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Six decades of made-up politics
By J. Michael Cole 寇謐將
Friday, Sep 24, 2010, Page 8
Aside from the business and geopolitical imperatives that
stem from the international community’s desire to interact with the People’s
Republic of China (PRC), another reason why Taiwan remains in political
isolation is that its history and domestic conditions are misunderstood, not
only globally, but also in China and by many of the foreign correspondents who
cover Taiwan.
Routine references to Taiwan and China “splitting” after the Chinese civil war,
for example, or the mention that Taiwan and China have been ruled separately for
“more than six decades,” are not only misleading — they are wrong. Beyond
failing to get the facts right (disunited entities cannot split, and Taiwan was
ruled separately for at least 11 decades, counting Japanese rule), these facile
insertions tend to reinforce the view that Taiwan and China are one and the same
— or rather, that one ought to be subsumed into the other.
These generalizations also fail to take into account the political fabric of
Taiwanese society, which rather than being the monolith it is often portrayed as
(a mistake that has equal implications when it comes to coverage of China), is
far more complex and diversified.
Ironically, the external view of Taiwanese politics tends to attribute to the 23
million people in Taiwan the position of a tiny minority on the island. This has
been the true since Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)
forces fled to Taiwan after their defeat by the communists in 1949. Soon
afterwards, this government-in-exile imposed itself on Taiwanese and arrogated
upon itself the right to rule the 7.39 million people who lived in Taiwan at the
time, 1.37 million, or 18.55 percent, of whom were refugees from China.
When Chiang and the KMT, from 1949 until that dream collapsed as a result of its
own stupidity, threatened to retake the “mainland,” the rest of the world
assumed they were speaking for Taiwan as a whole, failing to realize that those
aspirations were only felt by, at most, one-fifth of the population (and
probably less, as mainlanders intermarried, built new lives for themselves and
no longer wanted anything to do with the Chinese Civil War).
During the final years of president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) and the 12 years
president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) was in power, the KMT also underwent a
transformation that saw it become more localized, progress that culminated in
Lee’s formulation of the Two-State Theory. Not only did this move Taiwan toward
consolidation as an independent state, but of equal importance, it also departed
from the prevailing KMT view that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the PRC
were illegitimate and that the KMT’s Republic of China (ROC) was the one and
only China. By doing so, the KMT came closer to reflecting the views of ordinary
Taiwanese, who, though they disliked the authoritarianism they saw in China and
felt threatened by the CCP’s ambitions to “liberate” Taiwan, did not deny the
existence of their neighbor as a sovereign state in its own right.
This process was taken even further under the eight years of the Chen Shui-bian
(陳水扁) presidency, during which time Taiwanese identity was not only celebrated,
but also reinforced. Chen’s policies on Taiwanese identity and his “one country
on each side of the Taiwan Strait” were also based on recognition of the PRC and
the CCP as legitimate political entities, which again dovetailed with the
majority consensus among Taiwanese.
One by-product of China’s closed political system and state control of the media
is that the sense of Taiwanese nationhood that always existed remained largely
unknown to ordinary Chinese, who were fed propaganda that defined Taiwan as a
lethal enemy seeking to undermine all that was good in the PRC.
By failing to look at the nuances of history and politics, foreign media
coverage of Taiwan commits the same sin — a worse one, given their access is
better than that of even the most well-intentioned Chinese. That is why some
outlets find it easy to portray the Democratic Progressive Party as
“anti-China,” which it isn’t. It is pro-Taiwan, as are the great majority of
Taiwanese.
“Anti-China” would imply the negation of China as a political entity, which, but
for a few “extremists,” is an altogether discredited idea in Taiwan. It is no
small irony that Westerners who have lived in China for a while also believe
that Taiwan and Taiwanese do not recognize the PRC and the CCP.
Sadly, under President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) the KMT has resurrected the idea that
there is only one China — the ROC — and that its sole legitimate ruler is the
KMT. Such comments, which receive far more airtime in China and abroad than do
those who disagree with them, are an attempt to turn back the clock and could
reinforce the view in China that Taiwan is, indeed, “anti-China.”
However, this could not be further from the truth. Not only does Ma’s contention
highlight that the faction within the KMT that had localized and adapted to
modern realities under CCK and Lee has been sidelined, but it further contrasts
the views of ordinary Taiwanese with the increasingly small minority of people
in Taiwan who identify as Chinese rather than Taiwanese.
Unless the KMT manages to socially re-engineer Taiwanese society — and there are
signs it is trying to do so via reforms in education — those increasingly
diverging views can only spell trouble for the KMT in future elections. It could
save itself if the faction that is more grounded in Taiwanese reality gets the
upper hand within the party.
Despite the political rhetoric of the Ma administration, Taiwanese have
absolutely no claim over China, nor do they seek to threaten it, militarily or
politically. Simultaneously, ordinary Chinese and the CCP should acknowledge
that people in Taiwan increasingly identify as Taiwanese and that support for
immediate unification continues to drop (now as low as 5 percent, from 9 percent
in 2000, by some accounts) while that for the “status quo” and/or immediate
Taiwanese independence (now at 16 percent, from 12 percent a decade ago) is
steadily rising.
With their political blinders still on, it is no wonder that Chinese and
international media are failing to see the trouble that lies ahead in the Taiwan
Strait, when Ma’s “peace” and Beijing’s ambitions of unification collide with
the very different (and conveniently ignored) realities of domestic politics in
Taiwan.
The so-called “warming ties” are party-to-party, not state-to-state or between
two peoples, and should be characterized as such. These are realities that every
responsible international media outlet should seek to reflect in its reporting,
both for sake of accuracy and out of respect for the 23 million people who, to
this day, remain misunderstood.
J. Michael Cole is deputy news editor at the Taipei Times.
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