State Building in China and Taiwan

4 credits · Undergraduate

This course aims to provide an overview of the political history of China and Taiwan since 1949. We will compare and contrast the state building process in mainland China and Taiwan from 1950 to today. While both regimes were under the authoritarian rule at the beginning of the 1950s, why did Taiwan democratize but not China? Meanwhile, does the democratic politics in Taiwan generate any implications for the democratic future of China? By comparing the state building process under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Kuomintang (KMT), students will gain a better understanding of the theories and implications of the interaction between political development and economic development.