President Tsai Ing-wen and this emerging Taiwanese national identity, part three, the dead-end of the “blood and soil” Chinese nationalism. Taiwan Republic 台灣国, national identity, and world history classrooms. This week Taiwan’s army presented prototypes of an indigenous 105mm wheeled armor vehicle. Taiwanese netizens rapidly made a size comparison of the proposed wheeled 105 mm vehicle with the M-1A2T MBTs coming to Taiwan. Further improvements will be made, though it has been interesting to follow the discussion-debate on its viability in the Taiwanese civil space.
During the democratic era, Taiwan Republic has had four presidents — Lee, Chen, Tsai, and Lai. Decades apart, Chen and Lai share the fate of facing a pro-China pro-autocracy majority in the parliament, but for foreign and domestic reasons Lai is in a far stronger position. I have been writing about different elements of why this is the case, as a way of analyzing the formation of modern Taiwanese national identity. An interesting indicator is in the realm of national security. For historical-political reasons, during Chen’s eight years in the 2000s the national security area, public and private, was monopolized by the so-called “mainlanders,” and a particular subset – veterans of China KMT dictatorship’s military, who spent decades forcing the subjugated Taiwanese to be anticommunists, until the democracy era, when they decided Taiwan independence is far worse than Chinese communism. What’s left of that group is the embodiment of a “blood and soil” type of reductivist, violent, anti-democratic Chinese nationalism.
It is not so much that with time these Chinese Taipei occupiers mellowed — in fact, many have become more radicalized — it is that their numbers have noticeably been reduced because Tsai’s eight years opened the door to those associated with the population that fled to Taiwan between 1945-1949 who maintain a sentimental attachment to “RoC” but also are pro-democracy to join with the pro-democracy and pro-not surrendering to the Chinese communists Taiwanese mainstream. Many of the online and YouTube civilian Taiwan military analysts I follow may well have voted for the reactionary and anti-democracy Ma twice, and may still vote for China KMT candidates on the legislative and local levels. But on presidential-national identity-democratic sovereignty issues, they have become a part of Tsai’s emerging domestic consensus on “RoC” Taiwan and its democratic sovereignty. Taiwan, as is the case with the US and Europe, is a good case study of why blood and soil type nationalisms may achieve short-term political gains but result in long-term national dead-ends — while Tsai’s liberal-democratic nationalism – the idea that being Taiwanese citizens is defined by adherence to a set of democratic values and principles and not based on blood and lineage — is such an important principle for Lai and allies domestic and foreign to promote and to protect. 27.6.2024
[Illustration from 新‧二七部隊 New 27 Brigade at https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=122154187856155786&set=a.122105799836155786]
[Analysis of the armored vehicle at Tommy Chi諸葛風雲的異想世界https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tlp34pK3png]
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