Taiwanese Politics | The Foreigner in Formosa

Jokes That Don’t Translate Well

Guess I’m going to have to stop the self-deprecating humor I occasionally use in Taiwan about my past life as a "professional student." Because it turns out that the phrase has a rather more ominous connotation here than it does in the West:

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) office filed a defamation lawsuit [on July 3rd] against Cabinet Spokesman Shieh Jhy-wey (謝志偉) implying Ma served as a "professional student" for the party whenhe was at Harvard University.

In Taiwan, the term "professional student" usually refers to those who studied abroad on KMT scholarships and worked as campus spies for the party, reporting on pro-independence Taiwanese students. [emphasis added]

The story’s a bit old*, though I bring it up because I ran across this story about China sending its own "professional students" to America:

In a manner similar to Chinese espionage efforts, Chinese students are encouraged to gather seemingly innocuous data for the Chinese government. For example, who has been saying anti-Chinese government things on campus? Which Americans, especially Chinese-Americans, appear most likely to support the Chinese government?

As the article says, this too, is nothing new. Relatively new however, are proposals by the KMT to allow Chinese students to study in Taiwan. Left unaddressed in these proposals is the ~~possibility~~ probability that many of these Chinese students will be tasked with identifying future collaborators, and marking other Taiwanese students for blacklists, re-education camps – or worse.

It would indeed be a black joke – one translatable into any language – if the Taiwanese, having recently been freed of "professional students," were to elect an alleged one to the PRESIDENCY, and as a result, had their centers of higher education once more filled with that particular sub-set of humanity.

* The story may be old, but as the The View from Taiwan notes, it’s one that isn’t dying, and it may have significant ramifications on the Taiwanese presidential elections in 2008.

UPDATE (Aug 4/07): Fixed the Strategy Page link.

Diplomatic Recognition: A Comparative Record

Last week, Costa Rica switched its diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China, leaving Taiwan with only 24 diplomatic allies. As a result, Chinese Nationalist Party presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou took the current government to task:

"We had as many as 30 allies when the KMT was in power … It was clear that we made some progress diplomatically when we had a consensus with China … Chen’s foreign policy has lead Taiwan to a dead end," Ma said during a visit to Taipei Port in Bali Township (八里).

Chen’s foreign policy has led Taiwan to a dead end? An invitation if ever there was to take a closer look at where KMT foreign policy has led the beautiful isle:

During the time the KMT ruled Taiwan, how many net diplomatic allies did it lose? 80? 100? 130? On top of that, how many new U.N. member states were given the opportunity of recognizing Taiwan, and chose China instead? I can think of at least 15 – the old Soviet Union used to consist of 15 republics – and NONE of them recognized Taiwan when they gained their freedom. Come to think of it, neither did any of the newly-freed Eastern-bloc countries, either. All those potential allies up for grabs on the KMT’s watch – and the KMT let them slip right through their fingers.

So, back to the question: how many diplomatic allies, real and potential, did the KMT lose for Taiwan? I’ll guess 100 (and be grateful to anyone who can provide a more accurate number). That means that over 50 years, the KMT lost 2 diplomatic allies per year, on average. Does this record compare favorably to that of the Taiwanese nationalists?

I’m afraid it doesn’t. Under a Taiwanese nationalist president, Taiwan suffered a net loss of 6 diplomatic allies within a period of 7 years. Unless I’m mistaken, that works out to an average loss of 0.86 diplomatic allies per year. Nothing to brag about, to be sure, but it sure beats the KMT’s loss of 2 per year.* Which is to say nothing of the KMT’s loss of Taiwan’s security council seat, and their idiotic refusal to accept the consolation prize of a general assembly seat instead.

* In reply, supporters of the Chinese Nationalist Party might offer two defenses. The first, Ma Ying-jeou has already mentioned:

"It was clear that we made some progress diplomatically when we had a consensus with China."

OK, I’ll bite. Just how many new diplomatic allies did Taiwan pick up after it reached the mythical "One China, two interpretations" consensus in 1992? I wasn’t here, so I don’t know. Was it two? Three? Four? Undoubtedly, Ma would insist this was a result of goodwill from Beijing. But could he be suffering from a bad case of post hoc ergo propter hoc? In other words, might there be some OTHER possible explanation for the increase, besides some sort of imagined "goodwill" on the part of revanchist communists?

Well, let’s see…1992…That would be, what, THREE years after the Tienanmen Massacre? That was a time at which horrified American and European investors had ceased, or significantly slowed, their investment into the Middle Kingdom.

Wealthy Taiwanese industrialists had fewer scruples, however. They saw untapped opportunities in China that Americans and Europeans weren’t taking advantage of, and they jumped in. Fortunately for the Butchers of Beijing, the slack in foreign investment was picked up by the Taiwanese, who pumped money into China big time.

Under this unique set of circumstances, what would China have had to gain by wholesale thievery of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies? Only an angry government in Taipei, which might have gotten serious about staunching the flow of capital to China, that’s what. Better to let Taiwan have its two, three, four, new allies. A few diplomatic gains for Taiwan weren’t going to change the big picture anyways, and would have ensured those NT dollars kept a-comin’. It might even have convinced a few fools in Taipei to think some sort of detente had been achieved. Later, when American and European investors returned to the market, the relative importance of the Taiwanese contribution diminished. China could then afford to put the screws to Taiwan, secure in the knowledge that a cessation of Taiwanese investment would have limited impact, with Americans and Europeans on the scene willing to pick up the slack.

Now for that second objection. A supporter of the Chinese Nationalist Party might dismiss all of this, pointing out that THEY weren’t responsible for the loss of Taiwan’s allies. The People’s Republic of China was to blame. The communists were the ones who twisted arms, or bought governments off. Against them, tiny Taiwan just couldn’t compete in the diplomatic game.

Funny how that’s an excuse Chinese nationalists aren’t gracious enough to grant in turn to others. From Taiwan’s China Post:

The ROC government need not fault Costa Rica for leaving it. Nor should the DPP administration accuse Beijing of trying to deprive Taiwan of international space. The DPP should instead look at its own attitude and behavior. [emphasis added]

There we have it. When Chinese nationalists lose allies to the PRC, it’s the PRC’s fault. And when Taiwanese nationalists lose allies to the PRC? Well, in THAT case, the PRC is entirely blameless. The fault can ONLY lie with Taiwanese nationalists, naturally.

If I didn’t know better, I might think someone was arguing in bad faith!

But…let’s pursue this all the way to the end:

The DPP itself has not been very peaceful. Its chairman, Yu Shyi-kun, has publicly advocated a possible retaliatory missile attack on Shanghai…

Jeez. RETALIATORY strikes hardly rate up there with the KMT’s old "Retake the motherland" tomfoolery on the ol’ warmonger-ometer, but we’re not supposed to notice that. We’re only supposed to feel disgust that the victim of Chinese aggression would ever dare defend itself.

Let me paraphrase Charles Krauthammer here: When under attack, no nation is obligated to collect permission slips to strike back. But the Chinese nationalists at the China Post think otherwise. Clearly, in the event of a Chinese attack, Taiwanese ought to bend over and ask, "Please sir, can I have some more?"

(Come to think of it, that’s EXACTLY the way the Taiwan News felt America should have handled Afghanistan after the attack on 9-11. But it’s late now, and that’s a whole ‘nother topic.)

Kudos To The KMT

UPDATE (Dec 20/08): The approval I gave to the KMT in this post was entirely unwarranted. A year-and-a-half after this post was written, Taiwanese police were still conducting household inspections.

Unaccustomed as I am to putting up headings like that, I think this time it's deserved:

The [Taiwanese] legislature [on Tuesday] abolished a 60-year-old system in which the police were responsible for carrying out household inspections, in a move experts said would improve public order and advance the protection of basic human rights.

My place has never been inspected by the local police, so I had no idea this relic of the martial law era was still in place. Or that it was EVER in place, for that matter. The opportunities it once provided Big Brother are not difficult to fathom:

"In the past, the inspection system was often used as an excuse for the police to enter people's homes and collect information about ordinary people," [the Vice-Minister of the Interior] said when the amendment was presented to the legislature for a preliminary review in March.

Now to be fair, the Chinese Nationalist Party framed their arguments in terms of police efficiency, rather than human rights:

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇), who had proposed the amendment, said that the objective of the revision was to lessen the burden on the police force….

Wu said the original regulations had required the police to spend a total of 801,840 hours a month conducting household inspections nationwide, given the assumption that each officer needed an average of 20 hours per month to carry out the task.

"If an officer is on duty for 240 hours per month, the removal of the duty would be equivalent to having 3,341 more police officers in the country," Wu said. [emphasis added]

Nevertheless, KMT claims of pragmatism in no way change the bottom line that they're doing the right thing.

One quick media coverage observation: the Taipei Times (no friend of the KMT) was quick to credit the Chinese Nationalist Party. (Third paragraph in a front page story). Yet the China Post, a pro-KMT paper, failed to mention the KMT's role in the legislation even once.

Hey fellas, why the sudden bashfulness here about praising your own side?

UPDATE (Jun 11/07): Sunday's Taipei Times editorial gave a brief summary of the former system for home inspections:

Those who are familiar with the practice of household inspection know that it was a practice under which police officers would periodically knock on the door of each home and ask to examine the identification cards of the individuals in that home to see if they conformed with the household registration and to see if there was anything suspicious about the residence. The police did not need to have any reasonable or grounded suspicion about criminal activities before requesting entry. This practice was far removed from Western practices under which police cannot enter private households without either a search warrant issued by a court or an urgent need to stop the perpetration of crime.

[…]

Generally speaking, in the past, when a police officer conducted a household inspection, he was supposed to ensure that the inhabitants of a house were the people whose residence was registered at that household. If there were strangers in the house, the police were supposed to find out whether there were any suspicious circumstances underlying the guests' presence.

The more I think about this, the more I wonder if the KMT's spearheading of this law is simply an effort on their part to make up for their (absurd) defense of Chiang Kai-shek with Taiwanese voters. Which would be a more cynical interpretation than the one I gave earlier.

Renaming Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall

My initial reaction to the way it was handled was to label it a Trainwreck, though I’m actually of several minds on the subject. Part of me is still disappointed that the Chen administration didn’t take bolder action. But another sympathizes, and even approves, of the road taken. I previously wrote that Chen should have based his actions on whether he thought they would pass legal muster; elsewhere, Michael Turton pointed out that this is something that may have been unknowable:

In addition to the ongoing struggle between the two competing nationalisms, one Taiwanese, the other Chinese, the issue also shines a light on another problem: the ambiguous lines of authority in the government here. [emphasis added] There is a general complaint that democracy has made everything messier, and it is quite true: democracy has forced the government to figure out what the rules are, and in most cases they are vastly unclear, with multiple and conflicting lines of authority. Foreigners constantly complain that different government agencies tell them different stories about what is needed to accomplish this or that, but actually that is the experience of everyone on the island, at almost every level. In the past, Taiwan was governed by men, not laws, and so to get something done, you had to find out who was in charge of that thing. But now, no matter what the issue is, lines of authority are extremely unclear.

Given uncertainty over the legality, the right approach may have been the cautious approach. Imagine first if President Chen HAD decided to make people like me happy, and ordered the "Chiang Kai-Shek" engraving jackhammered off the memorial’s facade. Then, imagine his choices if a court subsequently decided AGAINST him.

Far as I can see, he’d only have two options: backtrack by ordering the "Chiang Kai-Shek" inscription re-engraved (MAJOR loss of face!), or defy the court (thereby becoming the lawless dictator Chinese nationalists always claimed he was).

Suddenly the virtue of the banners and scaffolding, which I previously derided as half-measures, becomes clear. Chen knows the chance he may be forced to retreat on this isn’t negligible, so he’s committing as little as possible. A probing action, if you will. If he loses, he doesn’t lose much – just some temporary scaffolding and a few banners. Much preferable to the TV news endlessly repeating clips of cold, hard stone being re-engraved and lovingly polished by Chiang loyalists.

One other thought – one that isn’t original, but worth repeating just the same. If Chen’s goal here was to rename CKS Memorial Hall, then so far, he has failed. (He may yet still win, but for now, the dedication to Chiang is still etched in stone, for all to see.) If however, his goal was to bait Chinese nationalists into defending (even embracing!) Taiwan’s former dictator, then he succeeded quite spectacularly. To wit, I offer this encomium, delivered as a response by Taiwan’s China Post:

History attests that Chiang, the man and his career, stood for Freedom, Democracy and Science…*

Plenty of freedom and democracy during 4 DECADES of martial law under Chiang and son. One of the maxims of La Rochefoucauld comes to mind: "Courtiers who flatter princes with virtues they do not have, insult them with impunity…"

As a second illustration, I point to the behavior of Chiang supporters during a recent religious ceremony on site for victims of the 228 Massacre:

The ritual was performed mainly in peace, despite a few instances where opponents to the hall’s name change shouted verbal insults at the families. [emphasis added]

NIIICE. Dunno if there’s any footage of that, but it just might be useful. Come election time, I mean.

Man (labeled DPP) throws a Chiang Kai-shek bust off the edge of a cliff,, which a dog (labeled KMT) follows. The man says, Atta boy! Taipei Times editorial cartoon.

(Cartoon from the Apr 1/07 edition of the Taipei Times.)

* Digressing from the subject of this post, I thought I’d mention this curious sentence from the the China Post‘s May 21st editorial:

…Taiwan’s independence-seeking DPP government under [President] Chen, defying cautions by its mentor and protector the U.S., has resorted to pushing anti-China and anti-Chiang campaigns to advance its separatist agenda through undemocratic and illegal means.

To placate China, the U.S. has indeed voiced opposition to name changes of Taiwanese state firms. To my knowledge, however, it has been notably silent on the Taiwanese de-Chiangification campaign.

UPDATE (Jun 2/07): An overview of the issue for general readers can be found here.

i-1

Trainwreck

My initial reactions to the rocky attempt to rename Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall in Taipei. But first, a little background:

Earlier this year, Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian decided to rename the Chiang memorial, on the grounds that it was inappropriate for the capital of a democracy to host giant monuments to former dictators. Because the legislature is dominated by Chinese nationalists who revere Chiang, Chen undertook the re-dedication via an administrative procedure.

After denouncing Chen for his ingenuity, Chinese nationalists in the legislature insisted that the change could only be made by an act of THEIR branch of government. Since the opposition possesses a legislative majority, they essentially believed they had a veto over the plan.

Not to be outdone, the Taipei local government (again, a body dominated by Chinese nationalists) got into the act. Invoking an administrative procedure of his own, Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin, son of one of Chiang’s generals, designated the hall as a temporary historical site. In doing so, he put the local government on a collision course with the national executive branch, because such sites cannot be legally altered.*

(Why? Well, it’s kinda hard to rename a structure if you can’t take down the old nameplate. Or screw the new nameplate anywhere onto the walls!)

Faced with this fly-in-the-ointment, the Chen administration decided to square the circle, by covering up the old "Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall" nameplate with scaffolding. Large canvas banners proclaiming "Democracy Memorial Hall" were hung from the outside walls. Finally, a new nameplate was unveiled in the gardens, in such a way that the structure was unmolested.

What a coincidence that Sunday’s Taipei Times featured a picture of an elderly protester who busied himself shouting that the president had no, uh, gonads. Because my reaction was that maybe that old coot had a point there.

I mean, if President Chen didn’t think the name change would pass legal muster, he shouldn’t have bothered with the whole endeavor. The law’s the law, even if you’re president and you don’t happen to like it. On the other hand, if Chen DID think the courts would rule in his favor, he should have insisted the old nameplate be removed. None of these phony-baloney half measures, with banners and scaffolding. To HECK with the local government. Tear down the old stone engraving, and put up the new plaque.

Yes, yes, City Hall said that anyone doing that would be arrested. But if you TRULY believe the courts will vindicate your actions, then you also have to believe that the workmen will ultimately be released. And that somebody in City Hall will in turn have to answer charges of false imprisonment of the workmen. Workmen who were, after all, only doing their job.

As it was, Chen’s wishy-washiness mollified no one. Those banners? City Hall said the NAILS used to hang ’em up damaged the "historical site". The scaffolding? Changed the site’s appearance. Grievous breaches of the law, meriting fines, said the city of Taipei.

(Not content with that, local authorities had the banners and scaffolding torn down a few days later, anyways.)

I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks Chen comes out looking weak here – a bit like a certain duke from an old nursery rhyme:

The Grand Old Duke of York
He had 10,000 men
He marched them up the hill
And he marched them down again…

* Actually, I’m sure they CAN be altered, but only with permission from the local government. Permission which Taipei City Hall would be loath to grant.

Slanderous Remarks

I don’t know Robin Winkler. Oh, I know that he’s a bit unusual (not many foreigners work for Taiwan’s EPA, nor any other part of Taiwan’s government, for that matter). But besides that, I wouldn’t know him from Adam.

I also don’t know if what he said recently was true, that the EPA here is too cozy with business, and that the EPA regards members of his committee as "enemies".

But I do know that the EPA is over-reacting to what he said:

The administration said that Winkler’s comment was untrue and damaged its reputation. It vowed to seek legal action if Winkler did not clarify [ie: apologize for] his statement.

This is a relatively inconsequential story, ’bout a guy belonging to a government bureaucracy, criticizing that bureaucracy. Could be he’s right on the money; could be he’s full of beans. The response however – threats of libel or slander suits – is a perfect illustration of one of the greatest internal threats to democracy facing Taiwan. There can be no progress without criticism of the way things currently are, and there can be no criticism without people who are willing to step forward and do the criticizin’. Toss around a few multi-million NT dollar libel suits, and most people will learn to keep just as silent as if they’d been tossed into a political prison on Green Island.

Heck, in a face-based society like Taiwan, even the prospect of a one-NT-dollar-fine-and-print-an-apology-in-ten-major-newspapers type-punishment could have a major chilling effect on free speech because of the humiliation involved. Add to this the possibility of future partisan control over the judiciary, and political parties here might one day find themselves locked out of debate as they currently are in Singapore.

To paraphrase Ludwig von Mises, if the Taiwanese want to hold onto their democracy, they must resist the temptation to call the police every time they hear something they find objectionable.

David Frum On Taiwan & Other Links

Apparently David Frum of the American Enterprise Institute was in Taiwan recently, and he wrote a few pieces about La Isla Formosa. Haven’t had much time to follow the ‘net over the past few weeks (belated congratulations on blog post #2000, Michael!), so apologies to anyone who has already posted these links.

Frum gives a good summary of China’s behavior towards Taiwan here.

Even better is his second piece (though it’s a bit deceptively-titled). He certainly grasps that left-right labels aren’t really applicable to Taiwanese politics:

The "left-wing" DPP has proposed to purchase American warships, surveillance craft and interceptor missiles. It presses the U.S. to engage in joint training exercises with Taiwanese forces, to allow U.S. naval vessels to call at Taiwan ports and to change current policy so as to allow serving generals and admirals to visit Taiwan.

The "right-wing" KMT prefers detente. It has used its majority in Taiwan’s parliament to stall the DPP’s arms purchases. It advocates closer contacts with China even if China refuses to recognize Taiwan. Some of its members voice rising doubts about the relevance of the U.S.-Taiwan alliance. Leading KMT members have travelled to Beijing to hold party-to-part talks with leading
Chinese Communists.

(My favorite moment a few years back was when "left-wing" Vice-President Annette Lu channeled Ronald Reagan, calling China "an empire of evil". A statement which the "right-wing" KMT hastened to denounce as "China-bashing".)

He closes this one with a concern many of us here have had for a long time:

One hears persistent rumors in Taiwan that the Chinese Communists pressure Taiwan businessmen with interests on the mainland to make campaign donations to their ancient enemies in the KMT. China ranks among the most corrupt countries on Earth. Young democracies are vulnerable to external corruption.

I travelled to Taiwan worried that the Chinese might try to invade the island. I returned worrying that China will try to buy it.

Over at his blog with the National Review, he gives a book review of Minxin Pei’s China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy. One highlight:

* The Chinese Communist party’s grip on power is tightening, not loosening. While 60% of entrepreneurs who launched businesses in the 1980s were workers, peasants, or other ordinary people, by 2002, two-thirds of China’s business owners were former government officials, party cadres, or executives of state-owned enterprises. This is not a case of successful businessmen opportunistically joining the ruling party. Rather, it seems that the ruling party is opportunistically seizing successful businesses.

[…]

Pei argues that these disturbing trends represent something more than growing pains. He argues that they inhere in the path the Chinese Communist Party chose for the country it rules.

The great problem facing any state is how to control the actions of its agents. In a democracy, we rely on a free press to alert us to abuses by the government and competitive elections to correct them. Mao Tse-Tung’s version of communism relied on capricious and all-enveloping terror. But when the Chinese reformers semi-opened their economy, while sedulously denying political freedom, they loosened their control of their agents – while creating lucrative new incentives for their agents to siphon wealth away for themselves.

A vicious cycle has been unleashed. The richer China grows, the more reluctant the ruling elite becomes to surrender power, because power has become so much more valuable. But the refusal to loosen the grip on power undermines China’s wealth, by creating unchecked incentives to the state’s agents to prey upon wealth creation. [emphasis added]

Elsewhere, George Will points out that James Mann has something similar to say in The China Fantasy: How Our Leaders Explain Away Chinese Repression:

[Mann’s] most disturbing thesis is that "the newly enriched, Starbucks-sipping, apartment-buying, car-driving denizens" of the large cities that American visitors to China see will be not the vanguard of democracy but the opposition to it. There may be 300 million such denizens, but there are 1 billion mostly rural and very poor Chinese. Will the minority prospering economically under a Leninist regime think majority rule is in their interest?

Maybe this is piling on, but Guy Sorman says much the same:

Still, hasn’t [economic] growth [in China] created an independent middle class that will push for, and eventually obtain, greater political freedom? Many in the West think so, looking to the South Korean example, but [dissident economist] Mao Yushi isn’t convinced. What exists in China, he argues, is a class of “parvenus,” newcomers whose purchasing power depends on their proximity to the Party rather than their education or entrepreneurial achievements. Except for a handful of genuine businessmen, the parvenus work in the military, public administration, or state enterprises, or for firms ostensibly private but, in fact, owned by the Party. The Party picks up the tab for almost all their imported luxury cars, two-thirds of their mobile phones, and three-quarters of their restaurant bills, as well as their call girls, their “study” trips abroad, and their lavish spending at Las Vegas casinos. And it can withdraw these advantages at any time.

In March, the Chinese government announced, to much fanfare in the Western press, that it would begin to introduce individual property rights. We should understand that this “reform” will benefit only the parvenus, not the peasants, whose tilled land will still belong to the state. But the parvenus will now be able to transmit to their children what they have acquired thanks to their Party connections—one more reason that they will be unlikely to push for the democratization of the regime that secures their status.

Speaking of democratization, Sorman gives us an idea of just how much democracy Taiwan can expect to retain should the KMT’s dream of reunification ever be implemented:

…like everybody else, the Chinese love to watch TV, despite pervasive censorship and the propaganda broadcast on it in China. One of their favorite shows is a local version of the U.S. hit American Idol called Super Girl, broadcast by a Hunan satellite channel and produced by a private firm. In 2005, the winner of this amateur singing contest was Miss Li, a lanky 20-year-old with a punk hairdo, sporting jeans and a black T-shirt—a fashion inspired by South Korean pop bands. Miss Li won democratically with nearly 4 million votes, text-messaged by viewers using their cell phones from home. Over 400 million Chinese viewers—more than the combined populations of the United States and England—watched the finale.

An unexceptional story—except that it happened in China, and the Communist Party, taken by surprise, condemned Miss Li for not singing in Chinese but in English and Spanish and for wearing clothes that didn’t conform to the anodyne official dress code laid down by the national television station. A columnist in China Daily, the Party’s mouthpiece, interpreted her victory as a popular uprising against the established order, concluding that “Miss Li has been elected but the people have made a bad choice. This is what happens when people are unprepared for democracy.” [emphasis added]

Taiwanese Premier’s Resignation

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou’s reaction:

"[When the new premier takes the position] there will have been six premiers in seven years. This is not only harmful to our political stability, but also harms policy continuity," he said.

Yeah, six premiers in seven years DOESN’T sound very stable. But I’m sure I’m not the only one who recalls that the KMT spent much of 2006 threatening to call votes in the legislature in order to topple premier after premier in 2006, 2007 and 2008.

Following through would have left Taiwan with a whole lot more than SIX ex-premiers. So it’s a bit gratifying then, to hear the former KMT chairman implicitly admit that his party plays a destabilizing role in Taiwanese politics.

UPDATE (May 15/07): So concerned with Taiwan’s political stability and continuity is Ma that a day later he expressed his willingness to look at proposals to hold a non-confidence vote in the legislature to oust the current Cabinet:

"The overthrow of [the] Cabinet isn’t a thing that shouldn’t be discussed," declared Ma, while on a bicycling campaign tour of south Taiwan.

Won’t Get Fooled Again

Taiwan’s China Post came out a few weeks ago against a referendum on Taiwan attempting to join the U.N. under the name, "Taiwan," saying the question is superfluous:

…everyone [in Taiwan] wants Taiwan to rejoin the United Nations, from which the representative of Chiang Kai-shek was ousted in 1971. As far as the United Nations is concerned, the question of Chinese representation has long been settled. In fact, the world body formally acknowledges Taiwan as a province of the People’s Republic of China. As a result, if we want to accede to the United Nations, we have no alternative but to apply as Taiwan, which should be accepted by the world organization as an independent, sovereign state rather than a province of China. The people should not be asked to vote on an issue of whether their country should or shouldn’t try to acquire U.N. membership as ‘Taiwan.’ The answer is there before the question is asked. [Emphasis added]

When the China Post says "everyone" here wants to join the U.N. as "Taiwan", the casual reader is liable to think that they include themselves in that number. But if that were true, how can one explain their near-apoplectic response to the Chen administration’s efforts to add "Taiwan" to the names of state-owned enterprises?

In other words, how can the paper tell us with a straight face that they want to enter the U.N. under the name ‘Taiwan’, when only one or two months ago it was bitterly opposed to the creation of a Taiwan Postal Service?

The truth of the matter is that the China Post doesn’t want Taiwan to ever join the U.N. as ‘Taiwan’. That would smack too much of independence for their Greater China sensibilities. But rather than be men about that and admit it, they’d rather disingenuously claim that the result would be a foregone conclusion, and then call for a boycott of the referendum. That way, if enough of the electorate fails to vote, the initiative will go down in flames. Which is what they wanted all along.

Just remember that foregone conclusion the China Post talks about now. Because if the referendum fails, the paper will do a pirouette and claim without embarrassment that it failed not because of the boycott they themselves called for, but because the "people" never wanted to join the U.N. as ‘Taiwan’ in the first place.

That’s the little game the China Post and Taiwan’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) played during the 2004 referendum. It worked once, so why SHOULDN’T they try again?

This Is Not About YOU, John Chiang

Earlier this week, John Chiang, an illegitimate descendant of former Taiwanese dictator Chiang Kai-shek, launched a lawsuit over the dismantling of his grand-dad’s statue by the city of Kaohsiung:

"I can’t bear to see the statue of the late president being disassembled. I demand Mayor Chen publish an apology in the islands three main Chinese-language newspapers and pay a symbolic NT$1 in compensation [for] the city’s rude behavior…"

"I shed tears when I saw on the TV that it (the city government) disassembled the [Chiang Kai-shek] statue into more than 200 parts * …"

The fact is that while John Chiang shed tears, others cheered. I know of no moral calculus that says John Chiang’s displeasure must weigh more heavily than the approval of others.

There is, I believe, only one instrument with which the conflict between Chiang supporters and critics can be resolved: Democracy. This is where Taiwan’s China Post gets their "Cultural Revolution" analogy all wrong. Unlike Mao’s China, Taiwanese mobs are not roaming the streets smashing Chiang statues.** Instead, the people of Taiwan chose known anti-Chiang politicians to be their leaders, and those politicians are enacting that part of their program. When pro-Chiang politicians are elected to executive positions, I will take that as evidence that the Taiwanese wish Chiang to remain in his place of honor.

Some might object that anti-Chiang politicians were elected for other reasons, pointing to poll numbers to support that claim. Fair point, though I notice that Chiang defenders are not quite so confident about their numbers as to call for a democratic referendum on the issue. Guess it’s easier to bluster about Chiang’s "solid support" in Taiwanese society than it is to risk a humiliating loss at the polls on the question.

* While it was initially reported that the Chiang Kai-shek statue in Kaohsiung was broken into 200 pieces, the correct number was quickly established to be 79. For emotive purposes, John Chiang continues to use the inflated figure.

** There was however, one troubling case of arson directed against one of Chiang Kai-shek’s holiday villas recently, and it’s my hope that the perpetrator will be found and punished harshly. De-Chiangification must take place under the rule of law and under democratic auspices, not according to the whims of individuals with butane lighters.

UPDATE (Apr 21/07): The difference between John Chiang and Cho Seung-Hui’s grandfather could not be starker:

John Chiang: "I shed tears when I saw on the TV that [the city government]
disassembled [my grandfather’s] statue into more than 200 parts."

Cho Seung-Hui’s grandfather: "Son of a bitch. It serves [my grandson] right he died…"