The Huang Fu-hsing (黃復興) faction is the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) “party within a party.” The KMT wanting to change its image by renaming the faction, which consists of military veterans and their dependents, is the party’s own internal affair, but the issue goes beyond factionalism. At heart is the issue of the KMT being able to “Taiwanize” itself. The Huang Fu-hsing branch is no longer able to distinguish between friend and foe. From its former stalwart anti-communist stance to its present submissiveness to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), it now blames Taiwan for all things, opposes the US and loathes Japan. It ignores and has turned its back on Taiwanese public opinion and national interests.
After the KMT lost its political hold over Taiwan, the Huang Fu-hsing faction — an instrument of the party-state era — fell on its back foot and retired generals have successively collaborated with their old nemesis. In 2016, retired lieutenant general Wu Sz-huai (吳斯懷) sat upright in China’s Great Hall of the People, listening with rapt attention as Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) gave an address at the annual assembly of the CPP. This is nothing but an absolute scandal and travesty. Not only do members of the Huang Fu-hsing faction not oppose the CCP, but their love of “China” is far different from their love of their fellow Taiwanese.
Among the KMT factions, the Huang Fu-hsing branch belongs to those that come “from outside” of Taiwan and yet within the party, its numbers and power are influential, despite its divergence from Taiwanese society. Its members dream of a “Great China,” but are not wont to “return home” to live out their China dream. Instead, they want to hobble Taiwan by constricting it and see the nation subsumed and annexed by China.
Simply stated, it is a self-identified “Mainlander party” faction composed of a minority of high-level KMT members. Members who identify with Taiwan are few and far between, and pale in comparison with members of the nation’s military who identify as Taiwanese.
The Huang Fu-hsing faction’s Mainlander homogeneity is a force that rejects homegrown power, is united and relatively radical, has a tendency to rant and rave, manipulates elections for the KMT chair and fights to maintain its sole message within the party, but is useless for establishing, developing and expanding the party’s native-born roots.
When former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) was leading the party, he advocated for the localization of the KMT — to turn it into a “Taiwan Nationalist Party.” The Huang Fu-hsing faction lashed out and berated him as being a “Taiwanese independence supporter,” “a Japanese,” and blamed him for the party’s corruption and its addiction to “black gold” politics. “Hate Lee, hate Japan and love China” became their new slogan, yet the KMT still relies on families with black gold connections to help it strike out at everything on its behalf.
KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) has tried to play it both ways with all factions. Just replacing the Huang Fu-hsing name without making moves to change it has already brought him under fire. Some party members have called for him to be “prudent.”
Others have said that the Huang Fu-hsing faction is the “Chinese soul” of the KMT. Chu’s choice to ditch the “Chinese soul” has led the KMT to the point where “China’s progeny from the Yan and Huang emperors are no more, and the rejuvenation of China is but a mere dream.”
The heavy backlash from these diehards, combined with the deathly silence from local factions, has laid out the fork in the road before the KMT and the party’s schisms for all to see. Chu is coming to the end of his tenure as party chairman. Whether he can hold on to the chairmanship would be a test of the Huang Fu-hsing’s influence.
James Wang is a media commentator.
Translated by Tim Smith
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
Taiwan aims to elevate its strategic position in supply chains by becoming an artificial intelligence (AI) hub for Nvidia Corp, providing everything from advanced chips and components to servers, in an attempt to edge out its closest rival in the region, South Korea. Taiwan’s importance in the AI ecosystem was clearly reflected in three major announcements Nvidia made during this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei. First, the US company’s number of partners in Taiwan would surge to 122 this year, from 34 last year, according to a slide shown during CEO Jensen Huang’s (黃仁勳) keynote speech on Monday last week.
When China passed its “Anti-Secession” Law in 2005, much of the democratic world saw it as yet another sign of Beijing’s authoritarianism, its contempt for international law and its aggressive posture toward Taiwan. Rightly so — on the surface. However, this move, often dismissed as a uniquely Chinese form of legal intimidation, echoes a legal and historical precedent rooted not in authoritarian tradition, but in US constitutional history. The Chinese “Anti-Secession” Law, a domestic statute threatening the use of force should Taiwan formally declare independence, is widely interpreted as an emblem of the Chinese Communist Party’s disregard for international norms. Critics