"Self-strengthening activities" (自強活動), a feature of local political culture, have now become popular on the other side of the Taiwan Strait.
During the period of authoritarian rule, even entertainment and group excursions had to be accompanied by moral epithets. Thus, when government agencies and schools organized leisure trips, they had to be called "self-strengthening."
The application of the term to electoral politics is yet another Taiwanese innovation. "Self-strengthening activities" are a way to co-opt community leaders during elections. Candidates treat neighborhood chiefs and borough wardens to outings, then take people from their local communities as well. Everyone happily eats and drinks as candidates happily count heads and calculate votes.
The most exciting activities are of course those related to highly competitive elections where there only is a limited number of voters, such as in elections for council speakers and deputy council speakers.
The itineraries are also the most elaborate. Wine, women and gambling -- whatever you want, you get.
The beauty of this kind of political self-strengthening is that it consists of an exchange of concrete benefits. It is also a coercive action that restricts individual freedom of movement and prevents the opponent from engaging people, an active demonstration of real power.
Organizing self-strengthening activities is a power game requiring advanced skills. They are illegal by nature, and the exchange of benefits is not built on trust and enjoys no legal protection. They therefore rely on coercion.
Leaders of Taiwanese business associations in China have recently been invited to meet Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) by local officials in charge of Taiwan affairs. In both style and substance, this is very similar to the self-strengthening activities familiar to us at home.
Everyone knows the meeting is an attempt by the Chinese leader to initiate a propaganda war opposing Taiwanese independence. Would not participating not be the same as saying that you are in favor of Beijing's biggest taboo? Retribution would result.
Of course, the Chinese leadership wouldn't be so stupid as to threaten his guests right there and then. He would want to create an atmosphere of solidarity, while at the same time demonstrating his power.
And after eyeballing the people Beijing has indeed been able to co-opt, Taiwan can only hang its head in shame.
However, we can assume that local authorities in charge of China policy are also eager to get the businessmen to return home for Lunar New Year to take part in its own self-strengthening activities.
The activities marked for Taiwanese businessmen must be less coercive than the traditional self-strengthening conducted during election campaigns, due to the gap across the strait (or "one country on each side," which China considers jarring). This makes it difficult for Beijing to count votes and co-opt community leaders. Nor does the Chinese leadership have any means of imposing sanctions on those who change their minds once votes have been cast, since the economic cost for imposing sanctions on each and every businessman would be too high.
This is also the reason why Taiwanese businessmen can have a bet each way, moving quite comfortably between both sets of self-strengthening activites in an environment where they enjoy no clear legal protection.
The businessmen, however, have won over both governments by relying on economic strength. Hu must be polite towards them, and President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) cannot afford to offend them.
Ku Er-teh is a freelance writer.
Translated by Perry Svensson
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
Ursula K. le Guin in The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas proposed a thought experiment of a utopian city whose existence depended on one child held captive in a dungeon. When taken to extremes, Le Guin suggests, utilitarian logic violates some of our deepest moral intuitions. Even the greatest social goods — peace, harmony and prosperity — are not worth the sacrifice of an innocent person. Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), since leaving office, has lived an odyssey that has brought him to lows like Le Guin’s dungeon. From late 2008 to 2015 he was imprisoned, much of this
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and