The battle for the middle ground

Taipei, December 21 2010: Just barely two weeks ahead of the latest round of local elections (held on November 27 – see our last report), former President Chen Shui-bian lost his appeal to Taiwan’s High Court against two wide-ranging bribery and corruption charges. The trials themselves were unusual and seen by many as being motivated by Chen’s political opponents who regained power in 2008. Likewise the timing of the final verdict was also considered to have been made to influence the election outcome in favour of the KMT.

The Supreme Court which heard the appeal could have allowed Chen to serve his sentences concurrently. It did not do so. He was ordered to serve 11 years on one count and 8 years on the other – and will serve a total of 19 years – reduced by the court to a minimum of 17½ years since he has already been incarcerated for more than 700 days. He will be almost 80 years old when released from his latest confinement. 

“Latest”, because as a young lawyer he was incarcerated during the martial law years for advocating Taiwan’s independence from China. Many people believe that the wheel has come full circle and that the entire episode is a case of political pay-back from a KMT administration that now appears intent more than ever to curry favour with Beijing.

The Kuomintang, which celebrates its centenary year as a political party in 2011 was intended originally to be the democratic face of post-imperial China. Mao Zedong got in the way of that grand plan and when the KMT fled to Taiwan at the end of the civil war period, its leaders believed that it was only a matter of time before the Communist government collapsed and the KMT would be able to return triumphantly to the mainland to take back the reins of power. For that reason until well into the 90s, the KMT  kept a clear distinction between the national government of the Republic of China with its (temporary) seat in Taipei, and the Taiwan Provincial Government which held office in Taichung. There were two separate legislatures with the national legislature including seats for representatives of constituencies on the mainland of China. This charade only came to an end with reform measures introduced by Lee Teng-hui who took over the presidency upon the death of Chiang Ching-kuo in 1988 and then won two terms in his own right in the 1990s. Since then the Taipei Provincial Government has been allowed to wither.

Lee was a native Taiwanese educated in Japan and his pro-Taiwanese sentiment was plain for all to see. When the KMT lost power to the DPP in 2000, it did not take long for the KMT heavyweights to expel Lee from the party for his pro-Taiwan views. Very little has changed over the years. The party – at least at its more senior levels – remains dominated by those with their roots on the Chinese mainland and it remains firmly allied with “big business”;  indeed it still retains a vast business network from which it has not quite disengaged despite pledges to do so. Until recently at least it was the world’s richest political party; not only did it control much of business – and especially the “government-owned” monopolies on Taiwan but many of the assets surrendered by the Japanese at the end of World War II found their way into KMT hands as well. During these years, the lines between party and state were blurred to say the least. And of course we won’t mention the money made from the Burmese opium trade which the KMT used to fund its civil war against the communists back in the 1930s and which (at least until the 1970s – after that the trail becomes opaque) continued to be a major source of revenue for the party.

Trying to fathom the collective mindset of today’s KMT keeps an entire industry of Taiwan-watchers occupied – this analyst included. Clearly the party remains firmly attached to its Chinese roots and has not lost its aspiration of governing more than the island of Taiwan. While it claims to have democratised, it remains firmly wedded its Confucian ways. Western democratic traditions – embraced by Chen Shui-bian – sit uneasily on the shoulders of the KMT stalwarts; rather “democracy” is often seen as being internal to the party where consultation and consensus is valued instead of a form that embraces the general polity – the voters.

Being the party of big business, the KMT often appears mesmerised by the business opportunities offered by China and the chance for individuals to “return” to the mainland as patrons of their ancestral village. There is a comfort and familiarity about China – they speak Mandarin rather than the Taiwanese dialect and are feted for their wealth. Not only do they feel at ease – they feel important. Doing business in China is “easy”; trying to fathom how the rest of the world works is somewhat harder. Many maintain second families on the mainland – aping the mores of bygone times.

This natural affinity with the mainland – an affinity not shared by those whose ancestral home is within Taiwan – has been made so much easier by the opening of China economically and the thought that at some distant point in time, China might embrace democratic values. After all, when the Chinese leaders came down heavily on the student protesters who occupied Tien An Mien Square in the June of 1989, those leaders did not eschew democracy as a concept–they merely claimed that China was “not ready.” Much has happened over the past twenty years of course and as China has emerged as a global economic power, it can be argued that the Chinese leadership has even more to fear now from a loosening of the political chain than it did twenty years ago.

Nevertheless this “chink” in the Chinese armour may give hope to those within the KMT who dream of a political constituency running into the billions rather than the mere 20+ million residents of Taiwan island.

And as we have mentioned before in these essays, both the KMT and the CCP have Marxist roots and an organisational structure along Leninist lines. That is as true of the KMT today as it was 50 years ago. This provides a natural affinity between the two parties that – with the bitter personal animosities of civil war leaders now fading into history – a rapprochement does appear possible (maybe, perhaps).

So it is not hard to imagine that many within the KMT leadership would want to encourage this process. Politicians such as former President Chen and other DPP leaders who espouse liberty and personal freedom along western lines stand in the way of this grand design and many consider them to be “unChinese”. Silence them, discredit them and when all else fails lock them up.

And so it is that former President Chen, often hailed as the “Father” of Taiwan’s democracy has been reduced to being prisoner no 1010. On 2 December he was moved from the Taipei Detention Centre to which he was confined after his arrest shortly after the KMT resumed power to the Taipei Prison in Taoyuan. His head was shaved in accordance with prison regulations and he is reportedly sharing a four square metre cell with another inmate.

Prosecutors are still mulling whether his paraplegic wife, Wu Shu-jen (who has been similarly sentenced) will have to serve similar jail time.

If the KMT was hoping that Chen’s incarceration would damage the DPP in the November special municipality polls, it does not appear to have done so. Indeed while at first sight nothing appears to have changed – the KMT held onto the mayoral positions in Taipei, Sinbai (Taipei County) and Taichung while the DPP held onto Tainan and Kaohsiung – yet when the results of the elections for counsellors and ward chiefs are taken into account, the DPP actually increased its vote substantially. Some analysts have speculated that the heavy-handed treatment of Chen Shui-bian encouraged people to lodge a protest vote against the KMT. This is reinforced by the fact that at least two recent polls have shown that Taiwanese believe that their political rights have been eroded since the KMT took office in 2008. 

The polls affirmed that the DPP is far from being the spent force that the KMT claims it is and that it has a chance of winning back government when next the country goes to the polls in 2012. No doubt the fact that the DPP has played down its former strident stand on Taiwanese independence helped it regain the trust of many voters. The poll results show that voters want to take a middle of the road course – neither integrating with China nor opting for de jure independence.

In their efforts to shape the next election both parties have some deep soul-searching to do. Can the KMT soften its pro-China attitude and pay greater attention to the attitudes of voters? More importantly, will China allow it to do so? And can the DPP come to terms with its nationalistic fervour? These are the issues that will come to the fore over the next 18 months.

One thing is certain, the next election will be fought over the middle ground.

A Lesson in History

Taipei, November 1 2010: October 10 – or “Double 10” as it is commonly referred to is Taiwan’s national day, or to be more precise, the National Day of the Republic of China. The event this year was a rather more subdued affair than normal as the KMT government appears to be unsure as to whether it should be called a “national day” at all for risk of offending Beijing. The Chinese revolution may be coming full circle and what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could not win on the battlefield, it may win using its economic muscle.

Taiwan faces another series of elections at the end of November for the special municipalities and President Ma Ying-jeou has announced that he regards the election as a mid-term referendum on his performance; but despite Taiwan enjoying a strong economic rebound and signs of a recovery in job prospects, the KMT party appears to be trailing to the DPP in most pre-election polls. With the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement with China (ECFA) not due to kick in until 2011, Ma appears vexed as to how best he can regain voter appeal.

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This year’s national celebration commemorated the 99^th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of China which actually came into existence on 1 January 1912 in the aftermath of China’s upheaval that saw the “Son of Heaven” dislodged from his imperial throne in Beijing. In view of recent events, it is worth delving back into Taiwan’s recent history to provide some context.

Founded originally on principles of bringing democratic nationalism to China, Sun Yat Sen was the first provisional president of the ROC. The Kuomintang Party (KMT) was formed that same year (on August 25) in an attempt to unite disparate revolutionary groups; since that time the fortunes of the ROC and the KMT have been inextricably intertwined. The principles of democratic nationalism did not last very long as China quickly descended into a period of Warlordism. The arrival of Russian advisors in the early 1920s saw the KMT morph into a Leninist system of government. This of course, was before the rise of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as an alternative force in its own right. Initially, ardent communists joined the KMT seeking to transform it from within. Neither the KMT nor the CCP saw any role for a “loyal” opposition.

At that stage of course, Taiwan — or Formosa as it was then known— was under Japanese occupation. These early events were played out on the Chinese mainland and mostly in southern China. Although nominally brought into the Chinese empire in the 19^th century, much of Taiwan remained ungoverned and lawless; China’s writ did not extend beyond the major cities and ports along the western plain. It was Japan and not China that unified Taiwan, bringing a system of government to the entire island and developing its economy to the point that by the time of the Second World War, the people of Taiwan were among the most prosperous in Asia.

At the Cairo Conference in 1943, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek met with Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt to determine the look of post-war Asia once Japan had been defeated. Early ideas of giving independence to Taiwan gave way to pragmatism when Chiang insisted that Taiwan be ceded to China – or to be more precise – to the Republic of China.

In 1949, Chiang and his Nationalist army lost the Chinese civil war to Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party. Rather than surrender, he fled with approximately one million of his troops and loyal supporters across the Taiwan Strait and established a rump government in exile in Taipei. A stalemate ensued between Taipei and Beijing that lasted for more than 40 years and the people of Taiwan were placed under martial law – which was not lifted until the end of the 1980s.

All this time, government was firmly in the hands of the Kuomintang and Taiwan was a one-party state, Both Taiwan and the Chinese mainland had similar systems in which the governing party and the state were to all intents and purposes one and the same. The KMT held onto the myth that it was the legitimate government of the whole of China; representatives of China’s mainland provinces sat in the ROC legislature and while the ROC Government sat in Taipei, Taiwan’s provincial government sat in Taichung.

When Chiang Kai-shek died in 1975, the presidency passed to his eldest son, Chiang Ching-kuo. By this time Taiwan had already lost its seat in the United Nations (and its seat on the Security Council) in favour of Beijing. China was opening up under the new-found pragmatism of Deng Xiaoping and, following the Nixon lead, countries around the world were switching recognition from Taipei to Beijing. Neither was particularly democratic but Beijing had the far greater claim to represent the people of China as a whole.

Had the KMT abandoned the pretext of representing China in its entirety (including Manchuria) events may have played out differently. But the KMT believed for a long while that the PRC would self-destruct and that the nationalists would eventually make a triumphant return.

As hopes of this happening finally dwindled, Chiang 2 realised that the ROC had to change. While remaining authoritarian, he took some early steps at change. These were tentative in nature and barely visible to outsiders, but they resulted in a lighter hand in governance and saw Taiwanese party members brought into the decision-making apparatus of the mainlander-dominated KMT to which they had heretofore been excluded.

Up until the 1980s, the administration had been firmly under the control of the “mainlanders” and the native Taiwanese were regarded as second-class citizens. Chiang went some way to breaking down the mistrust that had long lingered between the two groups — both of which were ethnic Chinese. Bans on visits to the Chinese mainland lifted (in large part to allow elderly KMT members to visit their ancestral homes before they passed on) and the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), a non-official official body, was set up to help the thawing of relations between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits.

When Chiang died in 1988, the political landscape had changed sufficiently that a native Taiwanese, a medical doctor educated in Japan and the United States, was able to become party leader and national president. Lee Teng-hui, the vice-president at the time, served out the remainder of Chiang’s term and then won two elections in his own right.

Lee wasted no time in hastening further reform. He introduced direct presidential elections, recognised the legality of opposition parties, redrew the map of China and reformed the legislature by abolishing the seats held in the name of mainland electorates, thereby abandoning the myth that the ROC was the legitimate government of the Chinese mainland. Lee was a pragmatist and a democrat but hardliners in the KMT never forgave him for his democratic ways.

Lee was able to begin the process of regular political dialogue with Beijing through the SEF and its Chinese counterpart body, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS). Perhaps on the Chinese side, in the aftermath of the 1989 Tien an Mien incident, China needed to be seen to be conciliatory.

In any event this early dialogue led to the 1992 Cross Straits Consensus in which each side agreed to the “one China” principle – but left Beijing and Taipei to interpret the meaning for themselves. China it should be remembered, was not the global powerhouse it is now and this level of ambiguity served both sides well. For China, it provided reassurance that Taiwan was not seeking de jure independence while for Taiwan, the lessening of tensions gave it greater freedom to manoeuvre internationally – or so it hoped. Following a meeting in Singapore between SEF Chair Koo Chen-fu and ARATS Chair Wang Daohan in 1993, the first cross-straits accords were signed dealing with posts and telecommunications as well as document authentication.

Any hope that Taiwan might have greater elbow room on the world stage was short-lived. When in 1995, Lee accepted an invitation from Cornell University to deliver a speech on the democratisation of Taiwan, China’s reaction was swift and ugly. A series of Chinese missile tests were held in late 1995 and early 1996 in the waters surrounding Taiwan and intended to send a clear signal that China would not tolerate Taiwanese leaders assuming the world stage. In China’s mind, Lee was seen as wavering from the one-China principle, something he denied at the time but later events would show that he had more in common with the emerging Democratic Progressive Party (which was unashamedly pro-independence) than with the mainland-dominated leadership within the KMT.

Tensions eventually eased and the SEF and ARATS continued their work. A further meeting was held in Shanghai in October 1988 but thereafter relations soured once again when Lee floated his “two states” theory of cross-straits relations. Beijing saw this statement as an abrogation of the 1992 consensus; Lee on the other hand saw it as a means of seeking to give tangible meaning to that consensus by floating the idea of a “commonwealth” whereby the ROC and the PRC (as well as Hong Kong and Tibet)  belonged to a supra-national China on the lines of the European model. Taiwan was left in no doubt as to China’s attitude on that one.

Of course with the election of the DPP’s Chen Shui-bian as Taiwan’s first non-KMT president in 2000, relations with China went into deep freeze. Only with the re-election of Ma Ying-jeou and the return of a KMT administration in 2008 have relations thawed – some would say to the point of boiling over. Party-to-party relations (between the CPP and the KMT) have continued although much of the contact has been behind closed doors and beyond public scrutiny.

Over the past two years, relations with China have progressed at a giddy pace and posing the question as to the purpose of such haste. China of course has come a long way economically since that first communiqué in 1992 while treading water politically – as its reaction to the award of a Nobel Prize to dissident Liu Ziaobo, currently serving an 11-year prison term for advocating democratic reform has most recently shown.

For Taiwan, many would claim the opposite to be true. Taiwan has made considerable progress in democratic reform – first under Lee Teng-hui and then under Chen Shui-bian (who became political allies after Lee was forced out of the KMT for his pro-Taiwan views) – although the pendulum may now be swinging the other way. Economically Taiwan has stagnated or gone into reverse as much of its manufacturing has moved to China over the past twenty years, hollowing out Taiwan’s industrial base.

Indeed the case can be made that despite the absence of political dialogue, Taiwan is now far more dependent on China than it ever was. Many believe it to be unhealthily so.

Yet rather than seeking to ensure Taiwan maximises its options, Ma and his KMT allies appear intent on working with Beijing to cement the relationship even further to the point that even the national anthem and the national flag have to be put away whenever a PRC official is within sight. Pro-Taiwan sentiment within the KMT seems to have been nipped in the bud.

The official line is that reunification will come when China sees the error of its ways and embraces a democratic system of government – for which the ROC has shown the way. This is really a reorganisation of the earlier theory that China would self-destruct. The trouble with that reasoning is twofold: there is no sign of it happening any time soon and furthermore the KMT seems to be keen to reinforce the Beijing line by denying visas to Chinese dissidents that seek to visit. The leaders of the KMT do not want to see an independent Taiwan anymore than the Chinese leaders do.

With the economic accords out of the way, China is now pushing for political and military talks with suggestions that one item China may be willing to put on the agenda would be removal of the more than 1000 missiles it has deployed on its southern coast and posing a direct threat to Taiwan. It sounds appealing at first sight until one considers the quid pro quo which undoubtedly would be that Taiwan forgo any further defensive military purchases.

China will not let up the pressure it is exerting on Taiwan to ensure it returns to the fold and in the KMT government, it appears to have many willing hands to ensure that no future government on Taiwan could ever contemplate other than reunification. It has even been floated that Presidents Ma Ying-jeou and Hu Jintao might themselves be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Now that would be one for the books!

The question is whether the electorate will buy into it. We only have another month to find out.