Many people outside — and inside — Taiwan find it hard to fathom why so many Taiwanese talk about the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) as a colonial power, little different from the Japanese, the Spanish and the Dutch before them.
They cite the historical ties between Taiwan and China, the linguistic links and the family connections as reasons for taking a less confrontational stance.
It is hard to make these people understand the political, cultural and social unrest, to put it mildly, that followed the relocation of the KMT-Republic of China government to Taiwan after it lost the Chinese Civil War — even before the bloodshed and brutality of the 228 Incident and the White Terror era.
The arrogance, cultural bigotry and colonial mindset that underlay the massacre and the declaration of martial law has surfaced in KMT politicians and former government bureaucrats every time the question of investigating and making amends and reparations for the massacre and the White Terror is raised.
This could be seen in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when pressure for an examination first gained traction, resulting in then-president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) making a public apology to victims’ families in 1995 when the 228 monument in Taipei was unveiled. That the apology was made because Lee was Taiwanese and not a Mainlander almost goes without saying.
It was a recurring theme during former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) two terms amid efforts to publicize the truth and honor the victims.
Chen and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) were constantly accused of playing “the ethnic card” and trying to stir up ethnic unrest.
A prime example of the KMT’s colonial/cultural mindset is the argument put forth earlier this month by Soochow University law professor Chen Ching-hsiou (陳清秀), a former director of the government’s Central Personnel Administration, against efforts to seek transitional justice.
Chen said there was no need to critique the KMT’s authoritarian era regime and its human rights violations, implying that its mistakes and achievements evened each other out.
While the KMT regime might have done a few things that “were not beneficial to ‘ethnic Taiwanese,’” it had brought them the treasures of China’s 5,000-year-old culture — presumably a reference to the National Palace Museum’s collection — as well as Chinese intelligentsia, he said.
Chen was trying to use the “civilizing” card, played by colonial powers for centuries: the Spanish and Portuguese in the Americas, the English in the Americas, India, Africa and Asia, and so on. That there might be civilizations in those places already that did not see the benefit of a foreign rule was irrelevant.
And what about the loss of Taiwan’s own intelligentsia? Teachers, writers, artists and civic leaders were all swept up in the purges conducted by the KMT, and far too many of them lost their lives.
Chen’s comments also bear more than a passing resemblance to Beijing’s defense of its reign of terror over Tibet and Tibetans — that it has brought development and progress to a poverty-stricken region, as if money can make up for Beijing’s efforts to destroy Tibetans’ religion, language and culture.
If that was not bad enough, he said efforts to achieve transitional justice, such as demolishing the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, could hurt the nation’s tourism industry.
That is like telling Cambodians that they should be grateful for the millions killed by the Khmer Rouge, because thousands of tourists now travel to visit the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center and the old S21 prison.
It is not up to the colonizers to determine if amends are needed and what form they should take; it is the victims who suffered under their rule. The Jadeite Cabbage and Meat-Shaped Stone should not be seen as a consolation for lost lives and shattered families.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs