History of the Kuomintang
[15][16] The Blue Shirts Society, a ultranationalist paramilitary organization within the Kuomintang modeled after Mussolini's blackshirts, was anti-foreign and anticommunist, and stated that its agenda was to expel foreign (Japanese and Western) imperialists from China, crush Communism, and eliminate feudalism.
[60] Historians until the 1990s often portrayed the KMT simply as a band of corrupt leaders who colluded with rich financiers and industrialists and cared little for China's workers and peasants, contrasting it with the supposed broad base of popular support for the communists.
[80] In 1939, Isa Yusuf Alptekin and Ma Fuliang were sent on a mission by the KMT to the Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt, Turkey and Syria to gain support for the Chinese War against Japan, they also visited Afghanistan in 1940 and contacted Muhammad Amin Bughra, they asked him to come to Chongqing, the capital of the Nationalist Government.
[84] General Ma Fuxiang, the chairman of the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission stated that Mongolia and Tibet were an integral part of the Republic of China, arguing: Our Party [the Guomindang] takes the development of the weak and small and resistance to the strong and violent as our sole and most urgent task.
[citation needed] Ma Bufang also crushed Mongol separatist movements, abducting the Genghis Khan Shrine and attacking Tibetan Buddhist Temples like Labrang, and keeping a tight control over them through the Kokonur God ceremony.
Until the 1970s, the KMT successfully pushed ahead with land reforms, developed the economy, implemented a democratic system in a lower level of the government, improved cross-Taiwan Strait relations, and created the Taiwan economic miracle.
Currently, there is a law proposed by the DPP in the Legislative Yuan to recover illegally acquired party assets and return them to the government; however, since the pan-Blue alliance, the KMT and its smaller partner PFP, control the legislature, it is very unlikely to be passed.
On 13 February 2007, Ma was indicted by the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office on charges of allegedly embezzling approximately NT$11 million (US$339,000), regarding the issue of "special expenses" while he was mayor of Taipei.
Fundamental conservative ideas are grounded in Confucian values and strands of Chinese philosophy associated with Sun Yat-sen's teachings, a large centralized government which intervenes closely in the lives of individuals on both social and economic levels, and the construction of unified Sinocentric national identity.
However, most of his political ideas which were later adapted by his successors in governing Taiwan included equalization of land ownership, learning Chinese traditional morality through Confucian values, and the regulation of state capital by national corporations.
[99] As a result, the return of the KMT into power will likely be predicated on a more careful maintenance of pragmatic diplomacy which foreseeably involves drawing Taiwan closer to the PROC through a variety of methods, such as sharing social spaces in international institutions, making diplomatic visits, signing economic deals.
[101] Beijing's preoccupation with the process of "localization" stems from concerns over the ROC's move towards "De-Sinification" which would weaken the PRC's claim that people on both sides of the strait share common bond and heritage.
Moreover, China views current DPP president Tsai Ing-wen as a dangerous player who threatens the 1992 Consensus, blaming the KMT for mismanagement of domestic and international policy which led to their 2016 election loss.
The "government in exile", a term the ROC under Chiang Kai-shek elected to call itself, remained a status recognized by the international community until October 1971, when Taiwan's seat in the UN Security Council was replaced by that of the PRC, and February 1972, which marked Nixon's historical visit to Peking which ended in the Shanghai Communiqué.
In August 1955, and later in 1958, Chiang demonstrated his commitment for settling KMT-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) representative rivalry with military force by instigating conflict along the Tachen, Kinmen and Matsu islands in the First Taiwan Strait Crisis.
Nevertheless, the 1970s was marked by United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758, signaling Taiwan's decline in the international community, and with it, the desire to recapture the mainland was replaced by the necessity to survive under the new unstable status quo.
Dealing with the island's weakening economy after a long period of prosperity under the Japanese, as well as the residents' dissatisfaction of KMT's administration, Chiang Kai-shek decided on consolidating his dominance through an authoritarian political system to stabilize Taiwan's internal affairs, opening path for unification with the mainland.
[108] However, in exchange for social welfare, benefits were freedom and democratic rights: continuing the Martial Law, which granted extensive power to police and military in case of a "Communist rebellion" Chiang's government throughout the 1950s banned all political activities of the Taiwanese, such as forming parties, publishing newspapers and students' democracy movements.
[114] Thus, the KMT under Kuo shifted its interpretation of One-China to the notion of representative rivalry within its current Cross-Strait relations, which expresses Taiwan's necessity to negotiate for its relevance and its concessions made in other foreign arenas in light of the CPP's competing claim of representation.
These policies demonstrate that Chiang Ching-kuo sought to gain international support in order to strengthen his regime, by taking the moral high ground of democratic legitimacy against the rising threat of China.
In tandem with maintaining a strict Sino-centric identity, as Chiang Ching-kuo and his men were attempting to introduce a new brand of conservatism to the party structure, on the nationwide scale the government was still labeled authoritarian conservative.
This period was also marked by a major shift in the Taiwanese investments - from-small scale manufacturing and mostly labor-intensive industries, such as apparel, footwear, food processing, to higher technology production and infrastructure projects.
In response, President Lee Teng-hui asserted that the country's excessive dependence upon overseas investment, particularly in the PRC, was diverting capital and attention from revitalizing the domestic economy, and the government might have to put a lid on it.
[123] Lee's policies were met with strong opposition - both from the business levels and the general electorate, which supported closer economic ties with the mainland, in spite of concerns over security threats and pressure from Beijing.
As such, Ma's main vision was to slowly restore the modus vivendi in regard to the growing power and influence of the ROC by scaling down the hostile relationship which had greatly escalated during Lee Teng-hui's and Chen Shui-bian's presidencies.
Moreover, since 2009, relations with countries in the Asia Pacific region have also recovered, as evidenced by the Memorandum of Understanding on Aviation Safety Cooperation with Korea and the resumption of deputy minister level economic and trade consultations with Malaysia and the Philippines.
[128] The United States, Taiwan's long-standing ally, continued to maintain bilateral relations in the form of assisting in the ROC's national defense: in October 2008, the Bush administration agreed to 6.2 billion dollar arms sales, which was repeated during Obama's presidency.
Some of those controversial moves from the authorities were poor management on dealing with aftermath of 2008 tsunami, the Statute for Farm Village Rejuvenation, media control of public television broadcasting, sexual harassment towards children,[132] and the approvement of establishing a naphtha cracker plant near the coast.
[132] All those policies reflected a relatively conservative perspective due to the presence of a large, albeit unpopular state, financed by big business, which in particular during Ma's era, undermined human rights and environmental issues.
Unlike the previous KMT government under the presidency of Lee Teng-hui, which attempted to reduce the mainland related economic activities, Ma Ying-jeou focused on development in cooperation with China to reap trade benefits.
