Mon, Nov 04, 2002 page3

• DPP contender seeks harmony

  A WISH Wilson Tien, a second-generation mainlander who is running for a Taipei City councilor post, talks about how politicians continue to exploit ethnic divisions

  • By Sandy Huang / STAFF REPORTER
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  Wilson Tien (田欣), once a successful computer scientist in the US, came back to Taiwan nine years ago hoping to help others improve their lives.

  Tien believes that Taipei City can be better than it is now, and he has decided to dive into the year-end elections as a DPP Taipei City councilor candidate for the Sungshan and Hsinyi districts.

  

  Wilson Tien, a DPP candidate for a Taipei City council post, criticizes Mayor Ma Ying-jeou's administration and how it has handled traffic and Typhoon Nari.

  PHOTO: CHEN CHENG-CHANG, TAIPEI TIMES

  "I am deeply disappointed with the way Taipei has been governed by Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九)," Tien told the Taipei Times.

  Tien said that the city's traffic gets congested long before the beginning of rush hour, often as early as 2pm.

  Tien says that Taipei's traffic has not improved much even though the city has the MRT.

  "And then, there's the attitude of Ma's government and his problem-solving skills regarding Nari," Tien said.

  "It really angers me that Ma took no responsibility but simply blamed Mother Nature for the mess and the destruction suffered by the city."

  Tien was referring to Typhoon Nari, which hit Taiwan between Sept. 16 and Sept. 19 last year. The storm caused the worst flooding in five decades in Taipei City and claimed the lives of 27 Taipei residents.

  Nari flooded more than 4,000 basements across the city, damaged vital equipment and paralyzed the operations of the MRT.

  "Maybe the city councilors haven't been doing their job very well. They have failed to point out these faults to the city government. That's why the city's residents are not aware of the inefficiency of Ma's government," Tien said when talking about why he is running for a Taipei City councilor seat.

  Regarded by many as one of the DPP's rising stars, Tien is also notable because -- as a second generation mainlander who supports Taiwan's independence -- he comes to the party with a slightly different background than most of his DPP colleagues.

  "My reason for my stand is clear and simple," the 40 year-old Tien said.

  "I don't see how [Taiwan's] unification with China will bring Taiwan any good."

  Educated at National Taiwan University and Indiana University, Tien wrote a book in 1995 titled Taiwan, My Only Motherland (台灣，我唯一的祖國). In the book, Tien outlined his political ideology as well as his personal views on national identity.

  "Taiwan is the only place I dream about and identify with," Tien was once quoted as saying in an interview.

  Once the DPP's former director of its International Affairs Department, Tien was also the former secretary-general of the Goa-Seng-Lang Association for Taiwan Independence (外省人獨立促進會), a group made up of mainlanders -- including current secretary-general of the Presidential Office Chen Shih-meng (陳師孟) and DPP Legislator Dung Yi-kang (段宜康) -- who share a pro-independence ideology.

  "Of Taiwan's 400-year history, who is not an immigrant in this country anyway?" Tien asked, noting that more than 80 percent of the population are descendants of Chinese who moved to Taiwan as far back as 400 years ago -- mainly from Fujian Province.

  "The thing that made the so-called waishengren -- the term used to refer to mainlanders who fled to Taiwan with the KMT in 1949 -- stand out more than others, is the fact that so many of them arrived at once," Tien said, adding that the exodus consisted of approximately one million people.

  Seeing as how Taiwan's population was -- before the KMT arrived -- around 6 million, the in-coming group made up one sixth of Taiwan's population, Tien said.

  Tien thinks that if the ethnic issue wasn't over-politicized in Taiwan, inter-marriage and the assimilation of cultural and social differences between mainlanders and Taiwanese would create a more harmonious society.

  China's policy towards Taiwan also contributes to the ongoing distrust between mainlanders and native Taiwanese, Tien said.

  "China's efforts to marginalize Taiwan, internationally and its threat of using force to `reunify' Taiwan has meant that anyone who expressed any affinity for China would be seen as a traitor in Taiwan," he said.

  However, Tien is optimistic that, with time, the ethnicity problem will subside as the two groups converge.

  "Strictly speaking, waishengren is not an ethnic group because they, unlike the Hakka, do not share a common religion, speak a common language or share a common history," Tien said.

  "So it will be hard for them to continue to identify with China for a long time."

  "I think in the future, within five to 10 years' time, the term `mainlander' will become blurred and it will be hard to tell whether someone is a mainlander or not," Tien said.
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