It has been said by certain individuals in China that if every person there spat in unison they would be able to drown the whole of Taiwan in spittle. Not a nice image — not least because it is hygienically questionable and lacking in magnanimity — it also flies somewhat in the face of physics. After all, if every person in China spat in unison it would be more likely to cover their own country in phlegm: Beyond that, of course, the idea is derived from the inherently totalitarian, nationalistic and ever-so-slightly ludicrous thinking that, on some prearranged signal, all 1.3 billion Chinese might be made to spit on command. I just can’t see it happening, but perhaps those who have grown up in a totalitarian society, exposed to extreme nationalistic ideas, would find it more conceivable.
Certainly it does seem that way from recent comments made by Peking University professor Kong Qingdong (孔慶東). According to Kong, Taiwan’s presidential election was fake democracy at work and was of little consequence because, his reasoning goes, the victor didn’t even get 6 million votes, which is “not even equal to half the population of Beijing.”
If you follow that logic, the vast majority of democracies in the world are fake and of little consequence. You could argue, for example, that the number of people voting in a general election in the UK — whose population could hardly be considered small, and which has been a democracy for some time now — could be compared unfavorably to half the population of Sichuan Province.
What about half the population of Beijing or Sichuan? Even if it is unlikely everyone, even in a totalitarian society such as China, would act in unison — although this is not something someone with a totalitarian mindset like Kong would understand — Kong could still conceive of ensuring a landslide victory in Taiwan by manipulating the vote through underhanded tactics.
The spirit and value of democracy lie in not assuming that everyone is the same and in not imagining that they can all be herded in one direction or manipulated en masse. Democracy involves recognizing that society consists of rational beings subscribing to a wide range of different views who can make their own independent decisions and act upon their own initiative.
Regrettably, it seems that media baron Tsai Eng-ming (蔡衍明), forgetting how hard it has been to win democracy in Taiwan, has decided to become an apologist for China’s totalitarian society, championing unification with China and restricting what journalists working for his outlets include in their reports.
Nobody is saying that Taiwan’s democracy is perfect. There is much room for improvement. Perhaps one of the biggest problems with it at present is the lack of fair competition, a product of the dominance of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). However, in the face of attitudes such as those of Kong and Tsai, we need to cherish and protect Taiwan’s democratic system and unequivocally reject the prospect of becoming a totalitarian society.
Chi Chun-chieh is a professor in the department of ethnic relations and cultures at National Dong Hwa University.
TRANSLATED BY PAUL COOPER
A gap appears to be emerging between Washington’s foreign policy elites and the broader American public on how the United States should respond to China’s rise. From my vantage working at a think tank in Washington, DC, and through regular travel around the United States, I increasingly experience two distinct discussions. This divergence — between America’s elite hawkishness and public caution — may become one of the least appreciated and most consequential external factors influencing Taiwan’s security environment in the years ahead. Within the American policy community, the dominant view of China has grown unmistakably tough. Many members of Congress, as
The Hong Kong government on Monday gazetted sweeping amendments to the implementation rules of Article 43 of its National Security Law. There was no legislative debate, no public consultation and no transition period. By the time the ink dried on the gazette, the new powers were already in force. This move effectively bypassed Hong Kong’s Legislative Council. The rules were enacted by the Hong Kong chief executive, in conjunction with the Committee for Safeguarding National Security — a body shielded from judicial review and accountable only to Beijing. What is presented as “procedural refinement” is, in substance, a shift away from
The shifting geopolitical tectonic plates of this year have placed Beijing in a profound strategic dilemma. As Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) prepares for a high-stakes summit with US President Donald Trump, the traditional power dynamics of the China-Japan-US triangle have been destabilized by the diplomatic success of Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in Washington. For the Chinese leadership, the anxiety is two-fold: There is a visceral fear of being encircled by a hardened security alliance, and a secondary risk of being left in a vulnerable position by a transactional deal between Washington and Tokyo that might inadvertently empower Japan
After declaring Iran’s military “gone,” US President Donald Trump appealed to the UK, France, Japan and South Korea — as well as China, Iran’s strategic partner — to send minesweepers and naval forces to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. When allies balked, the request turned into a warning: NATO would face “a very bad” future if it refused. The prevailing wisdom is that Trump faces a credibility problem: having spent years insulting allies, he finds they would not rally when he needs them. That is true, but superficial, as though a structural collapse could be caused by wounded feelings. Something
RSS