In an interview with a Chinese-language newspaper last weekend, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
The misguided will see Ma's remarks as standing up to China in a way that outgoing KMT Chairman, Lien Chan, never would and never has. For Lien, all that ever mattered was his ambition to be president. When he found the Taiwanese wouldn't give him the job, he hoped China might make him Taiwan's Janos Kadar. Ma, on the other hand, seems principled enough to be more averse to selling out Taiwan than his predecessor. And he is also realistic enough to know that China's political system is anathema to Taiwanese. Of course it is not just Tiananmen that bothers them, but Ma has highlighted that a reversal on Tiananmen would herald such a re-drawing of the relationship of the state to its people in China as to change the current system beyond recognition.
So far, so good. Ma is prepared to tell uncomfortable truths to the Chinese and stand up for Taiwan's liberal democratic values.
But the problem here is what he means by "beginning discussions of reunification." Because it is by no means certain that a majority in Taiwan want this to happen. Mainland Affairs Council polls show barely 13 percent of people on Taiwan want reunification either now or ever. Compare that with the 19 percent of hardcore independence supporters, or the 37 percent of don't knows -- the "status quo now, decision" later brigade -- and it's clear that assuming unification negotiations are things that could start, were China to meet some criteria, seems to be assuming rather a lot. Actually, it is riding roughshod over the wishes and views of the 87 percent of Taiwanese who are more ambivalent about unification than Ma.
It should be remembered that the goal of unification -- which one could have been thrown into jail for questioning a generation ago -- was imposed on the Taiwanese by the KMT without their consultation or approval via any democratic means. No Taiwanese has ever been able to vote on whether they supported unification with China, and the assumption that they do is simply an insult. That Ma, KMT blueblood that he is, cannot begin to understand how deeply offensive his attitude is, reeking of traditional Chinese paternalism with its distrust of the views of the hoi polloi, and the thuggishness and selfishness intrinsic to the KMT, shows how thin is the veneer of Ma's democratic values. It is the same old contempt as ever.
For the record, here is the most basic demand for unification talks. Before they begin there must be a referendum on whether they should begin. It is that simple. Taiwanese have to show that they are interested in unification before there is any point in starting talks.
Why? For the obvious reason that the talks will probably not be allowed to fail, though they might be dragged out quite a long time. So to start to talk about unification is really to commit yourself to it taking place -- sometime -- and without sanction via a referendum, no government could say it had a mandate to enter into such negotiations. Any government which did try to force this on the people deserves to be faced with an insurrection.
If Ma were a democrat, he would know you cannot negotiate without a mandate. But at heart he is a Chinese Nationalist and a fat lot they have ever cared for such niceties.
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,
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