Democratic Progressive Party

Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), the current president of Taiwan and a member of the Democratic Progressive Party.

The Democratic Progressive Party (民主進步黨) is a Taiwanese centre-left progressive, social liberal, anti-communist, populist and Taiwanese nationalist party. It is now Taiwan's ruling party. Some say it is a social democratic party, but there is room for controversy.

Taiwan is a multi-party democracy, but it effectively has a two-party political structure where there are two main players: The "Kuomintang" (the center-right Chinese^{[note 1]} Nationalist Party) and the "Democratic Progressive Party" (the center-left Taiwanese nationalist Party).

Kuomintang (and the Pan-Blue Coalition^{[note 2]}) agrees with the 'One-China policy' principle, but the Democratic Progressive Party (and the Pan-Green Coalition^{[note 3]}) disagrees with the 'one China' principle, and opposes reunification with the PRC. This is because many members of the Democratic Progressive Party are anti-communists and identify as 'Taiwanese', not 'Chinese'. So the Communist Party of China dislikes the Democratic Progressive Party very much and is relatively friendly to Kuomintang.

However, even though they are liberal, they are friendly to conservatives and ultra-rightists in the United States and are not very aligned with moderate conservatives or liberals. This is because the hard-line conservatives of the United States are more strictly anti-China (on the other hand, US Democrats and establishment Republicans waffle significantly more). In addition, the Democratic Progressive Party is also friendly to the Japanese ultra-rightists who hate China. The DPP's anti-Chinese sentiment is linked to anti-imperialist ideologies; Taiwan has a minority but indigenous group, and the DPP argues that Chinese and Taiwanese are different "nation" based on differences in Taiwanese culture and mainland Chinese culture.

Despite this, it is fairly liberal with regards to Taiwanese internal issues. The party is supports strengthening social welfare, has negative positions towards nuclear power plants, and supports same-sex marriage.

See also[edit]

• Identity politics^[1] — Apart from the left and right interests, the DPP's political line has many points of contact with identity politics in the West. In short, they are in favor of Abe and Trump's anti-PRC and nationalist identity policies, and at the same time, they partially accept the discourse of several minority groups identity policies in the U.S.-style.

• Tsai Ing-wen

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