Now that the US, which has such a long and sordid history of inflicting regime change on sovereign nations, has itself become a victim of the same, allegedly at the hands of Russia, it can take solace from what is happening in Taiwan.
Most Americans today sit back in dismay as Trump & Co and its billionaire cohorts prepare to have their way with what little democracy remains in the country. Is it over then — the great American experiment with freedoms of speech, the press, religion and all the other freedoms that, until now, every American could take for granted? What is happening in Taiwan today suggests the contrary.
Taiwan has already entered into and come out the other side of something like what the US is now going through. With the takeover by Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and his Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), what freedoms the people here had were trampled underfoot by parasitic oligarchs grabbing up for themselves every last resource the nation had. They even outdid the Japanese in this — just as Trump and his kind in the US will surely outdo Russian President Vladimir Putin and his gang in Russia, their natural allies and fossil fuel business partners.
However, what happened next in Taiwan is what is really interesting. Not from the neat little villages of his mainland people that Chiang built up all over the island, but from the tangled and chaotic towns of native Taiwanese, small factories began sprouting up like mushrooms after a rain. These set in motion a grassroots prosperity that eventually brought on the conditions that made increased democratization necessary and inevitable. Taiwan’s example shows that the slip into the grips of a parasitic oligarchy need not be a one-way street. It can turn around and go the other way.
This reflects a dynamic recognized early on by the ancient Chinese and expressed graphically in their yin-yang symbol. Everything contains in itself the seed of its opposite. It can and will, when the conditions are right, turn again into that. It so happens that, in spite of US president-elect Donald Trump’s election, conditions tending away from oligarchy are over-ripe in the US today. Take the energy sector. The huge fossil fuel bubble that makes so many of the oligarchs billionaires, in Russia as well as in the US, is set to burst, just as the housing bubble did. Savvy investors already see the writing on the wall and have begun shifting their investments elsewhere.
As was the case with sub-prime mortgages, the instant the balloon pops, billions or trillions of US dollars in assets will overnight become worthless. The oil and coal will stay in the ground as sustainable energy technologies become ever cheaper. Anyone with a rooftop can sell electricity instead of buying it, fuel their own vehicle instead of paying for gas. As energy consumers become producers, and enabling technologies proliferate, the many good ideas that ordinary people have will mushroom into start-ups everywhere and, like what happened in Taiwan, generate the kind of shared prosperity that necessitates a more open, free and democratic environment to perpetuate itself.
I have lived in Taiwan for 14 years and every day am more impressed at what I see happening all around me, wherever I go. This is an island on the move in so many remarkable ways. I cannot believe that the forces I see being set loose everywhere here are different in kind from those that can and do operate, to one degree or another, everywhere. In these difficult times, Taiwan, alone and unrecognized by today’s international community, shines as a beacon of hope, especially for the beleaguered US about to be saddled with Trump’s presidency.
William R. Stimson is an American who lives and writes in Taiwan. He offers a course at National Chi Nan University and at Tunghai University on dreams, self-discovery and creativity.
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