As former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrapped up his visit to the People’s Republic of China, he received his share of attention.
Certainly, the trip must be seen within the full context of Ma’s life, that is, his eight-year presidency, the Sunflower movement and his failed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, as well as his eight years as Taipei mayor with its posturing, accusations of money laundering, and ups and downs.
Through all that, basic questions stand out: “What drives Ma? What is his end game?”
Having observed and commented on Ma for decades, it is all ironically reminiscent of former US president Harry Truman’s famous quote on former US president Richard Nixon: “He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he’d lie just to keep his hand in.”
That quote might seem strange, but examine how Ma too easily and too willingly abandons Taiwan’s freedom and democracy as he pursues the dream of building a “greater China.”
Ma has always tried to keep his hand in on building a “greater China.”
Here, Ma has also had no shortage of nicknames from the “Phony Pony” to “Ma Ying-joke” to the more infamous “Bumbler.” This trip might well add another, like “Ma the Meddler” or even “Ma the Quisling.”
What is the central thought that drives Ma, his weltanschauung and his paradigmatic vision for Taiwan?
Some say that Ma is quite easy to read, but it is a reading that leads down a deeper, more complex rabbit hole, a hole that broaches sacrilege and bitter realities.
Begin with how Ma clearly professes to be a follower of Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙), and how, like Sun, he wants to restore the “greatness of China.” This is where the complications begin, for Sun’s own life needs its examination and rewrite in history.
Despite Sun’s professed beliefs in democracy and that his picture hangs most everywhere in Taiwan, a core issue in evaluating Sun is how willingly he, and therefore Ma, would sacrifice Taiwan’s democracy on the altar of a greater China.
For Sun and Ma, democracy is and has always been secondary. This issue is what haunts the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) as it struggles to redefine itself on Taiwan.
This is the rabbit hole.
What is China? What is sovereignty? How does democracy fit into all this?
Does culture define sovereignty? No. Have other cultures been suppressed in China’s current pursuit of sovereignty? Yes. Who has done the rewrite?
When Sun began his quest to overthrow the Manchu rulers, he needed something more encompassing than “I want the Han to replace the Manchus.” Democracy fit that bill. The pursuit of democracy became the primary and unifying motive to get the Mongolians, Uighurs, Tibetans, etc, to jointly buy in to throwing out the Manchus.
This fits previous rewrites in which Han culture and history is intermingled with sovereignty. It is an area where even Western historians and authors have been complicit from Marco Polo down.
When the Mongols built an empire that extended from Korea to the Caspian Sea, they did not suppress other cultures in the way that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) does.
One Khanate of that empire included “China” and other lands such as Korea. However the Mongols did not call it “China.” A similar factor happened with the Manchu conquest of Ming China, Mongolia, Tibet, Xinjiang, etc.
Why have these Mongol and Manchu conquests always been called “China” as if the Mongols and Manchus had no other names to define their sovereignty.
Examine Taiwan then. Parts of it were under Manchu rule, but the Manchus never ruled the whole island. Japan would be the first to colonize and control Taiwan. Japan did not send the memo that Taiwan has been a part of China “from time immemorial.”
Return to Ma and his professed belief in democracy. If Ma really believes in democracy, why on his trip to China, did he not visit the Uighur detention camps in Xinjiang. Why did he not question how those people were denied democratic representation?
Why did Ma not visit Tibet to examine the “century of humiliation” that the CCP rulers have imposed on Tibetans and their culture?
Further, why is Ma so dead set against Taiwanese independence when the reality of that independence is based on democracy?
Why does Ma not even face how Mongolia escaped the fate that befell the other parts of the Manchu empire taken over by the CCP?
The CCP ironically accepts Mongolia as independent, but under the outdated Constitution of the Republic of China (ROC), Mongolia is still part of the ROC.
Democracy is clearly secondary in Ma’s thinking. His immediate goal remains to rewrite history so that somehow Taiwan can be restored to the alleged “motherland.”
Ma would better spend his time examining the polls done by National Chengchi University’s Election Study Center. They are taken from 1992 when democracy was introduced to Taiwan.
In the polls on identity and maintaining Taiwan’s “status quo” as a de facto independent nation, the results are revealing. The number of people who identify as Taiwanese has soared 44 percentage points from 17.6 to 61.7 percent from 1992 to the present. On the other hand, the number of those that identify only as Chinese dropped from 25.5 percent to 2.4 percent. Even those who see themselves as both Taiwanese and Chinese dropped 14 points from 46 to 32 percent.
Combine this with the poll that emphasizes maintaining the “status quo” of Taiwan’s de facto independence. Almost all support maintaining this position or even moving toward full independence. Those that want immediate unification with China are a minute 1.2 percent.
Does Ma wish to be a Judas to Taiwan’s democracy? What drives Ma?
Jerome Keating is a writer based in Taipei.
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