Zhongli incident

The Zhongli Incident or Chung-li Incident was a democracy movement in the Taiwanese town of Zhongli (now Zhongli District, Taoyuan City) in 1977, after a voter reported witnessing the Kuomintang rigging the election.

Historical background

In the 1950s and 1960s, non-Kuomintang candidates could run for local positions in Taiwan, but were effectively barred from national or provincial posts because of a lack of resources and a government-controlled press that always supported the Kuomintang. In the 1970s, they began to coalesce into what came to be known as the Tangwai movement (literally "outside the party"), though martial law under the Kuomintang prevented the formation of a unified opposition party. The movement gained strength from gradual emergence of a sense of Taiwanese identity and was emboldened by steps taken by Washington and Beijing toward normalization of diplomatic relations, undermining the Kuomintang's claim to be the legitimate government of all of China, including Taiwan. During local elections in 1977, the Kuomintang lost ground to Tangwai candidates.

Incident

In 1977, the loose group of opposition candidates won 34% of the vote in the elections for the Taiwan Provincial Assembly. The growing opposition began to have an effect inside the Kuomintang. One popular figure, Hsu Hsin-liang, left the party and ran as a Tangwai for a local county magistrate's position in November 1977. Hsu Hsin-liang was an unpredictable political figure, a self labeled "socialist", who wanted to maintain the Taiwanese economic base while humanizing its class structure. He vigorously advocated parliamentary democracy and Taiwan independence, and frequently attacked the state's political corruption and systematic violation of human rights.