Sat, Aug 21, 2010 page8

• Carpetbaggers hold Taiwan back

  • By Jerome Keating
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  Taiwan has many problems, not only with its economy, but also with its democracy and identity. In the past two years, Taiwan’s economy has gone nowhere but down under President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九); his “6-3-3” promise is at best a nationwide joke. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), from its one-party state days up to the present, still controls the Legislative Yuan.

  For this reason, it maintains tremendous leverage and its possession of stolen state assets can go unchallenged, so the KMT can continue to place party interests before Taiwan’s national interests.

  Or put another way, the KMT only protects Taiwan’s interests if they protect the KMT’s interests. This is the root of Taiwan’s problems and what Taiwanese still have not yet grasped. The KMT is a carpetbagger party that exists to serve its carpetbagger interests and preserve the constitutional fantasy that perpetuates its carpetbagger rights.

  Carpetbaggers? Yes, that word is a pejorative term dating back to the post-US Civil War reconstruction period. It depicts those northerners who went south for their own advantage. However, the word has taken on additional meaning today; it applies to any outsiders, especially politicians, who as opportunists and ­exploiters seek a position or success in a new location.

  Today in Taiwan, the pejorative sense of the word not only still applies, but it has an ironic twist. In the US, the carpetbaggers were the victors in a Civil War; in Taiwan, the carpetbaggers were the losers, and they were coming to a land that had nothing to do with that Civil War.

  The KMT carpetbaggers’ long history is well known. They started coming to Taiwan and began exploiting the land and the Taiwanese after Japan lost World War II in 1945. Leading them was Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) appointed and greedy governor Chen Yi (陳儀). For the next 40-odd years, the carpetbaggers enjoyed the protection of martial law in Taiwan as all key government positions went to KMT loyalists.

  The lifting of martial law and the later disbanding of the Garrison Command took away the carpetbaggers’ muscle, but that was not enough. The Legislative Yuan and National Assembly still contained KMT members elected in China in 1947 who had come to Taiwan for refuge and new opportunities.

  Death got rid of some of those 1947 carpetbaggers, but it was the Taiwanese Wild Lily protests in 1991 that helped to get rid of the larger slew. Because of those protests, and as an effort toward democracy, Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) forced those elected in 1947 to finally resign 44 years later, but that still was not enough.

  At this point, do not make the mistake and say all waishengren are carpetbaggers. Many wai­shengren who fled China seeking a better life in 1949 were killed, tortured and/or imprisoned on Green Island; they suffered under Chiang and his successors just as much as Taiwanese.

  To distinguish a carpetbagger, one must look at their positions, who financed their degrees, who groomed them for one-party state office, how they benefited from stolen state assets, their attitude toward that land across the Strait that the KMT lost in its Civil War.

  Furthermore, what are their attitudes to the outdated 1947 Constitution that not only claims that Tibet, Mongolia and Xinjiang still belong to the Republic of China, but justifies the raison d’etre of their carpetbagger positions? How do they feel about Taiwan as Taiwan? Taiwan’s current president claims that he does not recognize the People’s Republic of China, yet he allows its flag to be flown in Taiwan and takes down Taiwan’s flag. Where is his heart?

  The Legislative Yuan remains full of KMT carpetbaggers protecting their own party interests. In the last elections, the KMT candidates received some 54 per cent of the vote, yet because of gerrymandering, they were able to gain 75 per cent of the seats; do they use that majority to benefit Taiwan or themselves? Because of the KMT majority, the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement has never been subject to true national scrutiny.

  With the November elections approaching, now is the time for Taiwanese to awaken their consciousness; now is the time to finish the process and finally get rid of the carpetbaggers who dream of a different land and who seek to perpetuate the carpetbagger privilege.

  Though the KMT still possesses a large monetary political war chest from ill-gotten gains, in a democracy they can be voted out, one by one, position by position. Only when this is done and when all the KMT carpetbaggers are gone will Taiwan have a chance at wholeness, identity and a true imagined community.

  Jerome Keating is a writer based in Taiwan.
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