After the overwhelming victory of Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
In 1987, a wave of democratic reform swept across Eastern Europe. Many communist regimes collapsed and were succeeded by democratic forces driven by dissidents that had been persecuted under the previous regimes. But a few years after the dissolution of communist authority, communist parties were able to reinvent themselves as center-left parties. Newly-formed parties calling themselves the Socialist Party or the Social Democratic Party even returned to power. They were able to do this because these parties were determined to reform themselves and rise from the ashes. Without such determination, these parties would not have survived.
These parties underwent reform on three fronts.
First, they completely discarded party-state thinking. Regardless of whether the peaceful transformation in 1989 was bottom-up or top-down, the Communist Party was able to adjust its policies to accommodate the wishes of its citizenry. It managed to revise the nation's constitution in a timely fashion, renounce its secure position as a single-party authoritarian regime and jettison redundant regulations. Also, the communist regimes firmly announced their determination to draw a clear line between themselves and their forerunners. Then they held elections in order to establish the healthy competition of party politics.
Second, the parties renamed themselves and changed their organizational structures. Apart from the Communist Party's continued use of that name in the Czech Republic, all other Eastern European communist parties renamed themselves the Socialist Party, the Social Democratic Party or the Left-Wing Democratic Party in order to completely wipe out the remnants of the Leninist regimes. Former communist states such as Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Macedonia and Lithuania made an all-out effort to carry out reforms, since this was the only way to take back power. Retaining the communist party name would have resulted in utter defeat -- the fate of the Communist Party in the Czech Republic.
Third, these parties handed over party assets to state coffers. The party-state assets were returned to the governments of Eastern European nations after the dissolution of their communist regimes. Given that most headquarters of the communist regimes were in the heart of the capital city, the democratization process led to the renewal of the cityscape, and the concentration of communist apparatchiks and their security forces dissipated.
The KMT and the former communist states of Eastern Europe all followed Leninist ideology. In the early period of the democratization process in Eastern European states, the Communist Party was committed to sweeping reforms in order to purge the nation of party-state ideology and forge a new constitution in step with the times. Only in this way could the former communist authorities return to power.
Given the successful transformation of former communist states in Eastern Europe, could the KMT follow in their paths? The KMT's fate in the 2008 presidential election depends on whether the party is able to implement the three kinds of reform listed above in a convincing manner.
Thomas Hung is a graduate research fellow at National Chengchi University's Institute of International Relations.
TRANSLATED BY LIN YA-TI
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
In an article published on this page on Tuesday, Kaohsiung-based journalist Julien Oeuillet wrote that “legions of people worldwide would care if a disaster occurred in South Korea or Japan, but the same people would not bat an eyelid if Taiwan disappeared.” That is quite a statement. We are constantly reading about the importance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), hailed in Taiwan as the nation’s “silicon shield” protecting it from hostile foreign forces such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and so crucial to the global supply chain for semiconductors that its loss would cost the global economy US$1
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
Sasha B. Chhabra’s column (“Michelle Yeoh should no longer be welcome,” March 26, page 8) lamented an Instagram post by renowned actress Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) about her recent visit to “Taipei, China.” It is Chhabra’s opinion that, in response to parroting Beijing’s propaganda about the status of Taiwan, Yeoh should be banned from entering this nation and her films cut off from funding by government-backed agencies, as well as disqualified from competing in the Golden Horse Awards. She and other celebrities, he wrote, must be made to understand “that there are consequences for their actions if they become political pawns of