ABSTRACT
Taiwan is a mildly divided society, divided along the lines of ethnicity and national identity. In general, as elsewhere, these types of cleavages are highly emotional, often resulting in animosity among different groups in the population. However, in the 1970s and 1980s, these divisions had actually played a positive role in facilitating the democratization process in Taiwan by providing the opposition movement with a ready-made power base in their struggle against the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party, KMT) regime (Hsieh 2000). Nevertheless, as Taiwan became more and more democratic, such deep-rooted cleavages might, from time to time, prompt extremely intense, sometimes even hostile, competition between the major political groupings and complicate the policy-making process by instilling some highly emotional elements in the formulation of public policies, particularly those policies pertaining to China.
