Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

When Chiang Ching-kuo (CCK) became president of Taiwan in 1978, the political future and freedom of the country took a sharp turn from its previous existence. Taiwan had fallen under martial law provisions in 1948 , and since that time, it had been under the cruel rule of the Republic of China. From the very beginning, CCK was opposed to China’s harsh rule, and set out almost immediately to follows Sun Yat-sen’s plan to enter into a democracy. As CCK stated on Constitution Day in 1973: “In the first 36 years our nation suffered internal rebellion and external invasion, yet in the midst of blood and tears we still bravely persisted in … moving from military rule, through tutelage, into the stage of constitutional rule.” CCK’s 1986 reforms sprung forward from this belief while turning the country away from being despotically ruled, and towards the Kuomintang’s (KMT) ideology of “constitutional government and democracy.” His first move was to eliminate the martial law imposed by China. After this initial break from the mainland, Taiwan began its ascent from tyranny to democracy. The factors which helped lead towards this democratization are very straightforward: First, Taiwan had reached a socioeconomic