Search results

Among developing countries, the Republic of China in Taiwan (hereinafter Taiwan) has been experiencing economic growth accompanied by improving income distribution. Between 1964 and 1980, the average annual growth rate of the real gross national product was 9.92 per cent (Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD), 1982, p. 23). In the same period, the income ratio between the top 20 per cent and the bottom 20 per cent of families dropped from 5.33 to 4.17 and the Gini coefficient decreased from 0.36 to 0.30 (CEPD, 1982, p. 54; Directorate‐General of Budget Accounting and Statistics, 1980, (DGBAS), p. 44). To put it somewhat dif‐ferently, in 1964 the lowest fifth of households received 7.71 per cent of total personal income, and the highest fifth 41.07 per cent. But in 1980, the income share of the lowest fifth increased to 8.82 per cent while that of the highest fifth decreased to 36.80 per cent. The condition of greater equality in income distribution appears more obvious in the capital city of Taipei. In 1981, for instance, its Gini coefficient was estimated to be only 0.28 (Taipei Bureau of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, 1981, (TBBAS), P. 24).

China around 1900 was an enormous domain with approximately 400 million people, almost all of them desperately poor. Most were farmers, working intensively on small tracts of land using relatively primitive technology. It was in many respects a Malthusian economy, with high death and birth rates and many residents living close to the subsistence level.

The authors focus on a non-Western setting that has hardly featured in debates around political authenticity, Taiwan. The authors also adopt a novel inter-generational perspective to look at varying attitudes towards two ‘unconventional’, high-profile politicians, Ko Wen-je and Han Kuo-yu. Drawing on focus group data, the authors note the similarities and differences in the way that the different generations engage with, and assess, the two politicians with a particular focus on the extent to which their personalities, appearance, and everyday activities are perceived as authentic.

This offers an introduction to the ROC army with a focus on its influential role in post-revolution society, the retreat to Taiwan, and its transformation over the decades. Originally called the National Revolutionary Army at its inception in 1925 in China, it was renamed the Republic of China Armed Forces in 1947. Since 1949, the force’s primary goal was the ROC government’s objective of retaking the mainland (China) from the Communists. As a result of its history, the military has long been regarded by most Hokkien-speaking Taiwanese (those whose ancestors moved to the island from the 17th century, as opposed to the so-called Mainlanders who arrived from mainland China in following the 1949 KMT defeat at the hands of the Communists) as being the “KMT army.” The extent to which this perception persists is very much of interest when determining the civil–military relationship in Taiwan. Thus, conditions exist for low popular regard for the military, especially as regards a military career. There exists a situation in which Taiwan society has moved forward, both economically as well as politically, from dictatorship, through democratization, and into a truly open and free society dedicated to fairness and equality, and yet the security situation remains unchanged, with the threat of invasion remaining ever-present. As a result, the military tasked with confronting this threat has remained one of the largest social organs on the island resistant to change.

Force Structure is an important aspect of the PMMM and helps define the nature of civil–military relations. It is in the realm of conscription that the dimension of force structure finds particular relevance in the Taiwan context. Moreover, while there have been military restructuring projects and programs that have made detailed changes one way or the other, the big picture remains: Taiwan’s is a conscript-based military. Therefore, it is this aspect of force structure wherein the importance of public perception lies, and the results of this research show that attitudes toward military conscription are impacted significantly by self-identification, with the vast majority wanting the ROC government to keep conscription, rather than moving forward with the All-Volunteer Force transformation. In terms of the attitudes toward conscientious objection, results show that the younger a respondent is, the more they support conscientious objection. Moreover, the more supportive a respondent is to women serving in the military, the more they support conscientious objection. Taken together, this would seem to indicate that citizens, especially young people, regard the matter of military service as a choice that should be made by the individual in question – either male or female. Given the fact of conscription, persons with a valid reason for conscientiously objecting should not be forced to serve, or punished if they refuse to do so. Thus it seems that people recognize a need for conscription, whether as a means to promote good citizenship habits among young men, or because of the China threat, but that opting out of such a system should be accommodated.

This study aims to examine the problems encountered during the establishment of the Central Police Academy (CPA) under the Nationalist regime from 1936 to 1949. While the authoritarian party-state unified the police academies by forceful means, this catalyzed the cleavage between the schools of police studies and resulted in power struggles over police education, intellectual thought, collectivity and even the national reform of police administration. More than narrating the progress of power consolidation, this study attempts to identify the problems underlying the factional strife and to reveal the interwoven pattern of these power struggles, exploring the confusion regarding what the police is, a question that troubled Chinese policemen from the mainland to Taiwan.

This paper explains the emergence of the factional strife from the beginning of the preliminary growth of the Police Academies in Nanking and Chekiang. It widely makes use of the official archives from Japan Center for Asian Historical Records and Historica Academia to show the dynamic situation in police education and administration. Rather, the official publications of the Police Academies and their affiliated associations reveal the hidden political agenda behind a unified framework as the party-state claimed. Moreover, official gazettes, memorials and newspapers are also used to strengthen the core argument of this study.

This paper examines the impact of the factional strife between the police leaders Dai Li and Li Shizhen on the CPA from 1936 to 1949. It illustrates that the establishment of the CPA ostensibly unified the nationwide police force but triggered power struggles over the control of the police administration. More importantly, it also shows how the factions strove for larger shares of power under the supreme doctrines that Chiang Kai-shek and the party-state imposed.

The failure of police education to become powerful was a special case among other more typical institutions. The governors coercively merged the police academies and created robust conditions for growth under the shelter of state authority. The police force did not follow the same path of national monopoly as what recent studies found but drifted apart with its vested interests and incompatible beliefs. Hence, the greater the demand for centralized control by the state, the greater the tension of the factional strife.

In his autobiography, Chen Shui-bian (1999, p. 40) condemned the Koumintang's (KMT's) corruption and praised the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) for being free from money politics and corruption. The DPP fought the 1992 Legislative Yuan election campaign effectively on an anticorruption platform and used the same strategy in subsequent elections. If Chen Shui-bian had criticized the KMT for its involvement with “black gold” politics and had won the 2000 presidential election on his anticorruption platform, why was he and his family found guilty of corruption after his second term of office? The short answer is that even though he had promised to curb corruption, President Chen himself had succumbed to corruption after assuming office. In June 2002, Keesing's Contemporary Archives cited a poll in Taiwan that indicated that more respondents had perceived the DPP to be more corrupt than the KMT (Copper, 2006, p. 14).

This chapter analyzes Mao Zedong’s decision-making code in foreign policy decisions made during his years as China’s leader: 1949–1976. I examine six decisions in China’s foreign policy during Mao’s tenure: China’s involvement in the Korea war (1951), Annexation of Tibet (1951), attacking the Taiwanese islands (1954), China’s war with India (1962), its involvement in the Vietnamese war (1964), and 1969 incident with the Soviet Army. This, in order to shed more light on the decision-making of leaders from the Far East, and to try and understand insights pertaining to the current foreign policy of China.

The analysis was conducted using the Applied Decision Analysis (ADA) method, based on historical materials, testimonies, and reports. The analysis demonstrates that Mao followed the poliheuristic decision rule in these decisions. Chairman Mao was making his decisions while choosing the most rational, cost-effective decision among alternatives that did not place his political status at risk.

The vast majority of respondents see the role of the military as one of defense. The role of defending against attack from China is larger in all groups, although interestingly, those with parents from the mainland tend to think the army’s role is to defend “against another country,” and not necessarily to defend against China. The difference between identifying the name of the enemy and not doing so is of little practical difference, but an inability to articulate the name of the enemy is at odds with the military’s role to unambiguously defend the nation against exterior threats. Moreover, the close ties that have developed in recent years between the KMT and the CCP, coupled with the preponderance of old-guard thinking within the military, threaten to muddy the waters and cause the general population to see the military as an anachronistic, out-of-touch institution that is not in tune with the realities of the threat facing Taiwan. This would have detrimental effects on recruitment, retention, and morale within the military, and with its place in society. Given the history of animosity between the ROC military’s traditional role and the trend toward localization, it is little wonder that the survey results show that people are concerned about confusion in national identity, especially as regarding how it impacts the military. There appears to be an across-the-board consensus that the main problem facing today’s ROC military is confusion about national identity, with 38.1 percent of respondents choosing this option to best represent their belief about where the problem lies.