That kind of word is very dangerous.
Politicians here really need to weigh the consequences of their words. Words have consequences. They are not just words. They are symbols that motivate behavior and motivate people to feel a certain way.
I think there are very worrisome trends on the ethnicity front. The DPP has toyed with the ethnicity issue in the past in ways that have perhaps not been entirely productive for national unity.
And the KMT has its own problems. It hasn't succeeded in finding a way to recruit and train a sufficiently broad range of new leadership. It's got some very appealing candidates, but there are very few major new political leaders in the KMT who are Taiwanese.
It's a handicap for them, and it's a handicap that the DPP blatantly and easily exploits. It's actually a little baffling to me why after all these years with Lee Teng-hui promoting the Taiwanization of the party that is the case. But it is, and I think it is a handicap for them.
It would be better for a democracy if all the parties work harder to transcend this issue and not exploit it.
But I do want to emphasize very strongly that this is not the least unusual in a democracy. This is usually the way it works in democracies -- in that ethnicity becomes one leverage in politics and parties use it and mobilize it for their own ends. If that is going to be the case, then one hopes it can be attenuated or moderated.
And it is important that there are other issues besides ethnicity and national identity that become important to voters so that there is at least some crosscutting leverage.
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