Taiwan's Political Re-Alignment and Diplomatic Challenges

Wei-chin Lee

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9783319771243
• eBook ISBN: 9783319771250
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This edited volume investigates and evaluates the context, causes, and consequences of various essential issues in Taiwanese domestic politics and external relations before and after the regime change in 2016.  It offers theoretical interpretation and temporal delineation of recent electoral shifts, party realignment, identity reformulation, and subsequent foreign policy adaptation in the 2010s. Contributors address these issues in three sections—"Democracy and New Political Landscape," "The China Factor and Cross-Strait Dilemma," and "Taiwan's International Way-out"—to advance conclusions about Taiwan's political transformation from both comparative and international perspectives. 

© The Author(s) 2019

Wei-chin Lee (ed.)Taiwan's Political Re-Alignment and Diplomatic ChallengesPolitics and Development of Contemporary Chinahttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77125-0_1

Begin Abstract

1. The Turn of Fortune: Realignment in Taiwan’s Domestic Politics and Diplomacy

Wei-chin Lee¹

(1)

Department of Politics and International Affairs, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, USA

Wei-chin Lee

Keywords

Identity politicsMa Ying-jeouTsai Ing-wenTaiwan’s securityChinaRegime change

End Abstract

When Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou of the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, KMT ) won the 2008 presidential election, his supporters were exuberant about the end of the turbulent years of the Democratic Progress Party’s (DPP) President Chen Shui-bian’s era of governance. In 2012, Ma received another solid electoral confirmation for one more term of the presidency. Even so, Ma encountered frequent challenges and criticism of his governance style and policies. Public frustration and fury led to a few large-scale social movements and a devastating loss for Ma’s ruling party in the island-wide local elections in November 2014. The KMT’s stumbling defeat in the mid-term elections signaled the DPP’s muscly surge in subsequent elections . In 2016, the DPP’s stunning upset victory in the presidential race and its substantial gain in legislative seats placed the DPP in full control of both the legislative and executive branches of governance. Taiwan completed its third regime turnover since its democratic transition in the late 1980s during the “third wave” of the global trend of democracy.¹

Even with the glow of electoral victory and a new mandate to govern, the Tsai administration has encountered the daunting task of fulfilling multiple campaign pledges. President Tsai has attempted to soothe past social and political tensions, has navigated through the tedious business of legislating, has reached possible deals with various opposition parties and interest groups with divergent demands, and has reversed Ma’s rapprochement policy toward China as expected. Tsai’s strategic alternation is leaning toward the US and Japan to counterbalance China’s security pressure. Being anxious to demonstrate the new government’s sincerity in fulfilling the electoral mandate, President Tsai has launched a variety of controversial policy changes with her party’s dominant legislative muscle.

The regime change is assuredly a critical turning point for Taiwan. For instance, in July 2016, against the common presumption of innocence until proven guilty, the government passed a law inferring that all KMT property is ill-gotten and subject to seizure by an authorized government committee with the power to assess and judge whether each and every KMT property is legitimately acquired and legally owned. The burden of proof resides on the KMT.² In December 2016, the legislature amended Taiwan’s Labor Standards Act for a five-workday week without careful and thorough deliberation of the policy feasibility and economic impact on Taiwan’s global market competition. This followed the government effort to legalize marriage equality rights for all, especially the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community, and ignited an uproar from opponents with stronger religious convictions. Some opponents had been long-term dedicated DPP supporters. Fortunately, Taiwan’s grand justices of the Constitutional Court timely stepped in to deliver a landmark ruling in favor of LGBTQ rights in May 2017, which took the heat off of the DPP. Then in late June 2017, the DPP-dominated parliament engaged in a nasty battle for the reduction of pension benefits for teachers and civil servants amid constant street protests and partisan squabbles, including the unexpected disruption of the opening ceremony of the 29th Summer Universiade Game in August 2017. Even so, the Tsai government still faces the daunting tasks of pension reform for military personnel and labor. It will dearly cost the DPP’s political capital to navigate these two segments. The military service pension reform issue pierces the heart of Taiwan’s civil-military relations —a crucial element embedded in Taiwan’s defense against China’s threat. Workers’ pension reform may shake up the DPP’s support base in elections.

Finally, on August 15, 2017, a massive island-wide power blackout triggered by a technician’s blunder at a gas-fired power plant led to public anger, policy scrutiny, and renewed doubt about Tsai’s campaign pledge to replace nuclear energy and coal-generated energy with renewable energy and other low-carbon sources. The outage became a test of the Tsai government’s credibility for which she swore that there would be no power shortage and electricity fee increase under her administration. Taiwan’s power woes may also become a serious drawback for the island’s bid for foreign investments and may cause an exodus of domestic factories to seek sufficient and stable power supply abroad.

On the diplomatic front, Tsai’s refusal to honor Ma’s pledge of the “1992 Consensus ” (“One China ” with separate interpretations) toward China has thrown cross-Strait relations in limbo. China not only has suspended the functionality of all official channels of bilateral interactions but also has dramatically reduced the number of Chinese tourists in Taiwan. Meanwhile, China has gradually squeezed Taiwan’s international space and diplomatic endeavors. In response, Tsai has strategically swung close to the US in order to secure and strengthen Taiwan’s national security, a move that has uncalculatedly proceeded to a stage of unpredictability with the temperamental Trump presidency overseeing US foreign policy. Without a clear gauge of the US approach to cross-Strait relations and their unequivocal commitment to Taiwan, Tsai has encountered an increasingly powerful China under Xi Jinping , who has repeatedly signaled China’s iron will in maintaining territorial integrity, including over Taiwan and the South China Sea . Xi recently asserted that China has the “resolve, confidence, and ability” to crush any attempt at Taiwan independence by stating in his 19th Party Congress in October 2017, “We will never allow anyone, any organization, or any party, at any time or in any form, to separate any part of Chinese territory from China.”³

In sum, the landslide victory in both the executive and legislative branches apparently convinced the DPP government that its multifaceted reform agendas and reversal of her predecessor’s stance on the cross-Strait policy would receive broad public support. However, unintended consequences and mishaps have occurred to disrupt their fulfillment of campaign agendas in Tsai’s first year of governance. Notwithstanding, the 2016 elections signified a major party realignment in Taiwan’s political terrain. It represents a game changer for its significant impact on Taiwan’s domestic developments as well as external relations. Even so, the tenure and departure of the Ma government has not ended Taiwan’s political fissures, which are caused partially by hate-fueled national identity polarization and partially by the inherent complexity and contortion of Taiwan’s institutional design and operation. The good thing about a democracy is that the majority was able to choose to offer the DPP the political authority to govern, but whatever ill-will and problems existed prior to 2016 continue to afflict Taiwan’s politics.

Causes, Context, and Consequences of Taiwan’s Political Realignment in 2016

This is exactly what this volume aims to investigate and evaluate: the causes, context, and consequences of Taiwan’s political realignment and their ramifications on domestic politics and external relations in the wake of the 2016 elections . Indeed, each country’s democratic transition has its unique sources for democratic ferment and liberal inspiration, its own pace of cracking open the old regime’s tight control, and the emergence of the new institutional design. Subsequent consolidation of a democracy requires a move beyond democratic forms and procedures into solid substance by fair and free periodic elections and the vitality of civil society and public internalization of the core idea that democracy is “the only game in town,” as Linz and Stepan have stated.⁴ Likewise, Amartya Sen has pointed out, “While democracy is not yet universally practiced, nor indeed uniformly accepted, in the general climate of world opinion, democratic governance has now achieved the status of being taken to be generally right.”⁵

Certainly, no one would doubt the claim that democracy in Taiwan is surely the game in town. Yet, Taiwan’s political endeavor in consolidation has been both tenacious and tumultuous. The conceptual definition and measurement of democratic consolidation have generated numerous scholarly debates and intellectual inquiries for disciplinary communication and policy learning.⁶ Bruce Dickson thinks it is time for us to evaluate the quality of Taiwan’s democracy in a long-term span and broad scale. Dickson starts with a reflective exploration of the rise and decline of Taiwanese parties, the complexity and oddity of Taiwan’s semi-presidential system in implementation, and institutional gridlock between the executive and legislative branches. He even probes the procedural requirements for partisan coordination and consensual building in the legislature, as well as exploring the merits and drawbacks of the change of a single, non-transferable vote (SNTV) system to a two-vote system, with one for an individual candidate and the other for party preference in the national legislature. All these problems are compounded with politicians’ aggravated brandishing of ethno-nationalism for sensational electoral mobilization and political capital accumulation. Unsurprisingly, parties and politicians are concerned about self-interest rather than the collective welfare in political gameplay. The unwillingness to mediate for a compromising deal sometimes results in stalemates or institutional sclerosis on urgent policy matters. Even so, Dickson’s qualitative analysis pairs with quantitative indices of democracy as measured by the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI) , the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) database, and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) . Like some other democracies, Taiwan’s predicament in democratic consolidation is “neither unique nor severe,” in Dickson’s words. In a broad comparison, the quality of Taiwan’s democracy remains positive and promising. Improvements of some institutional matters, like the addition of a requirement for a runoff in the presidential election to ensure more than 50 percent support for the winning candidate, would strengthen the political legitimacy of presidents in governance. Regrettably, Taiwan’s national identity dispute has long been embedded in various policy debates, and harsh partisan competition has made it difficult to reach a middle ground for dispute resolution.

Zooming in on the 2016 elections , John Hsieh dissects the electoral results and deciphers what the voters want by plowing through the large-scale post-election 2016 Taiwan Election and Democratization Studies (TEDS) survey. Based on the single-member district (SMD) plural...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. The Turn of Fortune: Realignment in Taiwan’s Domestic Politics and Diplomacy
• Part I. Democracy and New Political Landscape
• Part II. The China Factor and Taiwan’s Cross-Strait Dilemma
• Part III. Taiwan’s International Way-out
• Back Matter