Month: July 2007

Generalissimo

Another review of a Taiwan-related book from David Frum at the National Review:

It all started in China. It was here in the 1930s and 1940s that the United States was first presented with a dilemma that has recurred again and again over the decades since: a strategically important country; a tradition-minded authoritarian ruler, at the head of a corrupt and incompetent government; a violent insurgency led by a totalitarian and anti-western movement. What to do?

This question, so haunting and difficult, is well illuminated by Jonathan Fenby’s fine Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-Shek and the China He Lost.

In China, the US never could quite make up its mind, and Fenby helps us to understand why.

[…]

Understandably, the Chiang problem flummoxed the Americans who had to deal with him. While a few Americans (Edgar Snow, John S Service, John K Fairbank) disgraced themselves either as apologists for Mao or as easy dupes, most of the US government and military badly wanted to defeat Mao – but were absolutely baffled by the problem of how to do it. Arm and aid Chiang? And when Chiang allowed his family and friends to steal the arms and aid and then begged for more – what then?

Fenby raises one interesting historical might have been. The US never seriously considered intervening against Mao on the ground: US military forces were fully committed to the defense of Europe. But as late as May 1949, the Chinese Nationalists securely held the territory south of the Yangtze, including the cities of Shanghai and Canton. What if the US had used air and naval power to prevent the Communists from crossing the river? The richest parts of China might have joined South Korea, South Vietnam, and West Germany as one of the divided nations of the Cold War.

Interesting counterfactual there.  Discuss amongst yourselves.

Diverting The Issue (Of Stolen Assets)

UPDATE (Aug 5/07):  It just occurred to me that I spent this entire post talking about "transitional justice" without actually explaining what that even means.  David on Formosa begins his post on the subject the smart way – by defining the term.  Stealing from his source:

Transitional justice refers to a range of approaches that societies undertake to reckon with legacies of widespread or systematic human rights abuse as they move from a period of violent conflict or oppression towards peace, democracy, the rule of law, and respect for individual and collective rights.

There.  NOW this post should make sense, especially to the uninitiated.

Over at Jerome Keating’s website, Dr. Keating believes transitional justice needs to be a campaign issue in Taiwan in 2008 (Hat tip to Tim Maddog at Taiwan Matters!).  In an earlier post, Dr. Keating describes the structural advantage the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has over other parties:

…we had seen how the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has gone on record to admit it has over [NT$ 25 billion] in assets [US$ 757 million].  Its closest rival, the ruling party Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has barely about one per cent of that, it has approximately [NT$ 25 million] in assets, or US$ 7.5 million.

A great deal of this 100:1 advantage can be explained by the forced sales and outright confiscations that the KMT was the beneficiary of during 38 years of martial law.  He notes one irony:  communist parties from former Soviet Bloc nations, ideologically dedicated to confiscation, were eventually forced to return assets they had confiscated.  Meanwhile, the KMT, ideologically opposed to confiscation, not only confiscated vast amounts of property, but has STILL never returned it!

That this might be an issue of vulnerability for the KMT was highlighted a week ago, in a column by Dr. Joe Hung.  Towards the end of the piece, Dr. Hung began casting out wildly, looking for other transitional justice issues that the country should attend to besides this one:

Why not help the former patients of Hansen’s disease segregated by the Japanese? President Chen Shui-bian has apologized for their continued segregation after 1945, but his government wants to remove them from the sanatorium they now call home and raze it to make way for a mass transit system.

Why not help Taiwan’s dwindling number of "comfort women"? They were forced to work as sex slaves, serving troops of the Japanese imperial army in the Pacific War. All they want is an apology from the Japanese government. Has Taipei done anything to get Tokyo to offer it?

Why not reckon with the slaughter of ten times more than the victims of the 2/28 Incident the Japanese committed in the first decade of their colonization of Taiwan. For a mere five years, from 1898 to 1902, at least 11,950 people were slain as rebels. How about the Wushe Incident of 1930? The Atayal village of Wushe, with 270 inhabitants and 60 families, was totally destroyed. Nearly all of the men, women and children in the village were massacred by Japanese troops. Japanese army warplanes bombed the Atayal reservation. Gas bombs were dropped to smoke out those "rebels" who refused to surrender.

Why not seek transitional assistance for all the indigenous people whose forebears the ethnic Chinese killed on Taiwan, to grab their land and go into their forests to fell camphor trees? In 1662, when Koxinga took Taiwan from the Dutch their population was estimated at 200,000. That population remained almost the same in 1945. It may not be genocide, but the fact is that countless thousands of Austronesians were slaughtered by the ethnic Chinese, as well as the Japanese colonizers. James Davidson, the first American-born U.S. consul in Taipei at the turn of the twentieth century, reported that aborigines were killed and their flesh sold to ethnic Chinese, who ate it. Why not reckon with these horrible legacies?

I’m not necessarily opposed to action on any of these issues, but I think Dr. Hung overstates the urgency  of his cases:

1)  The Lo-Sheng Sanatorium. What this is is a classic case of competition for a finite resource. At least 10,000 residents of the town of Hsin-juang want the sanatorium leveled so that they can get an MRT station.  You know – reduce traffic on the streets, clean up the air a bit, and all those other nice things that mass transit is good for.  Meanwhile, the project is being held up by a mere 75 former lepers who want the sanatorium to stay.

Now, Hung would have his readers believe that cruel President Chen Shui-bian stroked his Snidely Whiplash moustache one day and decided on a whim to throw all those poor, disfigured old lepers into the gutter. But the truth is, it was the former KMT government that sold Lo-Sheng for use as an MRT depot, all the way back in 1994.

The KMT wants to run on THIS issue of transitional justice?  Fine. Maybe they can start by explaining why they sold Lo-Sheng WITHOUT EVER CONSULTING THE BLOODY RESIDENTS.   Forget consultation – the KMT never bothered to NOTIFY the poor bastards even AFTER the sale.  The first the lepers ever heard of the deal was TEN YEARS LATER when the BULLDOZERS arrived, Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy-style.

The reality is that 150 former Hansen’s disease patients have already moved into the brand-new hospital just next door, while the 75 that remain prefer the open air and gardens of the sanatorium they live in now.  Can’t say I blame the ones that want to stay.  But surely, the solution is obvious.  Just build ’em another sanatorium SOMEWHERE ELSE.  And make sure it’s bigger.  And nicer.

Oh, and don’t forget to put it all on the KMT’s tab.  Because as far as I can make out, they’re the idiots responsible for the whole mess in the first place.

2)  The "comfort women".  An apology from Japan would be nice.  And future help from Japan against a Chinese attack would also be nice.  If Taiwan can get both through amiable diplomatic means, then great.  But if aggressive pursuit of the former alienates Japan from providing the later, then prefer the latter instead.  I don’t see allies America and Britain demanding apologies from each other for old wounds.

National survival trumps apologies to a tiny minority.  Welcome to realpolitik.

3)  Other, earlier Japanese atrocities.  Um, at this point, exactly how many first generation descendants of these victims are still alive to benefit from the transitional justice Dr. Hung proposes?  Moreover, the KMT had 55 years to deal with this (and the "comfort women" issue as well).  If their efforts were half-hearted, perhaps they can be forgiven because of the realpolitik mentioned in Case #2.

4)  The aborigines.  Dr. Hung discusses the injustices done to Taiwanese aborigines that date back to the year 1662.  1662?  FOUR HUNDRED years ago?  By now, I get the distinct impression Hung isn’t just asking for TRANSITIONAL justice – he’s asking for something Thomas Sowell calls COSMIC justice.  He’s asking that every injustice that was EVER DONE IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE be attended to.

And it can’t.  It simply can’t.

And Dr. Hung knows that.  So what in effect he’s saying is that the KMT shouldn’t give back ANY of the $757 million it plundered until ALL THE WRONGS IN THE WORLD are made right.  Which of course, might just be a while.

Hung closes on this note:

Of course, President Chen and his government are not going to do anything to get transitional justice done for all these people, for the very simple reason that any help rendered won’t be translated into votes at the ballot boxes in December’s legislative elections, and the presidential race in March next year.

But while he sees cynicism, I see democracy.  Let the Taiwanese talk about the relative merits of Joe Hung’s cases, as well as that of the KMT’s looted assets.  Let the jurors decide which cases are more urgent, and which are more marginal.  Then, let the members of the jury vote.

All 13 million of them.

POSTSCRIPT:  Another aspect of the program for transitionaljustice in Taiwan is the de-glorification of its former dictators.  Dr. Hung also discussed this in his column; my reply can be found here.

Classic Headline

And no, it’s not a spelling mistake:  Japanese singer in hot water over pubic appearance

Police charged a Japanese rock singer yesterday with violating public decency laws after he briefly stripped on-stage during a concert in Taipei on Saturday night.

The Taiwan News helpfully adds:

"Some female fans were astonished, but males in the audience were thrilled and screamed," a United Daily News report added.

The MALE fans were thrilled and screamed?  OK.  I’m officially creeped-out now.

Responsibility

I’m hoping to get at least a couple of posts out of Joe Hung’s Monday column in Taiwan’s China Post, because I think it’s got a lot of interesting stuff to chew on.  Here I’ll discuss responsibility of political leaders.  Dr. Hung admits that Chiang Kai-shek bears some responsibility for the 2/28 Massacre, but it’s unfair to have him shoulder the lion’s share of the blame:

Generalissimo Chiang — he was not elected president yet in 1947 — certainly was responsible for the 2/28 Incident, for he was then head of state and head of government at the same time. But he wasn’t either the chief culprit or the murderer, as some government-provided historians painted him to be. The Gimo didn’t order the slaughter. It was carried out by troops so ordered by their commanders. One example suffices. Innocent people were summarily executed under martial law. At least one city in Taiwan saw no such execution[s], because the commander who had to enforce martial law didn’t order his troops to arrest people and shoot them to death. He was Maj. Gen. Su Shao-wen, who set up his command in the city of Hsinchu. Under no orders to shoot and kill, General Su did not even impose a curfew. In fact, the people of Hsinchu lived totally unperturbed for two weeks, while soldiers were on a killing spree in some other parts of Taiwan.

If I understand this correctly, ONE of Chiang’s commanders behaved honorably during the affair, ergo Chiang was innocent.  By that logic then, Erwin Rommel’s boss wasn’t a "chief culprit" during the Second World War.  Because after all, even those who fought Rommel spoke admiringly of him.

(Furthermore, if I’m not mistaken, there is no paper trail showing that Hitler ever explicitly gave orders for the Holocaust.  So in that respect, he was like the Gimo, in that he didn’t order the slaughter.  Therefore, Hitler was innocent too, Q.E.D.)

With that reductio ad absurdum out of the way, I do think that Hung raises an interesting question here.  Evil leaders can have subordinates that behave honorably, and decent leaders can have subordinates that behave less than honorably.  When a subordinate commits crimes in an official capacity, how are we to judge the relative responsibility of their superiors?  Is it a case of an unscrupulous subordinate betraying the intentions of a decent leader, or of an unscrupulous subordinate faithfully executing the policies of an immoral one?

Obviously, the case is trivial if explicit orders are issued from on high.  Absent those, judgment becomes trickier.  What of implicit orders?  Plenty of mob bosses make "suggestions" that their underlings hasten to fulfill; a godfather’s guilt is none the lesser because his orders weren’t spelled out in black and white.  But on the other hand, vague statements, or ones made in moments of anger, are sometimes misinterpreted.  Henry II didn’t want St. Thomas Becket assassinated, but his exclamation, "Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?" led some of his knights to that unfortunate conclusion.

Doubtless someone schooled in law could think about this more systematically, but for me, judgment should be based on at least two factors: information and incentives.

First, information.  As the now-cliched statement goes, "What did the president know, and when did he know it?"  As I wrote in an update to a March 13th post:

[Johnny Neihu] expresses astonishment that Chiang could not have known what his subordinates were doing in Taiwan around the time of the 2/28 Massacre:

Unaware! Chiang was a control freak who distrusted his subordinates so deeply that he countermanded his generals mid-battle. At one point he held 82 government posts simultaneously, including chief of the government, army and party, plus — rather bizarrely, the presidencies of the Boy Scouts and National Glider Association. To believe that he could have been "unaware of conditions on Taiwan" is pushing it just a little.

…Neihu’s list DID jog my memory about something else – that Chiang’s army was based on Leninist lines, with each unit having both a military and a POLITICAL officer.  The job of the latter was to spy on the former, to make certain he was loyal.  If it looked like the military officer might be mutinous, the political officer was authorized to put a bullet in his head.

It’s therefore hard to imagine Chiang not being aware of the situation in Taiwan with all of those political officers floating around, each one of them regularly reporting back home.

If someone wants to make Chiang’s case, then I think the onus is upon them to explain how he was unaware of his subordinates’ misconduct despite the existence of the pervasive intelligence apparatus that he instituted in the first place.

Secondly, whether a leader is responsible for a subordinate’s malfeasance depends upon the incentives the leader presents his people with.  What incentives did the leader give for ethical conduct, and what disincentives did the leader give for unethical behavior?  It might be instructive here to see how similar uprisings due to KMT misgovernance were handled in China prior to 2/28, and how the people  responsible for restoring order were rewarded or punished.  That is something beyond my own purview.  However, it is my understanding that some of the most brutal commanders of the 2/28 Massacre were later promoted.  That, of course, is particularly damning.  To reward a subordinate is generally taken as a sign that one approves, not disapproves, of their actions.

Although this discussion was mostly about political leaders, the thinking here is more generally applicable to leaders in other areas as well.  CEOs of major corporations, and owners of small businesses.  For the sake of illustration, suppose a pizza deliveryman runs down a pedestrian while driving unsafely.  What would a jury want to know before pronouncing judgment on the owner of the pizza parlor?

Many things – mostly related to information and incentives.  Was the restaurant owner aware of the deliveryman’s driving record?  Did he make an effort to learn about that record?  Did the owner make unreasonable promises to customers about the speed of delivery?  Did the owner explicitly tell his deliverymen to break speed limits, or observe them?  And regardless of those explicit instructions, did the owner have a policy of punishing or rewarding deliverymen who drove unsafely?

Notice that they probably wouldn’t be too interested in whether the owner could produce some OTHER deliveryman who HADN’T hit anyone.

Imagine this for a second.  A jury would want all of this information, about a PIZZA PARLOR OWNER whose employee had killed or injured a SINGLE pedestrian.  Yet lower standards apply in the case of Chiang Kai-shek, accused of being responsible for the deaths of 28,000 during the 2/28 Massacre.  According to Dr. Hung, we’re not supposed to use our own minds and consciences to even THINK on the matter:

But history demands understanding, not judgment.  History is a dialogue between the past and present.

Regarding that – history and judgment – Theodore Dalrymple had this to say in a recent critique of Tony Blair’s record:

Strictly speaking, history doesn’t absolve, or for that matter, vindicate, anybody;  only people absolve or vindicate, and except in the most obvious cases of villainy or sainthood, they come to different conclusions, using basically the same evidence.

Time To Call His Non-Union Mexican Equivalent

From ABC News:

Steven Spielberg, under pressure from Darfur activists, may quit his post as artistic adviser to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, unless China takes a harder line against Sudan, a representative of the film director told ABC News.

Reading further, I was surprised to see that Spielberg isn’t being paid for his work for China’s ’08 Games.  Not that he needs the money, but still. 

So what we’ve got is a 60 year old mogul, probably at an age where he’s starting to think about his legacy in the industry when he passes on, and he’s getting grief about the Genocide Olympics.  And what’s more, he’s gotta realize that people like Mia Farrow DO have some kind of a point.

I think he quits.  The Chinese aren’t the only ones for whom "Face" is important.

Looking forward to the editorial from Taiwan’s China Post.  The one lambasting Spielberg for mixing politics and sport.  From the same folks who never criticize China for preventing Taiwan’s national anthem from being played during Olympic ceremonies.

Mixing politics and sport?  That’s just WRONG.

Unless of course, it’s China that does it.

What’s All The Führer About?

Pics of Nazi-themed restaurants and bars in Asia.  (None from Taiwan, though.)

On a completely unrelated note, we’ve been having some record-breaking temperatures here recently.  Perhaps I’ll cool off with a tangy bei-shan guo bing san (passion fruit slurpee) from one of the local beverage stands.

Hitler Drink Shop in Taiwan

Or…maybe not.

(Photo by The Foreigner)

i-1

Citizen Journalism In Taiwan

Funny, I spoke with a friend of mine about citizen photojournalism about a week ago, and I’ve seen two stories on citizen journalism since then.  The last one, from Monday’s Taipei Times, I’ll mention first:

Wu Ping-hai (吳平海) has neither a journalism degree nor experience working for newspapers or TV news programs.

But Wu’s video camera has recorded a footage from a wide range of events, documenting the personal stories of ordinary people and the issues that concern local communities.

Wu posts short documentaries on peopo.org, an online citizen news platform started recently by the Taiwan Broadcasting System.

Two of his films document the study of farmland tree frogs, a species only found in Taiwan, and the experiences of foreign spouses learning Mandarin in Meinung Township (美濃), Kaohsiung County.

Wu was one of more than 700 citizen journalists who have contributed to community news coverage since the creation of the platform in April.

They have generated more than 2,200 news stories over the past three months.

[…]

To ensure the quality of stories, the Web site’s administrators have asked would-be contributers to submit a formal application before posting reports and footage.

Over at The Belmont Club, Wretchard speculates where this is headed:

Here’s what I think people will see in the next decade. Big news won’t go away but readers will be able to drill-down on news stories in a way impossible before. For example, suppose new riots break out in the banleius of Paris in 2017. The reader will be able to drill down into every greater detail. Was a man burned on a torched bus? Click and find the micro-journalist who is following the recovery of the victim in a hospital. Or discover how the riots have affected a particular suburb in northern Paris. Not only will you be able to drill down, but you will be able to interact with the news. With online payment systems I believe readers will be able to support micro-journalist efforts to find out more details about an story, in a miniature version of the way readers support Michael Yon in Iraq today.

UPDATE (Jul 26/07):  Might citizen journalism be a way for Taiwanese nationalists to circumvent the stranglehold that Chinese nationalists have on Taiwan’s mainstream media?  Apparently RCTV in Venezuela carried on in reduced form on YouTube after their license was pulled, so there is some kind of precedent.

Martial Law Mentality

From a story in Monday’s Taiwan News entitled, "Scholars point out martial law mentality lingers long after era":

"The former regime has made many Taiwanese live like walking corpses, living without passion. The 38 years of authoritative rule has also made them stop thinking, with many focusing only on how to make money," [a local professor of sociology] added.

I don’t know if I would go QUITE so far.  "Walking corpses," and all that.  However, I do have an observation – an anecdotal one – about my chats in English with middle-aged Taiwanese.  Every now and then, in the course of a conversation, I will ask them an idle question:  What do they think the penalty or punishment should be for some infraction or another?

What I will hear from such people – almost invariably – is what the punishment for such-and-such a crime IS.

At that point, I often scowl a bit and look at the person somewhat suspiciously.  Because I didn’t ask them what the punishment IS – I asked them THEIR OPINION about what the punishment OUGHT TO BE.  I scowl because I can’t help wondering whether my interlocutor has deliberately evaded answering my question.

I catch myself then, and try to give them the benefit of the doubt.  After all, there’s a language barrier, so perhaps the person honestly misunderstood me.  So I politely follow up by saying that I understand what the punishment IS, but what I would really like to know is what they think the punishment SHOULD BE.

The usual reply:  "The punishment for such-and-such a crime is THIS.  And I AGREE with that."

So I’m faced with two possible conclusions here.  Either Taiwan is a society with a preternatural level of conformity, where all it’s middle-aged citizens agree WITH EVERY JUDGMENT meted out by the criminal justice system…or the middle-aged here have simply learned not to express their honest opinions about such matters.

After all, an openly-expressed opinion about how things SHOULD BE that differs in any way from the way things actually ARE is itself a criticism of the rulers that made things the way they are in the first place.  And criticism of the country’s rulers was the sort of thing that could get someone in heap big trouble in the bad old days of martial law.

Well, that’s my own observation about "lingering martial law mentality" in Taiwan.  Anecdotal?  Absolutely.  Try it yourself, and let me know the results.  Try it with groups of Taiwanese, and try it with individuals.  Taiwanese you know well, and those you don’t.  The middle-aged, and the young. 

I’m very interested in knowing if I’m onto something here, or whether I’m completely off base.

POSTSCRIPT:  Along similar lines, I could relate a story about a place of employment in Taiwan that is known to me.  In this workplace, certain Taiwanese employees freely talk about their support for Chinese nationalism.

Now it so happens that one of the employees there was once a political officer in the ROC armed forces.  And apparently, nary a word is EVER spoken by his co-workers in favor of Taiwanese nationalism.

A brief explanation is in order here.  Up until a few years ago, units in the Republic of China’s armed forces were organized along Leninist lines, headed by both military and political officers.  Political officers were tasked with observing the military officers for signs of disloyalty towards the Party (KMT).  They carried pistols, and were authorized to SHOOT military officers, in extreme cases.

Let me hasten to add that I’ve met this former political officer, and he seems like a very pleasant guy on a personal level.  A great guy, in fact.  But I still can’t escape the fact that none of his colleagues ever speaks in favor of Taiwanese nationalism.  And I don’t think that’s by accident, either.