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3 East Asia's other CDS include Japan, Singapore, and South Korea. Hong Kong before its handover to China qualified only conditionally as a CDS given its formal status as a British colony. But since July 1997, Hong Kong has joined the region's latest CDS, China.

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20 Note, for example, the rapist imagery underlying this nineteenth-century justification of colonialism, the historical precursor to twentieth-century liberalism as global ideology: “Colonization is the expansive force of a people; it is its power of reproduction; it is its enlargement and its multiplication through space; it is the subjection of the universe or a vast part of it to that people's language, customs, ideas, and laws” (original emphasis, French philosopher Leroy-Beaulieu quoted in Said, E., Orientalism [New York: Vintage Books, 1979], p. 219).Google Scholar

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23 Foremost among its advocates are political leaders in the region like Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, Mahathir Mohammad of Malaysia, Suharto of Indonesia, and Roh Tae Woo of South Korea.

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25 This concept first appeared in a pre-Confucian source, the Shangshu. It stipulated that “heaven hears what the people hear, heaven sees what the people see.” Subsequently, Mengzi (Mencius) incorporated this notion to conclude that the ”people's heart” (minxiri) should function as the ultimate arbiter of a regime's legitimacy. The people, Mengzi claimed, came first because they are the most noble, next comes the country, last is the prince. See, Lao, S. K., Zhongguo zhixue shi (The History of Chinese political philosophy), 4th ed. (Taipei: Sanmin, 1988).Google Scholar

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36 See, for example, Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., Tiffin, H., eds., The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (London: Routledge, 1995).Google Scholar

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44 The National Assembly no longer elects the president but retains the authority to approve the president's nomination of the head of the Control, Justice, and Examination Yuans as well as their council members. The NDC proposal, in effect, would remove the premier, who chairs the Executive Yuan, from the Legislative Yuan's jurisdiction and shift his political allegiance completely to the president. Additionally, this proposal would allow President Lee to send the premier's cabinet to the National Assembly, thereby installing a de facto presidential caucus.

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46 Central Daily News, 30 December 1996, p. 4.

47 27 December 1996, p. 2.

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56 The Thousand Island Incident occurred in April 1994 when three mainland Chinese robbed and burned 24 Taiwanese tourists along with their 8 mainland crew members on a yacht touring the area. Embarassed by the event, local mainland authorities stalled requests by Taiwanese families to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones and to see the burned yacht. For the implications of this event for mainland-Taiwan relations, see Shih, C. Y., “Human Rights as Identities: Difference and Discrimination in Taiwan's China Policy” (Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science Association, 18–2003 1995, Portland, Oregon).Google Scholar

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58 This form of self-address invokes traditional Confucian protocol for scholar-officials.

59 The term “freeze” (dong) was used to avoid the impression that Taiwan's provincial status was being eliminated even though that, in effect, would be the result.

60 Xunzi, Mengzi, and the Four Books (si shu) all targeted individual “desire” as a source of social disintegration. See Sa, Rujia, in footnote 29.

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64 Former Minister of Justice (sifabu) Ma Yingjiou resigned when thousands of demonstrators demanded government action to restore public order when the 17-year-old daughter of a well-known actress was kidnapped and killed for ransom. This incident followed two other highly publicized murders, one committed against a DPP feminist in a taxicab and another with eight victims killed in the home of a KMT party member. These murders remain unsolved, thereby escalating public hysteria about law and order in Taiwan.

65 Records of the National Affairs Council, p. 226.

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68 K. K. Huang, for instance, lambasts politics in Taiwan for failing to approximatethe Western liberal democratic ideal by: (1) not functioning as a democracy but delivering a form of populism that is a “distorted product” (guaiwu) of Oriental despotism and Western democracy; (2) failing to govern by tolerating personal power mongering; and (3) deluding the public that money politics (jingqian zhengzhi) is really techno-industrial development and that mafia politics (heidao zhengzhi) constitutes a kind of family values. But he blames these structural and institutional problems on a single individual leader, Lee Teng-hui, and his moral character. See, Huang, K. K., Mincuiwangtailun (On the annihilation of Taiwan through populism) (Taipei: Choushang Wenhua Co. Ltd., 1995)Google Scholar. This application of Confucian morality to liberal politics is ultimately self-contradictory and self-defeating. Logically, it implies that Taiwan needs another individual (most likely male) imbued with the moral “right stuff” to lead it to democracy. How, then, is this democratic?