Chiang Ching-kuo was born in 1910 in Xikou, Fenghua, the son of Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Fumei, and later the stepson of Soong May-ling. In 1925, he traveled to the Soviet Union to study at the Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow—an institution the Soviets established to train Chinese revolutionary cadres—where he received Marxist-Leninist education and underwent strict political training. After the Nationalists and Communists split, the Soviet Union “held on to” Chiang Ching-kuo in an effort to shift his political allegiance. Over the next ten years, he experienced ideological remolding, forced labor, poverty, and surveillance by Soviet authorities. He witnessed firsthand how a violent authoritarian system operated. These experiences shaped him into someone who understood intelligence and security apparatuses deeply, believed in strong organizational control, was highly sensitive to power, and distrusted political idealism. He later married a Russian woman, Faina, in the Soviet Union. Their marriage was modest and steady, and she later followed him to Taiwan, maintaining an extremely low profile.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Chiang Ching-kuo became one of Chiang Kai-shek’s closest confidants. In the 1940s, he served as commissioner and administrative chief in Jiangxi and Zhejiang, gradually gaining control over intelligence operations, military discipline, and local administration. His iron-fisted enforcement of the New Life Movement in Jiangxi made his reputation sharply polarized. During the Chinese Civil War, his power grew further. He commanded Military Bureau of Investigation and Statistics (the “military intelligence” system), and was responsible for purging traitors, maintaining stability, and running anti-communist propaganda. By the time he retreated to Taiwan with the Nationalists in 1949, he was already considered a de facto successor.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, he gradually took control of the Investigation Bureau, the Secret Police (Taiwan Garrison Command), and the military police system. Although he was not the sole decision-maker, he was undeniably part of the top-level apparatus responsible for political repression. Taiwan’s structure of authoritarian terror—arrest without explanation, coerced confessions, and military trials—was closely tied to his hardline security strategy. At the same time, he was also a major architect of Taiwan’s economic development. He adopted a Soviet-style cadre management approach but applied it to Taiwan’s industrialization: aggressively recruiting technocrats, supporting the Ten Major Construction Projects, strengthening public infrastructure, and pushing export-oriented industrialization while cracking down on corruption. His combination of political authoritarianism and technocratic governance contributed to Taiwan’s rapid economic growth.

He suppressed local corruption networks, yet simultaneously consolidated the party-state system. He maintained media monopolies, refused to hold full elections for central representative bodies, repressed opposition activists, and upheld martial law. His relationship with Chiang Kai-shek evolved from heir apparent to principal decision-maker. In 1972, he became Premier; in 1978, he assumed the presidency, formally taking control of Taiwan’s highest political authority. The decisions he made in the final stage of his life would fundamentally reshape Taiwan’s history.

The 1979 Kaohsiung (Formosa) Incident made him realize that Taiwanese society had modernized and that the urban middle class had awakened; continued repression risked provoking a deeper crisis. The 1984 Jiang Nan assassination—carried out by Taiwan’s intelligence operatives against a U.S.-based writer—triggered strong backlash from the United States and forced a restructuring of the national security system. To ensure that the regime could survive beyond the Chiang family, and to prevent the Kuomintang from being overthrown after his death, he decided to ease social pressures, manage the pace of political transformation, rebuild legitimacy, incorporate local and societal forces, and improve Taiwan’s international standing under external scrutiny. These motivations pushed him toward an endpoint he himself may not have foreseen: the institutionalization of democracy.

On September 28, 1986, opposition figures held a public meeting at the Grand Hotel in Taipei. Although Taiwan remained under martial law and the ban on political parties had not yet been lifted, the gathering was not clandestine. It proceeded as a normal political assembly, with substantial media presence and intelligence personnel observing from the periphery. From beginning to end, the meeting remained orderly and uninterrupted.

The conference opened with senior opposition legislators chairing the meeting and explaining its purpose: to build upon the existing opposition movement by formally establishing a political party with its own charter and organizational structure. The explanation followed standard meeting protocol, and the atmosphere was serious but calm. The assembly then moved on to the party platform. The draft platform had been discussed in multiple preparatory meetings, emphasizing constitutional democracy, human rights, political reform, the termination of the long-standing mobilization structure, and the advancement of local self-governance. On the day of the meeting, the text was read aloud, briefly explained, and approved by a show of hands, quickly and without dispute.

After the platform was passed, the assembly turned to the party charter. The charter outlined the party’s organizational structure: membership qualifications, national and local party branches, committee operations, and financial and disciplinary regulations. Like the platform, the charter had been drafted in advance. The conference followed the same straightforward process of presentation and unanimous approval. Participants generally regarded the formal establishment of the party as the priority, rather than debating the fine details of internal rules.

With the platform and charter approved, the meeting proceeded to its central task: forming the Democratic Progressive Party’s Preparatory Committee and selecting its members. A group of preparatory committee members was elected, and the experienced and widely supported opposition leader Huang Hsin-chieh was chosen as chair. This decision reflected the high degree of consensus within the opposition movement at the time.

Huang then formally declared the establishment of the Democratic Progressive Party. The announcement was simple and direct, free of elaborate ceremony, yet it marked a decisive moment in Taiwan’s political history. Attendees responded with measured applause—solemn and restrained, without exuberance or rhetorical flourish.

After the declaration, the preparatory committee outlined upcoming tasks for the press and attendees: establishing local party branches, recruiting new members, planning the party’s central operations, and preparing for future revisions of the platform and charter. These statements focused on general direction; detailed implementation was expected to unfold over the following months. In the latter part of the event, the media conducted interviews. Journalists asked about the significance of the party’s founding, the government’s possible reactions, and future electoral and organizational strategies. Opposition leaders responded with consistent emphasis on democratic reform and transparent political participation.

The meeting concluded smoothly. There were no disruptions, no interference, no power cuts, and no arrests. Intelligence personnel continued to observe from outside but did not intervene. Procedurally, the event resembled a standard political meeting, even though the formation of a political party remained technically illegal under the still-active party ban. The government’s practical stance amounted to tacit acceptance.