Convergence or Conflict in the Taiwan Strait

The illusion of peace?

J Michael Cole, J. Michael Cole

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315524955
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Years of rapprochement between Taiwan and China had convinced many that the Taiwan issue had been resolved, and that it was only a matter of time before the two former opponents would reunite under One China. But a reenergized civil society, motivated by civic nationalism and a desire to defend Taiwan's liberal-democratic way of life, has dashed such hopes and contributed to the defeat of the China-friendly Kuomintang in the 2016 presidential elections.

This book draws on years of on-the-ground research and reporting to shed light on the consolidation of identity in Taiwan that will make peaceful unification with China a near impossibility. It traces the causes and evolution of Taiwan's new form of nationalism, which exploded in the form of the Sunflower Movement in 2014, and analyses how recent developments in China and Hong Kong under "one country, two systems" have reinforced a desire among the Taiwanese to maintain their distinct identity and the sovereignty of their nation. It also explores the instruments at China's disposal, from soft power to coercion, as well as the limits of its influence, as it attempts to prevent a permanent break-up between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. Finally, the book argues against abandonment and suggests that international support for Taiwan as it negotiates its complex relationship with China is not only morally right but also conducive to regional and global stability.

Acting as both a sequel and a rebuttal to earlier publications on Taiwan-China relations, this book takes an intimate and anthropological look at Taiwan's youth and civil society, and applies this to traditional analyses of cross-strait politics. It will appeal to students and scholars of Taiwanese Politics, Chinese Politics, International Relations and Sociology.

Part 1

The convenient illusion

1
Orphaned and forgotten

It is perhaps no accident that the first work of fiction I read about Taiwan after moving there in 2005 was an English translation of Wu Cho-liu’s (吳濁流) novel Orphan of Asia (亞細亞的孤兒), a work that has often been described as a formative element of “Taiwanese consciousness.” Taiwan was an orphan at the time of the novel’s completion in 1945 (first published in Japanese as Ajia no koji, アジアの孤児) and is no less a one more than half a century later. Despite its extraordinary successes in modernization and democratization, Taiwan remains a little understood and often ignored member of the international community. Given the size of its economy (ranked twenty-first and an important player in the global supply chain) and the risks that its unresolved status could spark major hostilities in the Asia-Pacific, perhaps leading to armed conflict between the U.S. and China, Taiwan arguably punches well below its weight when it comes to making its voice heard. As Chi Pang-yuan (齊邦媛), the editor of the English translation of Wu’s novel, wrote in the foreword, “During the second half of the twentieth century, Taiwan developed into a democratic reality, looking forward to international understanding of our efforts.” That understanding, sadly, has yet to materialize.

Why is that?

This chapter looks at some of the variables that have contributed to Taiwan’s continued isolation within the international community and how this has undermined Taiwan’s ability to counter Beijing’s sovereignty claims over it. This isolation stems from a handicap, which itself is the result of a number of persistent factors.

While it is easy to blame China for Taiwan’s predicament, to which we will turn in later chapters, there are other reasons why Taiwan’s political footprint is that of a fly when it should be that of a fox. There is no doubt that Taiwan harnessed the forces of globalization well before China and that, through its small and medium enterprises (SME), it developed economic ties with every corner of the planet. Therefore in economic terms, Taiwan is without doubt fully globalized. Why is it, then, that when it comes to discussing their politics and culture, the Taiwanese have done so poor a job?

Part of the reason could be a legacy of the authoritarian era, which roughly covers the 40 years between 1947 and 1987. During that period, discussing politics – especially subjects such as Taiwanese identity, independence, and human rights – was a sure ticket to prison on Green Island, or worse. As with any authoritarian regime, the KMT under Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and his son, Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), did not have the means to monitor every single citizen, and instead the party calibrated its repression mechanisms so that the people themselves were incentivized to self-censor. The random application of punitive measures, added to pressures to spy on one’s neighbors and even family members, created an atmosphere of uncertainty in which silence and avoidance were the safest strategies. The chilling effects were long lasting. Even today, after liberalization and democratization, people from the generation that came of age during the White Terror (they are now parents and grandparents) remain hesitant to speak up and will often seek to discourage their offspring from engaging in political activism. It is much better, in their view, to focus on getting a solid education and securing a lucrative job. In many ways, this remains a national trait among Taiwanese, and breaking from that mold takes a great deal of courage, as many of the youths who took part in the Sunflower Movement in March and April 2014 will attest. This reluctance to engage in discussions about politics, let alone doing so with a foreign audience, has therefore contributed to Taiwan’s invisibility, though there have been encouraging signs in recent years that this may be changing.

A companion to that phenomenon is the fact that Taiwan’s democratization in the 1980s was not only highly successful but also overwhelmingly peaceful. In some ways, Taiwan may have been a victim of that success. Although democratization without bloodshed and coups d’état might be a fascinating subject for political scientists and historians, the lack of drama means that such developments will receive little attention in the media and among publics abroad that suffer from both attention deficit and compassion fatigue. Without drama, it is unlikely that novels and films will be made to keep the story alive and generate future interest, as the Israelis and, to a certain extent, the Chinese have done so well. And for those who know little about Taiwan – a worldwide phenomenon – the lack of violence or rampant human rights violations means that Taiwan simply doesn’t register on their radars.

While peaceful democratization is something that every Taiwanese should be proud of, this comes at the cost of being ignored. Taiwan may have been newsworthy when it was under martial law and one of the many fronts in the Cold War, but it has now been democratized, and with that it would seem that its history “ended.” For those who pay attention to Taiwan or live there, it is clear that history did not end in the late 1980s or early 1990s and that democracy is never truly consolidated but rather a process, a pendulum that can swing in either direction. But such knowledge is far too granular for ordinary people abroad. As a journalist, I often faced the challenge of selling my articles about human rights violations in Taiwan to foreign newspapers. In most instances, my efforts failed, the response from the editors usually something like, “Interesting, but we’ll pass. This is too ‘insider baseball’ ” (Cole 2014).

Of course, when compared with rampant abuses in Myanmar, the locking up of activists in China, the kidnapping of booksellers in Hong Kong, or despots who are developing nuclear weapons, Taiwan’s situation is hardly dramatic enough for editors who must prioritize due to limited space and budgets. The same applies to military correspondents, who have had much less to write about in Taiwan than their counterparts who have been covering the rapid modernization of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on the other side of the Taiwan Strait, thanks in part to more than a decade of double-digit growth in Beijing’s annual defense budget.

The same problem has existed on the economic side, even if, to some extent, the economy remains one of the few subjects that foreign media continue to focus on in Taiwan. As with politics and military affairs, Taiwan’s economy was no longer one of the major stories in Asia. The booming years, when Taiwan was one of the so-called Asian Tigers, were behind it, and the island was overshadowed by the rapidly expanding economies of China, India, and countries across Southeast Asia. The contrast was stark, and the media wanted to be where the action was. The sense that Taiwan had become a laggard, that it was a thing of the past, was perfectly encapsulated by remarks that Martin Jacques, author of the book When China Rules the World, made when I interviewed him in Taipei in October 2009. Jacques, who has made little secret of his admiration for China, told me that the taxi ride from Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport to Taipei had saddened him. “It’s so quiet,” he lamented, contrasting that with the dazzling construction boom across China in the past decade. “There are so few construction cranes.” In Jacques’ view, this was a sign that Taiwan wasn’t “modern.” Many people would, of course, disagree with the notion that we can define modernity by the number of cranes that serrate the horizon. I am one of them. Moreover, Jacques’ observation of how “quiet” things were in Taiwan, as well as his contrasting that with the energy that has been unleashed in China, was unfair: China today is where Taiwan was 25 years ago. But as economies mature, they cannot sustain such infrastructure development indefinitely, nor can economic growth remain in the double-digit category in perpetuity. Taiwan’s economy has plateaued, much like other previously “hot” economies such as Japan. Yet perceptions that Taiwan was being left behind by the red-hot Chinese economy were prevalent in the media, which no doubt contributed to the view that Taiwan was no longer newsworthy.

As we will see in the next chapter, the nearly eight years of the Ma Ying-jeou administration have also compounded the lack of interest by fostering the notion that peace – a convenient peace – had been achieved in the Taiwan Strait. With the risks of war presumably receding into history, foreign media turned elsewhere (and ashamedly for the human race, they had plenty of places to choose from).

This trend also meant that when international media organizations facing budgetary constraints had to cut resources somewhere, they often did so in Taiwan. Bureaus were closed, staffs trimmed, and top journalists moved elsewhere – usually to China, where there was plenty of drama and action, and where opportunities for career advancement and more competitive salaries were available. Democratized Taiwan had become “boring,” of interest only to academics who are captivated by esoteric issues like the quality of democracy or obscure surveys on identity.

As a result of this media exodus, knowledge about Taiwan suffered, and reporting often was limited to economics, the stock markets, and business issues – except, of course, brief spasms of global attention during elections, when the politics of the island once again became interesting. The few foreign correspondents who did remain in Taiwan often faced a challenge when they pitched articles about domestic politics to their editors abroad; if they were lucky, they were allowed to write a story, but the allotted word count was usually too restrictive to provide the necessary contextualization. Furthermore, the bylines in articles about Taiwan were increasingly located in Beijing, Shanghai, or Hong Kong. However professional they might be, the China-based correspondents are already busy enough covering China and do not have time to focus on Taiwan, which is also hugely complex and demands exploration in situ. Consequently, when called upon to write about developments in Taiwan, the China-based correspondents or staff writers often offered only a cursory relating of events and tended to overrely on official – including Chinese – sources. Many of them have shared their frustrations and lament the closing of their bureaus in Taipei, but that is the economic reality. The Taiwan “blind spot” that results from this phenomenon has seriously hampered Taiwan’s ability to make itself heard and understood by the international community. The less it strikes people’s imagination abroad, the less Taiwan will succeed in establishing the kind of emotional connection that can translate into sympathy for the Taiwanese or into pressure on foreign governments to adopt policies that are more attuned to Taiwan’s reality.

It remains to be seen whether the election of a DPP president in January 2016, added to shifting perceptions of China due to its belligerence and crackdown on civil liberties since 2012, will encourage global media to pay more attention to or look more favorably upon democratic Taiwan. The unusually high interest caused by the November 2015 summit in Singapore between presidents Ma and Xi and the 16 January 2016 elections provided a good opportunity for international media to learn more about Taiwan. The extensive coverage and the parachuting of several top journalists there also helped create an emotional connection that hitherto had not existed. Most, if not all foreign correspondents who covered the elections left with an overwhelmingly positive view of the island nation and an awareness of the sharp contrasts that exist between the two societies, Beijing’s claims notwithstanding.

As the media exodus was taking place, an increasingly global China was busy launching a major “charm offensive” using its increasingly formidable “soft power.” This multibillion-dollar effort included substantial investment in its media operations abroad, with Xinhua alone establishing 117 foreign bureaus. It is claimed that, in 2009, China spent 60 billion RMB (US$8.79 billion) to expand the global media operations of the “big four” outlets – Xinhua News Agency, Central China Television (CCTV), China Radio International, and the China Daily. In July that year, Xinhua also launched China Network Corporation (CNC World), an online 24/7 English-language news channel broadcasting via satellite, cable, cell phones, the Internet, and outdoors screens. By January 2011, CNC World had coverage in Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and North America (Shambaugh). While one of CNC’s aims is to make money, it is also part of an effort to tell China’s story to the world in a way that, given press censorship and guidance from the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), tends to skip controversial issues such as Taiwan, Tibet, or Xinjiang. Other outlets, such as the English-language China Daily, have complemented that campaign, often by signing cooperation agreements with foreign newspapers and wire agencies. Although Taiwan’s Central News Agency (CNA) has made efforts to revamp its coverage, with services in Japanese and Spanish, and Focus Taiwan, its English-language service, there is no way it can compete dollar-for-dollar with China’s state-run media campaigns.

Exacerbating this problem is the tendency among many Taiwanese to look inward and to neglect foreign media, a deficiency that applies not only to ordinary Taiwanese but also to political parties and government agencies. Poor communication and foreign language skills, as well as an inability to package issues in a way that can appeal to distracted foreign audiences, are factors that have also contributed to Taiwan’s isolation. Until the Sunflower Movement in 2014, social activists often neglected to have English in their press releases or on their banners and placards, and yet they often complained that international media were not paying attention. The same applies to a number of groups that agitate for Taiwanese independence, whose press conferences are usually in Taiwanese only. While most foreign correspondents know enough Mandarin to do their job, very few understand Hoklo, the language that is most closely associated with the independence movement in Taiwan.

Another reason why Taiwanese have struggled to make their voices heard is that for the majority of them, their country – whether it is known as Taiwan or the ROC (Republic of China) – is already somewhat independent (the “status quo”), and their situation, though it may not be perfect, isn’t untenable. In fact, living in Taiwan is a comfortable experience – high summer temperatures, typhoons, and earthquakes notwithstanding. Despite the dispute with China, contemporary Taiwan is a modern, stable, prosperous, and safe state, something that cannot be said of several countries that are officially recognized by the international community. Moreover, while this will be disputed (usually by foreign observers), Taiwanese generally know who and what they are; their identity as Taiwanese with a Chinese cultural heritage is already settled and holds no fatal contradictions. Most Taiwanese therefore see little use in explaining this to others, which speaks volumes about their consolidated identity. However, this silence doesn’t help educate the rest of the world, which sees things otherwise and regards them as Chinese.

Taiwan’s small footprint abroad is also reflected in the book industry and specialized journals. Only a small number of books about Taiwan are published every year in languages other than Chinese, much, much less than is written about China or other countries in the region. While the abundance of books written in Chinese about Taiwanese politics and history is something to be celebrated, it doesn’t do much when it comes to helping the rest of the world understand and care about Taiwan and its future trajectory as a nation. As is often the case, Taiwan is relegated to brief mentions or footnotes in books that are concerned with the study of China. Many books about nationalism or self-determination published in recent years do not make a single mention of Taiwan, not even a footnote. For example, Allen Buchanan’s book Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law, described by a reviewer as “exceptional … in the breadth of its engagement,” contains references to almost every modern nationalist movement, from Quebec to Scotland, Kosovo to the Basques, Kurdistan to Eritrea, but Taiwan is not mentioned once (neither are Tibet and Xinjiang, for that matter). Michael Ignatieff’s Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism, does not contain a single reference to Taiwan. Meanwhile, a scan of the index of Nationalism and War, edited by John A. Hall and Siniša Malešević, shows only two entries about Taiwan, both in the chapter “The state-to-nation balance in power,” written by Benjamin Miller. Those two passages refer to Chinese nationalism (i.e., “demands for ethno-national unification based on the claim that there are ‘too many states’ in relation to the number of nations”) rather than Taiwanese.

One consequence is that a number of academics, government officials, and ordinary citizens overseas have difficulty seeing the Taiwan “issue” for what it really is: not an unfinished civil war or a mere misunderstanding, but a bona fide clash of two nationalisms in the Taiwan Strait. As previously stated, we can only hope that the DPP’s resounding victory in the 2016 elections and what it says about public sentiment in Taiwan will encourage analysts to revisit their assumptions about Taiwan’s status and create incentives to pay closer attention to the idiosyncratic elements of its nationalism.

Most books written about Taiwan are academic in nature and therefore will not reach a general audience, something that again cannot be said of China. And even those are hard to find, not to mention their usually prohibitive retail price. Consequently, bookstores worldwide rarely carry books about Taiwan in their inventories, as I have discovered to my great regret over the years. I remember paying a visit to an impressively stocked Waterstones bookstore near the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, which did not have a single book about Taiwan but several about much smaller countries and many about China. Unfortunately, that is the norm rather than the exception. Ordinary shoppers who peruse the Asia section at most bookstores worldwide could be forgiven for not knowing of Taiwan’s existence; they will find plenty of books about China, Japan, Vietnam, North Korea, India, Myanmar, Thailand, and Cambodia but few, if any at all, about Taiwan.

What is even more extraordinary (and unforgivable) is the fact that bookstores in Taiwan are j...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1 The convenient illusion
• Part 2 Taiwan’s democratic firewall
• Part 3 Convergence or conflict?
• Part 4 Why Taiwan matters
• Acknowledgments
• Index