ABSTRACT
Chiang Ching-kuo, the last strongman of Taiwanese politics, launched a series of historic measures leading to political liberalization. He accepted the formation of an opposition party and ended decades of martial law. At the same time, Chiang lifted a ban on traffic to and from mainland China, allowing a surge in the exchange of people, goods, and money across the Strait. Today, the two economies enjoy an increasingly connected relationship even as political rapprochement remains elusive. If anything, there is a greater distance felt between them as underlying military tensions persist, as Weixing Hu shows (see chapter 2).
