The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has hijacked the nation, and is frequently using the word “patriotic.” The KMT’s party-state discourse is like a protective charm. After having spent years hawking the idea of being loyal and patriotic to both the party and the state, it finds it difficult to change its old ways and abandon its old tricks.
The KMT has been in exile in Taiwan since 1949, and it has hijacked the Republic of China (ROC) and brought it here with it.
Acting on behalf of the Allied Powers, the KMT government accepted Japan’s surrender in Taiwan on Oct. 25, 1945. It later implemented the Martial Law era, while fighting against the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for the representation of China.
Regardless of whether one likes it, or whether it is a good or a bad thing, the PRC is a nation established by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese, after the ROC was overturned.
If the KMT really did care about the nation as it claims it does, it would have changed the nation’s name before the ROC’s withdrawal from the UN in 1971. By doing so, it could have kept its legal status as a state in the international community.
However, former presidents Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) and Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) valued the KMT over the nation and therefore missed the chance of a national rebirth, and instead treated those who valued the nation over the party as dissidents, killing or jailing many of them.
In the 1960s, pro-democracy activist Lei Chen (雷震) and his supporters proposed the Democratic Republic of Chinese Taiwan, while former presidential adviser Peng Ming-min (彭明敏) and his backers said that the goal to reconquer China was a myth.
They were already seen as “eyesores” by the party-state, and in response to the Kaohsiung Incident in 1979, the government launched a violent crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in order to block democratic reform, while struggling for its own survival.
The party-state was devastated by the power transfer in 2000. When President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was elected in 2008, the KMT was lucky to regain power. However, with Ma having served two terms, the party is now moving steadily toward its demise.
Since 2000, many KMT members who claim to be patriots have pinned their hopes on China, despite the fact that the ROC was expelled by the “Communist bandits” of the CCP. While they enjoy Taiwan’s independence, they treat it as their greatest enemy, regardless of how their actions might hurt Taiwan. Many of them used to fight for power in the name of patriotism, with some even reaching the apex of power.
Today, KMT members and politicos who have publicly betrayed the party-state doctrine and discipline feel no shame when they hear the cries of family members of the political prisoners who suffered from injustice and of those who sacrificed themselves.
Patriots are becoming traitors and traitors are becoming patriots. Playing with the nation’s name is a trick frequently used by dictators and their supporters to quash dissent.
Many of the rich and powerful inside the KMT have exposed their ugliness, while burying the party-state in order to please its real enemy. Due to a lack of transitional justice, some KMT officials, politicos and even military leaders have turned to Beijing, while worshiping the new party-state and digging the grave of the old.
Party chaos and national disaster are illnesses caused by not only politics, but also China.
Lee Min-yung is a poet.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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