It is perhaps inevitable around the time of 228 Memorial Day that there is discussion of Taiwan's ethnic divisions and problems. This year it has been exacerbated by the presidential election. In the current atmosphere, where both sides see this election as make or break, the only thing that is surprising is that ethnic enmities haven't made their baleful influence felt more fully.
One of the interesting facts about ethnic campaigning in Taiwan is that it is always the pan-blues who speak out most loudly against it while they also benefit the most from ethnically motivated voting. The overwhelming majority of Mainlanders are pan-blue "iron votes." The pan-blues have always used ethnic campaigning to reinforce this by playing up a siege mentality among the Mainlanders, frightening them with tales of what a vengeful Hoklo-dominated Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) would do were it elected -- remember the canard about canceling veterans' pensions?
And yet while the pan-blues promote ethnic voting among their core constituency, they also denounce it elsewhere. This is for the obvious reason that the pan-blues cannot get elected on Mainlander votes alone -- there simply aren't enough of them. So the pan-blues manage to have their ethnic cake and eat it. They play on ethnic fears to keep Mainlanders loyal and denounce ethnic campaigning to win over Taiwanese votes.
This is not to say that the DPP is without fault. Partly because of its origins as a party of the Hoklo gentry deprived of its political rights by Mainlander incomers, its recognition of the rights of other ethnic groups has been patchy. Only since the DPP became the governing party has it obviously reached out to Hakka voters, and its relationship to Aborigines is still far from ideal.
Nevertheless, given that the DPP obviously can win an election on Hoklo votes alone, it has been remarkably restrained. What could be easier than a campaign based on "Taiwanese should not vote for Chinese"? Yet there has been none of this in the election campaign so far. It is ironic that though it is the DPP that practices restraint when playing the ethnic card, it is the pan-blues who make most of the criticism.
It was interesting to hear that one of the pillars of Chinese Nationalist Party Chairman (KMT) Lien Chan's (
What this should be was symbolized by the 228 Hand-in-Hand rally on Saturday and, successful as that rally was in bolstering President Chen Shui-bian's (
Turning your back on China and turning toward the opportunity that for 300 years Taiwan has represented -- that is a pretty good definition of what it means to be a New Taiwanese. It is hard, however, to imagine Lien embracing such a concept.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
RSS