Former Presidential Office secretary-general Chen Shih-meng (
Kudos to Chen, as it is about time some people came forward to point out the absurdity of allowing politicians to take Mainlanders for granted.
In Taiwan, the term benshengren is generally used to describe people who came to Taiwan from China hundreds of years ago and their descendants, whereas the term waishengren (Mainlander) is used to describe people who came from China with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) after the Chinese civil war, and their offspring.
For a long time however, under the guise of looking out for their physical and material well-being with laws such as the Statute Governing Reconstruction of Old Military Dependents' Villages (
It is one thing for the party to treat Mainlanders as a voting bloc, but another to define their image by associating them with the KMT.
The notion was noticeably brazen in the recent fight over the changing of the inscription on the National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall's main arch.
Many pan-blue politicians objected to the renaming of the plaza to "Liberty Square" with the installment of the Chinese characters ziyou guangchang (
It is understandable that these elderly veterans felt this way, as many of them came to Taiwan decades ago on the promise of dictator Chiang Kai-shek that one day he would lead them back to their homeland in China.
But certain pro-China news outlets are happy to promote the notion that Mainlanders are and should be against the removal of Chiang-related artifacts. It's as if Mainlanders are inherently opposed to democracy and adore dictators.
Mainlanders should not be automatically viewed as pro-China just as a benshengren should not automatically assumed to be pro-independence.
There can be no political assumptions made about Mainlanders or benshengren.
The real question is whether one identifies with Taiwan or China.
It is unwise for political parties to manipulate ethnic issues whenever election time rolls around. It is even more unwise for political parties to "kidnap" a certain ethnic group at election time to serve their own political ends.
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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