middle, perhaps because both the extreme positions are viewed as extremely dangerous. Table 2 about here A second paradox is that the eruption of polarization over national identity at the beginning of the 21st century followed a de-escalation of conflict about the issue in the 1990s. Following the evacuation of the Chiang Kai-shek regime to Taiwan in 1949 at the end of the Chinese Civil War, the island has suffered from a clear ethnic cleavage between the Mainlanders who came with Chiang (a little under 15% of the population) and the long-time residents of Taiwan or Islanders who also were almost all ethnically Han Chinese. The Mainlanders dominated the government and imposed a harsh and repressive rule termed the Terror” until the country’s democratic transition in the “White late 1980s and early 1990s. Consequently, it was widely expected that Taiwan’s democratic transition in the late 1980s and early 1990s would unleash previously repressed ethnic tensions and frustration. Political forces soon began to push both parties away from these stark alternatives, as sketched in Figure 2. In the KMT, Islander Lee Teng-hui, who as Vice-President succeeded Chiang Kai-shek’s son Chiang Ching-kuo as President after his death in 1988, responded to this opportunity with what appeared to be inspired statesmanship on the national identity question. As Lee
middle, perhaps because both the extreme positions are viewed as extremely dangerous. Table 2 about here A second paradox is that the eruption of polarization over national identity at the beginning of the 21st century followed a de-escalation of conflict about the issue in the 1990s. Following the evacuation of the Chiang Kai-shek regime to Taiwan in 1949 at the end of the Chinese Civil War, the island has suffered from a clear ethnic cleavage between the Mainlanders who came with Chiang (a little under 15% of the population) and the long-time residents of Taiwan or Islanders who also were almost all ethnically Han Chinese. The Mainlanders dominated the government and imposed a harsh and repressive rule termed the “White Terror” until the country’s democratic transition in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Consequently, it was widely expected that Taiwan’s democratic transition in the late 1980s and early 1990s would unleash previously repressed ethnic tensions and frustration. Political forces soon began to push both parties away from these stark alternatives, as sketched in Figure 2. In the KMT, Islander Lee Teng-hui, who as Vice-President succeeded Chiang Kai-shek’s son Chiang Ching-kuo as President after his death in 1988, responded to this opportunity with what appeared to be inspired statesmanship on the national identity question. As Lee