Tag Archives: identity

Who’s your daddy, communist China? “PRC could not be ‘motherland,’ William Lai says. The PRC turned 75 on Oct. 1, but the Republic of China is older. The PRC could never be the homeland of the people of the ROC, Lai said,” Taipei Times. Taiwan Republic 台灣国 and geostrategery classrooms

How does one defend democratic Taiwan from an all-domain war against its democratic sovereignty?

Over a decade ago Taiwan Republic’s first democratically elected president Lee Teng-hui declared the “special state to state” relationship between Taiwan and communist China. A few years ago Taiwan’s third democratically elected president Tsai Ing-wen clarified that position by stipulating democratic “RoC Taiwan” – with twenty-three million citizens – as the status quo. Tsai’s successor, democratically elected President William Lai deepened the position not so much as the historical pissing match noted by many media, but as a message to anti-democratic and anti-Taiwan forces outside and inside Taiwan that the People’s Republic of China has zero historical or legal claims to citizens of democratic Taiwan.

President Tsai’s remarkable eight years have shaped a stable domestic governing majority on the premise of the democratic sovereignty of “RoC Taiwan” as the status quo. A domestic consensus that’s acceptable to Taiwan’s allies in the Free World. The Chinese communists, with their allies in Taiwan and among Western academia, have launched a new wave of assault against democratic Taiwan.

The malevolent global and domestic anti-democracy and anti-Taiwan forces President Lai is facing are in Beijing, in Taipei, they are also the Western imperialist think tanks and newspapers. The China KMT and the China People’s Party are both anti-democracy and anti-Taiwan sovereignty political parties that are serving as the vanguard of the Chinese communist war to subvert Taiwan’s democratic sovereignty. The echoes one hears from some Western imperialist think tanks, columnists, and Chinese communist mouthpieces inside Taiwan, are all trying to return Taiwan to the status of “troublemaker” – they argue: that Chinese imperialism and militarism are not the problem, Taiwan’s democratic sovereignty is the problem.
Democratically elected President Lai must ask the Chinese communists, their proxies in Taiwan, and Western imperialist scholars and journalists – on what basis does the Chinese Communist Party claim the right to govern the People’s Republic of China? Taiwan’s democratic sovereignty is legitimate – derived from one citizen one vote – how do the Chinese communists and dictator Xi derive their legitimacy to claim sovereignty?

President Lai is staking out clear national boundaries around Taiwan’s democratic sovereignty, while doing so in a way acceptable to the US, Japan, and European democracies. I have written previously that if one studies the China KMT’s former chair Ma Ying-jeou’s statements during his latest visit to communist China, the only issue he and his refugee party have left to concede is that the “one Chinese national family” he and his party supports is the People’s Republic of China. In this context, President Lai’s remarks make complete sense – for decades now as China KMT’s anti-Taiwan national identity position becomes a permanent electoral minority inside Taiwan, they have defended a political paradox – to advocate as super RoC patriots inside Taiwan, while refusing to speak of the RoC whenever they kowtow to communist China. Presidents Tsai and Lai’s embrace of RoC dismantles that China KMT grift. The fact that no party has a political future in democratic Taiwan when they advocate surrendering to the Chinese communists may also be why the China KMT and the China People’s Party have moved from passively refusing to acknowledge Taiwan’s democratic sovereignty to attempting to use their paper-thin majority in the Parliament to destroy Taiwan’s democracy. As the Chinese communists have done in Hong Kong, as with many cases such as Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, anti-democratic forces will use democratic institutions to overcome their electoral unpopularity.

This means President Lai is fighting a multi-front war to preserve Taiwan’s democratic sovereignty – against the Chinese communists, against the Chinese communist proxies inside Taiwan, as well as against naive and/or compromised Western think tanks who still dream that dialogue and engagement with the Chinese communists will lead to a peaceful compromise.

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Taiwan’s democratic sovereignty “Resilience improving: US official. DETERRING CHINA: The Pentagon has made strides in developing a new concept of operations to address challenges in the western Pacific region, Ely Ratner said,” Taipei Times.  Taiwan Republic 台灣国, national identity, and geostrategery classrooms. Sooner or later – and given the radical policies pursued by the Chinese communists and its anti-democracy and anti-Taiwan allies inside Taiwan and beyond, sooner – policymakers in Taipei, Tokyo, DC, and other capitals in the Free World will have to reckon with whether Taiwan’s democratic sovereignty is real. As of 2024, the Biden administration is working mightily to give Taiwan’s democratic sovereignty greater resilience while holding onto the geostrategery fiction cobbled together between DC, the Chinese communists, and the dictatorial China KMT. The last of this fiction is in Secretary Ratner’s comments:

“The consistent policy of the US is to maintain the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait and oppose any unilateral attempts to change it, [Ratner] said.”

The United Front position of the Chinese Communist Party, the China KMT, and the China People’s Party is that Taiwan does not have democratic sovereignty. Unlike in the 1960s, 1980s, or the 2010s, wherein the dictatorial China KMT maintained linguistic barriers between what remains of the “RoC/Free China” and “PRC/Communist Bandits” – China KMT’s former chair Ma, its legislators in the Taiwanese parliament, have negated Taiwan’s democratic sovereignty vis-a-vis China/PRC. Similar to dictator Putin’s declaration on the eve of the latest Russian invasion of Ukraine that a sovereign independent nation-state of Ukraine “did not exist,” this is the united front position of the Chinese communists and its allies inside Taiwan.

Interestingly, some Western IR analysts-scholars have proposed ‘softer’ but functionally similar positions to the Chinese communists and the China KMT – that Taiwan’s alleged historical destiny is to be annexed by the Chinese communists; or, again similar to what Ukraine has experienced, Western analysts using the threat of nucular war/world was as the reason to force Taiwan to “compromise/negotiate/make concessions” – all slightly softer ways of arguing Taiwan should surrender its democratic sovereignty.

The historical reasons that enabled the “status quo in the Taiwan Strait” fiction have run their course. From 1949, when the latest Chinese civil war ended, to recently, the communist dictators of China lacked the military ability to invade Taiwan. From 1949 to 1996 when the China KMT colonized and occupied Taiwan with their brutal dictatorship, Taiwan lacked a genuine voice and did not possess democratic sovereignty. From 1949 to 2019 the US and the Free World saw communist China as a “card” to play against the USSR during the Cold War, and subsequently, as a major source of cheap labor and a significant market for consumer goods. By 2024, none of those conditions are true – although policymakers in Western democracies have been slow to react and adjust. Moreover, the fantasy that if the US and the Free World would just “give” democratic Taiwan to the Chinese communists a sustainable peace could be had persists – again the echo with Ukraine, I am certain that even two years after the Russian invasion began, there are still similar voices inside Western capitals regarding abandoning democratic Ukraine to the Russian dictator “for peace in our time”.

The reality of 2024 is that there is a new status quo. A new status quo where the Chinese communists and their anti-democracy and anti-Taiwan allies inside Taiwan, such as the China KMT, have become radicalized and militant. Beijing has formed a strategic-military global alliance with Moscow and other bad actors to subvert the world order. China is no longer a reliable provider of cheap labor. Taiwan has become a democracy – with one citizen one vote – since 1996. On a purely political theory basis, the democratically elected government of Taiwan has more legitimacy to claim national status than the dictators of China – ask Western theorists on what basis should we consider dictator Putin and dictator Xi legitimate leaders of their nations for your own amusement. The sooner the Free World faces this new status quo honestly and makes concrete preparations – with Taiwan’s democratic sovereignty as the core – the safer the world becomes. Leaving Taiwan’s democratic sovereignty ambiguous creates room for military adventurists in Beijing to temptation – the temptation to imagine that Chinese communist and China KMT aggression against Taiwanese democracy in all forms (military, gray zone, economic coercion, assault against Taiwan’s democratic institutions, information warfare, and so on) will be accepted by global democracies. As we should have learned from Ukraine and many historical precedents – the more ambivalent liberal democracies are, the longer the Free World waits, the more aggressive autocracies become. Which ultimately means the higher the price the world has to pay. 27.7.2024

© Taiwan in World History 台灣與世界歷史. This site grants open access for educational and not-for-profit use. Maps and illustrations are borrowed under educational and not-for-profit fair use. If you are the rights holder and prefer not to have your work shared, please email TaiwanWorldHistory (at) Gmail (dot) com and the content will be removed.

President Tsai Ing-wen and this emerging Taiwanese national identity, part four, “民族認同度又上升！近8成自認台灣人 中國人再下跌剩不到1成,” 自由时报 Liberty Times。 Taiwan Republic 台灣国, national identity, and world history classrooms. “台灣民意基金會週四發布「台灣人最新的民族認同」即時民調，結果顯示有高達76.8%自認為自己是台灣人，當中有58%屬「強烈認同」，18.8%屬「輕度認同」。至於自認為自己是中國人僅有6.6%（2.9%「強烈認同」），9.5%自認為自己是台灣人也是中國人。另外有5.2%表示沒意見，1.8%不知道或拒答。”  Recent polling from Taiwan shows that a solid, governing majority of 76.8% of Taiwanese citizens identify themselves as “Taiwanese,” – 6.6% of residents of Taiwan identify themselves as “Chinese,” with 9.5% self-identifying as “both.”

National identity is dynamic and fluid – what is noteworthy about the Tsai era is how Tsai opened the door for pro-democracy and anti-communist non-green, non-DPP citizens to redefine what “status quo” entails. A lot of this is achieved because Dr. Tsai is a measured and moderate leader. Taiwan’s increased global status during her administration did not hurt – this increased, normalizing national status among the global democracies worked in tandem with the radicalization of the pro-China, anti-democracy China KMT (and later, the China People’s Party) inside Taiwan, as well as the belligerence and imperialism of dictator Xi and his Chinese communist regime.

Two other areas to ponder on how one develops one’s own national identity. Authoritarian, top-down Leninist parties like the China KMT and Chinese Communist Party obsess with brainwashing – education, propaganda, rules, threats, guilt trips, blood and soil nonsense. They cannot fathom that this emerging Taiwanese national identity can be organic and bottom-up – hence they accuse the ruling DPP of “brainwashing.” They only know what they practice themselves. Whereas in a globalized, cosmopolitan, diverse, and democratic nation like Taiwan, this emerging national identity is far more fluid and unpredictable. Twenty-three million citizens with diverse backgrounds and life experiences are connected to globalized media, with Taiwan as a top world trading partner, and tens of millions of students, businesspeople, and guest workers coming to and from Taiwan. Democratically elected leaders like Tsai and Lai may shape and respond to emerging national identity – they may even attempt to set boundaries, such as stipulating that the process ought to be peaceful democratic sovereignty. What authoritarians like Xi and Ma and Ke and others cannot countenance is that national identity in a democratic nation cannot be dictated from above.

And so while a poll like this is fascinating, it is also a snapshot subject to closer, careful interpretations – down to what it means to be “Taiwanese.” To be “Taiwanese” in 1945, in 1979, in 1996, and in 2024 would have recurring, consistent ideas, coupled with newer, evolving, changing meanings. 

What President Tsai has not been given credit for is how she used the tools of statecraft to give Taiwan the necessary preconditions for realizable democratic sovereignty – military power, strategic alliances, international reputation, and economic health. Her most remarkable accomplishment with this emerging Taiwanese national identity, however, is the fact that in her highly successful eight-year terms, she has never once dictated what future Taiwanese citizens must choose regarding their nationhood. Authoritarians like the Chinese Communist Party, China KMT, the China People’s Party, or an authoritarian-reactionary ideology like Confucianism, presumed the right of the leaders/elders/elites to instruct their lessers/subjects and those who have yet to be born what they must and must not choose. This coheres well with the destructive blood and soil varieties of populist nationalism. President Tsai’s vision is democracy and human rights – the right of individual citizens to, without coercion, peacefully and democratically decide their fate. She has set an example that the US and much of Europe can learn from. 5.7.2024

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President Tsai Ing-wen and this emerging Taiwanese national identity, part one. Taiwan Republic 台灣国, national identity, and world history classrooms. It will take many decades to fully assess President Tsai Ing-wen’s legacy. Oral history, historical archives, primary documents and not yet available – and this phase of Taiwanese history is particularly significant and dynamic – Western imperialist academics would probably say “fraught” or “nuanced.” So, these reflections are super preliminary. My main thesis: even though by temperament and reputation President Tsai is moderate, almost boring, Taiwanese national identity under her eight years made revolutionary leaps.

Historians tend to credit significant changes to the leaders of that time period – reasonable as a kind of academic shorthand. Of all elements of public life, national identity is the most complex – surely democratically elected president Tsai had an impact on this evolving Taiwanese national identity – but as it is often the case, great leaders also see and hear dynamic changes from the bottom up – and rather than to create those evolutions, they act instead as a channels, creating a path to coherently give words and meaning to these evolving national identities.

To me, the most significant change to this emerging Taiwanese national identity during Tsai’s eight years is that President Tsai, a former China KMT technocrat, miraculously convinced pro-Taiwan DPP supporters to tolerate formal institutions and symbols of the foreign/Chinese-imposed RoC – even up to the bloody reign of the younger Chiang dictator CCK. President Tsai advanced and modified her mentor, Taiwan’s first democratically elected president Lee Teng-hui’s formulation “RoC in Taiwan” into “RoC Taiwan” – starting the periodization at the end of the latest Chinese civil war in 1949, which the China KMT lost before they fled to Taiwan. This is an imperfect, everyone has something to not like compromise – but one which generates a stable, peaceful governing majority among Taiwan’s citizens, and significantly, has the support from the US, Japan, and the Free World. Even though the headlines out of Taipei now are the inevitable counterrevolutions from reactionary, anti-democracy, and anti-Taiwan political parties – if we broaden the historical lens out to centuries of Taiwanese history, the evolution of Taiwanese national identity has always been a two-step forward one or two steps back process.

An important data point to ponder regarding whether the Tsai formulation is transitory or historically significant is to assess the relative positions of new President Lai with former President Chen. Both Chen and Lai had to deal with anti-Taiwan, anti-democracy, and reactionary majorities in the parliament – noise and all notwithstanding, the pro-Taiwan and pro-democracy forces are in far better shape in 2024 than they were in 2000. It was a miracle that President Chen survived the reactionary coup attempts – President Lai has a firmer hold on to the executive branch, pro-democracy majority, and foreign support. And President Tsai’s policies played a significant role in this change – all the boring, non-crowd-pleasing policies she pushed through – pension reforms, improving the standings of the military and civil servants, infrastructure, transforming Taiwan from an international beggar, as the China KMT had formulated, into a positive global contributor, and so on.

The second significant development – and I am still thinking about this – is Tsai’s push for the Taiwanese to ponder, to enact, this emerging Taiwanese national identity apart from the “China-or-Not-China” construct – real independence comes only when the Taiwanese stop habitually comparing themselves first to China, or to China alone. To me, President Tsai’s calls for citizens of Taiwan to think of Taiwan as a part of the world is a significant revolution – to change decades of Chinese colonial, imperialist brainwashing that Taiwan is “only” a cultural periphery of a superior Chinese imperial core. And through an understanding of world history and global studies, to see Taiwan’s historic, and contemporary roles – not as the China KMT had constructed – Taiwan as a beggar, a muddied hinterland without culture or history – but as a democratic, sovereign, dynamic Taiwan nation that is positively contributing to the Free World. In this realm, I think the main dynamism and energy come not from formal, institutional, political quarters – or even formal educational institutions. When President Tsai took President Lee’s comment – “The agony of being Taiwanese” and updated it to become “The pride of being a Taiwanese,” I think she is more reflecting and channeling emerging Taiwanese national consciousness from the ground up than she is creating and leading.

Again, a historical comparison is useful. I think up to the late 1990s Taiwan-as-a-part-of-China was framed in Taiwan by the Chinese colonialist occupational elites as a conscious and subconscious “default” – in different realms of public life, to deviate from that default required strenuous efforts. Whereas in 2024 Taiwan is a nation with democratic sovereignty separate from China and any other nation is the new default. This rapid evolution in modern Taiwanese national identity may well explain why reactionary, anti-Taiwan, and anti-democracy leaders like Ma and other members of the China KMT have sharpened their rhetoric and attacks against Taiwanese democracy. As we have seen with political evolutions in North America and Europe, “white privilege” and “Chinese ‘mainlander’ privilege” share historical similarities. Foreign colonial settlers who have enjoyed decades of unearned, illegitimate power losing that privilege to a democratic, dynamic present will often turn to foreign autocratic allies to destroy the democracy from within. 14.6.2024

[illustration: “For Taiwan it is not about independence versus unification; in reality the only problem is a Chinese invasion to annex democratic Taiwan” Source: https://www.threads.net/@chenweiliaodesign?xmt=AQGzkbK9vj9u6STHE5MPKhr9Gx7BQRHQGrdJl4iOf3yynQ ]

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