Indeed, Taiwanese capital and know-how built much of China’s high-tech industries, and more than half a million Taiwanese live and work near Shanghai in a virtual replica of Hsinchu, Taiwan’s Silicon Valley. But in Chen’s Taiwan, domestic squabbles took precedence over economic development. Chen invariably blamed the KMT for blocking sensible economic plans, but even some of his moneyed supporters knew better.
With corruption allegations dogging the Chen government, the KMT was voted back into power. But, while Chen’s legacy of lies and corruption has ended, the reborn KMT under President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has much to do to convince a cynical public that Chen’s ways, reminiscent of the KMT’s own darker past, have not become embedded in the system.
Chen’s jail sentence should also serve to remind the DPP that it must become a party for all Taiwanese, “local” or not, if it is to have any chance at a revival. Taiwan’s people know that they cannot prosper as a democracy if ethnic divisiveness is allowed to hold sway.
Sin-ming Shaw is a former visiting scholar of history at Oxford and Harvard.
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