Editorial

With the presidential election drawing close, foreign journalists are washing up on Taiwan's shores in search of stories. They are being greeted with the predictable spin dished out in abundance by the Government Information Office: How out of the ashes of defeat the KMT forged an economic miracle in Taiwan and capped this with a bloodless political revolution that has produced arguably the freest society a Chinese culture has ever known. Most journalists have been there and done that. Then there is the interviewing of notable dissidents such as Shih Ming-teh (施明德) about the bad old days, with the caveat that was in another country and, besides, those days are dead. The journalists have the T-shirt for that one too. So what to write? What is the hot new Taiwan story that won't invite the sarcastic dismissal in which news editors specialize?

On Monday, this newspaper ran a long article from the New York Times about the KMT's assets, Lien Chan's (連戰) trust fund plan and the accusations that the ruling party's wealth skews both the electoral process in Taiwan and the country's economy. Some might have wondered why, when such reporting is our business, we should use a story from a foreign newspaper. Partly, it was because we thought the story made a good read. And partly, it was to draw the more discerning readers' attention to the fact that newspapers with the clout of the New York Times are picking up on this story. And, tired as they are of the Taiwan success story and the inevitable comparisons with the odious regime across the Taiwan Strait, they are going to be less accepting of the GIO's traditional spin and start looking for Taiwan's problems.

Unfortunately, the free ride Taiwan has enjoyed since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 is nearing its end. The world is now well aware that Taiwan is very different from China and is realizing that the correct comparison is not with the dictatorship across the Strait but with the kind of country that Taiwan aspires to be taken for, a reasonably wealthy western-style democracy, a lower-tier EU member for instance. And by such standards, there is much to fault. The fantastic corruption of local politics, the gangsterization of politics at the national level, the KMT's penchant for buying elections, the scam that is the Taiwan stock market, rigged to rip off the savings of the small investor so that the wealthy and powerful can be rewarded for political and other favors; the list of problems is embarrassingly long.

Note that word: embarrassing. Because a lot of this is going to be heaped on Taiwan's head unless it cleans up its act -- and fast. We do not expect much to be accomplished in the next 50-odd days. But whoever is elected on March 18 has to understand that Taiwan is being viewed with a far more critical eye.

It is not just a question of an unusually critical press. It is not even just a question of making Taiwan a better society in which to live. It is a national security issue. Taiwan needs as much support as it can get. But the only reason for other countries to support it verges on the sentimental; since 1938 there has been a reluctance on the part of the West to see small, well-behaved democracies crushed by dictatorships. Even when calculations of realpolitik suggest it would be better to let it happen, an outcry from ordinary voters generally precludes this.