The Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) near collapse in last month’s nine-in-one elections attracted many suggestions for reform.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who still nurtures hopes of controlling the nation, was unable to block public anger and had to step down from his post as party chairman, even though the party charter had been changed to say that a KMT president should also be the party’s chairman.
One can only speculate what kind of soup Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), who is acting chairman of the KMT, and Premier Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) will cook up, but people should have a pretty good idea of what to expect.
Some say that as long as the KMT does not rid itself of its illegal assets, elections will always be unfair. This of course makes eminent sense, but that does not mean the party will not lose elections. As long as voters wake up, like they did in time for Nov. 29, the KMT will fall no matter how far they push the unfairness.
“Unless the KMT falls, Taiwan will never do well” was a slogan used during the Sunflower movement and by young people since, and through this general awakening, they will use their votes to put an end to this evil party that thinks of nothing but how to rely on unfair competition to maintain its rule.
In the past, the KMT often talked about the “evil communists.” By “evil communists,” they of course meant the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Did it really never think that the KMT itself would one day be called “evil?” All it had to do was look at its own history, how it fled to Taiwan and how it let Taiwanese down.
The party’s assets came from exploitation and plundering, a result of the party-state spirit. Faced with democratic elections, the funds became a tool for manipulating voters. This is the reason people say that no one is the master of an election, all you need is the money to buy it. The party is self-righteous and never feels ashamed because of its colonial mindset. It would do anything and stop at nothing for the sake of power.
Such unfairness and injustice was what existed in the hearts and minds of the Republic of China’s (ROC) officials after the Chinese Civil War. It was an outrageous attitude, but it was the attitude of an elite in exile.
In 2000, former vice president Lien Chan (連戰) and the KMT lost the presidential election. KMT members with a Chinese colonial mindset hated former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and cut off the Taiwan-centered part of the KMT, thus digging the party’s grave by showing its true colors. Ma’s time in office seems to have been just a last spurt of activity before the final collapse. The KMT is not a Taiwanese political party, and that is where the whole problem lies.
The nation will finally start to focus on Taiwan itself. The country will finally be rebuilt with the determination and emotional attachment of the people living here.
If the specter of Chinese colonialism lingers within the KMT even after reform, the party will be abandoned.
How does “New Nationalist Party” sound? The party should let go of its Chinese baggage, aim for a “self-confessional” transitional justice, cooperate to let the ROC pass into history, return “China” to China and its illegal assets to the public. Building a new nation together is the kind of reform that is much needed.
Lee Min-yung is a poet.
Translated by Perry Svensson
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
RSS