So often we hear complaints by politicians that their rivals stir up ethnic tension by appealing to base instincts and Taiwan's history of ethnic discrimination. Occasionally, the "ethnic card" is played among the smaller minorities -- Hakka, Aborigines and marital immigrants -- for less spectacular results. But in election season, as legislators and party activists spit out language both offensive and florid, the chance presents itself to gain greater attention and exploit social inequalities.
KMT Legislator Kung Wen-chi (
Last week Kung attacked President Chen Shui-bian (
Over Chen's two terms, Aboriginal affairs have seen a mixture of genuine concern and indifference. Part of the responsibility for this must lie with the legislature, which -- hardly surprisingly -- has expressed a bipartisan lack of enthusiasm in advancing reform on Aboriginal autonomy and land rights.
But responsibility also lies with Chen's team in the Presidential Office. Top among these is Vice President Annette Lu (
So Kung's criticism can be expected. When he suggested, however, that Chen take after Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and issue a broad apology to Taiwan's Aboriginal peoples, he went over the line. In doing so, Kung not only insulted Chen by misrepresenting his record on Aboriginal issues, he also exploited the misery of Australian Aborigines to advance his career.
Rudd's apology was made in the context of hundreds of years of racist, if not genocidal, Aboriginal policy, and was partly energized by a report detailing the widespread, forcible removal of Aboriginal children from their parents for ideological reasons. It was also made in an environment of widespread opposition to any apology, including from former prime minister John Howard, a number of conservative legislators and media commentators, as well as a large minority of ordinary Australians.
Comparing Chen's eight-year stretch of government to Australia's centuries-old history of mistreatment of Aborigines is ludicrous. If Kung were simply another ignorant and uncouth legislator mouthing off on a touchy subject, then this would not be so noteworthy. But he holds a doctorate from a British university and his thesis was on indigenous people and the media. He cannot be unaware of the horrible experiences of Australian Aborigines -- at the hands of their government, ordinary White Australians and their own miscreant elements -- and of the currency that can be gained through media manipulation.
There are perfectly good reasons why Kung stooped to such demeaning language. The most likely is that if Ma wins the presidential election, Kung will be on the inside track to head the executive-level Council for Indigenous Peoples, the top Aboriginal bureaucracy. Every little attack on the enemy, no matter how cynical, helps this agenda.
And if Kung obtains the most powerful position in the nation that is open to the Aboriginal elite -- in practical terms, anyway -- we can expect that he will continue to do what he has done through most of his career as a Ma acolyte: Take instructions, follow them to the letter and keep his people ignorant of their real history of persecution.
With a Taiwan contingency increasingly more plausible, Taiwanese lobbies in Japan are calling for the government to pass a version of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), emulating the US precedent. Such a measure would surely enable Tokyo to make formal and regular contact with Taipei for dialogue, consultation, policy coordination and planning in military security. This would fill the missing link of the trilateral US-Japan-Taiwan security ties, rendering a US military defense of Taiwan more feasible through the support of the US-Japan alliance. Yet, particular caution should be exercised, as Beijing would probably view the move as a serious challenge to
As the Soviet Union was collapsing in the late 1980s and Russia seemed to be starting the process of democratization, 36-year-old US academic Francis Fukuyama had the audacity to assert that the world was at the “end of history.” Fukuyama claimed that democratic systems would become the norm, and peace would prevail the world over. He published a grandiose essay, “The End of History?” in the summer 1989 edition of the journal National Interest. Overnight, Fukuyama became a famous theorist in the US, western Europe, Japan and even Taiwan. Did the collapse of the Soviet Union mark the end of an era as
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