A combination of the good old days and modern populism can be a superb cocktail for winning an election. The problem for the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) populist presidential candidate, Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), is that there are no good old days. Worse for the KMT, its continued promotion of Taiwan as Chinese reveals a party void of new forward-looking policies that truly embrace Taiwan’s uniqueness.
A look at the KMT’s recent past exposes its political and economic failures. Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) China-friendly policies ended in the Sunflower movement’s occupation of the Legislative Yuan and the promised benefits from economic agreements obtained between Taiwan and China never materialized. Taiwan also dropped in the international democracy ratings by Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders.
Those were no good old days and therefore it is counterproductive for the KMT when Han promotes cross-strait peace and the “1992 consensus” as in Ma’s presidency.
The KMT vision for Taiwan is a Chinese cultural vision in a nation with a diverse cultural heritage and a population that does not consider themselves to be Chinese. Despite this obvious reality, Han continues to talk about the Chinese Civil War and that he would sign a peace treaty with Beijing if Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) promised to renounce the use of force.
However, Taiwan was not part of the civil war in China and a peace treaty would effectively make Taiwan a part of China in the international community.
A future reality check would reveal a Taiwan promoted as Chinese to the public and in diplomatic circles if Han won the election. This would be a sad return to Ma’s policies. It would also be a challenge for the international community to separate Chinese attempts to promote Taiwan as Chinese from the KMT’s own policies.
This would be in stark contrast with the progress made over the past four years in promoting Taiwan as unique in its own way. Taiwan can stand out in its own way through its diverse culture, technologies and aspiration for international cooperation among democracies and emerging nations.
Taiwan can leverage this progress by engaging more with civil society groups in Europe and elsewhere. These groups can promote and engage ordinary European citizens, becoming an even stronger element in Taiwan’s diplomacy. Unleashing creativity and activity that stem from a passion for Taiwan, people in Europe can cooperate in politics, sports, computer games, culture, art and other fields.
It is great to see this multidimensional diplomacy combining international outreach and civil society is getting an even stronger footing in the current Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration, something that could not be expected of the KMT.
Taiwan is unique and many Europeans are realizing this by traveling to Taiwan in higher numbers. Taiwan shall live forward and understand itself looking backward — not like the KMT, which prefers to live in the past.
Michael Danielsen is the chairman of Taiwan Corner.
Ideas matter. They especially matter in world affairs. And in communist countries, it is communist ideas, not supreme leaders’ personality traits, that matter most. That is the reality in the People’s Republic of China. All Chinese communist leaders — from Mao Zedong (毛澤東) through Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), from Jiang Zemin (江澤民) and Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) through to Xi Jinping (習近平) — have always held two key ideas to be sacred and self-evident: first, that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is infallible, and second, that the Marxist-Leninist socialist system of governance is superior to every alternative. The ideological consistency by all CCP leaders,
The US on Friday hosted the second Global COVID-19 Summit, with at least 98 countries, including Taiwan, and regional alliances such as the G7, the G20, the African Union and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) attending. Washington is also leading a proposal to revise one of the most important documents in global health security — the International Health Regulations (IHR) — which are to be discussed during the 75th World Health Assembly (WHA) that starts on Sunday. These two actions highlight the US’ strategic move to dominate the global health agenda and return to the core of governance, with the WHA
Just as the cause of the Kursk submarine disaster remains shrouded in mystery — the nuclear-powered Russian submarine suffered an explosion during a naval exercise on Aug. 12, 2000, and sank, killing all 118 crew onboard — it is unlikely that we will ever get to the bottom of the sequence of events last month that led to the sinking of the Moskva guided missile cruiser, the flagship of the Russian navy’s Black Sea fleet. Ukraine claims it struck the vessel with two missiles, while Russia says ammunition onboard the ship exploded and the ship tipped over while being towed
The war in Ukraine continues, and lines are slowly being drawn in the sand. Nations have begun imposing sanctions; few can ignore the reality of Russia’s aggression and atrocities, especially as it edges to the possibility of making a full declaration of war. For Taiwan, this resurrects a different reality, the tangled web of its own complex past and how as a colony of Japan, it became involved with Russia, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). Some role reversals are immediately evident. Taiwan is now an independent nation and the CCP rules China. The CCP indirectly
RSS