In the weeks preceding the vacation atmosphere of the Spring Festival it might be salient to reflect on serious matters.
Taiwanese politics seem to rest on basic assumptions that together make up a political perspective that is in the main shared by all major figures in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Under some circumstances, this could be a joyful political regime. However. in Taiwan, the limits to democracy entailed in this shared perspective stand as an insult to the great democracy movement that took on the burdens and dangers of martial law and converted a newly industrializing tiger economy into a free state that could now act as a model of socio-political evolution for emerging systems and as the major source of Taiwan’s global soft power.
The assumptions are often rehearsed. The China-Taiwan Strait question is the dominant and imminent issue at the national level, and this needs to be somehow “settled” — despite a gross absence of clear terms and meanings — before any really detailed effort, time and money can be afforded to broader political issues — cities, the environment, social justice, education, aging and so on.
Second, that really no solution is possible given the global and local situation, and at this point most politicians admit failure even to use key terms with any consistency.
Third, the best pseudo-solution is to defend and extend the “status quo,” although how precisely this might be done is argued over. Generally, many in the DPP would admit that in reality the KMT continues to set and manipulate this agenda.
My point? Does this combination of assumptions not condemn Taiwan to a dismal “cold storage democracy” based on a two-party, one-issue system that is fundamentally indefinite because the pressure of maintaining an unwritten “status quo” means constant rehearsal and repetition, meaning in turn that it remains the dominant issue and indeed practically the only issue once presidential elections come round? Let us extend this thinking.
As the KMT does not appear to lose by this in any way, seeming to have an infinite capacity to maintain basic contradictions, then my proposition would be as follows — unless the DPP acts in the mid-term as an opposition on all major fronts, putting out funded and systematic agendas on basic issues from the environment to social inequalities over the next two years, then the Taiwanese political system will be maintained in aspic, as if the electorate were simply not grown up enough to be trusted with a proper vote on a myriad of basic issues.
The notion of an underdeveloped electorate, seemingly fostered in this argument, was one maintained by the great economist and constitutionalist Walter Bagehot in the England of the 1860s, but even he could hardly have expected it to be maintained in strength across the world in Taiwan in the 21st century.
However, this ancient Victorian vision seems to underlay much of what we now have — a cold storage democracy in which an original one-party system of several issues, clouded, controlled and minimized by martial law, has, through all the earnest and brave efforts of the Taiwanese democracy movement, evolved into a two-party, one-issue system, wherein political debate is held in aspic, like a vegetable in jelly.
The essential feature of Taiwanese cold storage democracy is that through the old reasoning it becomes all but impossible for a new party to arise just as the two parties that do exist are caught in aspic.
Any new party is immediately set up against the single issue. On other essential issues such as the environment or employment or aging population, policy contention is so low that no party based on good policies in such arenas could get a voice, thus could never arise to a real competitive third or fourth level position.
In addition, any new outsider party would be very unlikely to possess a key that could unravel the China problem. This completes a vicious circle — the lack of newcomer competition further curtails democracy as it means no internal threat to the existing single issue dominance.
The KMT can thus continue its game-playing and major issues are seldom put before the voters. Corruption is about the only other issue that gets a look-in, and this seems utterly confused, as well as insidious on both sides of the political dualism. This is cold storage democracy Taiwan-style.
Taiwan is, thus, literally buried in the aspic of single-issue politics, compounded by the arrogance of the KMT, a party which too often seems to consider national politics a game of emotive words rather than considered policies, and which has for this reason chosen to remain with the China-Taiwan Strait issue despite its own historical past, which until surprisingly recent years included an explicit policy for the invasion of the mainland.
The turn-abouts of the past decades are nonsensical, but luckily for the KMT, the electorate can be short of memory and the new voters seem often unaware of such historical contradictions.
However, we might recall that aspic is a jelly that both holds in place and excludes interference from the outside, very much like cold storage. Unfortunately, there is no such jelly that could exclude any major changes in the Taiwanese political environs stemming from a fundamental shift in the Chinese regime or attitude.
One major political strategy and policy, then, could be a debate on cultural and diplomatic strategies for increasing Taiwanese soft power, both with the rest of the world and with China itself.
A public debate on this issue might bring out the best and the worst in the two major parties, allow a voice for other contending parties and interests, and so provide a better base for Taiwanese to judge the state of democracy in the nation long before the next presidential election.
So, on our argument, either China changes its policy lines significantly, forcing major adjustments within Taiwanese party politics, or the opposition, headed by the DPP, opens up the agenda and makes a serious attempt to address an enlightened electorate over a range of vital public issues, within which an intelligent trajectory for easing the “China question” may well be developed. It would be of great interest to us all to see how the KMT would then be forced to react.
It seems that this might be a good time for the DPP to lead a charge into a general political debate on the important socio-economic issues facing Taiwan, to offer up interim and accessible policy statements and to open forums for general discussion and participation, not excluding cross-party venues going beyond the rather narrow think tanks of the present time.
If attacked with energy, this could mean that by the time of the next presidential nominations and elections, there could be a series of well-developed and presented policy platforms that Taiwanese can choose from, exerting their democratic rights in a manner that befits a mature industrial society.
Why timely? The recent public meetings and protests of students suggest that the young part of the electorate is beginning to wake up to the importance of major issues, embracing jobs, city services and the environment, but also including issues that do not affect them directly, but which are important to their rising political awareness as well as their broader sense of well-being — the question of media ownership and the independence of public opinion was a recent obvious case in point.
The continuation of de facto recession in many major economies holds down Taiwanese growth and opportunity and will soon begin to raise harder questions concerning technological creativity, welfare implications of the aging population, the need for reform in financial and other services, the antiquated nature of the public service — employment, wages and pensions, the nature of promotion and issues of responsibility, nepotism and civility.
All such issues are political and may be properly politicized by a lively democratic opposition.
Ian Inkster is a professor of global history at Wenzao University of International Studies.
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