Taiwan has no shortage of melodramas this year. The most recent episode is President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) meeting Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) in Taipei last week. Political observers have touted this event as a landmark peacemaking gesture to lessen cross-strait tensions.
Although the Ma-Chen meeting was brief, both sides reached a consensus on resolving longstanding disputes through peaceful means. During Chen’s visit, ARATS and the Straits Exchange Foundation also inked a pact on shortening air routes, permitting direct maritime shipping, enhancing cross-strait postal services and setting up a food security mechanism.
While these practical approaches have been hailed as conducive to conflict resolution in the Asia-Pacific rim, many have overlooked how sustainable and valid they are.
The fact is Chen’s visit was greeted by heated anti-China slogans and street protests. Violence and bloodshed occurred between pro-Taiwan and anti-China supporters, as well as clashes with the police. At one point, Chen and his delegation were stranded in a hotel for eight hours. Before Chen’s visit, his deputy, Zhang Mingqing (張銘清), had endured a similar ordeal when he was confronted by protesters in Tainan.
Sadly, a majority of Taiwanese media are famous for creating drama rather than impartiality. The pro-China media portrayed the series of confrontations and clashes as violence instigated by anti-China demonstrators and opposition leaders. Meanwhile, the pro-Taiwan media focused on showing footage of police attacking unarmed civilians. Society’s voice is divided on the issue, as the public argued about these so-called “riots” and violent incidents. Some have gone as far as to say that the opposition’s adoption of violence — instead of a rational and peaceful approach — was a sign of Taiwan’s regressive democracy.
Resorting to violence is wrong. But the message that underlies the violence is enormous. In repressive regimes, the oppressed sometimes have no other choice but violence to express their fury and draw international attention to their plight. Violence has also occurred in mature democracies. Think about G8 protests, right-wing and left-wing demonstrations in Europe. Violence has never been excluded as a way of voicing discontent in democratic or non-democratic states.
The violence that occurred in Taiwan may not be that destructive, but it still left a number of civilians and police injured. What is worse, it revealed a wound that has not been heeded in Taiwanese society — the ethnopolitical cleavage that has nearly torn the nation apart.
There have been many attempts but no single objective survey that could really show how many Taiwanese are pro-independence, pro-unification, pro-status quo or undecided. What is certain is there is a divide between people who aspire for more international respect for Taiwan’s distinct entity and those who pine for a gradual unification with China. None of Taiwan’s leaders, however, have taken this division seriously. Indeed, politicians have profited from this schism and mobilized it to further their political ambitions. There has hardly been any serious effort to objectively address this ethnopolitical cleavage and seek measures to close the growing tensions and misunderstanding between these two camps. This can be seen in pro-independence president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) eight-year rule, in which this populist leader endeavored to foster a unique Taiwanese identity at the expense of pro-China voices, eventually widening the ethnopolitical division in society.
Eight months after Ma’s presidential win in March and six months after his inauguration, Ma has trumpeted great gestures to “create peace” across the Taiwan Strait. However, Ma has been carrying out his ideal of peaceful resolution with China at a pace that Taiwanese are not ready for. He has ignored the ethnopolitical division that has deepened during his predecessor’s administration. And he forgets that as the leader of Taiwan, he should not repeat Chen Shui-bian’s one-sided approach and respond only to supporters that share his pro-China vision.
It is interesting that during Ma’s meeting with Chen Yunlin, the Chinese envoy repeatedly used “Mr” rather than “president” to address Ma to avoid acknowledging Taiwan’s sovereignty. Ma did not reject this treatment. This moderate Harvard law graduate might believe this was a sign of goodwill, but he should not forget that the 17 million eligible voters of Taiwan cast their ballot to select their “president.”
If Mr Ma aspires to leave a good name in history — as he has revealed in his recent peacemaking gesture — then he has to return to his own divided people and ask how peace and democracy can further progress in this land. He has to sow the seeds of mutual understanding and conciliation not just between people from both sides of the Taiwan Strait, but also between the two major rival political forces in Taiwan.
Many Taiwanese have resisted being used by populist and opportunistic politicians to stage violence. It is vital that the voice of these people be heard. More social forums and civic education programs should be initiated to discuss and learn conflict resolution, eventually allowing rationality, integrity and justice to lead mainstream opinion.
If one considers a fair deal entails both “giving” and “taking,” then one has to ask what both bargaining parties have conceded and profited from the agreement in the short and long term — beyond pure symbolic gestures to foster peace. The Taiwanese and Chinese representatives have not revealed the real costs and benefits of the recent deal to their respective constituents. The Chinese leaders obviously do not consider being responsive to their compatriots an issue or a priority. Ma, however, is the leader of a democracy and hence tasked with the responsibility to address the public’s concerns. This begs the question then of whether now is the right moment for both sides to move from alienation to intimacy and to close the deal in a rush.
In my view, both sides have much to learn and to improve in domestic politics. Before democracy is truly consolidated, leaders from both sides will not be able to build a sustainable and binding peace-building framework for the future. Ma should slow down his pace “outward” and strive to heal the wound that is tearing ears this country apart.
Yu-Wen Chen is a PhD candidate at the University of Konstanz in Germany.
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