With the industrial revolution three centuries ago, humans started emitting large amounts of carbon dioxide into the air, leading to the greenhouse effect and global warming. Back then, Taiwan was relatively undeveloped, home to large numbers of immigrants beginning the process of creating a diverse culture together with the Aborigines, a culture combining the easygoing, good-willed attributes of the original inhabitants and the hard-working nature and agricultural society of the Chinese immigrants.
It inherited the island mentality of the Ming-era warlord Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功, also known as Koxinga), who used Taiwan as his fortress against China’s Qing Dynasty, the tradition of anti-Qing peasant revolts and the Meiji Restoration during the years of Japanese colonial rule that set Taiwan on the road to becoming a modern society.
In the post-World War II period, US influence permeated Taiwan, but the pretense of democracy was ripped away by the governments of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and his son and successor Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), who implemented martial law, pushing the populace to build the economy while suppressing their identification with their own land or pursuit of its sovereignty. The reign of the two Chiangs ended in the 1990s and Taiwan, with its close affiliation with the free world — the US and Japan in particular — became a global success story.
Yet there is still a sense in which Taiwan is being held back, and is not in step with the rest of the scientific, industrial world. Taiwanese’s sentimental attachments, their disregard for the rule of law and inability to distinguish right from wrong all contribute to inadequate facility for self-reflection.
Perhaps most serious is the inability to distinguish fact from falsehood, to be too willing to have the wool pulled over their eyes and too reluctant to subsequently search out the truth and understand who they really are. This risks having them fall behind in the globalized international community.
If Taiwan can only wake from this slumber, learn from the Meiji Restoration and put aside the false narrative of the Chiang cultural tradition, it might get in line with the scientific spirit of the times, make good use of digital technology and the Internet, and enhance its relations with its global partners, as well as its development of a modern talent pool.
This way, Taiwan can become an independent, autonomous member of the global club of free nations.
Today’s Taiwan is permeated and suppressed by the uncivilized world of communist thought. History shows that weaponry in itself is insufficient, that Taiwanese still need to transform the spiritual armor of their society and the individuals living within it if they are to fend off oppression from communist China or competition from the globalized world.
Today’s reform movement should be about the internalization of the scientific spirit and the scientific method. This needs to be done through educational reform, by cultivating a new breed of independently thinking Taiwanese and a society that holds human rights to be its highest founding principle.
With this, Taiwan would be better prepared to pursue a new path forward. Taiwanese must avail themselves of the courage and vision of the US founding fathers and understand the benefits of Japan’s Meiji Restoration’s resolve to move away from Asia and closer to the West. Only then can they expect to create their own future, one that belongs to themselves alone.
Chi Gou-chung is a convener of the Northern Taiwan Society Taiwan Talent Quality-management System Center and a former national policy adviser.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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