Those who follow the news may have noticed that the Kuomintang (KMT) candidate in the Taichung 2 by-election, Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) is often referred to as being from the Taichung Black Faction. Others may have noticed that former KMT chair and lawmaker Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) is affiliated with the Taichung Red Faction, or that former KMT presidential candidate Han Kuo-yu’s (韓國瑜) wife is from a Yunlin factional family.

But what are these patronage factions? What do they do, and how did they come into being? It should be noted that they are generally associated with the KMT and very different than the factions associated with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which are national and more concerned with jockeying for power within the party.

When the KMT arrived from China in the late 1940s with their government, they faced several problems. One was that very few of them spoke any of the native languages used in Taiwan or Japanese, which was still widely understood by Taiwanese at the time. Another was pressure from the Americans and some within their own ranks to hold elections.

While the KMT filled up the national government with exiles from China, they needed locals to help them administer local governments at the ground level. Their authoritarian regime had no desire to allow any rivals to share their power, but they needed a system they could control.

At the time, the only political parties permitted were the KMT and KMT-controlled small parties brought over from China (similar to the situation in China today). No new political parties were allowed to form, but independent candidates did run and sometimes won.

The system the KMT created was to let candidates run for office in local governments, but almost all were party members. These party members split into factions, usually two or more, that would often run against each other to win elections.

They varied around the country, but a common pattern was for there to be two or three factions in each county or major city. They sometimes bore the names of particular families, but many were named “red,” “black,” or “white” after the color of their marketing materials in the first election they ran in.

To keep them under control, the KMT strictly forbade them from expanding outside their locality for fear they could form a national challenge to their power. For example, the Red and Black Factions in Taichung County could not cooperate with their counterparts in Changhua.

The factions were able to largely keep independent candidates at bay through patronage and vote-buying. They would control local agricultural and fishing associations as well as local credit cooperatives and other sources of ready cash. Combined with the levers of power in government, they were able to “deliver the goods” to their constituents in ways that independent candidates could not.

Sometimes, like in Taichung County from 1972 until it merged with Taichung City in 2010, local factions would cooperate and alternate the top positions of county commissioner and speaker of the county council. In other locales, they vied fiercely with each other, often violently.

By the 1980s and 1990s, the factions more closely resembled organized crime outfits than groups of politicians. Violence and assassinations abounded, and they were associated with a wide range of criminal activities.

This author recalls seeing piles of cash at two of his workplaces, which were run by the wives of factional politicians in Changhua County. When asked what the money was for, they cheerfully responded “buying votes” as if it were no big deal. Some estimates put the percentage of elected officials with a criminal record as high as 30% during that era.

For a variety of factors, their power has been waning since the late 1990s. In major urban areas and among younger voters, there has been little enthusiasm for voting for them, leaving them primarily based in more rural counties.

As democracy took hold in the 1990s, the relationship between the KMT elites and their local factional partners began to get more complicated. The elites were uncomfortable with the image of violence and corruption that came with the factions and by extension tainted the KMT brand. The party made various moves to reduce the power of the factions, though come election time they would often renew their friendship.

In a few cases factions, or factional members, defected to other parties, including the DPP, but mostly they stayed affiliated with the KMT. When the KMT tightened their party membership rules against those with criminal convictions, some joined the Non-Partisan Solidarity Union but in practice still voted with the KMT.

The government, then led by a KMT administration, also cracked down on organized crime as well as the factions, sending many of their leaders to jail or seeing them flee the country in the late 90s.

Over time and under various administrations, some critical sources of funding like the credit cooperatives were taken out of their hands. The current administration, for example, nationalized the irrigation associations — though agricultural and fishing associations still often remain in factional hands.

Opportunities for elected office also began to dwindle. The ending of the Taiwan Provincial Assembly, the National Assembly, and the reduction of the number of seats in the Legislative Yuan sharply reduced the number of job opportunities.

A further blow was delivered by various county-city mergers like those in Taichung and Kaohsiung. This meant many smaller cities, townships, and villages ceased to exist and their elected positions with them.

Today, their power is much reduced, but some remains, including get-out-the-vote capabilities.