Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Weng Hsiao-ling (翁曉玲) has motioned to abolish the “Wu Sz-huai” (吳斯懷) clauses of the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) — which forbid all Taiwanese who enter China from engaging in any activities detrimental to national security or interests. This motion led the Taiwan Statebuilding Party (TSP) to report her for infringing upon the National Security Act (國家安全法), which Weng called a lawless and undisciplined attempt to threaten a legislator.
However, the true lawless and undisciplined person is Weng — the one standing in the enemy camp, despite her identity as an authentic, 17th-generation Taiwanese.
How can a victim develop affection and approval for the one who harmed them?
With national safety first and sovereignty a top priority, public opinion must support the government in drawing a clear distinction that China is the enemy. Reducing the pension of a general — or any member of the military — who is willing to be a tool of Beijing’s “united front” tactics is too light a penalty.
One solution would be to insist that opposing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) requires more than just mere resistance — we must completely break away from China.
Weng’s disdain for her own family background and affection for the enemy is the bitter consequence of 50 years of education under the two Chiangs — former presidents Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and his son Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) — which promoted anti-CCP sentiment while simultaneously eliminating Taiwanese consciousness. Sure enough, it resulted in abundant approval of China.
How many people like Weng are there in Taiwan, who were born and raised here, yet identify with the Chinese party that persecutes Taiwanese? Or even worse, how many spare no efforts to distance themselves from their identity and join the “upper-class” mainlanders who dominate Taiwan? This Chinese political party — the KMT — is full of politicians who do just that.
The second solution would be to value Taiwanese education and culture and deepen the nation’s historical understanding.
Weng once called herself a second-generation Chinese. It turns out that her father, Weng Chi-hsiung (翁啟雄), and her grandfather, Weng Chung-tzu (翁鐘賜), are the 15th and the 16th generations of the Weng family living in Chiayi County’s Yijhu Township (義竹). So, Weng is a 17th-generation Taiwanese. Despite her illustrious family background — which include former Academia Sinica president Wong Chi-huey (翁啟惠) and former Judicial Yuan president Weng Yueh-sheng (翁岳生) — she has chosen to hide it. What kind of mentality is this?
She would rather identify with something illusory and nonexistent than stand firmly on the land from which she came. She has committed 5,000 years of Chinese history to memory, yet has no knowledge of the events that have occurred in Taiwan in the past 100 years.
Weng has said: “I am a true Chinese, through and through... My father, like my grandfather before him, believed in a great China; in the 1920s they were active in the Taiwanese Cultural Association, and were heroes in the resistance movement against Japanese colonial rule.”
The association was founded by Taiwanese democracy pioneer Chiang Wei-shui (蔣渭水), an outspoken Taiwanese nationalist during the Japanese colonial era. The core tenet of the association was that “Taiwan is the Taiwan of the Taiwanese,” and was seminal in the emergence of a Taiwanese consciousness.
In 1927, Chiang Wei-shui founded the short-lived Taiwan People’s Party — not to be confused with the party of the same name established by Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) in 2019, almost a century later — but the impetus behind his movement would be reincarnated with the founding of the Taiwan People’s Association in 1946.
It would seem that the idea of resistance against the Japanese was far from monolithic, and that central to Chiang Wei-shui’s thought was the overthrow of the colonial power, whereas Weng focuses only on China’s resistance to the Japanese, a mindset introduced by the KMT’s party-state education. What she espouses here is the KMT’s alternative version of a colonial history.
In all of this, is Weng really attempting to conflate the motivations of her grandfather and father with the narrative of the CCP?
The next generation of Taiwanese need to cultivate a sense of their autonomy. They need to understand the history of the struggle of those who have come before, and be educated in a Taiwan-centric history.
The third solution would be to insist on the strict enforcement of the law.
Ironically, the very people who were inculcated with anti-CCP rhetoric under the two Chiangs are today the most pro-China. Can former navy lieutenant commander Lu Li-shih (呂禮詩) and his ilk, and the explicitly pro-CCP propaganda that they spout, not be reined in? Not only are the KMT legislators not amending the laws to close the gaping loopholes, but they are trying to abolish the already inadequate provisions that exist. Is this not tantamount to encouraging military personnel to go over to the other side? Legal experts should stand up and take these cases to the courts.
With political parties such as the KMT or the contemporary Taiwan People’s Party, does Taiwan really need enemies? Even if the government succeeds in increasing the military procurement budget, there would still be all kinds of compromises and loopholes. If retired military personnel can identify so closely with the People’s Republic of China, which seeks to eliminate the Republic of China, and still expect to draw their state pensions in Taiwan, how can people expect serving military officers to fight?
The government needs all the support it can get in its attempts to bolster a pro-Taiwan mindset.
Chu Meng-hsiang is an artist and former deputy secretary-general of the Lee Teng-hui Foundation.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen and Paul Cooper
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