Taiwanese democracy and independence are in peril. Democracy and Taiwan Republic 台灣国classroom. The thin majority gained in the Taiwanese parliament by the China KMT and its adjacent People’s First Party has generated the gravest challenge to Taiwanese democracy and sovereignty since the anti-democratic pro-communist China Ma Ying-jeou administration. Even before president-elect Lai was inaugurated the violence and chaos instigated by the KMT and allies in parliament yesterday demonstrated a new tactic by the Chinese Communist Party to defeat Taiwanese democracy – using democratic institutions and norms to subvert Taiwanese sovereignty from within. None of this makes any sense unless analyzed and filtered through the prism of national identity – do the three major political parties in parliament agree that Taiwan is a sovereign nation and that it is not a part of the People’s Republic of China?
While the videos of the violence in the Taiwan parliament are made for social media and tee vee, the consequential violence is the attempt by the China KMT to push through extrajudicial, anti-constitutional measures to Hong-Kong-ize the KMT-controlled parliament. Taiwan’s national constitution is a hot mess because Taiwan is forced to use a poorly designed, nonsensical constitution implemented by the dictatorial China KMT when it ruled China. Taiwan cannot modify/change its constitution because any change to the “status quo” is not acceptable to the global great powers. One can, for example, reasonably argue a nation Taiwan’s size would be better served by a modified Japanese, or Western European system. But such a discussion is not possible.
This gets us to an oft-ignored historical fact when global media and some scholars discuss Taiwan. There is a focus on computer chips. There is the rising tension possible war narrative. There is a focus on DC and Beijing. The peculiar and unsustainable nature of Taiwan’s democracy – the historically specific ways of how it arrived at this democracy – is far less discussed. The Taiwanese democracy of 2024 is vibrant – more vibrant than American democracy. Yet it is unsustainable because it is built on a flawed institutional basis – this quicksand being a constitution not designed for Taiwan but cannot be modified, and the fact that a foreign authoritarian political party, the China KMT – which as of 2024 still cannot clearly explain its national identity-allegiance and has not atoned for its anti-democratic crimes from the past – has been allowed to exist and participate in Taiwanese democracy. The peculiar history – Taiwan democratized peacefully in part because it was led by Taiwanese president and chair of the then Taiwan-izing KMT – means an incomplete process where all major forces for decades have had to fudge around major issues. Symbols of the China KMT dictatorship, such as the Chiang Kai-shek memorial, remain. There are memorials and museums to the China KMT crimes – 2.28 massacre, White Terror, Martial Law – all crimes with victims but without perpetrators, much less holding criminals to account.
As a historian, I will not speculate on how this particular episode of political turmoil and counter-democratic push will play out. It does seem to me that Taiwan is facing two concurrent key moments of reckoning. In global affairs, Taiwan’s ultimate status as a sovereign nation apart from the People’s Republic of China has been fudged and pushed off since the end of the Pacific War. Because of Taiwan becoming a democratic entity and because of dictator Xi’s impatience, the room for the you say potato I say potah-toe wink wink nudge nudge type of cross-straits/global system talk is coming to an end. Likewise, the provisional compromise wherein Taiwan is at once a vibrant, energetic, diverse democratic nation and still tolerates a major authoritarian political party that cannot speak clearly about its ultimate national allegiance, where symbols of an authoritarian and foreign past – RoC constitution, flag, Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek remains – as the Chinese Communist Party pushes full speed for its allies, the China KMT and adjacent parties, to subvert the executive power that asserts Taiwanese sovereignty and democracy, this domestic reckoning is coming soon as well. 17.5.2024
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