During a trip to Taiwan last week, we visited the Jing-Mei White Terror Memorial Park, a former prison that has been converted into a human rights museum. The site serves as a stark reminder of the country’s remarkable transformation. In just over 40 years, Taiwan has evolved from an authoritarian state — where political opponents of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) dictatorship were imprisoned without due process, tortured, and executed — into what is now a thriving multiparty democracy.
These democratic advances are exceptional in a global context of eroding democracy and rising authoritarianism. Taiwan received a score of 94 out of 100 in the latest edition of Freedom in the World, Freedom House’s annual report on political rights and civil liberties. That puts it well ahead of many other democracies, including the United States. Peaceful transfers of power between rival parties have occurred regularly since the first opposition presidential victory in 2000, and Taiwan is notable for hosting one of the freest online environments in Asia.
It is Taiwan’s success as a free and democratic society that is most threatening to the increasingly repressive regime in China, where President Xi Jinping during his decade in office has crushed the already limited space for civil society and independent expression. Beijing, which characterizes the island as a renegade province under malign Western influence, is dramatically upgrading its military preparedness, with Xi reportedly instructing his forces to develop the capacity for a potential invasion of Taiwan by 2027. But whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ultimately pursues armed aggression or simply continues its recent campaign of political and economic pressure, it is clear that the goal is to extinguish Taiwan’s democracy and ensure that its 23 million people come under Beijing’s rule.
The people of Taiwan certainly would not consent to that outcome. The overwhelming majority wish to maintain the country’s autonomy, according to opinion polls. Although many are of Han Chinese ethnicity, the island has not been controlled by mainland China since 1895, and its current residents prize their hard-won prosperity, their personal liberties, and their lively elections and democratic institutions. “One country, two systems,” the supposedly accommodating model for unification proposed by Beijing, is no longer credible in Taiwan given the sobering example of Hong Kong, where the CCP has steadily demolished local autonomy, the rule of law, and basic freedoms in recent years despite its promises to preserve them.
“Hong Kong was a wake-up call,” Jaw-Nian Huang, a professor at National Chengchi University, told us. “'One country, two systems' does not work.”
A number of Taiwanese leaders with whom we met also emphasized that the fate of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine could have serious implications for Taiwan. From their perspective, it is critical for Ukraine to succeed, as the Chinese leadership is closely observing the conflict and drawing lessons for its own strategic planning.
The parallels are indeed striking. The regimes in Russia and China share a deep hostility to the United States and to the ideals of free self-government, and each is determined to crush the democratic progress of its ethnic neighbor whose gains could inspire demands for similar changes at home.
Americans are generally supportive of providing military supplies to Ukraine and Taiwan, and both Kevin McCarthy, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and his Democratic Party predecessor, Nancy Pelosi, have now met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, rebuffing objections from Beijing.
Still, given our domestic policy challenges as well as our traumatic experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, many Americans are reluctant to accept that the global struggle for freedom and democracy is a vital national interest of the United States. What our visit to Taiwan reinforced is that solidarity with existing democracies in the face of authoritarian pressure is vital — for the defense of their freedoms and for the preservation of our own.
Many observers have noted the world’s dependence on Taiwan for the production of semiconductors and advanced computer chips, which are essential to a wide range of industries, including defense manufacturing. But as a front-line democracy, the country offers additional expertise in strengthening democratic institutions — in part by confronting historical injustices — and resisting authoritarian influence, including through cutting-edge techniques for countering disinformation campaigns. These skills are sorely needed in the United States and many other settings.
Support for threatened democracies like Taiwan is both a moral imperative and a matter of strategic interest for Americans. The United States and its allies must not waver in their commitment to deter authoritarian aggression, ensuring not only that Ukraine is able to defeat Moscow’s invasion, but also that Taiwan has what it needs to protect its impressive achievements as a free society.
Michael J. Abramowitz is president of Freedom House. Wendell L. Willkie II is an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a Freedom House emeritus board member. He served in senior positions in the Reagan and G. W. Bush administrations. The views expressed are the authors' own.
