Helping Beijing understand the complexity
of Taiwanese society, rather than reinforcing its flawed assumptions, would go
a long way in avoiding the kind of reckoning that could prompt China to use
force against the island
One of the principal reasons why I fear
Beijing will eventually lose patience with the government in Taipei on the
“reunification” issue, and therefore likely embark on a more hardline course,
is that even after five years of cross-strait rapprochement, Chinese expectations
continue to be based on a terribly flawed understanding of the highly complex
political dynamics that exist within Taiwanese society.
We should state from the outset that this
lack of understanding has nothing to do with the intelligence of Chinese
officials and academics. Instead, the blind spot stems from a tendency to
regard Taiwan in zero-sum terms, under which only two political forces — the
pro-unification and pro-independence camps — are allowed to exist. This world
view does not allow for a gray zone: everybody who supports Ma Ying-jeou’s
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is in the “good” camp; those who oppose its
policies are from the pro-independence Democratic progressive Party (DPP), the
“bad” camp, whose supporters Beijing regards as “the minority.”
Of course there are probably thinkers and
officials in China who have a more refined understanding of the political
environment in Taiwan. But if they exist, their views have not become
mainstream to the extent that they are influencing official policy. This is
made evident by the inability of the Chinese policymakers who are involved in
cross-strait negotiations, and of the academics who participate in cross-strait
conferences, to propose anything about unification that isn’t immediately a non-starter,
even among the “safe” pan-blue envoys and academics that were selected by the
blue camp to represent Taiwan.
What makes Taiwanese politics so complex,
and likelihood that the Taiwanese public will be willing to enter into
political talks with China so slim, is exactly that gray area in Taiwan, which
encompasses swing voters — “colorless,” “light-green” and “light blue” — civic
movements, NGOs, and a growing number of mostly young voters who have become
disenchanted with the main political parties. This not insubstantial segment of
the population is driven more by what could be called civic nationalism (as
opposed to ethnic nationalism) than by the “green” versus “blue” politics of
independence and unification. What this means, therefore, is that opposition to
KMT policies is not necessarily related to independence versus unification or
party affiliation.
Domestic matters that directly touch in
values, mores, and the ideational characteristics of Taiwanese society, are the
main drivers of activism in the gray zone. As a result, civic movements that,
for example, oppose the Ma administration’s controversial cross-strait services
trade agreement are not necessarily pro-independence or even pro-DPP (many are
not). In fact, the forces that have led to the emergence of an activist civil
society in the past 18 months are the direct result of the aforementioned
disillusionment with “blue” and “green” politics and their ethnicity-based
component.
So it does everybody a great disservice
when Taiwanese academics publish articles in China-based magazines and
newspapers that reinforce Beijing’s dichotomous, and therefore myopic,
understanding of Taiwan.
In an op-ed titled “Why be afraid of small
protest groups in Taiwan?” (台灣警方為何怕小型團體抗爭？) published in the Hong Kong-based ChinaReview on November 18, Wang Kung-yi (王崑義), a professor of international
affairs and strategic studies at Tamkang University, commits such an
infraction. Using the protests that surrounded the KMT’s 19th party congress
held in Greater Taichung on November 10 as the entry into his subject, Wang,
perhaps for the sake of his audience, papers over and therefore oversimplifies
the major distinctions that exist between the more than 10 civic organizations
that protested on that day. In fact, he places disparate groups such as the 908
Taiwan Republic Campaign, the Referendum Alliance, the Black Island Youth Front
and the laid-off factory workers under the umbrella of “pro-independence.”
Anyone who has followed those groups, as I
have, will immediately recognize the error in Wang’s position, as the aims of
organizations like the Black Island Youth Front and the laid-off factory
workers are not related to the independence question, but rather focus on very
precise legislative goals. Anyone who has attended the many protests organized
by those groups will moreover have been struck by the absence of politicians
and legislators from the DPP, not to mention the white-and-green flag
associated with the party or with independence.
The DPP’s inability to reach out to those
organizations, or to assist them in translating their protests into action
items in the Legislative Yuan, has led to a conscious decision among the
leadership of those groups to keep the DPP at arm’s length. The composition of
the activist groups is also evidence of that, as they comprise “blue” and
“green” voters, “Taiwanese,” “Mainlanders,” Aborigines, Hakka, and so on. No
single party identification or “ethnic” group has primacy over the others.
This reality also counters Wang’s
conspiracy claim that the DPP, having decided to no longer directly involve
itself with mass protests, is using the smaller and “more radical” groups of
activists as proxies to pressure the Ma administration. No such understanding
exists. As a matter of fact, the DPP has repeatedly been criticized for
ignoring the efforts of civic organizations, or the value of civil society as a
whole.
Wang is right when he argues that police
and the government should be afraid of the small organizations. But he is right
for the wrong reasons. The so-called “radicalism” of groups such as the Black
Island or the Taiwan Rural Front, which he contrasts with the “orderly” Red
Shirts and Citizen 1985, isn’t the issue. The unpredictability, connectedness,
intelligence, and persistence of those organizations, and above all, the
heterogeneous nature of its members, which at long last has succeeded in
transcending the blue/green/ethnic divide that for far too long has kept Taiwan
a house divided, is what the Ma administration is afraid of, hence the high
security, barbed wire, and overuse of the legal system to deter the activists.
Ultimately it is such a force, animated by
the dynamics of “colorless” civic nationalism, which will foil China’s designs
on Taiwan by highlighting the irreconcilable divide that exists between the two
societies. Consequently, helping Beijing understand the complexity of Taiwanese
society and the nature of its civic activism, rather than reinforcing its
flawed assumptions, would go a long way in avoiding the kind of reckoning that
could prompt China to use force against the island. (Photo by the author)
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