Lifting Martial Law

On July 15, 1987, President Chiang Ching-kuo announced the lifting of Taiwan's thirty-eight-year martial law — one of the longest continuous periods of military-backed emergency rule in world history. In a single stroke the Taiwan Garrison Command lost its jurisdiction over civilian courts, tens of thousands of blacklisted overseas Taiwanese could begin the long process of returning home, and the restraints that had governed every public gathering since 1949 were formally rolled back, replaced by a new Assembly and Parade Act whose loopholes the courts and the opposition would spend the next decade testing.

The end of martial law meant the lifting of bans on new newspapers and political parties, the opening of mainland visits for veterans separated from their families for four decades, and the legalization of labor unions outside the official federation, as Taiwanese society began experiencing a sweeping wave of liberalization that touched everything from late-night radio call-in shows to university campus magazines. Banned songs were recorded openly, publishers who had operated under pseudonyms reissued their back catalogues, and Hokkien, Hakka, and indigenous languages — suppressed for decades in schools — began to reappear in television programming and popular music.

The decision to lift martial law was not made overnight. From the mid-1980s, the global wave of democratization sweeping South Korea, the Philippines, and Eastern Europe, mounting internal pressures from Dangwai victories in elections and the DPP's de facto founding, and Chiang Ching-kuo's own political judgment — shaped by his declining health, diabetes-induced blindness, and a clear-eyed reading that the regime's long-term survival required controlled opening — collectively led to this historic decision. In the final stage of his life, Chiang promoted localization policies, replaced mainlander elders with Taiwanese technocrats, and elevated Lee Teng-hui to the vice presidency, laying crucial groundwork for Taiwan's democratic transition.

This volume focuses on the political maneuvering and social transformation surrounding the lifting of martial law, exploring how authoritarian rule came to an end through a combination of external pressure, internal reform, and pragmatic succession planning, and how the tremendous energy released by Taiwanese society during the initial phase of liberalization — messy, exuberant, and at times disorienting — set the baseline conditions for every democratic institution Taiwan would build thereafter.