Victorious in Defeat: The Life and Times of Chiang Kai-shek, China, 1887–1975
Alexander V. Pantsov, Translated by Steven I. Levine
Yale University Press: 2023
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Only forty years ago, Taiwan was still in the throes of an oppressive dictatorship. Public discourse was smothered by martial law, tolerance for dissent was nil, critics were bullied with abandon. Those foolish enough to ignore the government’s warnings often disappeared. Even opponents in exile were not entirely safe: in 1984, the Taiwanese American journalist Henry Liu, a gadfly constantly skewering the authorities, was shot dead by gangsters at his California home. Taipei initially denied involvement, but later admitted its intelligence services had been implicated. In the 1980s, freedom was still elusive in Formosa.

Taiwan today is a vastly different nation: free, open and democratic. President Tsai Ing-wen, elected in 2016, is the first female head of government in the Chinese-speaking world. In the Legislative Yuan, the island’s parliament, 42 per cent of the seats are held by women—in the US Congress, that number is only 28 per cent. In 2019, Taiwan legalised gay marriage, the first jurisdiction in Asia to do so, two years after its Constitutional Court found that legislation had been discriminatory. In just over a generation, the island has grown into an inspiring model for a region suffering from a democratic deficit.

• Tags: Alexander V. Pantsov, China, Issue 31, Martin Laflamme, Taiwan