Completing the circle

When I first came to Taiwan in 1965 to study as a graduate student in Chinese history at National Taiwan University, Taiwan was an economically impoverished and politically dreary environment. In 1992, when I first returned to Taiwan after 12 years on the blacklist, Antonio Chiang (江春男), the publisher and editor in chief of this newspaper, wrote in The Journalist (新新聞) that I was " part of Taiwan history." This sounds dramatic, but such prominence came at considerable costs.

During the past 35 years I have had the opportunity to see enormous changes in Taiwan politics and, involuntarily, my life became intertwined with some of these events. Thus, when observing the recent presidential election, I felt divided into two separate persons.

The scholar, who seeks to evaluate events, trends and results objectively, wrote the analyses which appeared in this newspaper on March 15th, 16th, 19th and 20th.

The other person has many memories and emotions. During campaign rallies and meetings, he recalled some happiness, much sadness and occasionally shed a tear. He, of course, helped remind the scholar of the momentous nature and importance of the election, but today his fingers are pressing the computer keys.

I first began to study Taiwan politics in 1969 as a postgraduate student at Columbia University and published my first article, "Recent Leadership and Political Trends in Taiwan" in The China Quarterly (January-March 1971). Over the next several years, several academic and journalistic articles followed. Enlightened leaders in Taiwan realized that objective analyses were much more helpful to Taiwan than propaganda tomes, which painted Taiwan as all-white or all-black, and I received considerable assistance in meeting a wide variety of senior party and government leaders.

At the time I came under "police protection" in 1980, there were widespread perceptions that I only had links to the opposition and DPP. During their investigations, the police were quite surprised by the number of prominent government and party leaders in my business card books, and by the number who vouched for me despite the dangerous times.

Prior to 1979, the Government Information Office had been particularly helpful in arranging appointments and over several years I had met each of the directors of GIO. When I arrived in May 1979 for a short research trip, the then new, young director of the GIO, James Soong (宋楚瑜), was too busy to meet with a then young academic. The GIO also suddenly seemed unable to arrange appointments.

Into the gap came a young woman, Chen Chu (陳菊). When she discovered that I only knew a few of the opposition leaders, she immediately arranged that I meet virtually all of the rest. Thus, while I was waiting for Soong's office to arrange appointments, I met such people as Shih Ming-teh (施明德), who was just out of prison, Yao Chia-wen (姚嘉文), Lin I-hsiung (林義雄) and Annette Lu (呂秀蓮).

When I next came to Taiwan in January 1980, many of these friends were already in jail following the Kaohsiung Incident of Dec. 10, 1979. I went to the GIO and expressed my concern about the people in jail and even asked to visit them. Despite this brashness, GIO helped arrange some appointments with senior government and party leaders as well as visits to the Ten Key Infrastructure Projects (十大建設), though Director Soong himself remained too busy for a meeting. I also met many more members of the opposition and many of their families.