60 Chapter 4 From "Free China"to Democratic Taiwan 61 a process so rapid,comprehensive,and peaceful that it has earned the label Although the ROC state incorporated many compromises aimed at ac. “political miracle." commodating the political realities of early twentieth-century China,it took the three principles as the basis of its legitimacy.But democracy was In August 1947,a few months after the bloody 2-28 Incident,General Al- not its only value-or even its primary one-for the ROC also was a na- bert C.Wedemeyer submitted a sobering report to U.S.Secretary of State tionalist state.For the ROC government,the survival of the Chinese nation George Marshall.A recent fact-finding mission had found the situation in was a precondition for democratization.Achieving that goal was a daunt- China grim,and nowhere more so than in Taiwan: ing task in a China wracked by internal division and foreign aggression.To reconcile democracy and nationalism,Sun prescribed a three-stage process. The Administration of the former Governor Chen Yi has alienated the people In the first phase,a military government would unite China,fulfilling the from the Central Government....The Central Government lost a fine oppor- nationalist mission and establishing a foundation for democracy.During tunity to indicate to the Chinese people and to the world at large its capability to provide honest and efficient administration.They cannot attribute their the second phase-which Sun called "political tutelage"-a provisional failure to the activities of the Communists or of dissident elements.The people government would rule the nation while the Chinese people learned the anticipated sincerely and enthusiastically deliverance from the Japanese yoke. skills of democratic citizenship through local self-government.Only after However,Chen Yi and his henchmen ruthlessly,corruptly,and avariciously these two phases were completed would China enter the third and final imposed their regime upon a happy and amenable population.The Army con- phase-constitutional government. ducted themselves as conquerors.Secret police operated freely to intimidate Sun Yat-sen imagined the first two phases might take ten years,but as it and to facilitate exploitation by Central Government officials...There were turned out,uniting China and repelling Japanese invaders took more than indications that Formosans would be receptive toward United States guardian- three decades.In 1947 the ROC at last was able to implement the final ship and United Nations trusteeship.They fear that the Central Government phase.A new constitution came into effect,followed by elections through- contemplates bleeding their island to support the tottering and corrupt Nan- out China that staffed local governments and two national representative king machine,and I think their fears well founded. bodies,the National Assembly and Legislative Yuan.The Legislative Yuan made ROC law;the National Assembly's responsibilities included naming It is hard to imagine a less promising beginning.The 2-28 Incident and a president,and in 1948 its members elected Chiang Kai-shek. the tensions that sparked it marred the Republic of China government's As the ROC entered the era of constitutional government,its political early days in Taiwan.Then,less than two years after Wedemeyer delivered system was shot through with contradictions.It was based on democratic his dreary report,Mao Zedong's Red Army drove the ROC off the main- concepts,but rarely lived up to its founders'lofty promises.The Nationalist land,leaving Taiwan's poisoned political landscape as its only refuge.The Party,or Kuomintang (KMT),had squeezed out nearly all of its political psychological and social consequences of those disastrous early encoun- competitors,and Chinese politics had hardened into a violent competition ters-distrust,anger,fear-lingered for decades,reinforced by the ROC's between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party.Their hot war ended institutions and practices.An authoritarian mentality pervaded nearly every when the Nationalists fled to Taiwan,but the animosity lasted for decades, realm,from popular culture and education to high politics.It was only in and distrust between the two sides is palpable even today. the 1970s that Taiwanese began to resist the state in significant numbers, Stranded on Taiwan in 1949,the ROC government and its ruling party to demand their freedom.But when they did,they discovered an unlikely faced conditions as dire as any they had encountered on the mainland. resource to support their claims:the ROC Constitution. Any liberal impulses they might have had were swamped by a torrent of Although it didn't look that way in the 1950s and 1960s,the ROC state crises,and the political institutions they set up on Taiwan overrode and was not built on an authoritarian foundation.The constitution adopted in invalidated most of the constitution's democratic precepts.Martial law 1947 is a democratic document;it rests on the ideas of Sun Yat-sen,a man provisions imposed in the wake of the 2-28 uprising criminalized most whose impulses-if not always his actions-leaned toward democracy. political debate.They empowered a military agency-the Taiwan Garrison Sun's political philosophy was rooted in his "Three Principles of the Peo- Command-to enforce a ban on any activity that challenged the KMT's ple":nationalism,democracy,and well-being.His Chinese approximation dominance.Other measures effectively suspended ROC citizens'political of Lincoln's "government of the people,by the people and for the people" rights,walling off the national government from popular participation carried the same democratic promise that Lincoln had in mind when he Despite these limitations,the constitution remained the source of the spoke those memorable words. ROC state's legitimacy.Under the logic of the Cold War,the ROC carried