There is no doubt that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is a nationalist party. During the 1990s, the party had two roads to choose from: the social democratic one toward a welfare state, or Taiwanese nationalism. The DPP chose the latter and remains uncertain on the former.
However, the DPP is not a full-fledged nationalist party. Taiwanese nationalism, which was an important factor behind the party's accession to power, is now one of its heaviest burdens. Over the past eight years, the DPP has used up all the nationalist resources that had accumulated in civil society and academic institutions -- Taiwan first, cultural self-awareness, language equality, historical reconstruction and so on -- by opportunistically applying them toward election campaigns without deepening the nationalist discourse and opening up a more advanced pro-localization path.
After president-elect Ma Ying-jeou (
A greater disaster for the DPP, however, has been that apart from its nationalism, it had nothing to say. During the presidential election campaign, we saw how the problem of inferior Chinese products developed from a problem of failing market mechanisms to a nationalist issue, and how the cross-strait common market went from being a conflict over economic positions to a war between Taiwan and China. In this process, the DPP built its attack along nationalistic lines by badmouthing China and instilling fear -- though it is true that the KMT did its fair share of fearmongering with all its talk about "the bad state of the economy."
It is not that the DPP lacks good ideas. DPP presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) proposed his "happy economy" concept, which had a distinct flavor of social democracy. Hsieh stressed that GDP growth should not be the only indicator of economic growth, a new perspective on development that is necessary as Taiwan faces environmental disaster and social inequality. However, DPP leaders only understand nationalism; if they are aware of other issues, they are only capable of dressing them in the language of nationalism.
During the presidential election campaign, it was obvious that all the KMT's talk about fighting for the economy was filled with hackneyed cliches and only meant fighting for a benchmark economy -- the economy of the wealthy -- and an economy that doesn't care about its impact on the environment. Despite this, the DPP was incapable of launching any effective criticism.
The election tells us that the nationalist party of the past is dead. The DPP's post-election realignment must include adjustments to its nationalism. As most media outlets are inimical to the party, and since current public sentiment does not seem to be very open to ideological or systemic reform, the DPP must be cautious and pragmatic when it plays the nationalism card and focus it on building social forces rather than on political struggles.
More important, the party must move quickly to clearly explain its position on social fairness and environmental justice. This is the only way voters will be able to differentiate between the DPP and the KMT. If the DPP wants to continue calling itself a progressive party, it should lead its supporters to think about something else than nationalism.
Lee Li-wei is a graduate student in the Institute of Sociology at National Tsing Hua University.
TRANSLATED BY PERRY SVENSSON
A response to my article (“Invite ‘will-bes,’ not has-beens,” Aug. 12, page 8) mischaracterizes my arguments, as well as a speech by former British prime minister Boris Johnson at the Ketagalan Forum in Taipei early last month. Tseng Yueh-ying (曾月英) in the response (“A misreading of Johnson’s speech,” Aug. 24, page 8) does not dispute that Johnson referred repeatedly to Taiwan as “a segment of the Chinese population,” but asserts that the phrase challenged Beijing by questioning whether parts of “the Chinese population” could be “differently Chinese.” This is essentially a confirmation of Beijing’s “one country, two systems” formulation, which says that
“History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes” (attributed to Mark Twain). The USSR was the international bully during the Cold War as it sought to make the world safe for Soviet-style Communism. China is now the global bully as it applies economic power and invests in Mao’s (毛澤東) magic weapons (the People’s Liberation Army [PLA], the United Front Work Department, and the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]) to achieve world domination. Freedom-loving countries must respond to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), especially in the Indo-Pacific (IP), as resolutely as they did against the USSR. In 1954, the US and its allies
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in China yesterday, where he is to attend a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin today. As this coincides with the 50 percent US tariff levied on Indian products, some Western news media have suggested that Modi is moving away from the US, and into the arms of China and Russia. Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation fellow Sana Hashmi in a Taipei Times article published yesterday titled “Myths around Modi’s China visit” said that those analyses have misrepresented India’s strategic calculations, and attempted to view
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) stood in front of the Potala Palace in Lhasa on Thursday last week, flanked by Chinese flags, synchronized schoolchildren and armed Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops, he was not just celebrating the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the “Tibet Autonomous Region,” he was making a calculated declaration: Tibet is China. It always has been. Case closed. Except it has not. The case remains wide open — not just in the hearts of Tibetans, but in history records. For decades, Beijing has insisted that Tibet has “always been part of China.” It is a phrase
RSS