Sat, Oct 18, 2008 page8

• EDITORIAL: Flags and the line in the sand

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  Compared with the situation even five years ago, the debate over which national symbols should or should not be exposed to visiting Chinese officials or at international sporting events has advanced to a point that borders on the surreal.

  The ideological trajectory of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — such as it is — is suicidal. For its agenda of unification to be properly implemented, the KMT must weaken Taiwanese identity such that Taiwanese cannot bind the concept of sacrifice to their polity’s well-being, but also to the point where the KMT cannot defend itself from marginalization or absorption by the Chinese Communist Party.

  In adopting a nationalist mindset or agenda, certain strategies are fundamental in mobilizing large numbers of people politically or even militarily. One of these is the idea that the nation — any nation — is a structure and an ideal that is worth working, fighting and dying for. This is a principle that requires a degree of consensus in public speech and public institutions so that the widest variety of people can be brought under an umbrella to advance their interests and pool their resources.

  The KMT cannot afford to allow this to happen. This is because the only option for mobilization that remains in this country is on behalf of an independent Taiwanese state. The problem at this moment is that support for this is weak or disorderly, depending on one’s personal political preferences.

  This is the way things must remain for the KMT to close ranks with China with a minimum of protest.

  At this time — in terms of public speech, at any rate — Taiwan’s nationalist umbrella is full of holes and can barely stand on its own. With the KMT undermining the very national symbols it created in the service of a policy of cross-strait appeasement, bureaucratic inertia and adjustments in Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) strategy are providing the main support for ossified symbols of a bygone era, such as the national flag, the national anthem and the embellishments of military psychology.

  In the legislature yesterday, DPP lawmakers questioned Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) on how the government would handle diplomatic niceties during the visit of Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), the head of China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait. In particular, they wanted to know whether the government would dishonor the national flag and other objects by removing them from locations where Chen is likely to travel.

  And so things became surreal. Liu welcomed the DPP legislators’ concern for the national flag, which was another way of saying — though he would never dare — that KMT strategists with a stake in China’s designs have little or no such concern. Liu’s polite chit-chat and the DPP’s ultra-pragmatism were another reminder that Taiwanese identity, which is strong and real, and its political representation, which is weak and highly manipulable, are very strange creatures, indeed.

  When Liu said that flags would not be taken down, the public was not hearing the words of a party man but of a head of government at the limit of compromise. The DPP has done Taiwan a service by making it clear where the line in the sand is on this issue.

  As time progresses, it is the erasure of these lines in the sand, or the drawing of new ones, that will tell Taiwanese whether their government is taking them toward a deal with Beijing that will puncture their pride and wind back their achievements, or fortify them as China learns to come to terms with its limited abilities and even more limited ability to offer something of substance that Taiwan does not already have.
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