people are free to express their opinions on policies, politicians, and the
Taiwan's future. Political debates have been moderated by mostly centrist
positions taken by government leaders, opposition leaders, the media, and
members of the business community. Thus Taiwan has so far been spared the
dangerous influences of extremism that has plagued so many democratizing
countries.

The clash of authoritarian and democratic tenets within Taiwan's political
system and the Kuomintang, and the party elite's handling of this contradiction
is the focus of this book. The Kuomintang's role in the democratization
process on Taiwan has been largely overlooked, though there are a number
of good studies that have appeared in recent years that consider the
emergence of democracy in Taiwan. Cheng and Haggard "Political Change
in Taiwan" and Tien The Great Transition: Political and Social Change in the
Republic of China are two excellent volumes that consider many important
aspects of democratization, including economic and social development, the
rise of opposition parties, Taiwan's relations with mainland China, and
electoral politics. ⁵ The latter is also a focus of Tien recent book Taiwan's
Electoral Politics and Democratic Transition and Yun-han Chu Crafting
Democracy in Taiwan. ⁶ Alan Wachman has considered the important role of
subethnic differences in Taiwan and how the national identity question has
influenced the democracy movement, and Murray Rubenstein has written a
fine study of politics and society in Taiwan generally. ⁷ But all of these books
fail to focus exclusively on the role of the Kuomintang in the democratization
process.

Peter R. Moody Political Change in Taiwan: A Study of Ruling Party
Adaptability, does focus on the role of the KMT. ⁸ Like Moody, I will analyze
the Kuomintang both as an independent actor and as an institution that was
acted upon by a variety of economic, social, and political agents. Moody
downplays the role of Leninism, however, and he does not document political
change in Taiwan or within the KMT chronologically. I suggest these are
important elements that have been overlooked by Moody and others in the
recent studies that consider Taiwan's democratization. They are the real keys
to understanding Taiwan's evolution from an authoritarian regime to a
democratic one.

There has always been widely divergent views of the KMT. Praised by
some, despised by others, the KMT has always been a focus of controversy.
During the Nationalist era in China (1927-37), the KMT was opposed by
industrialists who colluded with foreigners the KMT deemed imperialists.
Warlords took advantage of KMT appeasement while offering little in return.
Japan's invasion of China in 1937 dealt yet another blow to the Kuomintang
barely twenty years after individual Japanese had assisted in Sun Yat-sen's
early efforts to build the KMT into an effective revolutionary party. The

-2-