Through their votes and activism, young Taiwanese are protecting democracy rather than actively opposing China, according to a local academic who interviewed participants of the Sunflower movement and analyzed opinion polls. Speaking at the annual meeting of the Taiwanese Political Science Association last weekend, she added that this state of affairs remains “something that the governing Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) cannot seem to understand, even now.”
With China being an authoritarian nation, the distinction between the two sentiments could easily be blurred, but any political party or politician in Taiwan who aims to take office in 2016 must be more discerning.
Following the disastrous defeat of the KMT in the Nov. 29 nine-in-one elections, many observers, while also recognizing the government’s poor performance as a factor, were quick to interpret the results as a no-confidence vote on President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) pro-China cross-strait policies; especially since the elections were the first official barometer since the Sunflower movement in March, which was seen as a protest spawned by deep anxiety over the nation’s closer relationship with China.
In the same vein, academics have expressed pessimistic views on the future of cross-strait relations, saying that the public has shown that it could not care less about the economy and cross-strait “mutual trust.”
Online pundits, on the other hand, have focused more on the “generational rupture” generated by the growing wealth gap and evidenced in the use of social media for procuring information and social interaction that contributed to the KMT’s rout. The generation gap is also manifested in the degree of belief in democratic values and government transparency, observers have said.
The interpretations are two sides of the same coin. It is not that younger Taiwanese favor economic isolation over interaction with China; what they are against is the lack of transparency and procedural democracy in the mechanisms of interaction. They consider the government’s dealings with China to violate not only the principle of openness that is supposed to be guaranteed by a democratic system, but also the idea of fairness, when the negotiation channels have been monopolized by big corporations and politicians who either are close to these corporations or have their own vested interests in China.
The current cross-strait negotiation framework developed and endorsed by the KMT, has been “privatized” to be led by “a clique of priests” consisting of KMT politicians and business tycoons, who take the empty, so-called “1992 consensus” more as religious ideology than negotiable agreement. Since the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration they have allowed the cross-strait negotiations to bypass the state’s power and platform.
As the academic cited above showed, most of the young Taiwanese activists interviewed who said they were “politically enlightened” by the Sunflower movement, while confidently harboring the consciousness of Taiwanese identity, do not object to interactions with China.
It is not cross-strait exchanges, but particularized interest exchanges through undemocratic procedures that harm Taiwan’s democratic values and system that the younger generations are resisting.
Past experiences portray the DPP as a party that is traditionally skeptical or antagonistic toward Beijing. It has strived to change that image in recent years and in the recent weeks after the KMT’s defeat by downplaying the impact of the KMT’s China policies.
However, it should know that dealings with China are not restricted to the two extremes of rejecting China and following KMT’s approach of being a proxy for Beijing.
The next generation is waking up from the traditional bipolar rhetoric, and the next ruling party — whoever it is — needs to know better.
US President Donald Trump has gotten off to a head-spinning start in his foreign policy. He has pressured Denmark to cede Greenland to the United States, threatened to take over the Panama Canal, urged Canada to become the 51st US state, unilaterally renamed the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America” and announced plans for the United States to annex and administer Gaza. He has imposed and then suspended 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico for their roles in the flow of fentanyl into the United States, while at the same time increasing tariffs on China by 10
As an American living in Taiwan, I have to confess how impressed I have been over the years by the Chinese Communist Party’s wholehearted embrace of high-speed rail and electric vehicles, and this at a time when my own democratic country has chosen a leader openly committed to doing everything in his power to put obstacles in the way of sustainable energy across the board — and democracy to boot. It really does make me wonder: “Are those of us right who hold that democracy is the right way to go?” Has Taiwan made the wrong choice? Many in China obviously
US President Donald Trump last week announced plans to impose reciprocal tariffs on eight countries. As Taiwan, a key hub for semiconductor manufacturing, is among them, the policy would significantly affect the country. In response, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) dispatched two officials to the US for negotiations, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC) board of directors convened its first-ever meeting in the US. Those developments highlight how the US’ unstable trade policies are posing a growing threat to Taiwan. Can the US truly gain an advantage in chip manufacturing by reversing trade liberalization? Is it realistic to
About 6.1 million couples tied the knot last year, down from 7.28 million in 2023 — a drop of more than 20 percent, data from the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs showed. That is more serious than the precipitous drop of 12.2 percent in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the saying goes, a single leaf reveals an entire autumn. The decline in marriages reveals problems in China’s economic development, painting a dismal picture of the nation’s future. A giant question mark hangs over economic data that Beijing releases due to a lack of clarity, freedom of the press
RSS