ist/nationalist government that controlled a separate land mass that the original pseudodemocratic/nationalist-authoritarian government had never really controlled (except for five provinces) in the first place.
Now consider that (despite authoritarian militarist orientation), for the next forty years, the mainland could not be retaken (it could not). Next, consider that mainlander co-optation efforts failed to dominate Taiwanese consciousness permanently (they did fail, as proved by the awkward evolution of local-faction politics and the party's need to incorporate indigenous people into its elite ranks). It follows that nationalist/mainlander co-optation of indigenous Taiwanese would eventually butt up against the attrition of Taiwan's Long Parliament. Also, Taiwanese-mainlander tension would butt up against the party's institutional need for multigenerational viability. It could be viable only if the party apparatus were able to adapt itself to changing realities, rather than maintain its policy of trying to adapt its environment to suit the reality it preferred. How and why the KMT could be motivated to make itself relevant to political evolution in Taiwan make the issue of internal party factionalism relevant to the current study.
Yet democratization in Taiwan and throughout the world made Taiwanization hazardous for the purity of traditional party policy. There was a logical likelihood--confirmed by events--that opinions inside the KMT would differ on how the connection between Taiwan and the PRC (the KMT's original preoccupation) would be resolved or perceived. Differences of opinion extended to other issues too.
Consider the well-documented efforts by the KMT to manipulate the political environment and suppress democratic tendencies. What do we encounter as a result? That the history of the KMT in Taiwan virtually guaranteed that interaction between competing ideologies (or at least political priorities) and t...