Saturday last week marked President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) first 100 days in office. In Taiwanese culture, the phrase “100 days” has connotations of mourning, but for me, as a historian, it brings to mind the Hundred Days’ Reform initiated by Kang Youwei (康有為), Liang Qichao (梁啟超) and others in 1898, toward the end of China’s Qing Dynasty.
Tsai has now had her own “100 days’ reform,” in which the most prominent reforms have been the enactment of the Act Governing the Handling of Ill-gotten Properties by Political Parties and Their Affiliate Organizations (政黨及其附隨組織不當取得財產處理條例) and the scrapping of the greater China-oriented “adjustments” made to high-school history curriculum guidelines under the former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration.
However, changes are inevitably met with resistance from conservative forces and vested interests, so reformers have to think of comforting pretexts for reform to allay opposition by conservatives. Whereas Kang promoted reform by alluding to ancient precedents, Tsai has reassured KMT supporters by affirming the legitimacy of the Republic of China.
However, compared with conservatives, the resistance of vested interest groups is much harder to overcome. Kang and Liang’s Hundred Days’ Reform sought to abolish the imperial examination system with its “eight-legged essays” and to reorganize administrative institutions. However, scholars from all over China — including hundreds of hanlin (翰林), thousands of juren (舉人) and tens of thousands of xiucai (秀才), as well as millions of tongsheng (童生) who had taken, but not passed, the imperial examinations — rebelled against these reforms, because they felt that they would mean that they had wasted all their efforts.
In a similar way, Tsai’s proposed pension reforms have met with resistance from military personnel, civil servants and public school teachers who enjoy a preferential 18 percent interest rate on some of their savings. Now, as in the past, people usually put their own interests first.
Tsai is more fortunate than Kang and Liang in that she has the backing of a majority of the public, as expressed by the votes in the legislative and presidential elections, and this support can serve as a force for reform.
Kang and Liang, in contrast, relied on the support of Emperor Guangxu (光緒). When Guangxu was overcome by reactionary forces in the imperial palac headed by the Empress Dowager Cixi (慈禧太后) and her cousin, General Ronglu (榮祿), Kang and Liang were forced to flee abroad, while Tan Sitong (譚嗣同) and other fellow reformers were beheaded, earning them the title of the “Six Martyrs of the Hundred Days’ Reform.”
However, Tsai falls far short of Kang, Liang and the six martyrs in that she clearly does not have the same determination to pursue reform and “break free of all constraining nets,” as Tan put it. Tsai is far weaker and more hypocritical than the Qing Dynasty reformers.
People would be astonished if a Christian pastor suddenly said “Amitabha” in the middle of a prayer or if a Buddhist sang “hallelujah” while reciting the sutras. Each faith has its own ideology, logic and values, and what is true of religion is also true of politics. One would expect different political trends to have consistent integrity, logic and value orientations rather than being muddled and contradictory.
Before being elected, Tsai stressed Taiwan-centric standpoints, but after taking office she has put people who identify with “one China” in charge of foreign relations. In the past she praised the Sunflower movement, whose main purpose was to oppose a proposed cross-strait agreement on trade in services, but after becoming president she picked KMT-allied officials who strongly support the pact to drive the economy.
During the election campaign she pledged to institute judicial reforms, but after taking office she nominated someone who was an accessory to state crimes during the White Terror era to head the Judicial Yuan. These contradictory statements and actions are just as laughable as a pastor chanting “Amitabha” or a monk singing “hallelujah.”
Tsai was born into a wealthy merchant family and her whole career has been smooth sailing. She has a poor sense of history, having never taken part in any kind of social or political movement. She never personally experienced the revolutionary fervor and hunger for change that motivated the elder generations of the nation’s democracy movement, still less the attitude to life expressed in the words “With the sword across my throat, I look up to heaven and laugh” that Tan is said to have written shortly before his execution.
While urging people to be “modest, modest, and even more modest,” Tsai has also declared that she is leaving behind the DPP of the past.
Does she really appreciate that the KMT’s fall from power and her ascendancy to head of state are the result of the accumulated efforts of countless idealists over five decades, or even a century, to carry forward the democratic movement?
A sense of history and a sense of direction are essential, as are courage and determination. Without them, reforms cannot succeed.
Lee Hsiao-feng is a professor at the National Taipei University of Education’s Graduate School of Taiwanese Culture.
Translated by Julian Clegg
US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) were born under the sign of Gemini. Geminis are known for their intelligence, creativity, adaptability and flexibility. It is unlikely, then, that the trade conflict between the US and China would escalate into a catastrophic collision. It is more probable that both sides would seek a way to de-escalate, paving the way for a Trump-Xi summit that allows the global economy some breathing room. Practically speaking, China and the US have vulnerabilities, and a prolonged trade war would be damaging for both. In the US, the electoral system means that public opinion
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
RSS