ABSTRACT
During Chiang Ching-kuo’s presidency Taiwan experienced profound political, social and economic changes. The conflicts and controversies of the 1970s and 1980s solidified into a cleavage between the KMT, identified with both the economic successes and political shortcomings of the old regime, and the DPP, which represented change. The split between the KMT and the DPP was born out of the opposition’s efforts to empower Taiwanese and hasten democratic reform. As a result, the opposition party crystallized along political and ethnic fault lines, not socioeconomic ones. It was a marriage of anti-KMT political forces with little in common beyond their shared desire to drive the Nationalists from power. In the short run, this identity won the DPP an important place in ROC politics. But would it be enough to make the DPP Taiwan’s ruling party?
