An article published in the Dec. 12, 1949, edition of the Central Daily News (中央日報) bore a headline with the intimidating phrase: “You Cannot Escape.” The article was about the execution of seven “communist spies,” some say on the basis of forced confessions, at the end of the 713 Penghu Incident.
Those were different times, born of political paranoia shortly after the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) relocated to Taiwan following defeat in China by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The phrase was a warning by the KMT regime to the local populace not to challenge its power or threaten national unity.
The Penghu Incident does not have the notoriety or historical profile of the 228 Incident that occurred two years earlier. However, both are symptomatic of the historical trauma that continues to plague attempts at national unity in Taiwan.
The CCP, too, continues to seek national unity in its own country, but very differently from how the problem is being addressed in Taiwan. While Taiwan is trying to seek unity through transparency, China is trying to eradicate differences to construct a unity of its own liking, through the suppression of history, culture and differences of opinion.
Today’s Opinion page is all about reconciliation with the past. Arthur Chang (張崇廉), a lieutenant colonel in the navy reserve, writes about transitional justice and the need to avoid seeking retribution, even though closure relies on accountability of the protagonist. He believes that the KMT is yet to allow this closure to happen. Political commentator Shen Yan (沈言) in “History points in one direction,” writes about the ethnic, cultural and linguistic complexity of Taiwanese society that occurred as a result of immigration in the post-war chaos, stretching over three generations of the same family: his grandfather heavily influenced by the Japanese colonial period, his father-in-law who spoke in a heavy Shandong accent and had experienced the 713 Penghu Incident as a student, and he himself, who grew up in the democratic era.
Finally, writer Liu Che-ting (劉哲廷) writes about the recent launch of an online resource by the Ministry of Education on transitional justice, and the absurdity of having this resource promoting transitional justice in a country in which a huge expanse of capital city real estate is taken up by the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, an “enormous monument to an authoritarian past.” The juxtaposition is absurd, although explicable with an understanding of the historical, national and ethnic complexity of a nation yet to emerge from the contradictions of the post-war period.
Official attempts at transitional justice, coupled with the vibrant debate around it, are testament to the messy but organic process that demonstrates the strengths of the democratic system: a search for unity and understanding with society-wide participation. The criticisms are valid, but that they can be levied at all is proof that expression in a democracy is not limited to a single vote every four years. It is a bottom-up process that embraces historical and ethnic diversity, where the populace is warning the former authoritarian regime that it “cannot escape” its actions.
In China, the CCP is pushing for a manufactured unity. The Chinese National People’s Congress passed the Act on the Promotion of Ethnic Unity and Progress on Thursday, which Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) has said is essentially a law representing Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) vision of governing different ethnic groups in China, “to establish what the CCP perceives as ‘correct’ views on the nation, history, ethnicity, culture, education and religion.”
As Khedroob Thondup, a former member of the Tibetan parliament in exile, wrote in “Legislative unity, erasing difference” (page 8, March 14), the law recasts “unity in diversity” as “unity through uniformity” and “reframes diversity as a threat, turning legal protections into instruments of erasure.”
The law also provides a legal basis to prosecute parents who want to instill “detrimental” views in children that would “affect ethnic harmony.”
It is one man, Xi, telling individuals in the world’s second-most populous nation how to conceptualize their identity, and not to challenge the party or threaten national unity; it is a warning to any dissenters that “you cannot escape,” that there is nowhere to hide.
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