Martial law was imposed in Taiwan in 1949 along with the temporary wartime provisions and at the same time the Constitution was suspended (Hsiao and Hsiao, 2001: 4). This prohibited the formation of new political parties and empowered the secret police, who had broad powers to arrest anyone who expressed criticism of government policy (International Committee on Human Rights in Taiwan, 1987: 3). As a result, the liberalization process was long overdue. The main aspiration of Kuomintang (KMT) officials in adopting martial law was that they wanted Taiwan to become a bulwark for the future recovery of the mainland People's Republic of China (Chao and Myers, 2000). : 387). If the communist regime were to ever lose support and collapse, the Republic of China (ROC) party would restore its rule over mainland China. Consequently, the new government's immediate concern was to prevent communist subversion and Taiwanese nationalism from weakening ROC rule over Taiwan Province (ibid). To achieve these goals, the ROC government and the ruling KMT suspended any activities that could undermine their authority by limiting civil liberties, such as equality between the political and social spheres, the corrupt right to life by martial law, freedom of speech prohibited and ban on the right of assembly (Suomen Vartioliikkeitten Liitto ry, 2008: 61). This was done as early as May 19, 1949, when the governor of Taiwan, Chen Cheng, imposed martial law and began to establish legal and bureaucratic criticism or threat to public order in case of sedition (Chao and Myers, 2000: 387 -388). According to the law, adjudicated individuals would be charged by a military court and, if found guilty, imprisoned or... in the middle of a document... rk reconstruct the context of the state of exception. During Martial Law, the state of exception was applied indirectly to the Taiwanese social sphere through foreign policy which created a fragmentation of the political sphere and the social sphere. This undermined Taiwanese society by moving the social sphere into the zone of exception. Similar to the National Security Law, except that it directly affected civilians by limiting their rights by transferring them to the exception zone where they were not considered either legally or politically. Consequently, this situation could be understood, as Diamond (2011: 21) postulates, that democracy is lost as the level of freedom is declining due to bad governance that does not guarantee full civil rights, but instead keeps civilians in la sphere of exception in case of public resistance.