Taiwan has been hailed as a textbook example of a successful transition to democracy. At the end of the civil war in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Kuomintang (KMT), lost to Mao Zedong's communist forces and fled to the island. After almost four decades of martial law until 1987, Taiwan eventually held its first presidential election in 1996.
"It was a very long process of struggle for democratisation," said Asst Prof Fang-Yu Chen, lecturer at Soochow University's Department of Political Science, in a recent forum titled "A Freedom Beacon In Asia: Democracy And Social Movement In Taiwan And Thailand".
Chen said Taiwan's transition to democracy followed a top-down approach (an elite-led reform), but other factors -- such as public participation, international pressure, especially from the United States, power struggle at a high level, and the civilian control of the military -- came into play.
