Democratic Progressive Party (Taiwan)

民主 進步 黨 Democratic Progressive Party
Party leader	Cho Jung-tai 卓榮泰
founding	September 28, 1986
Headquarters	Taipei
Alignment	Centrism , Liberalism , Taiwanese Nationalism
Colours)	green
Parliament seats	61/113
Website	www.dpp.org.tw

The Democratic Progressive Party , or DPP for short ( Chinese  民主 進步 黨 , Pinyin Mínzhǔ Jìnbù Dǎng , short 民進黨 , Mínjìndǎng , English Democratic Progressive Party ), is a party in the Republic of China on Taiwan . The party founded as an opposition to the Kuomintang provided the President of the Republic of China with Chen Shui-bian from 2000 to 2008 . In the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, DPP candidates Hsieh Chang-ting (2008) and Tsai Ing-wen (2012) were defeated by Ma Ying-jeou from the Kuomintang. However, Tsai then won the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections by a clear margin over the Kuomintang and Qinmindang candidates .

History and political goals

The original founding meeting of the DPP took place on May 1, 1986 on the initiative of Taiwanese dissidents of the Dangwai opposition movement with financial support from American industrialists in Los Angeles with over 200 participants. The declared aim of the new party was to achieve liberalization in Taiwan. To this day it is still a matter of dispute who initiated or forced the foundation. Numerous members of the democratic movement in Taiwan were opposed to the establishment process in the USA and spoke out against outside interference. The chairman of the opposition writers and journalists' association Qui Yiren published (excerpt):

“I am against this approach from abroad. Establishing an opposition party in Taiwan is not a legal problem, but a political struggle. A party founded abroad is a political party with no roots in Taiwan. "

Against this background, the DPP was officially founded again on September 28, 1986 in Taiwan. Contrary to the existing ban on political parties, the DPP participated as an illegal party in the additional elections to the National Assembly of the Republic of China and the Legislative Yuan , in which it was able to achieve a respectable result.

The Dangwai came into being in the 1970s, when additional elections were allowed on a regular basis from 1972. These additional elections provided a political stage for the opposition. After the prestigious successes in the 1977 elections, the Dangwai moved towards institutionalization in the form of a party. Against the background of the closure of the US embassy in Taipei in 1979 , the government suspended the upcoming elections for 1979, which led to the radicalization of the Dangwai movement and the Kaohsiung incident .

As a result, numerous opposition leaders were arrested, including the later Vice President of the Republic of China, Lü Xiulian . The call for political reforms from Washington , the discovery of numerous human rights violations by the government in Taipei and the associated loss of reputation made it impossible for the government to prevent the Dangwai from stabilizing in the 1980s. As part of the democratization process in Taiwan that began in 1986 at the latest, the DPP was formed and legalized in the late 1980s.

After democratic elections were held for the first time in 1992, the party achieved numerous electoral successes in the 1990s, and from May 2000 to May 2008, Chen Shui-bian was the first president. After candidate Hsieh Chang-ting was defeated by Kuomintang candidate Ma Ying-jeou in 2008, the DPP found itself in the opposition. In 2012, the party achieved 35.4% of the vote in the election of the Legislative Yuan and was represented with 40 out of 113 seats in parliament. On April 15, 2015, the DPP nominated its chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen for the second time as a candidate for the 2016 presidential election, which she won by a clear margin on January 16, 2016. At the same time, the DPP received an absolute majority of parliamentary seats for the first time on the same day.

Although the current leadership of the DPP has on the one hand basically abandoned its program of establishing Taiwan's independence de jure in the constitution of the Republic of China , on the other hand it is pursuing the goal of preserving the autonomy of the island republic as irreversibly as possible.

After a severe defeat for the DPP in the local and regional elections on November 24, 2018, Tsai Ing-wen resigned as party leader. Cho Jung-tai has been chairman of the party since January 9, 2019 .

List of chairmen

1. Chiang Peng-chian (1986-1987)
2. Yao Chia-wen (1987-1988)
3. Huang Shin-chieh (1988–1992)
4. Hsu Hsin-liang (1992–1993)
5. Shih Ming-teh (1994-1996)
6. Hsu Hsin-liang (1996-1998)
7. Lin Yi-hsiung (1998-2000)
8. Hsieh Chang-ting (2000-2002)
9. Chen Shui-bian (2002-2004)
10. Su Tseng-chang (2005)
11. Yu Shyi-kun (2006-2007)
12. Chen Shui-bian (2007-2008)
13. Tsai Ing-wen (2008-2012)
14. Su Tseng-chang (2012-2014)
15. Tsai Ing-wen (2014-2018)
16. Lin Yu-chang (2018-2019)
17. Cho Jung-tai (2019-)

Previous election results

Taiwanese suffrage is a mixture of proportional representation and personalized majority voting. The following table shows the party list share of votes and the total number of seats won (across party lists and constituencies).

year	choice	voting share	Seats in parliament
1992	Legislative Yuan 1992	31.0%	51/161
1995	Legislative Yuan 1995	33.2%	54/164
1998	Legislative Yuan 1998	29.6%	70/225
2001	Legislative Yuan 2001	33.4%	87/225
2004	Legislative Yuan 2004	35.7%	89/225
2008	Legislative Yuan 2008	36.9%	27/113
2012	Legislative Yuan 2012	34.6%	40/113
2016	Legislative Yuan 2016	44.1%	68/113
2020	Legislative Yuan 2020	34.0%	61/113

literature

• Shelley Rigger: From Opposition to Power: Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party. Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder / London 2001, ISBN 1-55587-969-1 .
• Alan M. Wachman: Taiwan: National Identity and Democratization. ME Sharpe, Armonk, New York 1994, ISBN 1-56324-399-7 .
• Thomas Weyrauch: China's neglected republic. 100 years in the shadow of world history. Volume 2 (1950-2011) . Longtai, 2011, ISBN 978-3-938946-15-2 .
• Thomas Weyrauch: Taiwan's common color. The Democratic Profile of the Republic of China. Longtai, Heuchelheim 2015, ISBN 978-3-938946-26-8 .

Web links

Commons : Democratic Progressive Party  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Official website of the DPP

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Taiwan elects to change power. In: Zeit Online . January 16, 2016, accessed January 18, 2016 . 
2. ↑ Stefan Fleischauer: The dream of one's own nation. History and Present of Taiwan's Independence Movement. Springer-Verlag, 2009, p. 143.
3. ↑ ibid
4. ↑ 2012 ELECTIONS: KMT maintains majority. In: Taipei Times . January 15, 2012, accessed January 18, 2016 . 
5. ↑ Taiwan Update November 15, 2016 , accessed February 3, 2018
6. ↑ Change of power in Taiwan ; Friedrich Ebert Foundation, 2016, p. 3 f. , accessed February 3, 2018
7. ↑ Keelung Mayor Lin Yu-chang named as Taiwan ruling party's acting chair , Taiwan News, November 28, 2018