The Taiwan Issues

The presented monograph: The Taiwan Issues is a valuable result of the project Taiwan Studies Center, inaugurated and conducted during the academic year2011/2012 at the Institute of the Middle and Far East of the Jagiellonian Universityin Kraków.The project’s goals comprised academic teaching, research and exchangebetween Poland and Taiwan; increasing the awareness about Taiwan, its culturaland historical heritage; and developing a better understanding of Asiaamong the Polish academia. [...] The issues presented in the volume are concentrated on two cardinalproblems that shape the situation of modern Taiwan: challenges of politicaltransformation, which led to the development of vibrant democracy (firstthree chapters), and various aspects of the situation across the Taiwan Strait,i.e. between Taiwan and China (three latter chapters). All topics share thesame rationale of historic legacy: dramatic situation of the civil war, which asthe final point caused the division of China in 1949, and the hostile relationsacross the Taiwan Strait until the 1980s. For most aspects of Taiwan’s developmentthose events were crucial. They heavily shaped the ruling party’s (Kuomintang,KMT) policy in every aspect of people’s life, starting from education,through Taiwan’s indigenous people rights, to contacts with the relatives whostayed in the mainland China. The martial law was the embodiment of KMT’sruling methods in Taiwan. With time, the precise and rigorous framework ofTaiwan’s development, although resulting in spectacular economic achievementswhich opened many new doors for the Taiwanese, were no longer apriority, since the Taiwanese dream of democracy has come true. How was itpossible? What were the consequences for further transformations of socialand political life in Taiwan, and the relations with China?