Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
be given a portion of the credit for fostering the transition to genuine
democracy in Taiwan. He took a significant step toward the reconcilia-
tion of the island's mainlander and native populations by appointing
Lee Teng-hui, a native Taiwanese with a Ph.D. in agricultural econom-
ics from Cornell, as his vice president. He also eased up on many of his
father's more draconian policies and perceptibly toned down
the back-to-the-mainland rhetoric, although he continued to excoriate
the Chinese Communists during his entire tenure as president. In a
Chinese speech competition for nonnative speakers sponsored by
his government in 1984 in the Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei,
the themes required for the speeches included “upright anti-
Communist heroes (fangong yishi) fleeing in droves to freedom in
Taiwan” and “the demarcation between the Three Principles of the
People and communism.” That same year Chiang Ching-kuo insult-
ingly referred to the Chinese Communist party as the “Chinese Com-
munist bandit party” (Zhonggong feidang) in a televised speech he
delivered to an enormous crowd assembled in Taipei for the October 10
National Day celebrations. He had little tolerance for talk of Taiwan
independence, but by the mid-1980s he seems to have begun to under-
stand that his father's claim to be the sole legitimate government of all
of China was unrealistic. His own purpose seems to have been more
toward making the Republic of China on Taiwan as good as it could
be and having it serve as an attractive alternative to continued
Communist administration of the mainland. To this day, the Chiang
Ching-kuo Foundation remains dedicated to promoting Chinese
culture and fostering interest in it all over the world.
During the 1980s President Chiang Ching-kuo seems to have had
something of a change of heart regarding the legacy of his rule over
Taiwan. He took credible measures to reduce corruption in
government, and he wanted to be thought of as a man of the people.
He frequently traveled around Taiwan and loved to be photographed
with groups of ordinary people. During the 1980s local restaurants
throughout the island featured pictures of President Chiang patroniz-
ing their establishments. As he aged and mellowed he also grew more
tolerant of non-Kuomintang political organization. In 1985 he
announced that the next president of the Republic of China on Taiwan
would not be a member of his family.
Until the late 1980s the formation of political parties was technically
illegal, so critics and opponents of the Kuomintang government were
referred to collectively as Dangwai, or “outside the [Nationalist] Party.”
Sensing an imminent change of political direction in the air, by the
mid-1980s Dangwai people and movements became bolder and more
