—Shih-An Wang, Project Associate Professor, Graduate School of Law, Kobe University; Doctor of Jurisprudence (JSD), University of Chicago Law School
Introduction
Militant democracy remains one of the most debated concepts in comparative constitutional scholarship, and it is facing a critical test in Taiwan. In August 2026, the Taiwanese government petitioned the Taiwan Constitutional Court (TCC) to dissolve the Chinese Unification Promotion Party (CUPP), a minor political party in Taiwan that advocates unification with China. This will soon be the first time for the TCC to handle party dissolution since the mechanism was adopted under Article 5 of the Additional Articles to the Constitution of the Republic of China (Taiwan) (hereafter: the Additional Articles).
The Taiwanese government’s petition for party dissolution arguably conflicts with the political openness underpinning Taiwan’s democratic order. Nevertheless, this post argues that the proposal stems from three underlying difficulties: the sufficiency of ordinary criminal mechanisms, Taiwan’s competing national identities, and the geopolitical tensions that it is trying to mitigate. These features make the CUPP case a multilayered application of militant democracy involving domestic and geopolitical concerns. Amid a highly unpredictable geopolitical climate, the CUPP case will pose a formidable challenge for the TCC—a court that has been struggling to function smoothly over the past two years, testing its capacity to make a decision that can persuade a deeply polarized society.
Led by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the government has offered a threefold justification. First, the CUPP, instructed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), allegedly dismantled Taiwan’s public sphere and intervened in elections by collaborating with local temples, establishing pro-China radio stations, bribing voters, and obstructing the campaign activities of pro-Taiwan candidates. The CUPP also invited active-duty military officers and veterans to visit the PRC. Second, the CUPP was involved in the PRC’s “transnational suppression” of Taiwan’s democracy by physically intimidating Hong Kong activists Denise Ho and Joshua Wong when they visited Taiwan. Third, many members of the CUPP were involved in, and prosecuted for, committing organized crimes and offenses against national security under the National Security Act, the Anti-Infiltration Act, election laws and other legislation. For these reasons, the Taiwanese government has argued that the objectives and activities of the CUPP have violated the “constitutional order of liberal democracy” under Article 26 of the Political Parties Act and Article 5 of the Additional Articles.
This petition has sparked significant controversy. Hsiao-Ling Weng, a representative of the Legislative Yuan (Taiwan’s unicameral parliament) from the Kuomintang (KMT, Chinese Nationalist Party), strongly criticized the petition for violating citizens’ constitutionally guaranteed freedom of association. Weng emphasized that existing mechanisms of criminal prosecution are sufficient to hold the CUPP’s members accountable for their wrongdoings. At the same time, she condemned the petition as a draconian scheme initiated by the DPP-led government to selectively silence political parties opposing the DPP’s pro-independence platform. Weng sarcastically asked if the KMT would be the next target.
Nevertheless, supporters contend that since the PRC continues to claim sovereignty over Taiwan, banning the CUPP is necessary for protecting Taiwan’s national security and the constitutional order of liberal democracy. Moreover, the government’s rights-restrictive approach can be justified by the CUPP’s extensive records of criminal activity, which render its continued operation intolerable in a society governed by the rule of law. In sum, the Taiwanese government’s petition for party dissolution raises dilemmas concerning a political party’s involvement in organized crime, Taiwan’s competing national identities, and the public’s anxieties over Chinese interference in Taiwan’s political sphere.
Criminal Responsibility or a Necessary Deprivation of Political Status
The first question regarding the Taiwanese government’s petition is: Who is the CUPP? Who are its members? Why is it considered to be “dissolvable” by the Taiwanese government?
The CUPP is an unconventional political party because most of its members were not trained as politicians, but drawn from Taiwan’s underground world. The founder of the CUPP, Chang An-lo, also known as the White Wolf, was the leader of the Bamboo Union, one of Taiwan’s largest crime syndicates. A large number of the CUPP’s members are also from the Bamboo Union, and they have been frequently involved in organized crime, ranging from drug smuggling and fraud to intimidation and political violence. The CUPP is thus often criticized as a political shield for the Bamboo Union. By establishing a political party, the CUPP can step into the political arena and expand its criminal empire in a facially legal manner.
Although the CUPP’s criminal ties make it plausible to justify depriving the CUPP of its party status, significant concerns remain. It is one thing to say CUPP members have committed organized crime, which undoubtedly requires legal mechanisms to hold them accountable. It is, however, another thing to say that the objectives and activities of CUPP are inherently criminal. The government’s argument – that the CUPP, acting as a political party, was systematically involved in political violence or other forms of organized crime – illustrates exactly this problem. It will thus be the TCC’s task to determine whether party dissolution is an appropriate and necessary means of safeguarding the integrity of Taiwan’s political process, one whose benefits are not outweighed by the harm it inflicts on citizens’ constitutional freedoms.
Identity Politics: Constitutional Self-Defense or Silencing Political Opposition
The second dilemma concerning the proposed dissolution centers on Taiwan’s deep schisms over national identity vis-à-vis China. Indeed, at a global level, party bans frequently become a political arena where political actors compete on questions about mega-politics. Nonetheless, Taiwan’s experience is somewhat different.
In Taiwan, political rivals’ competition over national identity has been built into the mechanism of party dissolution itself. Article 5 of the Additional Articles stipulates that the objectives and activities of a political party must not endanger the “survival of the ROC” or
“constitutional order of liberal democracy.” These two clauses encode two contrasting threats to Taiwan’s constitutional identity. Each clause loosely reflects how the KMT and DPP, respectively, perceive the threat posed by their political rivals. The KMT has long embraced an ideology of Chinese orthodoxy and insisted on China’s territorial entirety. Seen in this light, it is no surprise that the DPP, which campaigned for the de facto sovereignty of Taiwan, would be categorized as separatists that may undermine the “survival of the ROC.” From the DPP’s viewpoint, the KMT can be defined as a threat to the “constitutional order of liberal democracy,” mainly because under its 38 years of martial rule, pro-independence ideas were suppressed and political opponents prosecuted. The structural logic of Article 5 thus makes it politically perilous for either the KMT or DPP to petition for the dissolution of the other, effectively neutralizing Article 5 between them.
The authorities fear that the CUPP may disrupt the existing party dynamics in Taiwan. The CUPP openly champions the PRC as the only answer for Taiwan’s future. It also overtly obstructs political activities and attacks pro-democracy individuals who show little affinity for Chinese unification. The authorities’ proposed party dissolution thus reveals deep concerns toward the CUPP’s capacity to shift the existing dynamics of Taiwan’s identity politics toward a more extreme, pro-China end. This shift can reshape the rules governing Taiwan’s political institutions.
Nevertheless, the CUPP is a minor political party. It occupies no seats in Taiwan’s parliament and local councils, nor does it hold any important public offices except for the heads of a few local villages. Moreover, there has been a decline in votes received by the CUPP in recent elections.[1] The CUPP thus has little prospect of becoming a major political party soon. The fact that the CUPP remains an unpopular party demonstrates the moderation of Taiwanese voters’ political preferences, a quality critical to democratic resilience in an age of extremism. If this is the case, is it really necessary to ban this unpopular political party rather than leaving it to be naturally weeded out through political competition and voter selection?
Authoritarian Interference from Outside: Necessary Deterrence or Power Overreach
The biggest elephant in the room is the murky relationship between the CUPP and the Chinese authorities. It is argued that the CUPP is supported by the Chinese government to influence Taiwan’s public opinion and elections by establishing and collaborating with local radio stations and temples. Relying on these cultural channels, the CUPP allegedly spread dis- and misinformation effectively with the goal of undermining public trust in democratic institutions. The long-term consequence, it is feared, is a nihilistic population that is indifferent to authoritarianism, making unification a less politically costly option, even if not intrinsically desirable.
The CUPP’s ambiguous role as a local collaborator for the Chinese government thus highlights the ideological asymmetry between authoritarian regimes and liberal democracy. By employing private agencies to speak and spend on their behalf, authoritarian actors can circumvent the regulations governing foreign participation in the politics of democratic systems. Such a form of political participation can be disguised as protected private opinions and circulate in the public sphere of democratic systems built on principles of political openness. While these interferences are disturbing, what instruments can a democracy use to deter them without undermining the very core principles that it commits to protect? As Taiwan’s experience demonstrates, the dissolution of the CUPP may set a precedent for invoking the long-dormant Article 5 mechanism. Is this a necessary move, or does it open a Pandora’s box for ambitious political actors to exploit in the future?
The Global Implications of Taiwan’s Experiment with Militant Democracy
The proposed dissolution for the CUPP underscores the unique democratic challenges Taiwan faces in a turbulent age of geopolitical competition: the difficulty of achieving accountability through ordinary criminal mechanisms, Taiwan’s divided landscape of national identities, and the anxieties of self-defense stemming from escalating cross-strait tensions. These complexities will thus test the TCC’s capacity to deal with the case.
Nevertheless, it remains unclear whether the TCC will take the case. Article 80 of the Constitutional Court Procedure Act requires a two-thirds majority of all Justices to dissolve a party. With only eight staffed Justices, including three refusing to participate, the court faces procedural uncertainty. Accepting the case would test its legitimacy in a highly divided society.
Interestingly, the CUPP case shares striking similarities with the dissolution of the Unified Progressive Party (UPP) by the Constitutional Court of Korea (KCC) in 2014. In that case, the Court dissolved the UPP for its violation of South Korea’s “fundamental order of liberal democracy” by campaigning for the unification of South and North Korea on communist terms. Similar to the relationship between Taiwan and China, South and North Korea were also divided in the late 1940s amidst ideological competition between the communist and liberal blocs, which set the two onto starkly different political trajectories. Given the structural comparability between South Korea and Taiwan, as well as the operational similarity between the UPP and the CUPP, the KCC’s UPP decision will likely serve as a critical reference point for the TCC’s decision-making.
For comparative constitutional scholarship, the CUPP case offers a fertile terrain for examining the practices of militant democracy beyond the “usual suspects” of European countries. To be sure, the challenges Taiwan faces resonate with the rise of extremism in Europe today, which is comparable to the proliferation of fascist political parties when Karl Loewenstein proposed the concept of militant democracy in 1937. Nevertheless, the CUPP case in Taiwan is also distinct on its own terms. This involves not merely the counterbalancing logic of the mechanism of party dissolution, but more critically, the geopolitical complexities faced by Taiwan. The high geopolitical stakes underpin the challenging task of preserving the integrity of democratic institutions from both internal and external risks. Accordingly, engaging with the CUPP case can broaden comparative understanding of militant democracy in an age of uncertainty.
Suggested citation: Shih-An Wang, A Recent Petition for Party Dissolution and Militant Democracy in Taiwan, Int’l J. Const. L. Blog, Aug. 9, 2026, at: http://www.iconnectblog.com/a-recent-petition-for-party-dissolution-and-militant-democracy-in-taiwan/
[1] The CUPP received 56,347 votes (0.46%) for the party representation seats in the 2016 parliamentary election, 32,966 votes (0.23%) in the 2020 election, and 17,423 votes (0.12%) in the 2024 election (Source: the Central Election Commission).