Taiwan: Democratization

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CLASS SCHEDULE
Introduction
Discourses of history
Elections
Austronesian
Elections
Early Colonialism
Qing Society
Japanese Takeover
Baseball
2-28
Little China
Democratization
Environment
Museums
Religion
Family and Marriage
Local and National
National and Global

ANTHROPOLOGY 469A/JSIS 484F

TAIWAN: CULTURE, SOCIETY, HISTORY

TOPICS AND READINGS FOR FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19

TOPICS
Between the death of Chiang Ching-kuo in 1986 and the presidential election of Lee Teng-hui in 1996, Taiwan moved from being a one-party dictatorship founded on the same principles as the Leninist dictatorship of the Chinese Communist Party, to being a raucous democracy with freedom of speech and chaotic electoral campaigns. What happened? Why was Taiwan able to democratize?

READINGS

Rubenstein, Murray A. 1999. Political Taiwanization and Pragmatic Diplomacy: The Eras of Chiang Ching-kuo and Lee Teng-hui. In Murray A. Rubenstein, ed., Taiwan: A New History, pp. 436-480. (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe)
Lu Hsiu-lien. 2014. Human Rights Riot, chapter 5 in My Fight for a New Taiwan (Seattle: University of Washington Press), pp. 98-128

ASSIGNMENT
By 8:00 a.m. on Friday, February 19, please post 200-400 words on the question raised by Singapore's Lee Kuan-yew and continued by the CCP, of whether "Western-Style Democracy" is compatible with "East Asian Culture," and what implications Taiwan's democratization (and the ROK's if you know anything about it and choose to include it) might be.