TAICHUNG (Taiwan News) — Both of Taiwan’s main political parties, the Kuomintang (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) are abnormal political parties. This includes their histories, original purposes, party structures, ideologies, and how they relate to each other.
The KMT traces its origins to revolutionary secret societies operating during the late Qing Dynasty (1644 to 1911) whose intent was to expel the foreign Manchu rulers and restore China to native Chinese rule. They played a significant role in overthrowing the Qing Dynasty and eventually were able to more-or-less unify China under their rule, but were constantly plagued by civil war and World War II.
Eventually, the KMT, which translated directly means "Chinese National People’s Party" (often shortened to Chinese Nationalist Party) turned the Republic of China (ROC) effectively into a one-party state. So much so that they changed the original flag of the ROC to include the party emblem.
Being friendly with the Soviet Union at the time, the KMT organized the party along Leninist lines. In spite of this, they eventually expelled communists from the party, largely by executing them.
During this period, Taiwan was a colony of the Japanese empire and played no significant role in the events in China or in the KMT.
It would be inaccurate to say the KMT had no connection to Taiwan as the original Taiwan People’s Party flag in the 1920s included the KMT emblem and KMT party founder Sun Yat-sen’s (孫逸仙) thinking was influential in intellectual circles. However, it would be accurate to say there was little connection to Taiwan in general.
49er generation
After World War II the Japanese empire was partitioned between the Allied powers, like Germany had American, French, British and Soviet zones. The Taiwan zone was run by the ROC, a situation that theoretically remains to this day, as many countries such as the U.S. hold that Taiwan’s sovereign status remains “undetermined.”
After losing the Chinese Civil War, the KMT decamped to Taiwan in 1949, bringing roughly 2 million refugees, the KMT-dominated ROC state and the party itself. Though they make up only roughly 10-15% of the population today, the descendants of these 49er families still hold a disproportionate amount of power in the party.
What followed was a long, brutal period of martial law before slowly democratizing in the early 1990s. There are still elements and impacts on the party from the martial law era today.
Though it is changing with time, the KMT still has an outsize influence on the military, civil service, diplomatic corps and university administrations. The last report I saw, about two-thirds of former dictator Chiang Kai-shek's (蔣介石) statues have been taken down since the Tsai administration took power, but some government agencies are still dragging their heels out of loyalty to the KMT.
The KMT emblem is still on the flag and on the insignia of many government and military agencies and continues to serve as state-funded marketing for the party. Similarly, the money and street names continue to promote KMT figures like Chiang, as well as Sun Yat-sen and his Three Principles of the People.
Also during the martial law period and to some extent extending until today, Taiwan in many respects had a command economy, much of it inherited from the Japanese era. The government didn’t just control the power company, phone company, trains and so on, but also products like salt, sugar, tobacco, alcohol, fertilizer and cement.
The top positions in those institutions were often packed with the party faithful. Or they were given out as rewards for services to the party and older employees, even after privatization.
Incidentally, today’s PX Mart supermarket chain started life by offering cheaper prices and no sales tax to the military, civil servants, teachers and other employees of government entities dominated by the KMT. Today it no longer serves any of those functions, however, and it is doubtful there are many KMT-era holdovers left as it is now a fully privatized entity.
Some powerful NGOs are also still strongly associated with the KMT, in spite of formal ties having been cut. These include the National Women’s League (NWL), which was founded by first lady Madame Chiang Kai-shek (宋美齡); and the China Youth Corps (CYC), which started life at the behest of then dictator Chiang Kai-shek as the China Youth Anti-Communist National Salvation Corps.
In 2016, the new DPP administration passed the ill-gotten gains act, which stripped the KMT of assets seized by the party from the departing Japanese after WW II or during the martial law era. The NWL and CYC also had assets seized as it was ruled they had directly benefited from KMT martial law asset seizures.
That act led to another unusual aspect to the KMT — its weak financial state. When it was billed as the “richest political party in the world,” the KMT would hand out plum party positions to loyalists so they could collect salaries as a reward and, as one political scientist described it, sit around, drink tea and smoke cigarettes.
Political patronage factions
While most or all of those excess employees are gone now, the party was hit hard financially by paying out severance packages and today is still on the hook for an outsized number of pensions. For years the party had to borrow massive sums to stay afloat, though it appears that under current Chair Eric Chu (朱立倫) they have managed to stay out of the red.
Another curious legacy of the martial law era is the local KMT patronage factions. In a nutshell, they are local networks that would in the past, and sometimes still today, hand out government jobs, fix problems using the government on behalf of people, dole out government contracts and financial rewards in return for political support.
They were formed out of existing Taiwanese elites soon after the KMT arrived. To keep them from growing too powerful, the national KMT controlled by 49er families limited the factions to their city or county, and the KMT ensured there was always more than one of them.
To placate the Americans and maintain a veneer of democracy, elections were held at the local level. No new parties were allowed to be formed, but independents could and sometimes did run.
They didn’t win often, however, because the factions had control over the local levers of government in most cases, and would buy votes. The factions were very powerful and wealthy locally because at the time they controlled local credit cooperatives, agricultural and irrigation organizations. They also had sway over the bidding process for construction in an era when kickbacks and corruption were the norm.
Today, the factions still exist in rural areas of the country, and continue to have some sway. They lost access to credit cooperatives a long time ago and irrigation was recently nationalized, but they can still dominate agricultural associations.
The KMT today still has some institutional advantages left over from the martial law era, especially at the local level and in government institutions, but they’re slowly being eroded. Don’t expect the free marketing on the flag to go any time, though.
