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ANALYSIS: No full
democracy, academics say
IT’S COMPLICATED: Although Taiwan has been
making steady progress on the road to full democratization, it is still being
influenced by several factors, academics say
By Shih Hsiu-chuan / Staff Reporter
A member of staff at the Chinese
Nationalist Party (KMT) campaign headquarters in Taipei posts presidential vote
count updates for cities and counties after the election on Jan 14.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Taiwan has yet to reach full democracy,
because its development has been complicated by a variety of factors, including
its national personality characteristics, history and relationship with China
and the world, academics say.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) won re-election by a margin of 6 percent, or about
800,000 votes, over Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) challenger Tsai Ing-wen
(蔡英文) in the country’s fifth direct presidential election on Jan. 14.
It was generally held that the result of the election was partly because of
rhetoric warning voters of the supposed negative impact of a DPP victory on
cross-strait relations.
The groups that jumped onto such a bandwagon in the run-up to the election
ranged from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — Ma’s party — to a number of
prominent entrepreneurs, who in the past seldom took sides or talked about
politics. Taiwan Affairs Office officials in Beijing and former American
Institute in Taiwan director Douglas Paal could be added to that list.
Jim Lee (李筱峰), a professor of Taiwanese literature at National Taipei University
of Education, said the so-called “intimidation cards” this year did “the trick”
because of Taiwan’s increasing economic reliance on China.
“My guess is that intimidation cards will become more and more effective in
swaying voters and affecting election results if the government continues the
policy that locks Taiwan’s economy into a monolithic Chinese one,” Lee said.
Lee attributed the susceptibility of voters to the characteristics of Taiwanese,
which he said were “cowardice, greed and vanity,” quoting Shinpei Goto, the
country’s administrator between 1898 and 1906 during the Japanese colonial
period.
“Election tactics like threats and bribery work with voters who have personality
weaknesses. Intimidation trumps cowardice, greedy voters could be easily bribed
and bestowing small favors upon the voters gratifies their vanity,” Lee said.
The differences in the characteristics between Taiwanese and South Koreans, who
usually have independent spirits with strong personalities, explain why the
resistance movements against colonial Japanese occupation in Taiwan were much
milder than those in Korea, the most famous being the March 1st Movement, Lee
said.
“In independent voters, the characteristics are especially salient,” Lee said.
“This is because they still have not shed the mindsets developed under the
decades-long authoritarian rule of the KMT that disregarded the importance of
Taiwan’s sovereignty and the significance of the values of freedom and
democracy.”
Tsai received 45.6 percent of votes in the election, about 4 percent higher than
the percentage of votes obtained by Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) when he challenged Ma four
years ago.
“The small increase in the percentage of votes proved that it’s still hard for
the DPP to win support from independent voters,” Lee said.
The re-election of Ma was interpreted by some commentators as recognition of his
reconciliatory cross-strait policy, but Michael Chang (張茂桂), a research fellow
at Academic Sinica’s Institute of Sociology, disagrees.
“Rather than a victory for Ma, I would say it was a victory for [Chinese
President] Hu Jintao’s (胡錦濤) Taiwan policy line — yi shang wei zheng (以商圍政),”
Chang said, refering to Beijing’s united front policy to gradually force Taiwan
to submit to its political will by throwing the country economic lifelines.
With this approach, “China has had a strong bearing on the livelihood of too
many Taiwanese,” he said.
The election result reflected the public’s worries over the disappearance of
“peace dividends” under a DPP government whose “Taiwan consensus” — that allows
for independence — was unacceptable against the so-called “1992 consensus” —
equivalent to the acceptance of a one-China platform, Chang said.
People who have enjoyed the dividends or expect to enjoy more of them voted to
ensure their interests and to prevent “systematic risks” to the cross-strait
business environment that could have been caused if the DPP had won, he said.
It all has to do with the intimate interweaving of business and politics in
China, where “the hidden rule is that business opportunities and deals are made
possible behind the scenes, because they are often ‘gifts’ from Chinese
officials with political endorsement, in exchange for returned reciprocity,”
Chang said.
Taking as an example the smartphone maker HTC Corp, whose chairwoman, Cher Wang
(王雪紅), strongly endorsed the “1992 consensus” on the eve of the election, Chang
said that HTC would not have been able to tap into the Chinese market without
collaborating with China Mobile.
Chang Yen-hsien (張炎憲), a professor of Taiwan history at National Taipei
University of Education, said that the impact of intimidation tactics in the
election should be examined over a longer time frame, rather than just how it
affected the election.
It is true that intimidation works on voters in Taiwan because Taiwan is a
relatively young democracy, with the process only starting in the 1980s, and its
national identity is still in the process of formation and consolidation, Chang
Yen-hsien said.
“While the campaign was heating up, information was heaped upon voters in
various forms, like media reports, ads and campaign slogans, rendering people
unable to compare the policy platforms of the respective candidates and
carefully consider which candidate to vote for in only a short and tense period
of time,” he said.
An example to corroborate his contention was that more than 70 percent of
Taiwanese are not familiar with the content of the “1992 consensus,” as one
survey had suggested, but the issue held sway in the election simply because
people were told that the DPP’s rejection of the formula could disrupt
cross-strait relations.
“When the election is over and people have calmed down, they can think more
clearly. This is how Taiwan makes steady progress in its democratization. We
would not have arrived at this point had we not learned from past elections,” he
said.
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