Intellectuals And Taiwan's Democratization

The political transformation of Taiwan has aroused academic interest of many relevant researchers, but few of them attribute this smooth process to intellectuals'endeavors.Taiwan's democratization, compared with other districts in modern world, incurred the least social turmoil. What kind of role had Taiwan intellectuals played in this smooth transition? And how many factors, internal or external, have exerted significant influence over the "Taiwan Miracle"? With these queries in focus, I intend to carry out, in this dissertation, the following discussion which is preceded by an introduction and cut into four pertinent parts.The first part, or to be more exact, the second chapter is to illustrate definition of intellectual, its traits, and at last, what characterize Taiwan intellectual.The third chapter is an elaboration on a series of political protests launched by Taiwan intellectuals against KMT authoritarian rule after the Second World War. Those incidents, named respectively after relevant magazines (Free China, Li terature Star, Col lege and Formosa), are dwelled on along with their backgrounds.The focus of my discussion in chapter four is on Taiwan's dualistic political system, which provides a constitutional gap accommodating opponents's political effort in their push for democratization. Analyzed close behind are its structure, traits and significance for political transition in Taiwan.The development and characteristic of Tangwai (nonparty oppoents) movement is discussed in chapter five which ends with exploring the significance for democratization of their concerted efforts with intellectuals in the fight against authoritarianism.From the above discussion, a conclusion can be safely drawn that, after Chiang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan, intellectuals, inspired by their high aspiration for democracy, has been striving to undermine the legitimacy of KMT authoritarian rule in this island, but they owed their final success to mass strength mobil ized by their propaganda but organized by Tangwai movement in the political space they opened up through local election which served to erode the root of KMT regime in Taiwan.