ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how community, religion, education, and common interest kinds of ties interacted with both communist and market versions of modernity as they developed into the situation of today. It's about the survival of horizontal ties under all kinds of conditions, even in the face of powerful attempts to end them. The case of Taiwan, the chapter shows just how important such social ties have been in their case of modernity without the complications of communism. The chapter argues elsewhere that the rioters themselves took on the role of ghosts—they were socially marginal people acting just like starving ghosts desperate for their offerings. Chinese communism, especially during its most radical periods of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, attempted to forge a brand new society at all levels. The chapter discusses the transformation happened very quickly in Taiwan after martial law was lifted.
