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Editorial: Who's afraid of lunch-box politics?

Likening former Democratic Progressive Party chairman Shih Ming-teh (施明德) to Mao Zedong (毛澤東), Shih's supporters to Red Guards and his campaign to the Cultural Revolution is tempting, but only if one is speaking with tongue in cheek.

Dissident writer Cao Changqing (曹長青), a columnist with the Liberty Times (the sister newspaper of the Taipei Times), however, has done just that, but without his tongue in his cheek.

Yesterday Cao told a press conference that the tactics of the Shih team resembled those used to whip up hysteria and violence in China's most infamous phase of the modern era.

Cao is not speaking mischievously. He is from China and knows what the Cultural Revolution did -- and is still doing, in pernicious ways -- to China. He supports Taiwan's right of self-determination, however it may manifest itself.

What Cao does not seem to understand is that the social and historical circumstances that shape Taiwanese behavior do not lend themselves to casual comparisons of Taiwanese protests to Chinese mass insanity.

In the Cultural Revolution, a people's youthful enthusiasm for bettering their country was nourished and manipulated by a charismatic thug to annihilate rivals within the Chinese Communist Party and groups within society that had the potential to weaken his grip on power.

It wasn't just about purging senior politicians and having a gullible proletariat let off some steam. It was about brainwashing millions of people, including children, into abandoning basic values of loyalty and propriety in the service of a cult leader's personal agenda. It was about killing as many ordinary people as necessary to protect that agenda.

It was a power play that nearly ruined a nation already suffering from the stupidity of the Great Leap Forward. And thirty years on, the social and spiritual effects of that era remain embedded in the Chinese psyche, including, in all likelihood, the fear of it coming to pass all over again in some form.

China's self-fulfilling prophecy of "chaos" therefore gives its rulers license to oppress, and temporary economic euphoria deflates the efforts of those who would lobby for a just and stable political structure.

Taiwanese do not have this history. Under Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rule there was savagery, but power was distributed sufficiently broadly -- and US oversight was sufficiently alert -- such that the "Republic of China" as a whole could work at making things better. And for most people, things got a lot better.

While there is a chance of conflict if Shih's campaign proceeds with its nationwide roadshow, there is no chance of this campaign appealing to Taiwan's "masses" -- as a mass revolution must -- because the economic interests of the great majority of Taiwanese are in conflict with the simplistic and naive (and disingenuous) messages of revolution and purity that the campaign is disseminating.

Put more simply, you can't stage a revolution on the back of complimentary lunch boxes.

Perhaps it was the color of these protesters' shirts that sent Cao Changqing over the edge and prompted him to warn of pending disaster. And he does make good points about the psychology of those involved and the techniques of organizers in rallying them.

Nevertheless, Cao would be doing his listeners and readers a service if he were to ease off on the alarmist rhetoric and factor in some positive attributes of this nation that will defuse a serious escalation: mutual respect, a sense of local community and, above all, a sense of perspective.
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