Word: kuomintang
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...more flexible and perhaps even more popular leader than the iron-willed, authoritarian Chiang Kaishek. He has diffused the force of a Taiwanese independence movement by encouraging native islanders, who make up 85% of Taiwan's population of 16 million, to join both the ruling Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) and the government...
Chiang Ching-kuo, as a former director of the secret police, has not exactly turned the island into the bastion of freedom that the Kuomintang claims it is. There are more than 1,000 political prisoners, the press is closely supervised, and foreign books and magazines reporting favorably on the People's Republic are censored. But Chiang has managed to maintain a level of economic growth that has given Taiwan the highest standard of living in East Asia after Japan. The prosperity of the native Taiwanese business class, moreover, has helped to reduce their resentment of mainlander rule...
...when he was installed as head of the Nationalist government, the generalissimo's power and influence were at their crest. Even then, however, Chiang was continuously troubled by rebellious warlord generals, rival Communist governments and revolts within his own Kuomintang. When Japanese troops marched into Manchuria in 1931, the Nationalist army was already fully occupied with a series of vast, costly annihilation campaigns against the Communists' rural bases. Not until 1936 did Chiang agree to set aside the civil war and join the Communists in the fight against the Japanese invaders. His armies tied down huge numbers...
...happened? After launching a classic, successful guerrilla war, the Communists had consolidated their base areas in the countryside while Chiang's troops remained isolated in the cities. Meanwhile, as inflation soared and long-delayed reforms did not materialize, popular support of the Nationalists vanished. Basically, Chiang and his Kuomintang had failed to address themselves to the essential problems of China: rural poverty, illiteracy, unjust taxation, usury and excessive land rents. His idea of revolution was a conservative one: the New Life Movement, which sought to revive filial piety and other Confucian virtues, appealed only to the established minority...
...government over to his son Chiang Ching-kuo, now 64. Since being named Premier in 1972, the son has taken effective control of the government. Tough and practical-minded, he has cracked down on corruption within his father's old guard and has opened higher positions within the Kuomintang's hierarchy to Taiwanese. He has quietly shelved his father's quixotic crusade for retaking the mainland, insisting instead that the people of China will some day rise up and overthrow the Communists. Former President Nixon's 1972 journey to Peking produced dismay and anxiety on Taiwan...