The Kuomintang (KMT, Chinese Nationalist Party) suppressed localism and barred Taiwanese from cosmopolitan life except in the spheres of science and technology.
The KMT claimed a loss of morale led to "losing the Mainland" and thus the state issued a series of ideological reforms aimed to "retake the mainland", which became the major state cultural program or the time, The immediate preoccupation with losing China diverted long-term investment in the humanities and social sciences.
On another level, the state's main objective was to "sinicize" the Taiwanese by teaching them Mandarin Chinese and Nationalist ideology through compulsory primary education.
[8] Between the beginning of the 1960s and mid-1970s Taiwanese cultural life was in a period of gradual transition between the immediate postwar ideological goal of "retaking the mainland" and the social realities of Taiwan's development.
The restrictive atmosphere in Taiwan resulted in a brain drain as many students failed to return after receiving their American degrees.
[12] Taiwan's deteriorating international position led to an increase in state fuelled nationalism, which was vented against Japan in a dispute over the Diaoyutai islets.
[13] Taiwan's decreasing prominence in the battle to win the Cold War also forced the KMT to refrain from the hard-line tactics it had used to extinguish dissent, and as a result, the government's ability to limit liberal intellectuals from the cultural sphere was severely inhibited.