A Taiwanese democracy
I enjoyed Gary Rawnsley’s recent piece saying that the Taiwan Academies are a poor strategy and agree with him on most of his points such as the need for soft power, the need to make culture more of a holistic strategy and the ambiguity of competing with China’s Confucius Institutes (“Taiwan Academies a poor solution,” Sept. 14, page 8). However, there is one point that he and most of the world have not yet gotten past to achieve the appropriate paradigm shift and perspective. That is his statement that Taiwan is the first Chinese democracy.
Taiwan was not the first Chinese democracy, Taiwan is the first Taiwanese democracy. This may seem like word play, but behind it lies the continuing misunderstanding and misinterpretation of Taiwanese history in which the island or parts of the island have been ruled by various colonial powers, including the Dutch, Spanish, fleeing Ming diaspora, Manchu Qing, etc. Japan of course it must be noted was the first colonial power to rule and control the whole island of Taiwan.
We do not call the US the first British democracy, nor do we call any of the South American countries once ruled by Spain and which have the common Spanish language and cultural influence, the first, second or third Spanish democracies.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is by many considered the last colonial power to rule Taiwan before it got its democracy and herein lies the rub. The KMT did not give democracy to Taiwan during its colonial one-party state rule. They forced the people to learn Mandarin and memorize all sorts of information and history about China including rivers, mountains, etc, just like the Japanese before them had forced them to learn Japanese and study Japanese history.
Democracy in Taiwan was won by the Taiwanese who by blood, sweat and suffering forced the KMT to concede it after nearly 40 years of martial law. Too often it is forgotten that the Taiwanese had also forced the Japanese to grant them the right to elect their own representatives to the Japanese Diet.
Rawnsley is correct that it is a false logic for a Taiwanese government to depend too much on a culture linked to another land. And despite the fact that the current government likes to emphasize the canard that there are Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, the reality is that there are Chinese on the continental side of the Strait and Taiwanese on the other side of the Strait.
It is time for the world to recognize this and start speaking in terms of this reality.
JEROME KEATING
Taipei
Damage control
Government Information Office Minister Philip Yang’s (楊永明) defense of inordinate energy usage at his official residence is yet another example of platitudes uttered by top politicians with their hands caught in the cookie jar (“Saying one thing, doing another,” Sept. 14, page 8).
According to Yang, his child’s need for cool, circulating air at all times justified the exorbitant electricity bill that Taiwan’s taxpayers had to foot. Why do I see Yang playing the sympathy card in my mind’s eye? Why can’t I block out the image of Yang conveniently using his child as a human shield for his own political escape? Seen in this twilight light, Yang’s cool, calculating callousness is terrific ... in more than one sense.
Not only has Yang failed to offer any apologies to the public or shown remorse for his misconduct, he and company then turned the tables on his enemies. He verbally struck back at the press that had called him out while his office pointed the finger at his predecessors from the opposition party for similarly egregious energy consumption.
These knee-jerk reactions, his “not guilty” attitude and his playing the sympathy card — all are reminiscent of a demagogue skillfully deflecting an accusation by pulling out all the stops in an effort to do damage control. A sophist witnessing these antics would have been grinning indeed.
Yang’s public life had undoubtedly required him to think outside the box in order to solve problems. For Yang to not have put that skill into practice in his home shows hypocrisy and disrespect to the public service position he represents.
Further, his defense is an insult to all parents because it hints at his child’s extraordinary needs, which are more pressing than those of other children.
The only scene missing from this masquerade is Yang smugly telling us ad nauseam what he is doing, while we have been witnessing his fingers constantly pressing the “off” button on the air conditioning’s remote control.
MICHAEL TSAI
Tainan
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