During his visit to Shanghai last week, Greater Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) broke out of the constraints imposed by China on its relations with Taiwan by openly talking about Taiwanese independence and the 1989 Tiananmen Square student movement. Lai dared to do so because he adheres to Taiwan-centric values and has always been concerned about human rights issues.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has done many things to sell the nation out, leading to the outbreak of the student-led Sunflower protest movement. As young people in Taiwan take matters into their own hands and come forward to salvage the nation’s prospects, Lai has had the courage to seize the opportunity by speaking out in China, confident that there is a strong current of public opinion to back him up.
The Sunflower movement has led the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to reflect and reconsider. Former DPP chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) decided not to stand for another term, and former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) quit as a potential DPP candidate for Taipei mayor. Meanwhile, Lai has stepped forward into the limelight.
In contrast, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), seemingly unmoved by the protests, is keeping to its conservative ways and has even strengthened its secret-police style of ruling the country.
This difference arises from the contrasting mindsets of the two parties. While one of them is based on the principles of democracy and progress, the other is more concerned with its Chinese heritage, steeped as it is in a political culture of feudalism, dictatorship and corruption. Of course, even within a single political party, different politicians will say different things according to their individual character and style.
Ma expounds cross-strait peace as his highest value. This slogan of peace has fooled some Taiwanese into sacrificing the nation’s sovereignty, livelihood and prosperity, all for setting up a meeting between Ma and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) so that they can share the Nobel Peace Prize.
Meanwhile, former vice president Lien Chan (連戰) and his family have followed a path of allying themselves with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to combat Taiwan independence. The reward they seek is to add even more to the Lien family’s already vast economic interests.
Now the KMT has put forward Lien’s son, Sean Lien (連勝文), as its candidate for mayor of Taipei — in an attempt to use the “new generation” to cover up its true nature as a party-state vested interest group.
Even in the DPP, there are some who stick to the outmoded idea that their party can only get back into government if China lets it happen. These people do not fully understand the character of the CCP and have not kept up with the changing times.
The CCP is an ambitious and greedy party, but it is also a pragmatic one. However loudly it may shout its slogans about opposing Taiwan independence, it will not cut off contacts with the DPP forever or stop applying its united-front tactics, because it knows that the DPP is the biggest obstacle in the way of annexing Taiwan and now it faces a new element in the form of Taiwan’s nascent civil society movement.
When the DPP was running the national government, the CCP had no choice but to accept the reality. The “small three links” between Kinmen, Matsu and China were opened up when the DPP was in power.
Now, with Ma in power and always willing to sell the nation out, China keeps pushing him to sell out even more. This attitude of bullying those who give in easily, but respecting those who stand firm is typical of a gangster dictatorship like China’s.
During his visit to China, Lai was neither haughty nor humble. When he talked about Taiwan independence, it was because a Chinese academic had raised the subject. Lai showed a lot more guts than Mainland Affairs Council Minister Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) did when Wang visited Nanjing University. Nonetheless, Lai is a moderate in the DPP — about as moderate as you can get without being pro-unification.
China has so far not made any official response to Lai’s comments, so pro-unification media outlets in Taiwan have been low-key about it. Nonetheless, some people have chosen to act as China’s eunuchs by hinting that Beijing is not to allow Lai to visit again. Others have taken a more threatening posture, saying that Lai could be arrested under China’s “Anti-Secession” Law.
The point of these comments is to stop the “William Lai effect” from spreading. The idea that Lai could be arrested is the most puerile. Would China ever pay heed to such a suggestion, which is meant to please China, but actually does it harm?
Taiwan is currently in quite an advantageous position both at home and abroad. On the home front, young people, and especially the second and third generations of the “pan-blue” political camp, have been waking up. For example, descendants of Confucius (孔子) took an active part in the recent student-led movement.
Internationally, China’s belligerent posturing has made it more politically isolated than at any time since the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, and this has improved Taiwan’s strategic position and given the nation more space to maneuver on the international stage.
If Ma sticks stubbornly to his line of surrendering to the CCP, he will be paving the way to his own early downfall.
Paul Lin is a political commentator.
Translated by Julian Clegg
Weeks into the craze, nobody quite knows what to make of the OpenClaw mania sweeping China, marked by viral photos of retirees lining up for installation events and users gathering in red claw hats. The queues and cosplay inspired by the “raising a lobster” trend make for irresistible China clickbait. However, the West is fixating on the least important part of the story. As a consumer craze, OpenClaw — the AI agent designed to do tasks on a user’s behalf — would likely burn out. Without some developer background, it is too glitchy and technically awkward for true mainstream adoption,
On Monday, a group of bipartisan US senators arrived in Taiwan to support the nation’s special defense bill to counter Chinese threats. At the same time, Beijing announced that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had invited Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) to visit China, a move to make the KMT a pawn in its proxy warfare against Taiwan and the US. Since her inauguration as KMT chair last year, Cheng, widely seen as a pro-China figure, has made no secret of her desire to interact with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and meet with Xi, naming it a
A delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials led by Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is to travel to China tomorrow for a six-day visit to Jiangsu, Shanghai and Beijing, which might end with a meeting between Cheng and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). The trip was announced by Xinhua news agency on Monday last week, which cited China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) Director Song Tao (宋濤) as saying that Cheng has repeatedly expressed willingness to visit China, and that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee and Xi have extended an invitation. Although some people have been speculating about a potential Xi-Cheng
Sunshine Women’s Choir (陽光女子合唱團), a Taiwanese production that premiered in China yesterday, received a massive backlash for calling itself the “all-time box office champion for Chinese-language films from the China-Taiwan region” in its promotional post on Chinese social media. Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Ngalim Tiunn (張雅琳) said that the production was taking taxpayers’ money while engaging in actions that are offensive to Taiwanese and undermining the subjectivity of Taiwanese culture. This was not a baseless allegation. The film, which boasted a cumulative box office of NT$740 million (US$23.2 million), reportedly received more than NT$18 million in government subsidies from the Ministry of Culture,
RSS