Intro to Taiwan politics
I generally assume that my readers have a working knowledge of Taiwanese politics. This introduction is intended for people who are new to the subject. As with any introduction I will inevitably skim over some things, but I hope that this into will allow readers to be able to more profitably consume other information about Taiwanese elections.
A caveat: Like most of my blog writing, most of this was written after midnight, and I may or may not have been fully awake. Please do not assume that this is up to publication standards. It may contain errors.
Update: This is all horribly out of date and incomplete. It turns out that I never got around to finishing this grand introduction to Taiwan, and I certainly haven’t updated over the years. Eventually, I’ll probably have to remove this entire section, but that assumes I find the energy. If you bother to read any of this, think of it as a historical snapshot from the final year of President Ma’s first term.
Frozen Garlic 
December 17, 2011 at 6:21 pm |
Hi Nathan: I’ve read through your intro section and I think it is one of the best “condensed” version of Taiwan’s history that I have seen thus far. One minor point, in the section where you talk about Taiwan transitioning to democracy it would be nice to see some mention of Chiang Ching-kuo’s thinking on this, or on the KMT’s thinking in general on why then etc. Also, it is my understanding that the Americans had been putting pressure on Taiwan to democratize. If this is true, it might be worth mentioning the role of pressure from the international community.
This is such a good, clear summary of events I was wondering if I could re-use it (with proper attribution of course) to give some visiting guests a bit more context to their visit here. I’ll explain more offline if you send me an e-mail directly.
Best,
JJR