(Reuters) - Taiwan voters pick a new president on March 22, choosing between Frank Hsieh of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party and Ma Ying-jeou of the Nationalist Party (KMT).
The vote is only the fourth contested presidential poll since the island of 23 million people embraced democracy in the mid-1980s.
Here are some milestones in the self-ruled island’s path to democratisation.
* February 1947: A Taipei street dispute over the state cigarette monopoly flares into a chain of protests against Nationalist Party rule from China.
* 1949: Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek flees to Taiwan with about 2 million supporters to escape the advancing Communist army in China. Washington continues to recognise Chiang’s Republic of China government in Taipei, not the Beijing-based People’s Republic of China.
* 1972: U.S. President Richard Nixon signs the Shanghai Joint Communique with the People’s Republic of China, declaring that there is only one China and that Taiwan is part of it.
* 1978: Chiang Kai-shek’s son, Chiang Ching-kuo, is chosen to be president three years after his father’s death in 1975.
* 1979: Beijing and Washington establish diplomatic relations. Later that year, President Jimmy Carter signs the Taiwan Relations Act, allowing informal relations to continue between the United States and Taiwan.
* 1984: Chiang Ching-kuo is re-elected and begins democratisation of the political system. Continued…
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