# Headline identifies KMT as "Pro-China party"

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/headline-identifies-kmt-as-pro-china-party/433440>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [January 14, 2008, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/headline-identifies-kmt-as-pro-china-party/433440 "2008-01-14T02:42:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![hawthorne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@hawthorne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hawthorne)\
**Post date:** [January 14, 2008, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/headline-identifies-kmt-as-pro-china-party/433440/1 "2008-01-14T02:42:03Z")

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[Pro-China party in landslide election win](http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23045209-401,00.html).

> [@](#):
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> TAIWAN’S opposition nationalist Kuomintang (KMT), which favours closer ties with China, has won a landslide victory in the island’s parliamentary election.

The story’s true enough and I suppose the headline is too - but only in a very weird sense.

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**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\
**Post date:** [January 14, 2008, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/headline-identifies-kmt-as-pro-china-party/433440/2 "2008-01-14T02:58:33Z")

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What? No orange motorcycles?

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**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\
**Post date:** [January 14, 2008, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/headline-identifies-kmt-as-pro-china-party/433440/3 "2008-01-14T04:09:40Z")

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Simplistically speaking, Taiwan has the KMT and DPP. The KMT are the morphed remanents of the party led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek that ruled China and fled to Taiwan in 1949. The KMT were the “mainlanders” that fled to Taiwan, and had a stated goal of returning to China.

The DPP were the long suffering underground opposition that became a real party in the late 1990’s. The DPP were the local Taiwanese that suffered decades of oppresion and prejudice up until the 1990’s. The DPP have at least as a core philosophy of Taiwan declaring independance and renouncing all claims to being part of China.

Of course now the Mainland Taiwan thing is not nearly so clear cut as the generation of people that were adults in China before 1949 is shrinking and pretty much no longer a force in politics.

Taking the above simplistic introduction, with the DPP in power, there is always the threat of holding a national referendum on declaring de jeure independance. China has always said that it retains the power to use military force to prevent Taiwanese independance. The KMT, while quite changed from the military dictatorship of the past, clearly does not want to make a fornal declaration of independance. As a result, the KMT are the Pro-China party.