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Dang Guo (l=party-state), also known as Tang Kuo, was the one-party system adopted by the Republic of China (ROC) under the Kuomintang, lasting from 1924 to 1987. It was adopted after Sun Yat-sen acknowledged the efficacy of the nascent Soviet Union's political system, including its system of dictatorship, however in practice it also borrowed from fascism. Chiang Kai-shek later used the Kuomintang to control and operate the Nationalist government and the National Revolutionary Army. All major national policies of the government bureaucracy were formulated by the Kuomintang, giving the party supreme power over the whole nation, as well as ideological supremacy across China, dominating the Chinese political landscape until the rise of Chinese Communist Party.
Following the beliefs of Sun Yat-sen, political power should have been returned to the people after the National Revolutionary Army militarily ended the Warlord Era. However, martial law in Taiwan continued from 1949 until 1987, during which other political parties were banned. Martial law was lifted in 1987 by president Chiang Ching-kuo, a move that legalized other political parties such as the Democratic Progressive Party and ended the Dang Guo era.
In 1924, Sun said regarding state-building:
The concept of Dang Guo was an outgrowth of Sun's concept of "political tutelage" during which the Kuomintang was to lead the state and to instruct the people on how the democratic system would work prior to the transition to full democracy.
Under Dang Guo, ROC military personnel and civil servants alike were expected to owe their allegiance to Kuomintang first and the state second, a policy reflected by such phrases as "Service to the Party and the Nation" (功在黨國) and in the national anthem, which makes an explicit reference to "Our Party". Likewise, the emblem of the Kuomintang was used as the emblem of the state, and the flag of the Kuomintang has been used as the naval jack to this day. The Kuomintang sought to build a one-party ideological state, which had some influence from fascism ideology.Schoppa, R. Keith. The Revolution and Its Past (New York: Pearson Prentic Hall, 2nd ed. 2006, pp. 208–209 .
The Kuomintang unified China in 1927 and started to prepare the state for political reform, as according to Sun's teaching. The Constitution of the Republic of China, enacted in 1947, stipulates that different parties shall enjoy equal status, and the National Revolutionary Army was returned to civilian control as the Army of the Republic of China. However, the outbreak of the Chinese Civil War caused the ROC to be under military rule of the KMT during the period of mobilization when the ROC government relocated to Taiwan in 1949.
After martial law ended in 1987, all political parties became legal, and the Republic of China was democratized. Since then, the President of the Republic of China has been democratically elected by the people of Taiwan. In 2000, Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party was elected as the first non-KMT president under the Constitution.
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