Hou You-yih: Just, like, my opinion, man

The KMT: promising a deep bucket of candy they can't deliver since 1945 (or earlier)

I have been so busy lately that keeping up with Taiwanese politics as presidential campaigns kick into gear has been a challenge in itself. Having opinions is tiring; distilling them into coherent points and typing those points out feels insurmountable. It hardly matters: there are so many insights from sharper people than me that you can read, including Donovan Smith, Chieh-ting Yeh and reporting from Nectar Gan, who does the "Taiwan history blurb" better than just about any journalist. If you're still writing "since 1949" in your articles, stop, read Gan's version, and yell at your editor. (Trust me, if they're the "amid rising tensions, China is provoked" type, they deserve it.) 

But I do have opinions, watching the Year in Taiwan Politics unfold as I try to just exist and make all the moving parts of my life cohere into some sort of forward-moving apparatus. Today, I feel like sharing my opinion on the KMT presidential candidate Hou You-yih.

Hou is...interesting. He was chosen by fiat -- for the primary, party chair Eric Chu essentially grabbed the gavel and shouted "Mine! I choose!" But also not: it seems quite clear that Chu doesn't care for Hou personally or politically. I think he'd prefer himself, or some other born-to-be-blue descendant of the China '49ers, certainly not someone who doesn't always toe the party line as envisioned by, say, Ma Ying-jeou. When Chu has all the power, why choose Hou? 

Because, of course, Chu thinks Hou can win. Even when you have all the power, and no matter how deeply embedded your dismissiveness and condescension toward people with ancestral Taiwanese roots, in a democracy you still have to take seriously the person who might be able to win over the public. 

I should be at least mildly relieved: the other big name candidate was Foxconn chair and general asshole-about-town Terry Gou, whose message centers Taiwan's economic development but doesn't even try to hide his slavering desire to sell Taiwan to China for his own "everyone's" profit. Gou tried to position himself as the potential CEO of Taiwan, but all he ever inspired in me was the sort of visceral hatred you have for your worst-ever boss. After all, there are many types of "successful" CEO: the ones who care about both people and business and foster supportive and satisfying work environments, and the ones who focus entirely on money and don't care that their company is a shit place to work.

There's a reason Foxconn has a reputation for a place you park yourself for awhile to make bank, but not a good place to work long-term. Thus, it could be deduced that he might be focused on money, but he wouldn't make Taiwan a better place to live.  For obvious reasons, I absolutely did not want to be any kind of employee in Gou's promised Taiwan, Inc. 

Hou, in comparison, seems like the less-terrifying choice. Apparently, he was once considered a potential DPP recruit. Thus far he's mostly avoided professing the deep-blue pro-China nonsense that disgusts me and turns off most Taiwanese (support for unification with China enjoys no meaningful support, and most Taiwanese don't identify as Chinese). Some of his comments have been pretty sus, though -- for example, that "the Republic of China is a cup, Taiwan is the water", which I won't even dignify with a response. Do enjoy this meme, though:

I could point to other substantive reasons why I don't care for Hou: for example, while I didn't like Mayor Ko, I can't deny that Taipei improved in some measurable ways under his leadership. New Taipei under Hou? Friends who live there complain of sidewalks, where they exist, paved with slippery kitchen tiles, a reduced but still overly-prevalent gang presence and public transit options that have improved but remain frustrating (for example, there are still very few straight-shot transit routes from Luzhou to Taipei; most meander in circles). 

Does it really matter, though? I think we all know that I just don't like the KMT because I think Taiwan is clearly already independent, and the KMT thinks it is some iteration of "China". I am against mass murder; the KMT makes ridiculous excuses for its mass murders in decades past. 

I don't particularly like the DPP's Lai Ching-te, but I simply wouldn't support any candidate the KMT chose, ever. In their current form, any KMT candidate would be too sympathetic to China and not sufficiently willing to defend Taiwan to the last. I'm willing to admit my bias, and I am not even remotely sorry. 

The deepest greens will point to one of Hou's greatest historical mistakes: his involvement in the death of activist, writer and Taiwan independence supporter Nylon Deng. As a police captain, Hou led the raid on Deng's office, which led to Deng's self-immolation. 

Image of Nylon Deng from an exhibit at the Tainan Fine Arts Museum (since ended)

Hou has said he was "just following orders" and it was his duty to uphold "justice", regardless of the "party in charge". He's said he doesn't have any regrets. 

I don't think Hou should go to jail. I don't think he should be excommunicated from Taiwanese society. I think, given appropriate contrition, forgiveness is possible: after all, Hou did not directly murder Deng. 

However, I do not think a man such as Hou should be the president of Taiwan, now or ever. 

The Nylon Deng Memorial Foundation has pointed out that before his death, Deng said "they can only take my body, they will never take me alive" -- sending a clear message about what would happen in just this circumstance. One might argue that a suicide threat should not prevent the police from "doing their job", but I do believe Hou had the means to understand that message and thus the likely consequences of his actions at the time. When he says the police mission had "also been about saving a life" but was "not successful", the disingenuousness is palpable. He knew that the mission in fact caused a death, and he had the necessary information to predict it would happen.

I do believe, somewhere deep down, Hou You-yih has the ability to understand what it means to be ethical and principled. In 1989, he had knowledge to understand that what he was doing was wrong. On some level, I suspect he surely knew that he was not upholding "justice" and doing it "regardless of party". I can't prove this, but I think Hou knew that the law Deng allegedly broke, which precipitated the mission, was not just. 

Of course, people act in ways they know are wrong and unjust all the time, and justify it to themselves. "Just following orders". "My boss told me to do it." "That's the rule." I'm the sort of person who will walk away from just about anything if I believe it is wrong, whether that's a toxic person harming others, or a workplace whose actions I cannot defend. Certainly I know people who've said they might do something against their principles if it's necessary to keep their job. Okay -- but they're not running for president. 

A worthy leader needs to know and be able to elucidate right from wrong. They need an inner fortitude that carries them through a clear reflection on their past actions, and the ability to admit they acted unjustly. They need to at least acknowledge the existence of the truth, even if their political career forces them to skirt a direct confrontation. 

When they know something is not right, they need to focus on the steps required to improve the situation. Their solutions may not be perfect, but they need to at least be headed down a vaguely correct path. For example, President Tsai has been fairly weak on labor rights, hasn't delivered quite the necessary changes in immigrant rights and is perhaps somewhat weak on energy policy. But she's oriented in more or less the right direction, and that's good enough for me. It has to be.

And when they see something is truly, deeply wrong, they need to own up to that. This may require walking away. The people I want to lead Taiwan would walk away from their cop job because they were fully aware that the actions they were ordered to carry out were a miscarriage of justice. They'd walk away because regardless of the law, it was wrong -- not for partisan reasons, but ethical ones.

Of course, I'm not stupid. I know Hou would never have done the right thing. Most people wouldn't. It doesn't make them wholly irredeemable. But then, most people aren't trying to be president.

The future president of Taiwan needs a certain strength of character which, from his own statements, Hou does not possess. To point to your "orders" or call something "justice" that you know is unjust is to be weak. 

To be asked about it years later and remain unrepentant makes forgiveness impossible. He could have done better. I cannot imagine ever supporting a KMT candidate, but I wouldn't be so deeply averse to him if he could just face the past honestly and clarify that he understands what justice means -- to admit that he now understands that the law was wrong, and he erred in carrying it out.

Right now, it is not at all clear that he indeed does know what justice means, or perhaps he doesn't care. And a leader who doesn't understand or care about justice is exactly the sort of spineless jellyfish leader who would surrender Taiwan to China without a fight because he was ordered to do so by a sufficiently threatening entity. I don't think Hou would abjectly or directly hand Taiwan to China in the way Terry Gou so clearly wants to, or Ma Ying-jeou tried to, up to and including his solo acoustic 2023 China Jackboot Apology Tour (which probably gave the KMT heart palpitations -- they don't like to say the quiet part quite that loud).

Hou isn't Ma or Gou -- but he wouldn't be Taiwan's greatest defender, either. 

I'm not Taiwanese. Nylon Deng's history is not my history -- but not even I can forgive this, simply because I know right from wrong. Hou is weak, and he is wrong. In refusing to reflect honestly on his past actions, he shows a lack of principles, spine and character.

Hou You-yih may not be an entirely terrible person, but he is a weak man with a weak character who is not fit to lead the country.