President Ma Ying-jeou met on the morning of June 23 with foreign scholars attending an international seminar entitled A Spectacular Century: The Republic of China Centennial Democracy Forums. On behalf of the government and people of the ROC, the president welcomed the scholars to Taiwan and thanked them for bearing witness to the development of democracy in the ROC.
The president remarked that the ROC is the first nation in the ethnic Chinese world where democracy took root, which created challenges for the nation, but is also a source of pride. In 1894, the nation's founding father Dr. Sun Yat-sen in Honolulu established the Revive China Society (興中會), whose members swore a pledge to "expel the Manchus, restore Chinese rule, and establish a federal republic." His original idea was thus to establish a republican form of government, but the development of democracy over the past 100 years has gone slowly, the president noted. The ROC Constitution was adopted in 1947 and elections were held the following year for the president of the ROC and the National Assembly. Due to the Chinese Civil War, however, articles in the Constitution relating to the implementation of democracy and freedom were suspended. This situation lasted for about 38 years, and it wasn't until the lifting of martial law in 1987 that the pace of democratization began to hasten. The Period of National Mobilization for Suppression of Communist Rebellion was ended in 1991, which ushered in democratic rule under the Constitution. The president added that direct election of the president in 1996 marked the full implementation of democracy here.
The president specially cited the role that local self-government played in the process of Taiwan's democratization. After the Korean War erupted in 1950, late President Chiang Kai-shek announced the adoption of local self-rule in Taiwan, with city mayors, county magistrates, and city and county councilmen to be chosen in elections. In October of that year, the people of Hualien County directly voted for the first democratically elected local leader in the history of the ROC, Yang Zhongjing (楊仲鯨). Thereafter, local self-government was implemented throughout Taiwan, with counties and county-level cities forming the backbone of the system. The popular election of local officials created the foundation for democracy in Taiwan, the president said, adding that quite a few political figures emerged under this system.
President Ma commented that the party in power here has changed twice over the past decade, and our democratic political system has had quite an impact on mainland China and other ethnic Chinese communities. At the same time, however, he noted that our democracy is still young, and although democracy is a vibrant force in the ROC, there is still much room for improvement. In the future, the nation needs to humbly seek further democratic progress in the hope of better meeting the needs of the public and implementing the rule of law, the president remarked.
Those attending the meeting included Roderick MacFarquhar (professor of history and political science at Harvard University), Larry Diamond (senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University), Diana Lary (professor of history at the University of British Columbia), and Thomas B. Gold (professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley). The delegation was accompanied to the Presidential Office by Republic of China Centenary Foundation Chief Executive Officer Emile Chih-jen Sheng (盛治仁) to meet President Ma. Also attending the meeting was National Security Council Secretary-General Hu Wei-jen (胡為真).