In the 1990s Taiwan began to pose a complex new challenge to the international community. At issue is Taiwan's attempt to revise the so-called “one China” policy as it had been previously understood. By seeking to be treated as a separate state that was distinct from mainland China, Taiwan was embarking on a new approach that confronted the Beijing government with what it saw as the totally unacceptable prospect of secession by a renegade province that would in effect subvert China's unity and national coherence.

Taiwan is a geographic location, an economic force, a political presence, a social reality and a cultural expression. The “precious island” (baodao), in the minds of those who are vaguely familiar with East Asia in the English-speaking community, evokes sensations of stunning natural beauty, hard-working people and troubled international status. Those who have travelled there as tourists in recent years are easily impressed by the vibrant economy, cuisine, traffic jams, air pollution, rich folk traditions and colourful popular culture. While journalists and business executives may be fascinated by the transformative power of marketization and democratization in Taiwan's political economy, many students have been overwhelmed by the profound impact of economy and polity on all dimensions of the cultural world - literature, art, dance, music and drama - since the lifting of martial law in 1987.

There is now general agreement among observers of international economic and technology affairs that the world has entered a period characterized by the interplay of two potent and possibly dialectical forces - globalization and regionalization. Globalization, which is clearly manifested in the changing nature of competition in industries ranging from textiles to telecommunications, is being driven by a combination of diverse forces, including the communication and transportation revolutions, the growing trends towards liberalization, privatization and deregulation, and the rapid diffusion of technologies around the world. Multinational companies (MNCs) have become the principal purveyors of globalization as they seek out new markets and search the world for access to critical R D, production and distribution assets irrespective of where they may be found. Regionalization, on the other hand, has primarily been driven by macro-political forces, with governments as the initiating agents, as in die case of the formation of the European Union and the North American Free Trade Association. Where regionalization is driven by explicit and overt government actions and policies it can more often than not be seen as an anathema to globalization; politicallyinduced regionalization in these cases is driven, in large part, by concerns about loss of national competitiveness and a decline in economic welfare.

This article examines the process of democratization from the December 1992 Legislative Yuan election, a watershed event in the course of Taiwan's regime transition, to the March 1996 presidential election, which put a conclusive end to the process of democratic transition. The political significance of the 1992 election as a historic conjuncture is multi-faceted. First, it was a necessary first step for a full transition to democracy, that is, a founding election.

Since losing the mainland to Communist conquest in 1949 (more accurately, since the North Korean invasion of the South in June 1950), Taiwan has become a continuous foreign policy protectorate of the United States. Had it not been for American security protection, Taiwan would long since have come under Beijing's rule. Several causative agents, separately, in combination or sequentially, kept Taiwan out of mainland Chinese hands. These included, initially, the American Seventh Fleet, then generalized American military might in concert with the American-Taiwan Defence Treaty of 1954, thence the three American- Chinese communiques forming the basis of post-1971 relations between the two countries, concomitantly the American Congress's Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 and the accompanying (and subsequent) legislative history, and, throughout, China's inability to overcome, with a high probability of success, active Taiwan military resistance and probable American military support. While the economic and, more recently, political transformation of Taiwan materially strengthened that entity such that its defensibility against attack rose greatly, to say nothing of its overall attractiveness, from the onset of the People's Republic of China it was the American connection that was the sine qua non of Taiwan's quasi-independent existence.

Taiwan entered the international spotlight in 1996. No longer seen as just an economic powerhouse and diplomatic dilemma, the Republic of China on Taiwan (ROCOT) caught international attention in two new dimensions: politics and security. In March the ROCOT's first ever direct presidential election took place against the backdrop of unprecedented military coercion from the People's Republic of China (PRC). The world watched nervously as Taiwan's presidential candidates campaigned while Chinese missiles landed near the island's two major ports and air and naval forces of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) held live-fire exercises in the Taiwan Strait.

Since 1949, the spectre of the People's Republic of China (PRC) has constantly dominated Taiwan's political stage. The PRC was considered until the mid-1960s by Chiang Kai-shek, then President of the Republic of China on Taiwan (ROCOT), as a part of the country to be reconquered from the Communist bandits (gongfei). And since the United States′ de-recognition in 1979 the reunification with mainland China has remained one of the key official objectives of the Nationalist regime.