The China Factor in the 2004 Taiwanese Presidential Election.

The dominant issue in Taiwan's politics concerns the island's relationship with China. Since 1949, Taiwan has resisted the control of the government on the mainland, tranforming itself into a more economically advanced and politically democratic society than the one on the mainland. But whether or not it should become an independent nation or seek to rejoin the mainland is the central issue cleavage in Taiwan's politics. In this paper, I will examine the role of this issue in Taiwan's politics by going beyond traditional measures of attitudes on this question to include consideration of conditional preferences toward national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]