Five thousand six hundred ninety-seven years is a very long time, and much of it is unrecorded, but as far as we know the first peaceful democratic transfer of political power in all of Chinese history took place on May 20, 2000, when Chen Shui-bian was inaugurated President of the Republic of China on Taiwan. In the national presidential election two months earlier, he and his Democratic Progressive Party had defeated the candidate of the Kuomintang Party, which had ruled the Republic of China continuously since the arrival of Chiang Kai-shek in 1949. But on Inauguration Day even KMT hearts put aside the bitterness of defeat, and swelled with unconcealed pride, for they knew that what they and all of the citizens of Taiwan had achieved was of world-historical importance.
From a distance--say, from the perspective of an editorial in an American newspaper--the emergence of democracy on Taiwan had looked natural and preordained: the "democratization process" it was called. And there had indeed been elements of process and planning: Just as Chiang Kai-shek had set aside his military instincts and established a free economy, so his son, Chiang Ching-kuo, had set aside his political heritage and begun to liberalize the press and the electoral system, and Lee Teng-hui, the nation's first popularly elected president, had held fast to his democratic principles even as his KMT party was increasingly threatened by the emergence of political rivals. Yet from the inside the growth of democracy was not a process but a hard-fought battle with an uncertain result--with heroes and villains, sacrifice and suffering, grave risks and great deeds, and physical as well as verbal violence.
President Chen, and his wife Chen Wu, Sue-Jen, became indispensable leaders in that battle. For them it was certainly not a matter of process or planning, but rather of trying to do the simple right thing in reaction to discrete events, of personal growth, and of a succession of individual steps that led one to another in the cascade of popular insistence on political freedom that swept the Republic of China in the 1980s and 1990s. He was a man of humble origins, who had married above himself as so many of us have done, now a prospering lawyer with two children and a bright and comfortable future ahead. But there were abuses, official attacks on those who dared to criticize the government, a dramatic incident in Kaohsiung, a sedition trial of political activists before a military court. Chen Shui-bian could not pretend that all was well or that he couldn't bother to get involved. With the vigorous encouragement of his wife, he became counsel for the defense, then a crusading human rights lawyer and political dissident, then a political prisoner himself, then an assistant to his legislator wife, then a legislator in his own right, then the first popularly elected Mayor of Taipei.
So it was that on that brilliant Taipei spring morning of May 20, 2000, a parade of official limousines pulled up to their home to escort two veteran freedom fighters to their inauguration at the top of their nation's government. But how would they appear--and how would Taiwan's new First Lady, confined to a wheelchair since 1985, make an appropriately stately entrance to the presidential stage? Suddenly the front door swung open and there stood the President-elect, beaming with joy and carrying his bride and political partner firmly in his arms (she was equally beaming and also somewhat surprised) across the threshold and out to the waiting limos surrounded by worried staff and delighted crowds. I daresay there will be no such moment of exuberant humanity when a new President of the People's Republic of China is stiffly decreed next March. When one fine day a political leader in Beijing does present himself before a cheering throng carrying his wife and soul-mate in his arms, we will know that democracy, and political equality, have arrived on the Chinese mainland as well.
It is a very great honor for the American Enterprise Institute to welcome a democratic activist of such singular principle, accomplishment, and bravery as Madame Chen Wu, Sue-Jen. That she is also the gracious First Lady of the Republic of China makes the honor all the more gratifying--especially because of the continuing broken official relations between the United States and the ROC, and because this is the first visit of a Taiwanese First Lady to Washington in fifty years.
Please join me in extending a warm welcome to Madame Chen.
Christopher DeMuth is the president of AEI.
