Much has happened in Taiwan since the first edition of this book appeared in 1999. The narrative of the first edition ended in late 1996, seven months after the second inauguration of President Lee Teng-hui and Vice President Lien Chan. Lee, then a member of the Kuomintang, was the first popularly elected president to take power in the history of the Republic of China, an event singular in its significance. Yet Lee was also a lame duck and began making the mistakes that lame ducks often make in their attempts to forestall their loss of real and effective power. In this edition, that original postscript has become, in the able hands of Cal Clark, a full-scale chapter that covers the events of Lee’s second term as well as the first term and subsequent reelection of Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party.
I would like to thank my fourteen co-authors and my editors, Doug Merwin, now head of his own press, East Bridge, and Patricia Loo editor of Asian Studies at M.E. Sharpe. I must also thank those at M.E. Sharpe, Inc. for inaugurating and continuing to publish the series Taiwan in the Modern World.
I am happy to report that the first edition has been embraced by the critics in the major journals and widely adopted for teaching purposes. I hope that this second edition will do even more by serving as a starting point for future research and stimulating new students to pursue further research on the history of Taiwan as it moves into the twenty-first century.
Murray A. Rubinstein