Taiwan’s Democracy Is Thriving in China’s Shadow

Amidst China’s growing military, economic, and diplomatic pressure on Taiwan and the attendant rising awareness of the risk of a cross-strait conflict, Taiwan is often solely viewed as a flashpoint or the frontline in a geopolitical struggle between China and the United States. A 2021 cover of the Economist, for instance, went so far as to label Taiwan “the most dangerous place on earth.” As international attention returns to Taiwan for its presidential inauguration on May 20, with keen interest in what president-elect William Lai will say on cross-strait relations, it is worth taking a step back to appreciate Taiwan’s democratic achievements. Under four decades since martial law was lifted and under three decades after its first democratic presidential election, Taiwan has emerged as one of the world’s strongest democracies, an achievement all the more remarkable considering the existential threat that the island faces. 

A Young but Strong Democracy  

In 1979, when the United States terminated diplomatic relations with Taiwan (formally the Republic of China) and established formal ties with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), it was trading one authoritarian regime for another. The Kuomintang (KMT) had imposed martial law on Taiwan in 1949, banned political opposition parties, and severely curtailed political rights. 

Eventually, however, the ruling KMT, and above all President Chiang Ching-kuo, concluded that it needed to allow political pluralism. In one sense, this was a shrewd calculation for self-survival; Taiwan had lost its principal international backer, the United States, and the KMT’s proposition that it would retake the mainland and that one-party rule was necessary in order to prepare for that day was impossible to maintain. Democratization, however, could help the KMT build a new foundation for its legitimacy among the populace. Chiang, also responding to growing pressure from below, thus set Taiwan on the path of a gradual and largely peaceful democratic transition. In 1986, an opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), was founded and the following year martial law was lifted. In 1992, Taiwan held legislative elections, followed by its first presidential election in 1996 and its first peaceful transfer of power from one party to another four years later. 

Now, clean, free, fair, and competitive elections in Taiwan are taken for granted. Taiwan’s elections are well-run, with voting done in-person (absentee voting is not allowed) and solely through paper ballots, each of which is read aloud and counted by election workers in the presence of observers after the polls close. The ballots are quickly tallied, and the winners are known within a few hours. In all of Taiwan’s presidential elections, the losing party has conceded defeat and paved the way for a peaceful transfer of power. Civil liberties, from freedom of expression to freedom of religion and freedom of the press, are protected. 

Reflecting these developments, Freedom House gives Taiwan a global freedom score of 94/100, placing it as the second-freest place in Asia behind Japan and the 22nd globally (far ahead of the United States). Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) ranks Taiwan 31st globally on its Liberal Democracy Index, one spot below Japan. The Human Freedom Index, which combines measures of personal, civil, and economic freedom, now ranks Taiwan twelfth in the world and first in Asia. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index places Taiwan tenth in the world. 

Bucking Democratic Backsliding 

Taiwan’s democratic strength and resilience are even more impressive when set against the backdrop of a deterioration in freedom around the world. Global freedom has declined for 18 consecutive years, according to Freedom House, with 52 countries suffering declines over the past year. Taiwan, by contrast, last saw its score dip in 2011, has been repeatedly upgraded over the past decade-plus (from 87 in 2011 to 94 in 2024), and its overall score has never been higher. In its most recent report, V-Dem warned that “autocratization continues to be a dominant trend” and “the level of democracy enjoyed by the average person in the world in 2023 is down to 1985-levels.” While “almost all components of democracy are getting worse in more countries than they are getting better, compared to ten years ago,” according to the report, Taiwan’s score is higher than it was a decade ago. Finally, as recently as 2015 the Economist Intelligence Unit labeled Taiwan as a “flawed democracy,” but in the years since Taiwan has improved to become a “full democracy.” 

Indeed, as the Hoover Institution’s Kharis Templeman has written, Taiwan has made notable progress in addressing five areas where it had relative democratic weakness, namely political corruption, rule of law, political polarization, institutional defects, and mass values. Taiwan’s democracy today is arguably stronger today than it has ever been. 

Democracy has become a core component of national identity and is firmly embedded within society. Reflecting this, since Taiwan’s first presidential election in 1996, the share of those in Taiwan who self-identify as “Taiwanese” (as opposed to “Chinese” or “both Taiwanese and Chinese”) has risen from under 25 percent to over 60 percent. The rise of Taiwanese identity, which paralleled Taiwan’s democratization, demonstrates that being “Taiwanese” is rooted more in an appreciation of its political system than in perceived ethnocultural differences from China. Indeed, some scholars have conducted other polling and argued that “rejecting the PRC as a political system is a central part of Taiwanese identity.”  

But Challenges Remain 

While Taiwan’s democracy is strong and resilient, challenges remain. Many of the issues that Taiwan has found difficult to tackle would sound familiar to most industrialized democracies, including stagnating wages and sluggish economic growth, rising housing costs, and high youth unemployment. If Taiwan’s government is unable to address these concerns, which were at the top of mind for voters during the recent elections, its people could come to associate democracy with stagnation and gridlock. 

Another issue, which is to some extent inherent on an island whose very existence is threatened, is polarization. Taiwan’s two principal political parties, the KMT and DPP, have traditionally had widely divergent visions of the island’s future and its relationship to China. The media ecosystem reflects this division, with partisan newspapers and television channels. As a result, according to a 2022 Reuters Institute survey, only 27 percent of Taiwanese respondents trust most news media most of the time, ranking it last in the Asia-Pacific region. 

There are, however, some signs that polarization is declining. The DPP and KMT have converged in practice on their approach to cross-strait relations, with both seeking to maintain the status quo. Rather than seeking de jure independence, the DPP now asserts that “Taiwan is an independent sovereign nation, and its name is the Republic of China” and as a result, a declaration of independence is unnecessary. The KMT, for its part, has rejected “one country, two systems,” while its presidential candidate pledged that “Taiwan’s future will be determined only by its own people” and acknowledged that “the majority of people in Taiwan want to maintain this status quo.” During the most recent election cycle, for the first time ever all the presidential candidates were “native” Taiwanese, demonstrating that the traditional cleavage between mainlander and “native” Taiwanese has largely faded. These shifts among the major political parties reflect where voter preferences have moved, with a plurality of Taiwanese wanting to maintain the status quo indefinitely. 

A growing threat to Taiwan’s democracy is PRC-sponsored cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns designed to sway the result of elections, sow divisions in Taiwanese society, and cast doubts on the reliability of the United States. Indeed, Taiwan is the target of more disinformation from abroad than any other democracy. In the months leading to Taiwan’s 2024 elections, distributed denial-of-service attacks on Taiwan grew by 3,370 percent compared to the previous year. The day prior to Taiwan’s elections, there was a significant spike in malicious cyber activity targeting the island. 

In addition to cyber-attacks, China has employed increasingly sophisticated disinformation campaigns, which Taiwan is particularly vulnerable to because most voters get their news from social media platforms, from Facebook to TikTok and YouTube. PRC disinformation campaigns are commonly designed to sow skepticism of the United States, employing narratives that the United States is unreliable, will sell out Taiwan, and is only interested in Taiwan insofar as it can be used to weaken China. Thus, a September 2023 poll found that only 34 percent of Taiwanese people found the United States to be a trustworthy country. China also seeks to undermine trust among Taiwanese in their democracy by amplifying allegations of corruption. 

Taiwanese civil society organizations have attempted to counter such efforts by employing fact-checking groups to quickly debunk false stories and proposing regulatory changes aimed at minimizing their deleterious effects. In one notable instance, a fact-checking organization squashed widespread rumors amplified by Chinese disinformation campaigns that claimed Taiwan was responding to an egg shortage by importing artificial eggs from China. 

Responding effectively, though, will likely prove increasingly difficult as the emergence of generative artificial intelligence will allow China to make more believable “deep fakes.” Moreover, the sheer scale of Chinese disinformation campaigns has proven daunting. Finally, it is difficult to distinguish between a PRC-sponsored disinformation campaign and a legitimate grievance or opinion and to take steps to respond to the former while ensuring that political freedoms are not circumscribed. 

Over the past four decades, Taiwan has transformed from an authoritarian regime to one of the world’s strongest and most resilient democracies. That it has done so while facing an existential threat from China and amidst broad international isolation makes its accomplishments all the more remarkable. Taiwan must now contend with growing Chinese disinformation and electoral interference campaigns and domestic political polarization, among other issues. As international attention turns to yet another peaceful transfer of power on Taiwan, observers should take stock not only of the outlook for cross-strait relations but also the island’s democratic achievements.