It is no small irony that the visit last week of Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) would bring to the fore a potentially damaging rift within the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
No sooner had Chen returned to China than the party’s old guard — personified by former KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) — accused the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of mishandling a decision to avoid holding major banquets for Chen.
Then a newspaper alleged that SEF officials had referred to Chen as a “C-list” politician whom “A-listers” Soong, Lien and former KMT chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) had desperately sought to meet. SEF Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) denied such a comment had been made, but the damage was done.
Without going into the ludicrousness of anyone considering Lien and Soong to be “A-listers,” it was clear that subterranean animosity in the pan-blue camp, hitherto mostly manifested in body language, was coming to the fore.
Soong, a Mainlander conservative who has long sought, though never entirely successfully, to dispel his image as someone who would sell out Taiwan because of his pro-unification views, was now accusing the SEF and the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) of failing to consult opposition parties — the irony of Soong championing “the opposition” being totally lost on him — over their cross-strait policies. He also did not take too kindly to seeing his request to meet Chen turned down by the SEF and the MAC, nor even Ma’s decision to bar Lien from hosting a banquet in Chen’s honor.
It’s hard to tell whether Soong’s accusations resulted from an injured ego, or whether he was referring to the PFP when he claimed that Ma and the government had failed to consult “the opposition,” but one thing is certain: There’s a rift within the pan-blue camp, and it will only widen the closer we get to cross-strait dialogue on political matters.
This fissiparousness holds opportunities and dangers. It could give the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) an opportunity for a wedge — perhaps by allying itself with less conservative elements in the pan-blue camp — and help shape the cross-strait dialogue in a way that is more favorable to Taiwan. Or it could be part of Beijing’s plan to divide Taiwan’s political landscape until the latter is unable to present a united front of any description.
DPP supporters who think in terms of the next elections may delight in apparent struggles within the KMT, but this is shortsighted, as the nation stands to gain nothing from weakness when it comes to cross-strait negotiations.
How apt it is that these signs of a deep KMT split would occur just as archeologists in China claim to have discovered the tomb of infamous third-century Chinese general Cao Cao (曹操), who more than anyone understood the value of shifting alliances and the opportunities created by disunity in the enemy camp.
Just like the cunning warlord, Beijing is unlike its opponents in its steadfastness of purpose and unflagging desire to seize its objective. It will exploit greed, pride and weakness in others, turn foe against foe, make temporary alliances and be unsparing in pursuit of its objectives.
If we only learn one thing from Cao Cao, it is that disunity in the face of a threat is nothing to savor. If all it takes to split this nation is a “C-list” envoy like Chen, then there isn’t much hope for survival.
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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