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Widespread
vote-buying occurred in plain view
By Ted Chang 陳峻綱
Much has been made of the impact of China-based Taiwanese businesspeople’s votes
in last month’s presidential election. Fearing their business interests could be
jeopardized if Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文)
were elected president, it was obvious that they opted for what they perceived
as “stability” in cross-strait relations.
The role of the taishang (台商), as the Taiwanese living and doing business abroad
— including China — are known, in these elections was the largest and most
significant since Taiwan started having direct presidential elections in 1996.
An estimated 200,000 taishang — out of a total population of about 1 million —
came back from China to vote on Jan. 14, a majority of them apparently for
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
Huang Jin-hsun (黃錦勳), head of the Association of Taiwan-invested Enterprises in
Chongqing, raised 1.25 million yuan (US$198,000) to subsidize cross-strait
flights specifically for taishang to return home to vote, according to a report
by English-language news Web site Want China Times early last month. It would
not be a stretch to assume that Taiwanese associations in every Chinese city
engaged in such “fundraising.”
So, one wonders how Huang could have raised such an amount outside of membership
fees and donations. After all, it would be pointless for members of Taiwanese
business groups in China to donate out of their own pockets to subsidize their
own flights back home when they could just as well spend that money on regular
airfare.
The fact that airlines in China offered steep discounts to taishang for
cross-strait flights in the run-up to the elections is no surprise and well
known, but how much of that had to do with directives or pressure from the
Chinese government? How much of that pressure was applied on Taiwanese carriers?
More importantly, how much collusion was required between the KMT and the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with their combined resources and through their
intermediaries — the Straits Exchange Foundation and the Association for
Relations Across the Taiwan Straits?
As the Want China Times reported, Huang was clear on his political allegiance
and sent text messages to members of his association: “My dear fellow
countrymen, Ma Ying-jeou is only 1 or 2 percentage points ahead in recent
opinion polls. I ask you to fly back to Taiwan to vote for him. If you know any
Taiwanese person who has not yet bought a flight ticket back to Taiwan, please
let me know.”
It is also important to understand that the taishang constituency would have
generated much more than 200,000 votes, given the influence that senior members
have over their family and other relatives. Take those numbers out of the
equation, and the final vote between the KMT and DPP would have been much closer
than the 790,000 vote difference, or perhaps even in favor of Tsai.
Ultimately, offering subsidized cross-strait plane tickets through the Taiwanese
business associations in China — thereby offering financial incentives to
would-be voters to elect Ma — should be viewed as an act of vote-buying. Given
the scale at which this took place, it would not be an exaggeration to say that
this constitutes the biggest case of vote-buying in Taiwan’s history, involving
not just a single politician, but the KMT, the CCP and their respective
party-state apparatuses as well. It happened under everyone’s noses, yet no one
confronted the issue.
So while last month’s vote was lauded as a fair election, it appears that it was
far from it. The final question is: Why hasn’t anyone in Taiwan spoken out about
these blatantly undemocratic actions?
Ted Chang is a copy editor at the Taipei Times.
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