While President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and those who benefit from trade relations between Taiwan and China are busy promoting a proposed cross-strait economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA), there is a truth that they dare not face up to: That the real problem is the widening gap between rich and poor, accompanied by worsening class oppression.
When these economic and political beneficiaries, following the trend of economic globalization, keep traveling between China and Taiwan, what they dare not admit is that they have sold out democratic values and reneged on their promises to society.
Economic globalization has led to the formation of an M-shaped society as the middle class is weakened or even disappears. Unemployment and falling incomes have made life very hard for the middle and lower classes. These phenomena have already taken hold in Taiwan and Ma can hardly be unaware of it.
Besides, since Ma took office two years ago, it has been clear to everybody how his administration has undermined democracy and betrayed the public. If Ma’s determination to sign the proposed ECFA were driven by faith in neoliberal globalization, there would be no need to worry about Taiwan’s democracy disappearing, because neoliberals uphold democracy and human rights. We would only have to deal with the problem of wealth redistribution.
However, Ma’s attacks on democracy and human rights, in words and in deeds, give cause to worry that the proposed trade pact is nothing more than a sugarcoat on the bitter pill of unification with China.
In his book The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy, historian Christopher Lasch wrote that economic globalization has created a new elite stratum of people who have no national loyalties and who, like gypsies, live by following the market, going wherever there are profits to be made.
These people are known as globalists, citizens of the world who do not identify with their native soil or any particular country. They shuttle between different countries and have come to share similar lifestyles as well as common values and ideology. They have claimed for themselves the right to define words like “openness,” “progress,” “cultural ferment” and “internationalization.” Anyone who opposes them is automatically labeled as “isolationist,” opposed to opening up, a cause of marginalization, etc.
For these people, economic interests are everything, while democracy and human rights are mere window dressing, just for show when they need to put on a humanistic and cultivated image. Meanwhile, competitiveness, struggling to the top and trying to overtake others are their golden rules.
For example, the reason given for the government’s proposal to allow Chinese students to attend post-secondary institutions in Taiwan is that universities should strive to gain a place among the world’s top institutions and become more competitive by adopting an open attitude.
Lasch criticized Western proponents of globalization for only seeking economic benefits for those in the elite stratum. In Taiwan, this economic elite has joined up with the trend of political unification represented by Ma to apply a sugarcoat on an ECFA.
This group has set out to mislead the public. What it is trying to do is highly unethical and a fraud.
Allen Houng is a professor in the Institute of Philosophy of Mind and Cognition at National Yang-Ming University.
TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG
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