The Emergence of Class Cleavage in Taiwan in the Twenty-First Century: The Impact of Cross-Strait Economic Integration

Abstract

This paper shows that, in Taiwan, political cleavage based on class (class cleavage) has developed since the beginning of the new millennium due to the increasingly important issue of cross-Strait economic integration. Class groups with more skills that benefit from this integration and the less skilled who are harmed by it are polarized into two opposite camps. Responding to these class groups, the two major political camps in Taiwan incorporate this issue into their political platforms. The pan-Blue coalition urges further cross-Strait economic integration, while the pan-Green coalition holds the opposite view. Using the datasets of the Thiwan Social Change Survey (臺灣社會變遷調查), this paper demonstrates that in the 2001 and 2004 legislative elections as well as in the 2004 presidential election, class groups oriented in favor of cross-Strait economic integration have allied with the pan-Blue coalition, while the opposing class groups support the pan-Green coalition.