Five decades ago, then-chair of National Taiwan University’s political science department Peng Ming-min (彭明敏) criticized the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for using the idea of “retaking the mainland” as an excuse for imposing an oppressive dictatorship on the nation.
This criticism was enough to send Peng to prison. Some people did not understand what he said, or else they did not want, or dare, to understand.
More recently, Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) offered former Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) deputy minister Chang Hsien-yao (張顯耀), whom he suspected of leaking secrets to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), a cushy job as the head of a state-owned company, on the pretext that Chang should be able to feed his family.
A closer look at the cabal of people like former presidents Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and his son Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and former premier Hau Pei-tsun (郝柏村) and his son, Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), reveals that these families have made their livings from anti-communism, and that pandering to the communists is another way of feeding the family.
Chiang Kai-shek founded a dynasty around the slogan of “retaking the mainland.”
Those who went along with him could feed their families, while those who opposed him were labeled communist spies and ended up spending years in jail, or worse.
Ordinary soldiers in the nationalist army were forced to follow Chiang Kai-shek out of China and across the Taiwan Strait, far from their homes in China and with no family to support them. They ended up being supported by the taxpayer while waving the banner of “retaking the mainland.” The government even gave them certificates promising them plots of land when the KMT eventually reconquered China — this turned out to be an empty promise.
Taiwanese have made the mistake of electing a “likeable” president. Ma is now well into his 60s, but when it comes to major national policies he talks as though he were still in kindergarten. While babbling on about birds and insect pests, he is oblivious to the fact that as a former “professional student” he supported himself by promoting anti-communism and snooping on fellow students. Like a woodpecker should, he ate those identified as “pests” by the Chiangs and Haus of this world. Indeed, that is how he made his career and fed his family.
At some point that is hard to determine, the old soldiers and former “professional students” who used to feed themselves and their families by serving the cause of anti-communism switched over to making a living by pandering to those same communists. Old soldiers and their families see themselves as the sons and daughters of China.
Hau Pei-tsun, who was a general and defense minister before he became premier, recently presented the ridiculous theory that because Taiwan’s fate has never been decided by Taiwanese, it should in future be decided by “the Chinese people as a whole.”
Ma, the former “professional student,” is in charge of the nation, but he has not figured out that the woodpeckers and pests are all his pets, nor has he realized that nowadays we have insecticide to deal with pests, making woodpeckers somewhat obsolete.
If woodpeckers are needed anywhere, it is in the Control Yuan and the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau, but instead Ma has filled those institutions with parrots who repeat his every word.
Ma had a go at being a woodpecker when he tried to eat that notorious “pest,” Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), but he found that he had bitten off more than he could chew.
Now that he has got rid of a “pest” in the shape of Chang, for the sake of protecting the woodpecker Mainland Affairs Council Minister Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦), he has run up against a “hunter” who wants to bag all kinds of bird.
After China’s Taiwan Affairs Office called on the media not to make groundless speculations about Chang, the woodpeckers have all stopped twittering. They would prefer to please the “hunter” by echoing Ma’s assertion that the Chang affair is a mere ripple on the surface of cross-strait relations.
As for Jiang’s comment about offering Chang a cushy job, it just shows how the KMT operates. Hopefully the public now understands what is really going on.
James Wang is a political commentator.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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