political restrictions.

Looking back, there were many reasons for the government to feel confident. Political dissidents, long silenced, had little capacity to stir up the public. Indeed, with economic growth, people were largely satisfied with the standard of living. In addition, Chiang Ching-kuo, the nation's leader at that time, was widely considered a "friend of the common man" after touring every corner of Taiwan dressed casually in a windbreaker. Taiwan looked even better in comparison with the ten years of chaos of the Cultural Revolution in mainland China and the poverty and destruction there. With so many reasons for confidence, the KMT became more tolerant and took a "softer" line on dissent. After authoritarianism

In 1977 came the Chungli incident: At that time elections were being held for city and county executives in Taiwan. In Tao-yuan County, Hsu Hsin-liang split from the KMT and ran as an independent. His supporters, suspecting that KMT was engaging in vote fraud, surrounded the Chungli police station and a riot ensued. Two years later came the Formosa Incident. Calling for "Taiwan independence," more than 10,000 residents of Kaohsiung took to the streets. These were major shocks to Taiwan society, which previously had been stable and tame. Fortunately, with both government and opposition showing restraint, there were no tragedies similar to the Tiananmen Incident in Beijing.

With the repression of the Formosa opposition, the first generation of opposition leaders were imprisoned. Their place was taken mainly by the attorneys who defended them. Sympathy for these political prisoners and their families, combined with a rational, more organized approach, enabled the opposition-known as the "Tangwai" (meaning "outside the KMT")-to do reasonably well in elections.

It was at this time that then-president Chiang Ching-kuo began to recognize that, as he put it, "times are changing and trends are changing." Later, as he fought a final struggle against long-term illness, he announced the lifting of martial law, permission for people to travel to mainland China, and the lifting of restrictions on the formation of political parties and opening of new newspapers. These steps marked a great liberalization of politics in Taiwan. Chiang's successor, Lee Teng-hui, has carried on with a series of political liberalization measures.

In 1991, the older generation of KMT politicians that filled the seats of the legislative branch of the central government-who had been in place since 1947-were forced to retire. Finally, the people of Taiwan, who in the past could only vote for local officials and a very small number of so-called "supplementary seats" to the national parliament, could elect their own legislators. In the first National Assembly elections after this, the KMT won nearly 80 percent of the seats, an overwhelming victory.

Chu Yun-han notes: "Taiwan is perhaps the only case in the world in which, after the fall of authoritarianism, the long-term ruling party was able to maintain power democratically." This could be because local elections had been in place for more than 30 years, giving people an outlet for their frustrations. The successful "Taiwanization" of the KMT under Chairman Lee Teng-hui was another factor.

Today, 12 years after the lifting of martial law, there has been a manifest change in Taiwan's political atmosphere. An elderly gent named Chang, who left Taiwan 20 years ago and returned a couple of years ago, is amazed when he sees cartoons lampooning national leaders or when radio commentators say national figures' "brains are on the fritz." Is this is the same country that he left all those years ago because of its suffocating and oppressive atmosphere? A new KMT, a new Taiwan

The accomplishments of democracy have been rooted in a relaxation of ideological control.

"The greatest change the Nationalist government has experienced is its transformation from an externally imposed government-in-exile to a localized regime with roots in Taiwan itself," says Michael Hsiao, a researcher at the Institute of Sociology at the Academia Sinica. This was, he says, "essential, but not easy."

Hsiao points out that as hopes for "recovering the mainland" faded, the government's own characterization of Taiwan gradually changed-from being the "springboard" for counterattack, to being the "base" for eventual recovery of the mainland, to being the last and only hope for the perpetuation of the ROC government in any form. President Chiang Ching-kuo accepted these realities. Thus, in the 1970s, he promoted a large number of Taiwanese political elites. President Lee Teng-hui, through such measures as direct election of the president and freezing of the provincial government, has gone even farther, attempting to transform Taiwan from its previous status as "a province of China" or "local government" to "the state of Taiwan."

Chu Yun-han says that, before 1949, Taiwan was always a subsystem of a larger system-under the Cheng family with its loyalties to restoring the Ming dynasty, as a province of China under the Qing dynasty, as a Japanese colony, and as a "restored" part of the ROC after WWII. There had never been any thought or expectation that Taiwan would be an independent country.

However, after Chiang Kai-shek moved the ROC government to Taiwan, Taiwan thereafter had its own army, its own currency, its own passport, its own legal system. . . . A consciousness of national identity gradually took shape, and has since been strengthened and consolidated. It can safely be said that the two terms that might best express Taiwan politics over the last 50 years would be "the Taiwanization of the KMT" and "the nationalization of Taiwan."

Today, 12 years after the lifting of martial law, Taiwan truly has democracy and freedom. Yet, as you look at the newspapers, you see the major parties engaged in internal power struggles, a National Assembly out of control amending the constitution to suit its own whims, intensive corruption and involvement of organized crime in politics, and the apparent powerlessness of the law. Taiwan has democracy, but the "rule of law" is still distant. Destruction and construction

Chiu Hei-yuan, of the Institute of Sociology at the Academia Sinica, explains that "democracy has always had two stages, first destruction then construction." As far as destruction is concerned, restrictions on freedom from the authoritarian era have been eliminated, and the shadow of the White Terror has disappeared. However, faced with the enormous task of building the democratic system, people are amazed to find that the real work is just beginning.

Chiu says: "To build a high-quality democracy, the first thing is to create a healthy political party system, and the second is to improve people's understanding and practice of democratic habits. Unfortunately, Taiwan has not done well in either of these respects." People who are today over 30, having grown up under the martial law education system, lack any concept of political checks and balances, are short on the ability to make autonomous judgments, and have poor democratic ethics. There is still a long way to go before Taiwanese democracy can be said to be qualitatively satisfactory.

What's worrisome is that the new atmosphere of freedom has intoxicated many people, and even quite a few intellectuals do not feel there's an urgent need for reform.

This August, as members of the National Assembly were talking about expanding their own powers an extending their own terms, Chiu led a demonstration of a few thousand people to the Chungshan Hall on Yangmingshan, where the Assembly was meeting, to demand its elimination.

However, sighs Chiu, "In demonstrations these days, some people might walk along for a while, and others may watch from the sidelines for a while, but nobody really treats them seriously." A decade or so ago, a gathering of a thousand people would bring out ranks of military policemen and barbed wire barriers. Today, there's no threat of authoritarian violence, but correspondingly there's little power to the demonstrations either. Demands for reform are "like punching cotton," and he feels a sense of powerlessness.

Unchain your hearts

Shih Ming-te, who a few years ago "fell off his pedestal as a deity of the opposition movement" because he promoted a "reconciliation movement" and socialized with legislators of the New Party (which is seen as a "mainlanders' party") takes a cool view of the current turbulence in the political arena, and can't help but warn: "Although Taiwan is democratic and free, many politicians still have invisible chains; they are bound by mistrust, suspicion, and conspiracy theories." Shih has on many occasions warned his party colleagues to free themselves of old prejudices: "Even if the DPP becomes the ruling party, that doesn't mean that it would be free from the temptation of becoming more authoritarian."

Even today, Shih keeps a bird's-eye-view photo of the "Oasis Hotel"-the facetious nickname for the political prison on Green Island were he spent so much time-at the entrance to his office, where he sees it several times a day. The point is not to remember what ills have been done him, but to remind himself that such things should absolutely never happen again.

The chains" he describes make it hard for many politicians to distinguish right from wrong. Many, tasting power for the first time, become corrupt themselves. This makes Shih even more concerned: "It's easy to bear with hardship, but hard to resist temptation. The DPP has to rebuild its moral ideals."

In looking at the KMT, Chu Yun-han says that, putting aside for the moment the White Terror, the most serious and unresolved political failure of the KMT in Taiwan has been manipulation of the constitution.

Referring to the National Assembly, he declares: "In no other country on earth is there a standing body specially responsible for amending the constitution which spends all its time doing nothing but rewriting the constitution." The constitution is the nation's basic law: it should be stable so that the country can be stable. However, in the martial law era, the Chiang family, in order to maintain the regime's power and the claim that it ruled all of China, allowed the first parliament elected in 1947 to have its term extended indefinitely, and even gave members added privileges, making the National Assembly a lifetime sinecure. With that precedent in mind, modern assembly deputies are that much harder to rein in.

In September of this year, disregarding an outcry from the entire nation, the National Assembly voted to extend its own term by over two years. They've said that one reason for extending the term is to establish a new "Taiwan Basic Law." This alone sent the Taiwan stock market into free fall. Yet, despite mass criticism, the only people who can dissolve the National Assembly are the deputies themselves, and the ordinary citizen is powerless to do anything.

Another "cancer" which haunts the ruling party is "black gold politics." This refers to widespread corruption and the involvement of organized crime in politics. Chu Yun-han points out that when the KMT first came to Taiwan, the leadership, remembering how corruption was fatal to their regime in mainland China, tried to keep the government clean. But, while the highest authorities were basically uncorrupted, the KMT-in order to maintain links with local power centers-entered into a dubious symbiotic relationship with local vested interests. Today, organized crime, money and politics are inextricably intertwined. The government has suffered a great loss of credibility, and Taiwan's budding democracy is threatened.

"Elections in Taiwan are everywhere marred by black gold politics. I would say half of the assemblymen and legislators in Taiwan have some connection to organized crime," said Lee Yuan-tseh, Nobel prize winner and now president of the Academia Sinica, addressing a seminar held in September to discuss the political situation. He said forthrightly that Taiwan's democracy is mainly something to show the international community, but internally there is disarray. How can this be corrected? Lee says that the people must themselves wake up and learn how to use their votes to turn things around.

While domestic politics is still not yet on a completely healthy track, eyes from across the Taiwan Strait look covetously on the island, greatly increasing the complexity of the political situation. Looking for a win-win solution

In the 1970s, when the US adopted the policy of moving closer to Communist China as a counterweight to the Soviet Union, China began to rejoin the international community. From that point, Taiwan's international space began to shrink. In 1971, the ROC was forced out of the United Nations. The following year Japan broke relations with the ROC, and the US did likewise on January 1, 1979.

The narrowing of international space in turn sparked the rise of "nativist ideology" in Taiwan-nascent Taiwanese nationalism. Now that Taiwan is free, democratic, and prosperous, the old policy of refusing to coexist in the international community with mainland China has been abandoned, and the government hopes to create a "win-win" situation. But mainland China still has the mindset from the civil war half a century ago. It is determined to treat Taiwan as a "renegade province," and will not give Taiwan any room to move.

"It's our fate," says Chiu Hei-yuan. "From the earliest immigration of Chinese to Taiwan 400 years ago, this little island has always faced the problem of how to deal with the hegemonic Chinese power across the strait." As long as the current standoff remains, China is still China, but Taiwan's status is distorted, and this has effects internally as well.

Senior journalist and commentator Nan Fang Shuo observes that Taiwan's diplomats are fighting a battle over every inch of ground. Taiwan businessmen, on the other hand, are schizophrenic, because they are being asked by the government to "be patient" but they know that in business time is money.

Everything in Taiwan is affected by the reunification-independence debate. For example, discussions on the 80th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement were complicated by the question of whether not the movement should be seen as "ours" (i.e. as something in which Taiwanese participated) or something that belongs exclusively to "those Chinese." You could debate the issue for a whole day without coming to any common ground. Even the issue of eliminating the National Assembly, which should be one of simply making the constitutional system more sound, involves suspicions that those who want to eliminate it, by creating discontinuity with the old ROC system, are encouraging Taiwan independence!

History can be ironic. In 1949, the Nationalist government fled to Taiwan, hanging on to the last bit of Chinese territory that had not been taken by the Communist Party. However, it was only 40 years later that the ideals of freedom and democracy formally extolled by the ROC were put into practice. Today, with half a century gone by since 1949, Taiwan has already transformed itself. It is only in the realm of cross-strait relations that the old tension remains.

When will the standoff end? Taiwan's government has consistently announced that its policy is one of no independence, no rush to reunify, no antagonism, mutual benefit for Chinese on both sides, and a win-win situation. But the problem is that, as long as Beijing does not face reality and does not change its hegemonic attitude, the future of cross-strait relations still looks murky.

The future is unpredictable. However, says Shih Ming-te, "So long as Taiwanese do all they can to manage this piece of land well, then these 50 years will leave a splendid mark in history."