ABSTRACT
Faced with the challenge to Chinese nationalism posed by the events of the 1970s, the KMT had to begin to develop a new form of legitimacy for the ROC regime in Taiwan. If the party was to go down the road of true democratisation, however, its initiatives would have to take account of the constraints imposed by Chinese nationalism, both in the Chinese mainland and Taiwan. For Beijing, under Deng Xiaoping’s leadership, playing up the theme of unification had become increasingly attractive. Normalisation of relations with Washington and progress in negotiations with the United Kingdom over the transfer of Hong Kong to PRC sovereignty had made real progress on the Taiwan problem look more feasible than at any time since 1949. For Chinese nationalists in Taiwan, on the other hand, and most significantly at the highest levels of the KMT, unification with China remained the foundation of claims to political privilege and a powerful mythology by which sense could be made of the world.
