Lee Teng-hui is president of the Republic of China. This address was delivered on 27 August 1995 at the opening session of an international conference on “Consolidating Third Wave Democracies: Trends and Challenges” held in Taipei, Taiwan. The conference was co-sponsored by the Institute for National Policy Research of Taipei and the International Forum for Democratic Studies of Washington, D.C.
The global trend that Samuel P. Huntington has dubbed the "third wave" of democratization has seen more than 60 countries experience democratic transitions since 1974. While these countries have succeeded in bringing down authoritarian regimes and replacing them with freely elected governments, few of them can as yet be considered stable democracies.
