Policy shift: The changing landscape of Taiwanese democracy
Taiwan’s internal and external politics undergoes a shift as two historic motions are filed in the country’s parliament.
Photo by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas on Wikimedia Commons
It is rare for any bill to pass the Legislative Yuan in Taipei without dissent. Yet when Chiang Chi-chen, incumbent leader of the opposition KMT (Kuomintang), proposed two motions during session on October 6, not a single opposing vote was cast. Even the fringe New Power Party - famously active in combatting KMT manoeuvres - had nothing to say in protest. Both KMT bills urged a deepening of the US-Taiwan relationship - the first seeking resumption of official diplomatic relations and the second closer cooperation in national defence. The move is a marked departure from party orthodoxy and a strong signal sent by Chiang to Beijing, Washington and - most importantly - the Taiwanese voting public. Amidst ever-escalating tensions in the strait, these bills represent a radical policy shift for Taiwan’s mainstream “blue” party and mark potential sea change in the political makeup of the island nation.
Born of the nationalist movement to unify China in the first half of the 20th century, the KMT fled to Taiwan after their defeat on the mainland, overseeing the 228 purges and subsequent years of “white terror”. After democratic transition in 1987, the KMT became Taiwan’s mainstream blue voice in parliament against the “green” DPP (Democratic Progressive Party). This blue/green divide in Taiwanese politics ostensibly correlates to the left/right flanks familiar to a Western democratic observer. Yet the blue/green halves of parliament in Taiwan are arranged along a sliding scale of the eternally immediate key issue - are you pro or anti-Beijing? The “deep blue” advocate immediate unification with the Chinese mainland and the “deep green” propose an almost total severing of relations. Certainly, the tendency is for older, conservative voters to identify as blue while young liberals tend to green. Yet the distinction is such that greens can support hawks like John Bolton simply for their anti-PRC position while such blue parties as the KMT have often advocated for reductions in military spending and friendly Taiwan-China relations, for example.
“Light blue” since democratic transition, the KMT have long advocated strengthening ties with the PRC for reasons economic in theory, but political in practice. Taiwanese voters have flocked to the polls for their balance of conservative Chinese ideology and economic growth despite history’s dark shadow: for 18 years, half the democratic Presidents of Taiwan have belonged to the KMT. In 2020, the winds changed. This January, Kaohsiung City Mayor Han Kuo-yu was the candidate selected to take on DPP incumbent Tsai Ing-wen. A populist, he rose to extreme prominence for “telling it like it is” and the slogan “let’s make a fortune” - a feat he openly admitted would require Beijing to realise.
His monumental defeat (57.1 - 38.6%) was perhaps less shocking than it would have been the previous year. After sustained revelations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang and endless coverage of democracy’s front lines in Hong Kong, 2019 was the year Beijing’s popularity in Taiwan flatlined. Every year since 1992, a poll has been carried out to record the political mood and self-identification of the Taiwanese people. This year, support for an immediate declaration of independence hit all-time highs of 27.7% while desire to reunite with the mainland was lower than ever at just 5.7%. Equally, the proportion of respondents who identified as Taiwanese and not Taiwan-Chinese was the highest ever at 67% - only 27.5% of respondents claimed dual identity, setting another all-time low.
Such fundamental demographic shifts are rarely attributable to international politics alone. Indeed, the ever-escalating onslaught of PLA (People’s Liberation Army) intrusions into Taiwanese airspace, continued net attacks by swarms of CCP die-hards and the increasingly evident severity of being blocked from such international organisations as the WHO have all conspired to grind away the vestiges of pro-China opinion in Taiwan. Chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan James Moriarty spoke recently at an assembly to charge the CCP with contravening international law. Beijing, he claimed, have graduated from threatening any pro-Taiwan foreign government to threatening hotels, airlines and even defence contractors who dare to do business on the island. Recent developments - most notably the forcible ratification of Hong Kong’s new national security law - have proven that Xi Jinping’s unflinching “one country, two systems” policy platform is a knife hidden in a smile”. Considered with Beijing’s steadfast refusal to accept Taiwan as anything but an “inseparable part of the motherland”, cross-strait relations have hit the bottom of a gully deeper than imaginable even five years ago.
So it was that when Chiang Chi-chen suggested resuming official Taiwan-U.S. ties and seeking U.S. help in “resisting the CCP”, it sent waves reeling through parliament and the observing media. Here was the stronghold of pro-CCP ideology in Taiwan sending a direct message to both Beijing and the voting public that times have changed.
As the Tunghai University professor of politics Chen Yuchung notes, the two bills “are of greater significance to the party than the world, their symbolic meaning greater than their practical” - and indeed are unlikely to produce much impact on DPP foreign policy. The U.S. remains now as ever extremely unlikely to break relations with China in favour of her island cousin - and direct military interference in the region will remain at the level of showboating until some great geopolitical earthquake breaks the veneer of peace. Nonetheless, just days after the KMT announcement, David Stilwell (Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs) stressed to the Senate that U.S.-Taiwan and U.S.-China relations are not part of the same policy and reiterated commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act and Six Assurances. The most important tenet of the latter treaty commits the U.S. to “support the people of ‘both shores’ and resolve [their] disagreements.”
The function of these KMT bills, then, is to signal tacit assent to the reality of mainstream opinion in Taiwan. The party’s crushing defeat earlier this year demonstrated with blanket finality that even the island’s southern blue stronghold is rapidly losing vitality. Internal KMT policy directive was not updated after the 2018 “nine-in-one” local election defeat or immediately after January’s crushing loss. This pair of bills strike more as an attempt to repaint the KMT image into 2022’s local elections and beyond into 2024. Chiang Chi-chen has realised the unavoidable necessity of meeting voter opinion if any thread of KMT power is to be maintained into the future. As Ting Shufan told Deutsche Welle, “an opposition party in clear decline, the Kuomintang have to draft motions with strong calls to action if they are to recapture people’s attention”. This kind of political action was used by the opposition DPP back in 1993 when they suggested Taiwan rejoin the United Nations. Now, just as then, a U-turn in party policy turned heads - just the following day, incumbent DPP Premier Su Tseng-chang made positive comments about the KMT for the first time on record: “In the wake of constant threats and pressure from China, I hope the Kuomintang will go on to express further opinions founded on beliefs mainstream among the Taiwanese people.”
Chiang Chi-chen’s decision to alter the course of his party and perhaps Taiwanese history has not been without its detractors. Such KMT luminaries as Hung Hsiu-chu have battled with rumours of a policy shift to meet prevailing winds since the election loss in January. Just this month, the media approached current legislator and former president Ma Ying-jeou to ask whether the two bills represent KMT approval of a pro-U.S. foreign policy directive. He replied “I’m afraid the Kuomintang will not acknowledge such an interpretation.”
In recent years, Tsai Ing-wen’s government have expanded military spending and the national armoury through purchases from Lockheed-Martin and other U.S. defence contractors. These international purchases solidify the DPP’s anti-Beijing stance and lash the Taiwanese economy far closer to Washington, in line with ideology that appears widely popular among voters. As the blue is diluted into green, and the green covers ever more walls of the White House, yet another battle line in Pompeo’s “new cold war” is drawn across the Pacific.