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assertive, especially after several of them were successful in the local
elections the Kuomintang allowed. Many Dangwai activists who had
been involved in the publication of Formosa magazine and the Kao-
hsiung Incident were now widely regarded as heroes and inspirations.
In 1986 it was plain that major changes were on the horizon, and a
trickle of travelers ventured out of Taiwan for the mainland. That same
year, in September, many Dangwai politicians met informally at a
famous hotel in Taipei. During their meeting a bold and daring motion
was made to form a political party, and it carried. This was the birth of
the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which was destined to play a
major role in Taiwan's democratization. Fortunately for the DPP found-
ers, they had read the political climate in Taiwan correctly. The next year
President Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law on the island and
allowed many people in Taiwan to visit their families on the mainland.
Chiang Ching-kuo passed away in January of 1988 and was suc-
ceeded as president by Lee Teng-hui. Everyone knew momentous
changes were coming. In 1990 the Wild Lily student movement
demanded direct popular election of Taiwan's president and vice
president. President Lee approved of this, and in 1996 Taiwan held
its first-ever fully open and democratic presidential election. Lee won
it and served a final term of four years as president, and during this
term he came out more and more in favor of “Taiwanization,” or the
strong assertion of the island's differences with the mainland.
After Chiang Ching-kuo died in 1988, the Kuomintang began
allowing democratic reforms. The transition from essentially one-
party rule to authentic democracy was brief but intense and highly
confrontational. Fistfights and even gang fights frequently broke out
on the floor of Taiwan's legislature, right under a gigantic portrait of
Sun Yat-sen, as members of the DPP, Kuomintang, and other parties
struggled to learn how to disagree with one another in a peaceful
and civilized manner. One rogue politician with a Ph.D. in philosophy
from a German university was in the habit of snatching the micro-
phone away from rival lawmakers, and once a woman legislator
walked up to the podium where another woman legislator was speak-
ing and slapped her right in the face, in full view of television cameras.
The former one-party rule by mainlander Kuomintang members had
fostered such a black-and-white paradigm of good versus evil in
Taiwan that people had difficulty imagining that someone could
oppose the government and yet remain loyal to the nation. The con-
cept of loyal opposition was new to Taiwan, and for a while it showed.
Bythelate1990s,however,thepeopleofTaiwanhadbecomemore
democratically mature, and the fisticuffs tapered off significantly.
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