Over the past seven months, many young Hong Kongers have been beaten, arrested, imprisoned and even driven to suicide during the territory-wide protests. Young Taiwanese have been paying close attention to these developments, and those who participated in the Sunflower movement can empathize with victims of indiscriminate police violence.
The idea of resisting China and protecting Taiwan has become a shared belief among the nation’s youth. This generation grew up after martial law was lifted, which means they were not fed anti-communist material in school as their parents were. Yet, if a random survey were conducted, young people would surely make up a large part of the group that finds Beijing abhorrent.
This makes one wonder why those who grew up during the Martial Law era and whose minds were filled with anti-communist material have dropped their guard against China and are afraid of criticizing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government. Logically speaking, they should hate the CCP more than any other group.
So what happened?
One major reason is the education and political propaganda that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) used to brainwash Taiwanese aged 45 and older through education and the media to protect its authoritarian rule.
This consolidated the KMT’s long hold on power, while a vast majority of Taiwanese grew up with a conformist mindset and weakened ability to engage in rational debate, logical analysis and self-reflection.
They were taught to see China’s Central Plains Culture as the established culture, place identification as “Chinese” above the idea of a modern nation and civic consciousness, adopt the clannish and patriarchal authority of Han society, and value male chauvinism above all else.
It also meant treating Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and his son Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) as the saviors of the nation, unconditional belief in the leadership and dominance of an omniscient government and the leadership of the KMT, and treating Chinese culture as the guiding principle for all social interactions, which in its turn gave rise to a love of saving face, formalities, empty talk, pulling strings and backdoor influence.
Finally, it also made economic growth the one and only benchmark of a society’s development, which meant that sacrificing the environment, labor rights, and disadvantaged groups was a reasonable price to pay.
Taiwanese society was dominated by this thinking for more than 40 years, giving rise to a large group of people who either seek only personal comfort and security, or want a shortcut to wealth, and who would imprison or ostracize any one with a slightly different opinion.
Had it not been for pressure from the US for Chiang Ching-kuo to implement democracy and the efforts by the dangwai (黨外, “outside the party”) movement in the early 1980s, in addition to the rising student and social movements later that decade, it would have been next to impossible to reform the nation’s political structure.
Martial law was lifted and Taiwan started democratizing in the late 20th century, but even after the central government underwent its first transition of power in 2000, many people were still bound by self-imposed martial law.
They held on to their passive attitude toward democracy and human rights, remained suspicious of the value of diversity, had limited ideas about the future, and continued to oppose the nation’s pursuit of legitimate status and an independent existence.
In this post-Martial Law era, the KMT showed that it understood the minds and thoughts of these people only too well, as it continued to use elections to emotionally blackmail and mobilize this group into becoming its fundamental support base.
However, thanks to the rise of the Internet in the late 1990s and Taiwan being a world-class manufacturer of information products, the younger generation grew up breathing the air of freedom, and thinking that democracy and human rights are the inherent rights of Taiwanese.
Moreover, they stay closely connected to the world through universally available computers and inexpensive Internet connections, allowing them to absorb a great amount of diverse information from the online world. The older generation has also gradually been influenced by their children and society, and started to free their minds.
Following this trend, Taiwan should soon develop into an advanced country in the same league as the US, Japan and some European nations, and there is hope for a new world order that would bring Taiwan to the UN and let it enjoy the status of an independent country recognized by the world.
However, just as Taiwan looks set to follow this path, the KMT and the CCP adjusted their strategy. Aside from acquiring Taiwanese media outlets, the CCP has begun using the Internet to infiltrate Taiwan and stepped up efforts to buy off local political factions and temple associations.
The change of government from the KMT to the Democratic Progressive Party in 2016 worried Beijing, and it has over the past two years bypassed communication with the KMT’s Central Standing Committee and turned its focus to local forces.
Realizing that they lost favor with China, KMT politicians stopped pretending that Beijing was not their master. They started appearing in media where they promoted the idea that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait would eventually be unified by the CCP to curry favor with Beijing.
China has used social media as a new form of online infiltration. Mainly targeting Facebook and the Line messaging app, China buys off Taiwanese ad placement companies to collect huge amounts of user information and then mark that up with the individuals’ political preferences. With the help of artificial intelligence and big data analysis, advertising firms promote misinformation on social media, smear the DPP administration and attack DPP politicians.
When the DPP and its supporters try to clarify an issue or strike back, huge numbers of fake accounts immediately crop up to attack and paralyze pro-green camp’s user accounts, terrifying and dividing them. Such assaults enabled China to help the KMT win a massive victory in last year’s local elections. It is deploying the same tactics to undermine the Jan. 11 presidential and legislative elections.
With the elections 10 days away, the Hong Kong protests and the US-China trade dispute have raised Taiwanese voters’ awareness of and alertness to Chinese manipulation and misinformation.
No one with common sense in Taiwan still believes in Beijing’s “one country, two systems” formula. The KMT has stopped pretending and shown its true colors as China’s lackey and proxy.
Thanks to Taiwan’s hard-fought freedom and democracy, Chinese proxies are able to continue running loose and spread fallacies to mislead the public. As Beijing uses Taiwanese democracy to undermine the nation, the best way to hit back is to use the same tactic.
Taiwanese were able to lead the nation toward democracy through a silent revolution in the 1990s, and should be able once again to rely on democracy to crack down on Chinese schemes and eliminate KMT members who have bowed to the CCP. It is this potential that makes democracy so valuable and powerful.
To all Taiwanese voters, the ballots in our hands are the most powerful weapon against Chinese conspiracies. Get out and vote to bring down pro-China political parties and their legislative candidates to keep Taiwan free and give our children a nation free of Beijing’s abuse, infiltration and threats.
Vincent Chen is a manager in the information and communication industry, and a former publicity section convener of the Wild Lily Student Movement.
Translated by Chang Ho-ming
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