|
Who will stay behind as Taiwan’s people flee?
By Lee Min-yung 李敏勇
An 83-year-old Mainlander who could no longer stand to see his 79-year-old wife
suffer from Parkinson’s disease is suspected of drugging her with sleeping pills
and then hitting her on the head with a screwdriver and a hammer before finally
calling the police after she died.
I am not sure how the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), which runs Taiwan as a
one-party state and is about to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Republic
of China (ROC), feels about this. This government and those who fled to Taiwan
together with former dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) ran it as a dictatorship
during the Martial Law era through its privileged party, government and military
officials. Those with power remain in Taiwan, while their family members
emigrated to the US or other developed, democratic nations.
Chiang and his son Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) no longer rule Taiwan, but those who
served under them have inherited their attitude, assuming that power is their
god-given right.
The old man in the story mentioned above came over with Chiang Kai-shek after
the war, and his wife was especially skilled in Chinese and English.
However, this man, who felt that he had no other choice but to kill his wife
left a message that read: “Everyone wants to go to the US and be Americans. What
is the good in all this? All I know is that my children have all gone to the US
and that this is bad for us.”
President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) two daughters are also in the US. Ma started out
waiting on the powerful leaders of Taiwan’s past and now he is supposed to be
our president, but even people within his own administration have the guts to
refer to him as only “Mr Ma” and not president. Ma and his father probably never
believed in the status of their “nation.” While Ma often talks about the
sovereignty the ROC in an attempt to look like he is running a country, it just
never seems genuine.
How do the children and grandchildren of this old man who felt he had to kill
his wife, feel about this? Do they really believe their mother died at their
father’s hands? Surely, their mother died at their own hands; the hands of the
children who went far away to the US to become Americans. This old lady actually
died in the shadow of the KMT’s ROC theory. And at this time, the KMT is busying
itself putting up decorations to celebrate what they think is great about their
“country” when in fact so many horror stories have happened over the last 100
years, with the aforementioned story being only the most recent example.
How many of Taiwan’s 23 million people have US citizenship or citizenship in
other countries? If the percentage is 10 percent, that would be 2.3 million
people. What if the ratio is even higher? It is understandable if people from
Taiwan get citizenship in other nations because they are uneasy about Taiwan’s
status as a nation, a status that is purely fictitious. However, there are those
people who talk about how great the ROC is while they also hold US citizenship.
These people are normally involved in politics, the military and other
privileged groups or work in state-owned enterprises or are civil servants. Such
people are a perfect example of the pathetic nature of the KMT’s whole
party-state fantasy.
Lee Min-yung is a poet and political critic.
|
