🇹🇼 Taiwan — Accountability Record

🌍 Last Nuclear Reactor Shut Down, Then a Failed Referendum to Restart It · 2025S3

Taiwan's last operating reactor, Maanshan Unit 2, was permanently shut down on the expiry of its 40-year licence, completing the nuclear phase-out legislated under Tsai in 2017 and making Taiwan "nuclear-free" for the first time in decades — at a moment when rising Chinese military pressure made energy security a more acute concern than when the policy was first written. The opposition-controlled legislature passed a last-minute amendment allowing licence extensions to 60 years, but too late to save this reactor; a subsequent August 2025 referendum saw a majority vote to restart it, though turnout fell short of the legal threshold required to make the result binding.

🌍 Nuclear Phase-Out Policy Launched Amid Rising Energy Security Concerns · 2017S3

Tsai's government legislated a policy to make Taiwan "nuclear-free" by 2025, shutting down reactors as their operating licences expired without replacement, driven partly by anti-nuclear sentiment following the 2011 Fukushima disaster in neighbouring Japan. Energy analysts and, eventually, the opposition Kuomintang increasingly argued the policy left Taiwan dangerously exposed given rising Chinese military pressure, since a heavier reliance on imported liquefied natural gas is more vulnerable to a Chinese blockade than domestic nuclear generation would be.

⚖️ Same-Sex Marriage Legalised — First in Asia · 2019✅

Following a 2017 Constitutional Court ruling that Taiwan's marriage law was unconstitutional, and a 2018 referendum in which 67% of voters rejected amending the Civil Code directly to include same-sex couples, Tsai's government passed a separate law — the Enforcement Act of Judicial Yuan Interpretation No. 748 — granting same-sex couples marriage rights under a distinct legal framework, taking effect 24 May 2019 and making Taiwan the first place in Asia to legalise same-sex marriage.

🔴 Illegal Wiretapping of Rival Legislative Speaker · 2013S3

Ma's government was found to have used prosecutors to illegally wiretap the phone of Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng — a rival within Ma's own KMT party — as part of an effort to remove Wang from his position after Wang was accused of improperly lobbying on a separate legal case. Taiwan's courts later ruled the surveillance illegal, and public backlash over the scandal, dubbed the "September political storm," badly damaged Ma's standing within his own party.

⚖️ Sunflower Movement — Students Occupy the Legislature Over China Trade Pact · 2014S4

After the KMT attempted to force the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (CSSTA) with China through the Legislative Yuan without the clause-by-clause review normally required for major legislation, hundreds of students and civic activists occupied the legislative chamber for three weeks. Police used water cannon and baton strikes clearing a related occupation of the Executive Yuan, injuring more than 150 people and arresting 61. The pact was never ratified.

📌 First Peaceful Transfer of Power to an Opposition Party · 2000✅

Chen Shui-bian's election victory ended 55 years of unbroken Kuomintang rule over Taiwan (dating back to the KMT's retreat from mainland China in 1949) and marked the island's first peaceful transfer of presidential power to an opposition party — a threshold many young democracies never cross, since first-time opposition wins are historically when democratisation most often fails or reverses.

🔴 Chen Shui-bian Convicted of Corruption, Sentenced to Life · 2009S4

Seven months after leaving office, Chen was indicted on money laundering, embezzlement, forgery, and bribery charges. Prosecutors said he and his wife embezzled roughly NT$104 million from a special presidential affairs fund and took bribes worth over $11 million connected to a land procurement deal and a construction project, laundering some of the money through Swiss bank accounts. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in September 2009; the sentence was reduced on appeal to 20 years, and the Supreme Court later set his combined sentences at 19 years across the two main cases.

📌 Taiwan's First Direct Presidential Election · 1996✅

Taiwan held its first direct presidential election, won by Lee Teng-hui with 54% of the vote — the culmination of a democratisation process that began after 38 years of martial law ended in 1987. China conducted missile tests and large-scale military exercises in the Taiwan Strait in the months before the vote, an attempt at intimidation that the US responded to by deploying two aircraft carrier battle groups to the region.

🌐 "Special State-to-State Relations" Remark Escalates Cross-Strait Tensions · 1999S3

In a radio interview, Lee described relations between Taiwan and China as "special state-to-state relations" rather than the "one China" framing both sides had previously used ambiguously to avoid direct confrontation. Beijing reacted furiously, suspending semi-official cross-strait talks and conducting further military exercises, and the remark is regarded by historians on both sides of the strait as a significant escalation in the two governments' rhetorical positioning.