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The Autocratic Democrat: why did Chiang Ching-kuo dismantle Taiwan’s authoritarian regime? – Retrospect Journal

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When a 2023 survey posed the question, “Who was Taiwan’s best president?”, the figure who came out on top was Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), the president of the Republic of China (Taiwan) from 1978 to 1988. According to this survey, the public of this vibrant, pluralist East Asian democracy chose the autocratic son of the warlord Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) as their favourite leader. As Taiwan grows ever more vulnerable under the looming shadow of a rising China, whose government is committed to asserting its sovereignty over Taiwan by any means necessary, why did the Taiwanese public choose not only an autocrat, but a committed Chinese nationalist, wedded to a dream of reunification, as their most favoured leader? In the current age of rising authoritarianism, the character of Chiang Ching-kuo, an autocratic democrat, stands out from the pages of twentieth century history as a complex, reforming visionary, who successfully led his country from being a totalitarian relic of the Second World War to

The Autocratic Democrat: why did Chiang Ching-kuo dismantle Taiwan’s authoritarian regime? – Retrospect Journal Skip to content The Autocratic Democrat: why did Chiang Ching-kuo dismantle Taiwan’s authoritarian regime? Written by Ed Green 17/03/2024 When a 2023 survey posed the question, “Who was Taiwan’s best president?”, the figure who came out on top was Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), the president of the Republic of China (Taiwan) from 1978 to 1988. According to this survey, the public of this vibrant, pluralist East Asian democracy chose the autocratic son of the warlord Chiang Kai-shek (蔣

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