A New Era in Democratic Taiwan

Trajectories and Turning Points in Politics and Cross-Strait Relations

Jonathan Sullivan, Chun-Yi Lee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351665926
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política asiática

In January 2016, Taiwan's former authoritarian ruler, the KMT, the Nationalist Party of China, lost control of both the presidency and the legislature. Having led the democratization process in Taiwan during the 1980s, it maintained a winning coalition among big business, the public sector, green-collar workers and local factions. Until now.

A New Era in Democratic Taiwan identifies past, present and future trajectories in party politics and state-society relations in Taiwan. Providing a comprehensive examination of public opinion data, it sheds light on significant changes in the composition of political attitudes among the electorate. Through theoretical and empirical analyses, this book also demonstrates the emergence of a 'new' Taiwanese identity during the transition to democracy and shows how a diffusion of interests in society has led to an opening for niche political organizations. The result, it argues, is a long-term challenge to the ruling parties.

As the first book to evaluate Taiwan's domestic and international circumstances after Tsai's election in 2016, this book will be useful for students and scholars of Taiwan Studies and cross-Strait relations, as well as Asian politics more generally.

1 Introduction

Jonathan Sullivan and Chun-Yi Lee

On 16 January 2016, President Tsai Ing-wen was elected 14th President of the Republic of China (ROC). Her party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), also returned a majority of seats in the Legislative Yuan. The 2016 elections were the sixth time the ROC president has been elected by popular vote and the eighth general election of all representatives to the Legislative Yuan. They also represent the third turnover of party-in-power, and the first time that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has won simultaneous control of the presidency and the legislature. These are practical changes in the composition of political power in Taiwan. But Tsai’s victory is also symbolically important. First, Tsai is the ROC’s first female president, and the only elected female leader of a Chinese-heritage polity. That gender hardly featured as an issue in her election is indicative of a society in Taiwan where “tradition” is becoming less of a barrier to political participation. Second, Tsai is a descendant of both Hakka and aboriginal ethnic groups. Within three months of her inauguration, on 1 August 2016, she formally apologized to Taiwan’s indigenous peoples for past injustices and unequal conditions imposed upon them under successive ROC governments (Ramzy, 2016). Tsai’s apology suggests an opportunity for Taiwan to embrace its minority peoples and redress the unfair treatment they have received in Taiwanese society. Third, the election of legislators representing small parties with social movement roots was a symbol of continuing support for diverse and progressive causes, and a demonstration that such causes can lead to political success.

For all these signs that Taiwan’s democracy is in rude health, Tsai Ing-wen faces substantial challenges. In terms of China, an existential threat and predominant economic partner, she inherits a relationship that is more intense and multifaceted than any of her predecessors faced. The vast scale of economic interactions across the Taiwan Strait has implications for virtually every policy sector in Taiwan, touching on the most basic elements of Taiwanese life, from education and housing to employment opportunities and the cost of living. Positions and processes initiated by outgoing President Ma Ying-jeou constrain Tsai’s policy alternatives. Acceptance of the “1992 Consensus” of “one China, respective interpretations”, for instance, has solidified as a necessary condition for cooperation with China. Tsai, consistent with many Taiwanese, rejects the notion that an ad hoc agreement between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and a then-unelected KMT (Chinese Nationalist Party) should dictate democratic Taiwan’s options. Yet, Tsai’s refusal to acknowledge the “1992 Consensus” quickly soured cross-Strait relations, with Beijing breaking off governmental communications, imposing limits on Chinese tourist visits and wooing Taiwan’s diplomatic allies. As China’s economic and military capabilities, and global influence, continue to grow, Tsai must balance domestic constraints with the reality of China’s preferences and power. She has consistently evinced a moderate position on cross-Strait relations, insisting that she will uphold the “status quo”, recognizing the diplomatic and economic constraints that Taiwan faces. However, Beijing views her with great suspicion, including her ability to control the factions within the DPP that support “Taiwan independence”.

Despite the justified domestic opposition to Ma’s China policy, he successfully oversaw the management of the cross-Strait relationship, a challenge that Tsai Ing-wen and the DPP have found difficult. From the missile crisis during Lee’s tenure to the formal gridlock, the unseemly “dollar diplomacy” and international isolation characteristic of the Chen era, cross-Strait relations had never been as outwardly warm as they were under Ma. Apart from the early breakthroughs made during Lee’s time as unelected President, the institutionalization of cross-Strait interactions fostered by Ma’s China policy were by far the most impressive. Ma oversaw a substantial increase in trade and the economic value of cross-Strait interactions. On the other hand, Taiwanese society became more unequal, with a greater sense of widespread relative deprivation than ever before. Taiwan’s dependence on and exposure to the Chinese economy are now greater than at any point in history, with concomitant vulnerabilities for Taiwan’s national security. The underlying militarization of the Strait, embodied by approximately 1,800 Chinese missiles stationed across the Strait in Fujian Province, remains unchanged by Ma’s China-friendly orientation. China’s military posture represents an undiminished threat to Taiwan’s national security. The passage of the PRC’s Anti-Secession Law, China’s growing military capacity and rapid modernization, the changing military balance in the Taiwan Strait, broad popular nationalism and the undiminished pressures of “hawks” within the CCP leadership (including the People’s Liberation Army), threaten Taiwan’s security environment.

While there are significant divisions in Taiwanese politics, and a lot of noise, there is a high degree of consensus in society and convergence between the major parties. Fundamentally, both major parties have limited room for manoeuvre when it comes to China policy: public opinion does not support extreme moves in either direction and the range of policy options is limited by Beijing’s position and the reality of cross-Strait economic interdependence driven by market forces. Thus, the fact that the DPP controls both branches of government does not mean radical changes in China policy. Tsai is more pragmatic than former President Chen Shui-bian and she has inherited a complex set of foreign policy and socio-economic dynamics that require careful judgement. Tsai has pledged to recalibrate the Taiwanese economy, with a greater focus on distribution and addressing ongoing livelihood issues, such as increasing provision of affordable social housing and raising graduate salaries. While this reorientation is welcomed by many Taiwanese, there are obstacles outside her control that come with being closely tied to a turbulent global economy. The DPP has aspirations to internationalize Taiwan’s economy, reducing reliance on China and integrating Taiwan into regional and pan-regional projects, and reanimating Lee Teng-hui’s Southbound policy. But the lure of the Chinese market exerts a substantial pull over Taiwanese capital. Meanwhile Taiwan’s participation in international society depends on PRC goodwill or acquiescence, qualities Beijing has not demonstrated since Tsai’s election. As Xi Jinping has taken personal leadership of the PRC’s Taiwan policy decision-making, marginalizing the Taiwan Affairs Office, Beijing’s position on acceptance of “one China”, even in the guise of “one China, respective interpretations”, has hardened. Absent conciliatory gestures from Tsai that Beijing deems to be “sincere”, Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic allies will come under pressure to switch allegiances.

Tsai had emerged as leader of the DPP from the wreckage of Chen’s second term, and successfully resuscitated the party. Unlike many DPP politicians, Tsai had little factional or ideological baggage and proved capable in balancing competing factions within the party. There were high hopes for Tsai’s agenda as she entered office. But Taiwan has been here before. On assuming the presidency in 2008, similarly with a comfortable margin of victory and a substantial legislative majority for his party, Ma Ying-jeou’s aims were to stabilize cross-Strait relations after a period of instability and deadlock during his predecessor Chen Shui-bian’s tenure, to revive Taiwan’s economic fortunes through closer integration with the Chinese economy, to balance the imperative of economic incentives with the maintenance of “national dignity”, and to roll back the “de-Sinicization” elements of Chen’s “Taiwanization” programme by emphasizing Taiwan’s Chinese cultural heritage and situating Taiwan within the framework of the greater Chinese nation. But the optimism that greeted Ma’s election quickly subsided, as the economic and social implications of his policies, and his disdain for Taiwan’s democratic institutions, emerged over eight years.

Taiwan’s famously even distribution of wealth became a thing of the past and social mobility was no longer something that Taiwanese could take for granted. Education was no longer the passport to mobility it once had been, with an increasing proportion of graduates earning a desultory NT$22,000 starting monthly salary (US$650). While widespread feelings of economic dissatisfaction took hold, corporations and individuals with political connections profited from opening up Taiwan’s economy to China. Squandering a long-held reputation as stewards of the “Economic Miracle” in the 1960s and 1970s, the KMT came to represent the privileged and well connected. Taiwanese companies swapped investment in Taiwan for China (61 per cent of Taiwanese investments since 1991 have been in China), moving out R&D operations and depressing the domestic job market. Chinese investment in real estate caused bubbles and made housing unaffordable for ordinary Taiwanese. As in Hong Kong, an influx of Chinese tourists exacerbated the sense of difference and antipathy towards people from the PRC. And Ma’s espousal of Taiwan’s commitment to being part of the imagined Chinese nation created resentment at perceived attempts to lock Taiwan into a narrowing range of future options.

With its “old guard” and “princelings”, the KMT lost touch with the electorate, neglecting its changing demographics and preoccupations. The extent of this estrangement should have been clear in the spring of 2014, when two years of large-scale popular protests over various issues culminated in students occupying the Legislature for three weeks. Inexplicably, the KMT, which had long proved so skilful in adapting from authoritarian rule to the conditions of democratic competition, failed to heed the warnings. Instead their campaign strategies relied on using vastly superior financial resources to attack opponents via negative advertising and by leveraging long-nurtured factional networks, while the Party came under the sway of an unpopular pro-China faction. In the post-Sunflower era, these tactics failed to connect with voters, particularly the younger generation and their lived reality of stagnant wages, poor job prospects and little hope of getting onto the property ladder.

The emergence of a generational shift is a significant development in Taiwanese society. The notion that wise elders should take care of decision-making, in the family and in politics, has long been deeply embedded in Taiwan’s political culture, underpinning and propagated by four decades of KMT one-party rule. Taiwan’s transition to flourishing democracy is a rebuttal to the self-serving narratives of conservative, change-resistant elites. Taiwanese have proven that there is nothing inherent in Chinese or Confucian cultural heritage that disqualifies them from having a fully functioning democracy. Yet, the legacy of one-party rule and instrumental quasi-Confucian notions did not expire with the coming of elections. Political elites retained their sense, and carefully framed a narrative, about knowing what was best for the people. And many citizens, conditioned by decades of priming through the media and education systems, continued to have a narrow understanding of what democracy meant, sometimes complaining to pollsters that democracy was too messy and divisive. There is no democratic tradition in Chinese culture, and the late political scientist Tianjian Shi argued that many Taiwanese came to understand democracy via the idea of minben (

), a restricted form of government by benevolent elites that he called “guardianship democracy” (Shi, 2015). More recent research shows that the attitudes towards authority that underpin support for this form of government are not widespread among young Taiwanese. The 19–35 cohort is more supportive of democracy as a political system, and accepting of the noise and contention that accompany it. And while they are more likely to call themselves Taiwanese, it is identification with democracy that is a crucial part of this trend. The cohort that has grown up under a democratic system takes for granted liberal democratic norms such as freedom of speech, accountability and transparency to a much greater extent than their elders, who had to “learn” them. This attitude change represents a significant challenge to the foundations of “guardian democracy”, which is magnified by the popularization of digital and social media. Unlike their parents, younger cohorts have grown up with the norms associated with internet culture, where there is little deference to authority and obvious scepticism and mistrust of government. Befitting the generation that has rejected the notion of “guardian democracy”, Taiwanese young people are politically active on a greater scale than their forebears, and their demand for accountability and transparency is something that will affect the contours of political competition for years to come.

Taiwan’s transition to democracy was a process rather than a single event. However, the 1996 presidential election, the first direct election of that office, is the milestone from which Taiwan’s democratic system can be traced. Taiwan has thus experienced more than two decades of democratically elected leadership, which provides a comparative context across time by which to evaluate the consolidation and direction of travel of Taiwan’s democracy. This distance and perspective allow the contributors to this volume to evaluate the significance of the 2016 elections, situate longer-term developments and make an assessment about whether the election results and the societal trends that facilitated them signal a qualitative change, a new era in Taiwan’s democracy.

Structure of the book

In Chapter 2, Batto’s analysis of public opinion data identifies trends in the electorate that suggest significant changes in the composition of political attitudes. In short, Batto’s data pour cold water on KMT supporters’ hope that the election results could be laid at the feet of departing President Ma. In fact, despite Ma’s personal shortcomings, his character was not responsible for the KMT’s defeat, and thus this is not as easily remediable as removing Ma from the scene. Batto does find evidence for dissatisfaction focused on Ma’s performance in the economy and providing for people’s livelihood issues, but more significantly he argues that the 2016 election marked a transformative shift in Taiwan’s political landscape. Large numbers of voters who had previously supported the KMT switched sides, throwing their weight behind the DPP. They did so because they discovered themselves at odds with the KMT on basic policy issues such as national identity, Taiwan’s future status, and cross-Strait policy, the core issues in Taiwan’s politics. Batto argues that this large cohort of switch voters have finally chosen the correct party, i.e. the one with policy preferences that most closely matches their own. The 2016 elections thus represent a re-alignment in which voters have finally got it right. If this realization lasts, and the KMT fails to reorient its own issue positions, the electoral landscape will have fundamentally altered, with the DPP set to be the dominant party for the foreseeable future.

Although the 2016 campaigns were fought predominantly on economic issues, national identity remains the core issue and the major cleavage in Taiwanese politics. It is, however, anything but static, as Muyard demonstrates in Chapter 3, in his rich theoretical and empirical analysis of the emergence of a ‘new’ Taiwanese identity during Taiwan’s democratization processes. Marshalling longitudinal opinion data, Muyard shows how attitudes towards Taiwanese identity vary substantially by demographics. In short, there is substantially higher support for Taiwanese identity and independence among the younger cohorts educated during the transition and consolidation of democracy. Older generations express more support for dual and Chinese identity, the status quo and unification, emblematic of the “generation gap” that is fast becoming a major force in Taiwanese society. Muyard’s sophisticated theoretical case explains why younger generations are more cohesive and less diverse in political views about the Taiwanese nation than older generations. His conclusion is portentous for proponents of unification. A new Taiwanese national identity defined by civic nationalism and multiculturalism has emerged in the past two decades and become pre-eminent, especially among the younger generations. Observed longitudinal trends in public opinion, which are unequivocally moving towards identification with Taiwan and disfavouring unification, will thus continue to colour electoral competition and restrict the range of policy options available to Taiwanese parties. Echoing Batto’s analysis, Muyard’s argument suggests that the DPP is best placed to dominate political competition, absent unforeseen changes in the KMT’s core policy position.

Muyard’s study also provides an explanation for another observation about the younger generations, their political activism. Internalizing expectations of transparency and procedural justice as fundamental features of democracy, young Taiwanese were responsible for the upsurge in social activism examined in Chapters 4 and 5 by Fell and Ho, respectively. The two chapters approach social movement mobilization in Taiwan in different ways. For Fell, the development of social movements has transformed the Taiwanese political terrain, rendering it more diverse and allowing causes to be fought outside of national identity politics. The emergence of small parties has given organizational forms to activist movements, and the successful entrance of the New Power Party (NPP), which emerged out of the Sunflower Movement, into electoral competition, has demonstrated a pathway for social movement activism into politics. After almost continuous mobilization during Ma’s second term, social activists have not disappeared with Tsai’s election, suggesting that popular discontent has become normalized as a mode of political participation. Activism and popular protest have already taken on the cause of pension cuts, the rising cost of utilities and most controversially, changes to the working week. Ho’s deep analysis of the societal trends that reached a crescendo, but did not end, with the Sunflower Movement, shows that social activism has become a major political force that will continue to condition the behaviour of major political parties. Even though the DPP is closer in political alignment to the grassroots activists and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the frequency of protests during Tsai’s administration remains high. Both Ho and Fell’s analyses suggest that the diffusion of interests in Taiwanese society has become untethered from the concerns of the major parties, opening space for niche political organizations but resulting in a longer-term challenge to ruling parties.

As Ho shows, while the advent and popularization of digital media communications are not responsible for social movements, they have changed their mobilization and communication strategies. As Sullivan et al.’s Chapter 6 on the evolution of Taiwan’s media-sphere demonstrates, digital media have had a transformative effect on the information environment. Digital media have challenged the operating structures and norms of legacy media, and complicated the media’s role and contribution to Taiwan’s democracy. The authors’ analysis of successive waves of media reform show how Taiwan has struggled to find a balance between regulation and market forces. For political and economic reasons, Taiwan has not found a solution to cultivating quality independent media, resulting in a polarized and politicized media-sphere. Unlike the oneparty era, the problem of the media in Taiwan today is not control by the authoritarian regime, but dependence on capital which is unavoidably affiliated to political interests. As the chapter shows, this includes Chinese capital and the cultivation of Chinese interests, which are actively targeting Taiwanese media as a means to achieving political influence.

In Chapter 7, Friedman’s analysis of Taiwan’s position in the thinking of China’s past and current leadership, and comprehensive review of the cross-Strait relationship, helps situate Tsai Ing-wen and Taiwan’s situation and options within a historical-ideological framework. Friedman’s analysis suggests China’s intractable and hardening position on Taiwan is a relatively recent development, but that may be cold comfort for the Tsai administration facing a narrow range of options. Fol...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The KMT coalition unravels: the 2016 elections and Taiwan’s new political landscape
• 3 The role of democracy in the rise of the Taiwanese national identity
• 4 Taiwan’s political parties in the aftermath of the 2016 elections
• 5 From protest to electioneering: electoral and party politics after the Sunflower Movement
• 6 The media in democratic Taiwan
• 7 Peace or war with Taiwan in China’s foreign policy
• 8 Has China’s Taiwan policy failed? And if so, what next?
• 9 New directions in Taiwan’s foreign policy
• Index