ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the similarities and differences in the political system between the authoritarian regime ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in China and the one ruled by the Kuomintang (KMT) in Taiwan. It argues that the CCP is an authoritarian regime that evolved from totalitarianism, whereas the KMT never really totalitarian. The chapter discusses the CCP and KMT regimes differ from the perspectives of two theoretical contexts: "post-totalitarianism" and "competitive authoritarianism". However, as the totalitarianism goes through "routinization", the ordinary citizens or even the party cadres no longer believe in the utopian ideology. Many ordinary people repeat the ideological slogan in their everyday lives not because they believe in it, but simply as a strategy to evade political repression. Political competition or elections constrain the political calculation of the ruling elites as well as the challengers. There is a lot of scholarship that examines the progress of "grassroots" elections in China under the CCP regime.