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Taiwan's National Assembly Elections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Simon Long
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Extract

The elections held on 21 December in Taiwan for seats in the National Assembly were unprecedented in a number of respects. But they prolonged the more than 40 years of overwhelming dominance of the island's politics by the ruling Kuomintang (KMT). They represented a huge leap towards a genuinely pluralist political system in Taiwan, but were marred by electoral malpractice, and distorted by the prominence of the “independence” issue, and the intervention of Beijing leaders.

Type
Recent Developments
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 129 , March 1992 , pp. 216 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1992

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References

1. Quoted by Associated Press, Taipei, 19 December 1991. Note that when General Hao says “our nation,” he is referring not to Taiwan, but to China (including Taiwan).

2. Not all “mainland” delegates were elected in 1947. Until 1987, those who died were replaced by people who had purportedly been runners-up in the 1947 elections, where such people could be found. In practice, some members appear never to have faced election at all, but to have been given their National Assembly seats as a sinecure in return for meritorious service to the KMT.

3. Quoted by Agence France Presse, Taipei, 20 December 1991.

4. For a brief summary of “supplementary elections” held in Taiwan since 1969, see Long, Simon, Taiwan: China's Last Frontier (London: Macmillan, 1991), pp. 66–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Central News Agency, Taipei, in English, 1626 GMT 21 December 1991. In Summary of World Broadcasts (SWB), 28 December 1991, FE/1264, p. B/5.

6. See Long, , Taiwan, pp. 66–74 and 180–202.Google Scholar See also Clough, Ralph N., Island China (Cambridge, Mass., 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Huang, Mab, “Intellectual Ferment for Political Reform in Taiwan” (Michigan Papers in Chinese Studies, 1978)Google Scholar; and Gold, Thomas B., State and Society in the Taiwan Miracle (New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1986).Google Scholar

7. Shaw Yu-ming, government spokesman. Interview, December 1989.

8. Author's interview for the BBC with James MacGregor, then Taipei correspondent, Wall Street Journal, March 1990.

9. Author's inteview for the BBC, March 1990.

10. Author's interview for the BBC, March 1990.

11. Chung-guo shi-pao (China Times), 19 08 1991.Google Scholar

12. Quoted by United Press International, Taipei, 21 December 1991.

13. At a post-election press conference, 21 December 1991, quoted by Agence France Presse, Taipei, 21 December.

14. Quoted by Reuters, Taipei, 16 December.

15. Chung-guo shi-pao, 20 11 1989.Google Scholar

16. In Baum, Julian, “Opposition cues,” Far Eastern Economic Review, 19 12 1991.Google Scholar

17. BBC report by Francis Markus, Taipei, 22 December 1991.

18. According to Samuel Hsieh, governor of Taiwan's Central Bank; Reuters, Taipei, 14 January 1992.

19. Economist Intelligence Unit, Taiwan Country Profile 1991–1992 (London, 1991).Google Scholar

20. Associated Press, Taipei, 23 December 1991.

21. Associated Press, Taipei, 21 December 1991.

22. Ibid.

23. Results of Gallup poll, reported by United Press International, Taipei, 19 December 1991.

24. Zhongguo shibao, 22 12 1991.Google Scholar

25. See Long, , Taiwan, pp. 203–221Google Scholar, and Weng, Byron S.J., “Taiwan's mainland policy before and after June 4th,” in Hicks, George (ed.), The Broken Mirror: China After Tiananmen (Harlow: Longman, 1990).Google Scholar

26. Economist Intelligence Unit, China Country Report, 1991, Number 2 (London, 1991)Google Scholar, quoting Chinese Customs figures. Some Taiwan sources put the trade higher still, at US$4 billion in 1990, and US$5.5 billion in 1991 (Reuters, Taipei, 16 January 1992, quoting unnamed Taiwan “trade officials”).

27. Long, , Taiwan, pp. 160–63.Google Scholar

28. This brings the total of countries with diplomatic relations with “the Republic of China” to 29. It cannot disguise, however, what has in many ways been a bad period for Taiwan diplomacy. Of its three most important diplomatic partners, one–Saudi Arabia–established relations with Beijing and severed them with Taipei in 1990, and the other two–South Korea and South Africa–will do likewise at the earliest opportunity. Meanwhile, Indonesia and Singapore, which had relations with neither China, also restored or opened relations with Beijing in 1990, and Israel, which is in the same category, followed suit in January 1992. Nor did Taiwan pre-empt Beijing by winning recognition from the newly independent members of the Commonwealth of Independent States, despite good ties in the Baltic, Belorus and the Ukraine especially.

29. SWB, 10 12 1991, FE/1251, p. A3/3.Google Scholar

30. SWB, 23 11 1991, FE/1237, p. A3/6.Google Scholar