Sun, Oct 19, 2025 page8

• When National Day becomes partisan

  • By John Cheng
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  Double Ten National Day speeches are supposed to rise above the noise — to remind citizens, if only for a few minutes, that a nation’s meaning is larger than its problems. In Taiwan, where democracy stands within striking distance of an authoritarian neighbor, such moments carry particular weight. Yet this Oct. 10, as the Republic of China marked its 114th anniversary, Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) used the podium not to unite, but to air grievances — and in doing so, turned the country’s most unifying ceremony into another partisan stage.

  Before foreign dignitaries and global cameras, Han delivered a speech that might have belonged at a campaign rally. He lamented solar panels destroying forests, black-hearted businessmen excavating valleys, low wages amid a booming stock market, and energy policy dragged down by ideology. He warned of desinicization raising the risk of war. Every phrase was artfully crafted to sound populist, patriotic, and oppositional at once — a kind of political venting session disguised as national reflection.

  The performance had all the drama of populist rhetoric, but none of the restraint expected from the head of Taiwan’s legislature. Han was not wrong that Taiwan faces deep problems — political, economic, environmental, social and even existential. There is a time and a place for critique. And the one person in government expected to represent all sides of the chamber should not spend National Day wielding his position like a cudgel against the very government he is supposed to balance, not bludgeon.

  And more unsettling was the question of who Han was really addressing. His words were spoken to the crowd in front of the Presidential Office Building, but the echo carried elsewhere. The tone — the imagery of decay, division, and ideological excess — felt strangely calibrated for another audience entirely: Beijing. It felt as if Han was delivering not a speech, but a report.

  This is, after all, a man who in 2019, just months after being elected mayor of Kaohsiung, paid a highly controversial visit to China’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong — Beijing’s political nerve center, infamous even then as the symbol of eroding Hong Kong autonomy. The visit prompted outrage across Taiwan and suspicion that Han’s political compass pointed abroad, not inward. His National Day speech seemed to confirm as much. When the legislative head of a besieged democracy chooses its most visible moment to echo the talking points of its adversary, it is difficult to dismiss it as a coincidence.

  Han’s defenders — including Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hsu Chiao-hsin (徐巧芯) — rushed to insist he merely “spoke the truth.” However, truth-telling in politics is not just about what you say; it is about when, where and to whom you say it. To use a national birthday — in front of ambassadors, allies and cameras — to paint Taiwan as broken, demoralized, and divided is to hand Beijing precisely the propaganda it craves. It was not leadership; it was betrayal.

  Imagine if the US speaker of the house used the July 4 Independence Day podium to accuse the administration of betraying the nation, undermining its identity, and dragging it toward war — in full view of foreign dignitaries. The scandal would write itself. Yet in Taiwan, the reaction has been depressingly familiar: partisan rallying on one side, moral outrage on the other, and the silent erosion of civic standards in between.

  That is the quiet tragedy here. Taiwan’s democracy has survived pressure from outside and dysfunction within because, at key moments, its leaders have remembered that freedom demands discipline — not theatrics. Han’s speech betrayed that discipline.

  And while the content of his remarks might please his base, they come at a steep cost. Every word suggesting that Taiwan is fraying or faithless reinforces China’s narrative that democracy is chaos — that only authoritarian order can restore dignity. Han, whether through calculation or carelessness, lent that narrative his office’s authority.

  Double Ten National Day is not the time for point-scoring. It is the day to reaffirm the improbable idea that Taiwan — small, noisy and unbowed — still stands for something larger than its quarrels. It deserves leaders who can speak for that idea, not just for their faction.

  In the end, Han’s speech was not merely inappropriate; it was revealing. It showed that the most dangerous form of betrayal is not shouted from the outside, but whispered from within — wrapped in patriotism, performed on the nation’s birthday and applauded by those too cynical to notice the damage being done.

  John Cheng is a retired businessman from Hong Kong now living in Taiwan.
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