Above all, the Kuomintang turned the country toward pluralism and itself into a genuinely democratic party. Taiwan has problems, of course, but its successes are stunning and, in a rather obvious way, moving. It has a system that people can trust. In China, by contrast, such trust is largely absent. According to Linda Jakobson, a Finnish expert on China now working in Taiwan, the real danger to the island is the spiritual void in China itself.
Communism is dead, sects multiply.
The only emotional lever that the party still controls is nationalism. And therein lies the risk to Taiwan. The strength of Chinese chauvinism was seen in the furious public reaction to NATO's bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo war. Young Chinese have been trained to believe that China will inevitably include Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Of the three territories, only Taiwan now remains free.