Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) has drawn a lot of flak for remarks he made last month in an interview with the US magazine Foreign Policy.
The magazine quoted Ko as saying: “For the four Chinese-speaking regions — Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Mainland China — the longer the colonization, the more advanced a place is … Singapore is better than Hong Kong; Hong Kong is better than Taiwan; Taiwan is better than the mainland. I’m speaking in terms of culture.”
The storm of criticism stirred up by Ko’s comments shows the negative connotations that the word “colonialism” takes on in the minds of the colonized. The idea that ethnic Chinese societies have progressed because of being colonized is a painful one for people affected by the Chinese cultural chauvinism syndrome.
Colonialism does indeed embody the history of European empires, which, for several centuries, forcibly spread their borders around the globe, developing and plundering the land and resources of subject peoples. Sins such as these have been perpetrated by every nation that has grown into an empire. Did China’s powerful dynasties not do the same thing? The Japanese empire was a latecomer compared with Europe, but it, too, invaded and occupied other nations and left its mark upon them.
Arguments for and against colonialism have given rise to many kinds of reconsideration and interpretation of history. Historical wounds leave scars and traces that remain with societies to this day. For former colonies that have emerged as independent nations, the best way to regain their dignity is to heal those wounds and develop into progressive societies In his interview, Ko talked about Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Singapore is an independent state, Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China and Taiwan should be an independent state, but is not one, as it remains entangled in the nationalist and communist versions of China.
Singapore is a state comprised mainly of ethnic Chinese, along with Malay and Indian minorities. Its history involves early Chinese immigration to Malaya, which was colonized by the British before becoming independent along with the rest of present-day Malaysia. Singapore separated from Malaysia, not China. Former Singaporean prime minister Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀), with his legalistic approach, molded Singapore into a city-state that emphasizes industry, commerce, trade and finance, but does not score very highly in terms of democracy.
Hong Kong was leased to the UK by China’s Qing Empire. While the nationalists and communists wrangled over control of China, Hong Kong prospered as a trading hub. Like Singapore, Hong Kong benefited from efficient administration and the rule of law under colonial rule, in marked contrast to the rest of China. The end of colonial rule did not see Hong Kong emerge as an independent state, so it has not been able to develop its own post-colonial national identity.
Taiwan was ceded by the Qing Empire when it lost the First Sino-Japanese War, which resulted in the Japanese colonial era that lasted for 50 years. However, when the colonists left, Taiwan did not gain independence, but instead became occupied and ruled in quasi-colonial fashion by its putative motherland — the China of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), and it is still trying to find a way to reconstitute itself. If Taiwan had become independent when the Japanese left in 1945, it would have been ahead of Singapore and Hong Kong in terms of civilization and the rule of law.
Ko’s assessment of the three territories’ degrees of civilization is restricted to the rule-of-law aspect, betraying his instrumentalist approach, but it is worth thinking about nonetheless.
Lee Min-yung is a poet.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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