On a recent journey, a Taiwanese colleague expressed her admiration for President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), and asked if I was likewise impressed.
She was initially surprised when I said that I find Tsai’s two terms in office “frustrating.”
Tsai has arguably been the most competent national leader Taiwan has ever had in administering the country’s international relations and keeping a steady hand on the diplomatic rudder. She has reassured Taiwan’s allies and friends, and exposed Beijing’s provocations as well as the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) ham-fisted attempts to throw spanners in the cogs of Taipei-Washington and Taipei-Tokyo relations.
It is true that Tsai did not engineer a globally noticed international relations “coup” such as former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Singapore. However, to expect that from Tsai is to fundamentally misunderstand her. Vanessa Hope’s revealing documentary Invisible Nation provides unparalleled access to and insight into the life and style of Tsai, from policy wonk to president.
The film shows us someone with a wry sense of humor and iron-clad values of responsibility and prudence. Tsai and president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) election campaign driving advert was a smart piece of political communication and reflected both Tsai’s tenure and democratic professionalism in transitioning power to a former rival.
In contrast to her predecessor’s obsession with image, obedience and national-building in the sands of historical revisionism, Tsai’s priority has been stability, consistency and a quiet incrementalism in areas such as human rights, transitional justice and defense. However, her leadership has been uneven and that is where the frustration needs to be addressed. Tsai has made mistakes in her two terms, as any leader can be expected to do.
Most of these come on the domestic policy front, and failure to lead more forcefully in a clearer direction and to lay down a vision of a sustainable political economy for the future was reflected in the Legislative Yuan election in January. The Tsai administration has not nearly gone far enough to address discontents such as the cost of living, house prices, stagnant low wages, environmental pollution and incoherence in policies on immigration and asylum. In some cases of important reforms, the delivery was mishandled, such as in the pension reforms, which antagonized many elderly Taiwanese and those in iron rice bowl professions who might have otherwise been better convinced of the need for change in this area.
It is no coincidence that birthrates have dropped in nations like Taiwan that are wealthy on spreadsheets, but hugely unequal and precarious in the streets. Taiwan is truly a prosperous country where all citizens enjoy the “convenience” of any service being available, aside from the small print saying “if you can afford it.” As productivity and GDP per person has risen, the share of that pot has not spread across society proportionally. To add to this disparity is a widening generational gap in wealth and financial security, the only thing holding back a wider systemic revolt at the hoarding of property and position to the exclusion of younger generations is their understanding and expectation of their inheritance of these coveted prizes.
At a macro level it is unfair and unrealistic to pin blame on Tsai for being singularly unable to slow the motion of this trend. Tsai does not have a big red “make more babies” button she can press any more than she has one that would stop the People’s Republic of China (PRC) wanting to annex Taiwan. She faces the limits of working with elected politicians who are part of a complex patchwork of bureaucratic and economic structural obstacles to advancing significant change in any direction. Inertia is baked into a self-protecting system of interrelated and legal and extra-legal conflicting interests. However, that is no excuse for not having and rhetorically delivering a wider vision of the direction of travel, a plan for steering the nation on a less wasteful path, and at least trying to head off the discontents before it results in egotists and soap-box charlatans seizing power.
A friend once said that diplomacy is the politics of betrayal, and Taiwan’s history of international relations stands as a good example. Friends today might take a check from your enemy tomorrow.
As Lai is preparing to take office in May, there exists an opportunity for him to build on Tsai strengths and address her weaknesses, and likewise for the British government to reorient its approach to Taiwan and to recognize the Taiwanese right to self-determination. The UK must take substantive steps to blow the cobwebs off of 70 years of an ossified policy toward the region stuck in Cold War calculations. That means having the courage to reword policies to reflect the reality that Taiwan is an important ally in practice, before, not after, the PRC creates a new de facto “status quo” that British would only be able to mewl about from the sidelines.
Some argue that the best deterrence of conflict across the Taiwan Strait is assurance. It is a perspective that relegates Taiwan to a pawn in great power rivalries and it invites disaster. The best assurance for Taiwan — which should be centered in discussion as a basic act of respect — is deterrence which speaks plainly and consistently, and not predicated on or shaped by wishful pretense of goodwill and restraint on the part of agencies which are quite clear in their forceful intentions.
Ben Goren is director of communications for the Taiwan Policy Centre and a long-term resident of Taiwan.
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