The Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China: Some Recent Relations

Abstract

The policy of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) toward Taiwan has been shaped by the Chinese Communist Party’s (CPC) rivalry with the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang; KMT), each party claiming to represent the legitimate government of all of China. The Taiwan issue was seen as an unresolved question from an ongoing civil war. This is reflected not merely in threats to liberate Taiwan but in the conciliatory approaches as well. For example, the one country, two systems policy was frequently couched in the context of forming a “third united front,” this time for the unification of China. This particular approach once corresponded with the KMT’s own definition of the situation, but with Taiwan’s political development it had become anachronistic even before the KMT’s loss of the presidency in 2000. But with the KMT out of power, radicalism fading on the Mainland, and the hostility of the Taiwan government to notions of Chinese nationalism, the two parties may be coming once again to share common ground. The anomalies of the situation provoke speculation: Had the CPC been willing publicly to assert in a more timely fashion the line toward Taiwan that it currently takes, there may have been progress, if not toward unification, at least for a stable and enduring peace between the two sides. And the KMT’s own future, if it has one, may be better served in the context of some sort of Greater China, rather than on Taiwan alone—although this would require considerably more progress toward democratization on the Mainland.KeywordsCommunist PartyChinese Communist PartyDemocratic Progressive PartyUnite FrontPeaceful ResolutionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.