Confucius is as relevant to Taiwan's COVID19 response as Aristotle is to the US's

We're in our house keeping our stuff in order because nobody else is going to help. 

Some outside Asia (and, honestly, some people here) seem to think Taiwan's success in dealing with COVID19 is due to "Confucian" ideals of collectivism and respect for authority which allowed the government to adopt measures that people in Western countries might find uncomfortably strict.

I don't want to search for too many examples because the entire line of thought makes me want to barf, but here's one:

In South Korea, as in Japan and Taiwan, the lingering cultural imprint of Confucianism gives a paternalistic state a freer hand to intrude in people’s lives during an emergency, says Lee Sung-yoon, an international-relations professor at Tufts University. 

“Most people willingly submit themselves to authority and few complain,” Mr. Lee said. “The Confucian emphasis on respect for authority, social stability and the good of the nation above individualism is an ameliorating factor in a time of national crisis.”

Such thinking is difficult to refute, because it comes from an Asian source (dominant narratives that don't actually describe the experiences of many, but appear to come from the "same" cultural sources, are a challenge for this reason). But I'm going to invite the furor of the Whole Internet and say that Lee is wrong. 

A cultural difference indeed exists, but at least for Taiwan, it was hard-won in living memory. First, seeing firsthand what SARS was capable of, people realized the need for immediate action and recognized government initiatives as wise (and they were). There's also the living memory of a police state in Taiwan, which helps draw a stark contrast between "a strong centrally-planned response" and "authoritarianism", because most Taiwanese remember the latter and can tell the difference.

Perhaps there is some additional "collectivism" baked into these cultures but I wouldn't go overboard with this: there's a point at which it becomes a stereotype. I see most "collectivist" action here as merely "not being stupid", and I'm an "individualistic" American.

In fact, if Taiwan had been in the WHO to begin with - or if the WHO didn't generally faff about with their thumbs up their butts - the world could potentially have been warned about this long before China officially recognized it, and "mitigation" strategies similar to the UK's might have had some effect. In fact, the UK's strategy, which was just announced to be a failure, sounds a lot like what Taiwan was doing as early as January 1. And it worked. Life is mostly normal here as a result.

That said, I can't help but quote this wonderful tweet:

Not entirely analogous: Taiwan has a strong, medically-trained political core. Meanwhile, the UK has Boris Johnson as leader, and the health minister (Hancock) would have to gain 10 IQ points to be considered comatose.

— Death. (@Lazarusfabulous) March 17, 2020

And, of course, threatened by China and ignored by the WHO, there is a recognized need to "deal with this ourselves" because Dr. Tedros sure ain't coming to save us (or anyone, but especially not Taiwan). So people do as asked by a government that appears competent, which they've just re-elected by historic margins, and a Central Epidemic Command Center that is doing a better job than the WHO. The results are visible, so people trust them. That's not "Confucian", that's "not being stupid". 

Do I swan about writing editorial bullshit about how "the Western failure to contain with COVID19 is due to the cultural imprint of Aristotelianism"? No. Because that's dumb. Stop being dumb.

In fact, Confucius is about as relevant to the average Taiwanese person as Aristotle is to you.

Think the comparison doesn't work? I assure you that it does. Ancient Philosopher Guy from a foreign land (because Taiwan is not China, and South Korea isn't China either) does some philosophy which is considered impactful enough to still be studied today?

Yup, checks out. Except only one is touted as the foundation of several distinct cultures, rather than what he really was: an important thinker, sure, but not the Father of All Things.

Also, let's talk "respect for authority" and people who "don't complain". Let's talk about things that would make dear old Confucius turn over in his grave.

Not too long ago, Taiwan looked a dictatorship in the face and said "get fucked". And it actually worked! South Korea did the same thing.

And they did it without an army - against an army, in fact. They did it with few resources and no firepower. They had only themselves and the power of their words and unarmed bodies.

Did your parents and grandparents do that?

No?

Then sit down, Billy McFreedomfries.

Data and Lore (a COVID-19 story)

Does this mean...I'm Wesley?

I had always imagined that, living on an island, I'd feel trapped if disaster struck. There are no borders to cross, only open sea. I know it's not a reasonable worry: land borders can also be treacherous, but knowing your only options are a plane or a boat (and probably not even a boat) rather than a truck, car or your own two feet can honestly induce claustrophobia.

So, while the world around us seems like it's collapsing, I'm surprised by how wrong I was in predicting my own feelings about island life in a global catastrophe. Thanks to Taiwan's pre-emptive, centrally-planned and intelligent response to the COVID-19 pandemic, I feel like I'm living in an island of safety, calm and normalcy in a world gone mad.

I am not terribly concerned that Taiwan will be felled by COVID itself. Even if there is a spike in cases, the time the country bought itself through a strong, early and professional response will be priceless: it is time Taiwan has had to prepare for that potentiality, and considering how they've treated the issue so far, we can be fairly sure they've been using it wisely. 

People are doing their part too - for every anecdote I hear about someone not practicing good pandemic hygiene, I see 20 people who do.

Of course, my confidence extends only to health. I worry quite a bit about the economic backlash. We have enough savings to weather a brief storm, or even a somewhat-prolonged quarantine, but what about an interminable economic crisis? A lot of my clients are businesses, and when the economic crash really hits, the first thing they're going to cut is English training. My teacher training work might see an uptick, but it's honestly hard to say.

Let's not think too much about that, though. There is literally nothing I can do about it except spend less on non-essentials. Once it was clear that climate change was real, I never expected the second half of my life to be easy anyway.

So, what has Taiwan been doing right? I won't write out a whole list because there are lots of places where you can read about that: see here, here, here and here. Suffice it to say, a large component of Taiwan's response has been data collection and public regulation. Most notably, for certain people quarantines are mandatory, and everyone that person had been in contact with might also be asked (or required) to quarantine. Quarantined individuals have their phones tracked and are notified if the government can see there is a violation. The CDC calls them every day (though this is a lot friendlier than it sounds). Isolated people report their temperature online once a day. All face mask production lines were bought up (in essence, expropriated) by the government, and masks are now rationed. Huge amounts of personal health data - including masks purchased - is tracked on National Health Insurance cards. Some public transportation, including all Kuo-kuang buses and all airport MRT trains - require face masks.

This gives the government a massive amount of data to work with, which has some fantastic benefits. There is an app (which is a bit difficult for foreigners to use) that can track which pharmacies will have masks, how many, and when. Apparently one can now pre-order masks. Potential disease vectors are swiftly located and locked down to prevent transmission.

Watching the news from the US right now, where the response seems to be to run out in the street screaming and flailing one's arms, it sure feels like they could learn a lot from the way Taiwan has handled this, starting with universal health coverage.

On the other hand, I have to wonder how much of this Americans would realistically put up with. The scale of data collection really is astounding. If you are identified as a risk, you lose a lot of personal freedom - both in terms of data privacy and freedom of movement. It is, to be honest, a lot to ask.

This is the point at which a different writer might start waxing rhapsodic about Confucian societies and collectivism and the people are more willing to submit to authority because 5,000 years or...something like that.

I won't.

This is a country where people set their sights on overthrowing a dictatorship and succeeded. Where protests are practically a hobby and producing protest gear a side hustle for many. Where your average person would be pretty upset if they couldn't day drink under their favorite temple awning (or in front of their favorite convenience store). Where an entire generation of people under 40 defied their elders by voting for same-sex marriage. There's no Confucian about it and I'm sick of the trope.

Instead, I'll say this: as an American, I'm fine with the level of intrusion into my personal life and willing to give up the data. I suspect - though don't know - that most Taiwanese are too. Not because of some 'different, exotic Asian values' fake East-West divide (a divide that online trolls really seem to push, which is how you know it's fake).

Rather, most Taiwanese are okay with Big Government  right now because this particular circumstance is a true emergency, because they know that this particular data is useful and important for a centrally-coordinated response to work, and because they trust this particular government. 

While we can heave a sigh of relief that this government was re-elected (for a peek into how a Han administration would have handled it, you need only look at Trump's non-response), unfortunately, this perspective doesn't offer many solutions for what to do when you don't trust the government. I don't often agree with libertarians but they're right about this: you only want the government to have as much power as you'd be comfortable with them having if you didn't trust the people in charge, because eventually, someone you don't trust will get elected.

In other words, I'll give this information (and power) to Tsai Ing-wen. I would never be happy to give it to Donald Trump. Or Han Kuo-yu. Would you want either of them at the helm of a government that has just taken sole control of key medical supplies? Would you want either of their administrations insisting they had the right to track your location?

All that data, though, has kept Taiwan feeling more like a cozy ark on a rising flood, rather than a prison from which there is no escape. And perhaps, considering that dictatorship existed in Taiwan in living memory so they know the difference between authoritarianism and a centrally-planned response, maybe we should take their word for it that government data collection for this purpose is acceptable?

So what's happening beyond the rough seas? Between many Western countries' totally botched responses - including a massive failure to test leading to rapid, undetected community transmission - and China's repeated cover-ups and lack of reliable data, there is fertile soil for misinformation and fake narratives to take root.

I had opined, when this all began, that such an obvious and self-evidential failure and clear, documentable cover-up on the part of the CCP might just offer up a silver lining: that the CCP itself would fall. That the systemic failure would be so inescapable that they would not be able to control the narrative. I figured it would be so undeniably true to anyone with working brain that China did not "buy time" for the world, but rather that the CCP's initial cover-up is what caused the disease to go pandemic in the first place, that something would possibly - maybe - give to loosen the grip of that brutal dictatorship on a country that absolutely deserves better.

For a brief period, it seemed that the world might just hold the Chinese government to account for this, or at least report clearly on who was to blame  - not China or the Chinese people, but the CCP.

But even before the US botched its response by completely failing to prepare, one could watch the narrative change almost in real time.

First, the media started saying that China "bought time" for the rest of the world, how its "decisive" and "bold"  response - note the adjectives used instead of the more appropriate draconian and inhumane - saved lives, how it "acted quickly"  (see here, here, here, here and here).

I thought when I hate-read these pieces that, yes, dragging screaming people into their homes and boarding the doors is, I suppose, bold in a sense. But are we really all pretending that the initial cover-up which is directly responsible for the pandemic going global in the first place just...never happened? Are we truly allowing COVID-19's origin story to be re-written so easily?

I'm not the only one who's noticed, fortunately.

Watching 🇨🇳 mishandling COVID19 disappearing down the memory hole is quite something. Arresting doctors, ignoring warnings, suppressing information during the provincial party congress. Weeks of inaction. All vanishing and replaced with 🇨🇳 decisiveness and success. https://t.co/X8IOi4kBTD

— mhar4 須平心再想。 (@mhar4) March 14, 2020

Of course, it's difficult to argue now that the US or Europe could have done better, as they have now both failed so spectacularly. The difference, of course, is that in a liberal democracy you can say so without getting shot, and theoretically can put better people in office next time.

I can empathize, however, with people whose governments did too little thinking that maybe the government that did too much - and now claims that cases are in decline - had the right of it. Even if that sentiment ignores the facts. Even if you are in essence saying "it would be acceptable to drag my screaming neighbor into their house, padlock the door and walk away with the key. It would be acceptable to do that to me, too."

These are the same people who think it's un-American to even ask them not to gather in crowds. Do they think China couldn't possibly be as bad as it actually is, or that it's OK to do that to others but "it would never happen to me" or...do they just use the cognitive dissonance like a white noise machine to help them sleep at night? I truly don't know.

Neither of these are good! 

It doesn't help that the facts are hard to come by. It's honestly surprising to me how many people understand that the US has no idea how many COVID-19 cases currently exist within its borders, but actually believe the numbers from China, despite China's clear history of lying about them. Now people are saying cases in China are on the decline, but can we really trust that, when nothing the CCP has said since the initial cover-up can be trusted? I don't, and you shouldn't either.

The CCP understands this better than anything: in the absence of trustworthy data, you can make up your own lore.

While all of this has been going on, there's been an ongoing discussion of whether calling COVID-19 "Wuhan Pneumonia" or anything relating to its place of origin is racist, as these viruses can originate anywhere. I don't know that changing a disease's name can really combat racism, but it almost doesn't matter. I'm not qualified to say whether referring to Wuhan in the disease's name is, indeed, racist - totally not my lane. I don't use it - it's too long and seems unnecessary. Holding the CCP to account and not treating people in racist ways both seem like more important things to worry about than exercising my 'right' to call a disease by a common name.

 But I will note that in Taiwan it's called 武漢肺炎 (that is, Wuhan Pneumonia) in Mandarin. It's slightly amusing to me that the CCP insists that Taiwan is a part of China, but also that calling COVID-19 "Wuhan Pneumonia" is racist...against Chinese. By that logic, Chinese people are racist against themselves.

Anyway, I've noticed a particularly bit of nasty ret-conning on the English front too.

I support a general push not to stigmatize people by using place names in disease names going forward, but there seem to be a lot of gullible people who now think we've never called diseases that in the past, so "Wuhan Pneumonia" is a unique example of racism on this front. Of course, those same people will still use disease names like Ebola, Nipah, Zika, Marburg and MERS.

Don't laugh - I saw someone arguing that "we've never named diseases after places!" under a chart that included all of the above. So I suppose I consider users of the term "Wuhan Pneumonia" exactly as racist as I would consider users of the terms "Ebola" and "MERS".

It's been disconcerting to watch how the CCP propaganda machine has taken advantage of this confusion.

First, insisting that its response was appropriate and effective. Then, trying to tell the world (and their own people) that we should be grateful. Then, getting behind a call to label everyone saying "Wuhan Pneumonia" racist moving to a general call not to "blame China" (which, of course, runs in tandem with labeling all blaming of the CCP "blaming China" and therefore "racist"). And now, we've got CCP officials spreading rumors that the virus did not originate in China at all.

I still don't intend to call COVID-19 "Wuhan Pneumonia", but I do note that it's a lot easier to convince idiots outside the Chinese-speaking world that COVID-19 did not come from China if everyone's afraid of being called racist for discussing how it absolutely did.

And so from an undifferentiated mess of information - most of which is unreliable as China's numbers can't be trusted - we have a myth of CCP "decisiveness" saving the world. Lore spun from literally nothing into a narrative that credible people actually believe.

I had hoped that cold, hard data would carry the day. That it would be clear what works (a response like Taiwan's) and what doesn't (running around screaming like a hemorrhaging goat like the US). How draconian, inhumane methods like China's are not necessary if there is initial transparency and swift action. I had hoped that this clarity would lead to much-needed changes in how governments operate around the world, from an end to CCP tyranny to drastic changes in the US's broken system.

Instead, it seems that between data and lore, the latter can pose as the former because most people can't tell the difference.

We will all pay the price for it.

The KMT's hard red turn *really* isn't as weird as you think: Part II

This is one of those photos that doesn't have a direct relationship to the post...except I think evocatively, that it does. 

In my last post on KMT-CCP synchronicity, I dove into the KMT's Leninist roots to show that their 'origin story' does not differ that much from the CCP. The short of it is that their early party structure (Leninist), philosophy (Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles), overarching ideals (that they are a "Chinese" government and that includes Taiwan) and general approach to governance (authoritarianism disguised as "political tutelage" by a caretaking "vanguard party") are all so similar to the CCP's approach to governance that one should not be surprised that the two parties are now working together to push the annexation of Taiwan to China. 

But, I approached a few key issues which were left unanswered. Namely: 


What about the stark ideological contrast regarding Marxism? 

How do you account for the different approaches to 'Chinese culture' between the two parties?

The KMT is - in theory at least - a competing party in a democratic system. Do all the old authoritarian beliefs still apply?


Let's address those now. 

Marxism

This one is easy - the CCP still claims to hold Communist ideology, but even a cursory, non-expert observation of how China works shows that the party's guiding ethos are not Marxist at all. It's not just that China has barely any social welfare system - just try accessing good medical care if you're not rich - but that the CCP has figured out that it's just as good to control the 'owners' of private enterprise, rather than actually run various enterprises themselves. If anything, it's better! Other people do the hard work of actually running companies, but the Party can decide who succeeds in establishing large firms based on their connections and Party loyalty. And because they can be arrested at any time for 'corruption' or controlled through national subsidies and contracts or just quiet threats delivered through a tightly-woven network, you don't lose any power.

I don't think this paper is particularly special, but it is an example of how the general academic consensus is that China is closer to 'state capitalist' than any kind of Marxist or Communist ideology. And here's another one. They're not very exciting.

The workers, you say? Those people that the CCP has sworn to protect? What of them? Without offering any of the benefits of Marxism - say, job security, access to basic necessities such as food, clothing, shelter and health care - the CCP is quite able to exercise all of the downsides of Marxism (state control of everything you are permitted to do) as it pleases.

What, did you think the CCP would actually give 'the workers' any sort of power? But that would force them to give up power themselves!

State capitalism, as they love to say in China, is a win-win situation! For dictators and their friends, that is.

With actual Marxism gone, there's really not much left to distinguish the strongman KMT from the strongman CCP. And you're a fool if you think the KMT isn't aware that their one ideological rift with their former adversaries no longer exists in anything but name. 


Chinese Culture

The last few times I went to China, I was treated to lovely feasts of traditional Chinese fare in restaurants decked out in traditional Chinese decor. The first one used traditional woodcarving as a design point, inserting traditionally-carved pieces into more modern wooden walls and dividers. The other one was in a shopping mall, but featured an entire miniature stream teeming with goldfish, with a little Chinese-style bridge over it, which one crossed to go from the reception area to the dining area. The dining room was set with traditional-style tables and chairs, with white plaster dividers inset with Qing-style windows shaped like peaches, medicine gourds, butterflies, ingots and more. 

There was something performative about the whole thing, not unlike going to a restaurant in America with "America" in the name. These restaurants were gorgeous and the food was delicious, but the unspoken point seemed to be "welcome to China, don't you love our 5,000 years of culture and therefore everything about our country!" [exclamation point - it's not a question.] 


Those were just two meals in China, but they illustrate a larger point: the Cultural Revolution is dead. Long live Chinese Culture as a method of state control! 

This topic ties in nicely with the Marxist angle above. To clarify the relationship, let me quote Alton Thompson's comment in the Taiwan History Facebook group (which is great - you should join!):

A big ideological split existed when the Communists really bought into the Karl Marx shtick about international class struggle. The Red Guards torched Chinese art, destroyed Beijing opera, and laid waste to Tibetan Buddhism in the name of the new order. With this sort of erasure going on, CKS could display Chinese cultural treasures in the National Palace Museum here to make the case that his party preserved, and therefore must be heir to, Chinese culture. 

Mao's successors added 'Chinese characteristics' to their concerns—and that changed everything. As in so many Communist régimes, party leaders now needed international investment to rescue their failed economy and underwrite their party's continued hold on power (see also 'Cuba'). It helped this project to move the Marx talk into the realm of nostalgia as they established stock exchanges and rebooted Chinese art, Beijing opera, and Tibetan Buddhism in some form to show visitors.

The CCP suddenly found itself in ideological kinship with the Nationalists. The main product on offer by both parties now was simply a police state with Chinese characteristics. This conjunction emerged just as both parties were viewing with increasing alarm Taiwan's advancing democracy and growing sense of native identity.

The rebirth of 'Chinese culture' in China was not a natural post-Cultural Revolution occurrence - it was an intentional CCP-backed initiative. Xi Jinping himself has said so numerous times and even cursory searches will bring up state-supported initiatives to promote 'Chinese culture' and tie it to 'Chinese government control'. Here, it's stated explicitly, but also uncritically (you may choose not to read that as your self-care for the day. It's more than a little barfy.)

Does this sound different from the KMT's attempt to harness "preserving Chinese culture" as a tool of party control through the Cultural Renaissance Movement (中華文化復興運動)? No:

While the KMT had little hope of retaking China, it used propaganda to maintain the illusion that war could break out at anytime to justify its military rule and keep its population united and patriotic. The Cultural Revolution broke out in China in 1966, giving the KMT a perfect opportunity to launch the Chinese Cultural Renaissance Movement as a countermovement. 

It was not the first of its kind. The KMT had launched the Cultural Reform Movement (文化改造運動) and the Cultural Cleansing Movement (文化清潔運動) in the 1950s. These movements share the common goals of shaping the world view of its constituents by repeatedly promoting KMT founder Sun Yat-sen’s (孫逸仙) Three Principles of the People (三民主義), fostering unwavering allegiance to Chiang and carrying out the ultimate goal of defeating the Chinese communists.

The council was made up of scholars, cultural experts and a large number of high-level KMT officials. In addition to promoting traditional Chinese arts, it sought to instill the ancient “Four Principles and Eight Virtues” (四維八德) among the populace.

You may have noticed in the last election that the KMT is holding strong to their "Chinese cultural" touchstones. The hyper-prominence of the ROC flag and its KMT telltale heart sun. The claims that this election was "a battle to save the ROC". Knowing it can never compete with the DPP on Taiwaneseness, a tacit but omnipresent push toward Chineseness. KMT-allied groups, such as the Anti-Gay Aunties (not their real name, they're actually the 中華婦女黨 or "Chinese Women's Party") explicitly talk about their bigotry beliefs in terms of "Chinese culture".

So, now we have the KMT in Taiwan and the CCP in China both promoting "traditional Chinese culture", and both tying it explicitly to their political goals.

Same same. Not different.Democratization

A Facebook comment on my first post pointed out that the KMT's history of authoritarianism didn't fully explain how the party as a whole could go so red. After all, they did capitulate to democratization, and the KMT's stated goal was always 'constitutional democracy' (of course, a 'stated goal' can never be taken as true belief - look at their actions, not their words). There must be some among them who really do believe in the democratic system, and don't wish to go back to authoritarianism. Some probably still believe that this all-important 'Chinese destiny' for themselves and for Taiwan remains an ROC construct, rather than capitulation to the PRC. 

And yet even they seem willing to be pulled along by the party's rush to cooperate with the CCP. Why?

There's no simple answer to this, and I do believe that (some of) these people (mostly) believe their own words.

However, true discomfort with authoritarianism must also mean discomfort with an authoritarian past. If one is able to excuse or explain away the KMT's history of political repression and mass murder, and join the party that did those things despite the party never fully making amends for their past, they are clearly not as uncomfortable with authoritarianism as they say, or believe. 

There are surely others who believe that "One Country Two Systems" is still viable, though they'll never call it that. The term is now - rightly - political poison. Still thinking of Taiwan's destiny as ultimately Chinese, they likely consider some sort of co-existence with the CCP inside a united 'China' as the next best thing to the KMT's original goal.

The KMT has recently insisted that "One Country Two Systems" will happen - in the words of failed presidential contender and now Some Guy in Kaohsiung - "over their dead body". But again, look at actions, not words. Every action the KMT has taken is toward a One Country Two Systems model, not away from it. Closer economic ties? Check. Not changing all of the references to "China" on national enterprises? Check. "Preserving Chinese culture"? Check. "Not rejecting unification"? You betcha. Floating a possible peace treaty? Uh huh. Links for all of those can be found in my previous post focusing on Leninism.

I don't know what to say about those KMTers, except that they are either stupid, delusional or intentionally ignorant. 

After witnessing events in Hong Kong, it is impossible to truly believe that there can be peaceful unification under any sort of two-system model. Leaving aside those who may simply be delusional or dumb, there must be a rationale in the minds of KMTers who intentionally ignore this fundamental truth: 

 “Under the premise of ensuring national sovereignty, security, and development interests, after peaceful reunification, the social system and way of life of Taiwan compatriots will be fully respected,” it said. 

“Private property, religious beliefs, and legitimate rights and interests of Taiwan compatriots will be fully protected.”

China has not explained how Taiwan’s democracy may be allowed to continue if it takes control of the island. [Emphasis mine].

As I've said: 

Note that among the things to be "respected", democracy is not listed.... The CCP apparently would get to decide what aspects of Taiwan's way of life are "legitimate" - just as they get to decide both who is Chinese and what it means to be Chinese - and you can surely expect that any sort of non-approved belief or attempt at continued democracy or even basic freedom of speech would be construed a threat to "national security" and therefore "not legitimate". "Rights and interests" is too general a phrase both in Chinese and English to mean anything, other than what the CCP wants it to mean...

Therein lies the answer to how KMTers who "support democracy" square that with friendliness to China and openness to unification.

They "support democracy" in that they believe there should be elections, and that the people who get the most votes should win those elections. That's about it. Even in the mid-20th century, the KMT held elections. Some of the local ones were actually competitive, in a sense. History shows that it's not necessarily an incongruous thing to believe as one supports an overarching authoritarian framework.

Under what structure those elections are "allowed" to take place is the question. For these KMTers, fake democracy will suffice. After all, they've joined the party that did fake democracy for decades, and then (wrongly) took credit for actual democracy! They are currently members of a party that has attempted to use lies, rather than platform-based campaigning, to win elections, and did not quit because of it. Even before the Hong Kong protests, they looked at Hong Kong's fake democracy and seemed to think "yeah, that'll do".

Fortunately, most Taiwanese can tell the difference between real democracy and the Diet version. They look identical but when you actually imbibe them, the core ingredients simply don't taste the same.

I bet some of the people pushing Taiwan in this direction can tell the difference too, but either their desire to be a "Chinese" party with a Chinese destiny overrides it (ie., democracy is of secondary importance), or they're sure that they personally stand to gain from unification under any system (they won't, but have probably been promised otherwise.)

Finally, it's worth bringing Leninism back into the discussion. Some of the old Leninist structures may no longer exist or hold any power, though the old patronage networks they engendered still exist. But one aspect of Leninist organization still seems to hold say in the KMT: democratic centralism. 

There may be KMTers who don't actually agree with the turn the party has taken, and who do understand that it goes against ideals they personally believe in. However, there's strong pressure within the party to 'fall in line' once an issue has been decided, and those who don't are punished (just look at what happened to Jason Hsu). There are ways to skirt that line, with tacit party blessing - see Wayne Chiang showing up to vote for one key provision in a same-sex marriage bill that the KMT had decided it would oppose, knowing that by the time he runs for Taipei mayor in 2022, treating LGBT people like people will be normalized. But openly opposing the "party consensus" after it has been reached? You're out.

This is true of most political parties, but the KMT seems to adhere to it more vigorously.

So, there may be KMT members who actually don't agree with their party's hard red turn, but they've decided that staying in the party and going along with it is more beneficial to them. Since they're comfortable building careers within a formerly authoritarian organization to begin with - one in which family connections matter more than talent, doing away with the notion that leaders are chosen based on merit - going along surely isn't as painful as it may seem from the outside.

Don't hold your breath, then, that anyone within the KMT will sound the alarm.

As a commenter on my earlier post pointed out, the KMT and CCP are like the Yankees and the Red Sox. They have different team colors and appeal to different demographics, but there's no actual difference between them - they're both playing the same game. Each one's fans claim to hate the other, but they all love the game, and they'll both gang up on people who don't want to play at all.

Ideologically, there is no longer much difference between the KMT and CCP - only rivalry over who should 'win'. Even in baseball, players are traded every season. It's all just a game. If the stronger team sees the benefit of helping out the weaker one to keep the World Series from being cancelled, it makes sense that the weaker team would be likely to accept.

It's really not that weird. 

The KMT's hard red turn isn't as weird as you think

Pretty sure "We Shall Return" was a threat more than a promise

Since the 2020 election, people have been asking how the KMT could have turned so thoroughly pro-China and along with that, pro-CCP. Once upon a dream they were the guys who fought the CCP. You know, "defeat the Communists and take back the Mainland!"

Whatever happened to those guys?

How did we get from that to disinformation and election interference campaigns by China, aimed at helping the KMT? How'd we get to the KMT arguing that we need closer ties with China - a policy the CCP supports? How'd we get Han Kuo-yu meeting officials in China, Ma Ying-jeou changing his tune from "no independence, no unification, no war" to "no independence, no war, don't reject unification" and KMT party officials attempting to wheedle and threaten an alleged defected Chinese spy into recanting his story? Or pro-unification groups broadly supporting the KMT (though that varies), a legislator who attended a speech by Xi Jinping, a KMT party list entry (later removed) who called for "beheading" independence advocates, a party list so avidly pro-unification that it had to be changed after public outcry, and some support for a "peace agreement" with the CCP?

It's true that the KMT used to espouse anti-Communist rhetoric:

Chiang spent the majority of his adult life fighting Communism either as the leader of the KMT during the Civil War in China or as the head of state of the Republic of China (ROC) leading the Chinese government in exile in Taiwan. He was unequivocal that the ROC should never submit to the will of the CCP.

But the only thing that sticks about the KMT is how they consider themselves a Chinese party, and their own - and Taiwan's - destiny as being ultimately Chinese:

To outsiders, this looks like a betrayal of their forefathers. But within the KMT ranks, they appear to have long since made peace with the paradox. “One China” has been deemed more important than the KMT’s historic opposition to the Chinese Communist Party.

They may have once appended the notion that the ROC is the only rightful government of China, but since it's become clear that such a vision is hopeless, they've defaulted to "Chinese by any means, regardless of what Taiwanese think".

Their only other ideology is power, for themselves. Knowing they'll never have the power they've wanted to regain in China, they'll take the next best thing: no, not power in Taiwan. Taiwan means nothing to them.  I mean power in China through cooperation with their former enemy.

When a rival offers a better deal through cooperation than continued conflict, those who care only about their own ambitions will take it.

Does it seem so unusual, then, that absent any reason other than a generations-old rivalry with the CCP, the KMT would turn red?

People have explored the 'what' of this question - what exactly is happening with the KMT. But nobody, to my knowledge, has considered the 'why'. Why is KMT-CCP cooperation possible, after so many years of mutual enmity? 

The short answer can be found in examining the KMT's core ideology. It is not anti-communist - if anything, they've shared more elements with communist-aligned parties than they've differed over the years. Nor is it inherently anti-dictatorship - they were quite comfortable acting as dictators themselves.

That latter point doesn't need to be explored in much detail. The only thing you really need to know is that, contrary to what KMT historical revisionism espouses, they weren't the ones who democratized Taiwan - that can be attributed to opposition forces that forced the KMT to implement democratic reforms.

As such, there's no clear reason why they would think the way the CCP runs China is inherently wrong because it is authoritarian. 

The shared quasi-socialist ideology angle, however, doesn't get a lot of attention online outside of academic sources which not everyone can access, so let's explore that.

I'm going to quote a lot of academic work here because I'm too lazy to write it all out myself, but also because not everyone has access to academic sources, so I hope long block quotes will be helpful.

First, let's be clear: the KMT has never had a "Marxist" ideology. There was no final goal of any 'dictatorship of the proletariat'. Even when they were nationalizing every industry that they could milk for their own benefit, they still existed within a system that was generally capitalist.

That said, both KMT and the CCP were borne of the ideas of Sun Yat-sen, and one of those ideas (minsheng 民生) or welfare of the people is generally interpreted as a kind of socialism - Wikipedia says Georgism. I don't know a lot about Georgism other than that it espouses the idea that labor should not be taxed, but the benefits you derive from owning non-labor resources such as land should. That sounds like it's in a socialist-like family to me! The point is, although 'minsheng' was never clearly defined, Sun Yat-sen was not exactly a rolicking capitalist. 

The connection has been made by many:

The KMT's Leninist roots go back to Sun Yat-sen, but more important was the party's reorganization (gaizao) after its retreat to Taiwan.' During the early 1950s, the KMT cre- ated a network of party cells throughout the government, military, and society to which each party member had to belong, and created a cadre system to handle party work in these sectors. The principles of democratic centralism, ideology as guide to policy, and party supremacy over the government and military were reasserted. And a ban on organized opposition inside and outside the party was enforced. It was this reorganization that made the KMT similar to other Leninist parties, not by coincidence but by intent.

Even before the KMT reddened like a Japanese maple, it showed that it was not necessarily ideologically opposed to the CCP, although neither were they the same:

KMT leaders justified many of these reforms by pointing to the success of the CCP. But although similar, the two parties are obviously not identical....

In any case, the way it spread its tentacles of influence throughout various aspects of society was certainly Leninist:

In terms of party structure and party-state relationship, the KMT regime in this period was a Leninist one. There was organizational parallelism between the party and the state: party organs controlled administrative units at various levels of government as well as the military via a commissar system....Party cadres were socialized as revolutionary vanguards....Party cells also penetrated the existing social organizations. 

Look at all that...that stuff that also comes up in Leninism. A commissar system. "Democratic centralism" (a system in which free expression is permissible until their is a group consensus, at which point members of the group must 'toe the line'). 'Revolutionary vanguards' (professional revolutionaries who run the show in the best interests of the people until true revolution can occur). There might not have been any specific  'revolution' planned for the end of this process, but surely these cadres did think of themselves as vanguards representing the best interests of 'the people':

Defining "the people" as its social base, the KMT organized a youth corps, recruited leading farmers, formed labor unions in the state sector, and prevented the emergence of independent labor unions all through leadership control and exclusive representation of these social groups.

This probably helped them sleep at night, that is, if they weren't all tuckered out from a day of genteel looting and not-so-genteel imprisonment and murder of their political opposition.

If you're wondering if social control is truly an important feature of Leninist party structures, it is:

The essence of Leninism, according to Philip Selznick, consists in the concentration of "total social power in the hands of a ruling group." Leninism views power everywhere, and therefore a combat party manned by disciplined cadres is used as an organizational weapon to remake the whole society. From a Leninist perspective, society is highly malleable, or to use James Scott's term, "prostrate". In reality, few societies are so vulnerable that they are ready to be re-engineered from above. Leninist control is necessarily embedded in social structures so that its actual impact is always less than the revolutionary rhetoric.

And if you are thinking "that just sounds like dictatorship, how is that supposed to lead to the Marxist utopia that all those edgelords on Facebook talk about when they claim to be Marxist-Leninists?" - well...yeah:

In his classical study on the evolution of industrial relations in communist China, Andrew Walder discovers the hidden realities of party-state control. Contrary to its professed unselfish collectivism, Leninism encourages the pursuit of petty interests as party cadres are given arbitrary powers to distribute scarce goods. In national factories, there is a pattern of "neo-traditionalism" whose syndrome includes organized dependency, in which workers are placed under the economic, political and personal control of work-unit superiors, and a culture of authority, in which official power assumes a moral leadership and intrudes into the most private sphere of daily life. Leninist control gives rise to factory clientelism which reproduces inequality between leaders and workers. Working life is fragmented into a fiercely individualist competition for personal favours from cadre leaders.

Historically, it has not worked as well as intended. Not surprising - if you give yourself power as a "revolutionary vanguard", that sort of power is hard to give up.

If that sounds like both Taiwan under KMT authoritarian rule, and China under the CCP - yes.  Exactly.

According to Bruce Dickson, this Leninist transformation was completed even before the similar attempt by Chinese communists. In the industrial sector, the KMT tried to "recruit skilled and productive employees and workers with leadership and revolutionary patriotism." Thus, from a very early stage, cadres were present in Taiwan's factories, where they built up a vast redistributive network among KMT loyalists.

It's worth noting that the lack of a specifically Marxist political goal doesn't mean that the KMT lacked a 'vanguard' element. It's just that they instead intended to mold society via a process called "political tutelage" (controlling the country until the 'masses' could be sufficiently 'educated' about their political rights to ensure a democratic transition).

You can imagine how tempting it would be - positively irresistible! - for a party with total control of the state as well as the education system intended to 'tutor' the people to simply...stay in power, and use that 'tutelage' to their own ends through political indoctrination.

The CCP skipped the actual tutelage and went straight to political indoctrination. The KMT adopted Japanese Meiji-era education systems that had been implemented in Taiwan, replacing Japanese cultural identity indoctrination with Chinese. They allowed a few local (sub-national) elections, and was thus able to feign a veneer of 'education', which was actually political and cultural indoctrination. The total KMT control permitted through 'temporary' provisions (when in fact they were not) enabled them to avoid giving any sort of concrete timetable for full democratization while providing a way to "co-opt local elites" as their chosen political candidates (source: that first link in the post).

In fact, pretty much every aspect of how the party ran itself follows these lines.

Leninist parties direct the action of the state by dominating both political and governmental institutions. During its first four decades in Taiwan, the KMT charted the state's course by selecting and cultivating all political and institutional leaders. 

[From earlier in the article] Leninist parties brook no opposition to their power from other parties and customarily treat factionalism as heretical to the party's ideology. While on mainland China, the KMT cooperated with other parties reluctantly and relentlessly sought to expunge factional conflict. Like other Leninist parties, however, the KMT could not extirpate factional divisions....Intra-party factionalism initially was rigorously suppressed; however, after the death of Chiang Kai-shek, policy differences appeared more frequently in party fora and were tolerated in fact (but factions were still opposed in principle).  

If that also sounds like it describes the CCP, well, surely you've got the point by now.

In fact, the factionalism within the KMT party state was such that it was basically its own complex ecosystem. For those who don't already know, that's basically why opposition from outside rather than between factions was called "tangwai", or "outside the party" opposition (also, that had not really been allowed to exist before). 

These factional disputes did lead, eventually, to break-off parties (such as the New Party). The New Party spun off because Lee Teng-hui was pushing the KMT towards prioritizing Taiwan over "reunification" and hardliners who wanted to keep the primary focus on China, well, left. But, you'll remember that Lee himself was kicked out of the KMT because they didn't like his push for Taiwan-focused localization.

It makes sense, then, that post-Lee, with a demagogue-ish DPP president in power (that'd be Chen, it's 2001 at this point), the KMT would double down on its earlier China-oriented ideology. And, when that happened, it'd make sense that the strong unificationists/China-oriented breakaway parties would circle back around to existing in their own right, but also supporting Big Daddy KMT's pro-China ideology.

The nationalization of key industries into state-owned enterprises (SOEs) also follows this political trajectory. From the link to Ming-sho Ho's work some ways up:

After the war, all these economic resources, private or public, were declared "the enemy's properties" and summarily confiscated. The KMT was determined to keep the industrial assets nationalized despite local complaints and American privatization pressure. For the KMT, state-owned enterprises guaranteed its political and economic independence from the host society. In the early period, nationalized industries made up the backbone of Taiwan's economy. In 1966, state-owned enterprises employed 13.5 per cent of the workforce in the manufacturing sector, concentrating in upstream industries.

Some such state-owned enterprises in Taiwan that you may be familiar with include Taiwan Salt, Taiwan Sugar, Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor, the China Petroleum Company and...well, plenty more. There have been organizational changes; I couldn't tell you what the exact structure of these companies is now. Their function as SOEs in the past, however, is absolutely in line with everything above. They are often seen as a form of 'state capitalism' (when the state engages in commercial/economic activity), a term which has also been used to describe the Chinese economy under the CCP. Lenin himself considered state capitalism to be a 'final stage' of capitalism before Marxist revolution.

That revolution was not the goal of the KMT, but from a political and economic structural standpoint, there has historically been little difference.

Of course, the actual effect is one of enabling total party control (all from Ho's work linked earlier on):

The full-blown transition to Leninism in state-owned enterprises came with the KMT's re-organization in 1950-52. In order to exert a firmer control over this hostile island, the KMT proclaimed it was to build "a social base with the vast labouring mass of youth, intellectuals, agricultural and industrial producers The central reorganization commission set up a special taskforce to speed up the building of a party branch in every nationalized factory and a party cell in every workshop. There was an impressive growth of worker party members from 26,505 in 1952 to 44,312 in 1957. In 1954, the KMT claimed membership of between 25.3 and 45 per cent of the workforce in selected industries.

SOEs are not necessarily bad - they're a fairly common way of structuring, for example, transit companies as public transportation is good for a city, but doesn't always turn a profit. They can help bring needed services to a community even if there's no market incentive to provide it. However, the KMT's SOE scheme mainly served to enrich itself:

Mainlanders [basically, the non-local KMT] continued to enjoy their privileges over the Taiwanese. Compared to other government positions, state-owned enterprises offered better rewards since more than half of their income derived from the handsome rationing of necessities. Thus, a sustained wave of mainlanders continued to move into state-owned enterprises through private guanxi. Nepotism was rampant.... Unionizing was also an integral part of the KMT's Leninist transformation....officials began a unionizing campaign in major public and private sectors in the mid-1950s....Far from empowering grassroots workers, the KMT's guidelines made it explicit that unions followed the party leadership. Without exception, union officials must be KMT members and were handpicked by the party branch.

Hey, doesn't that also sound more or less like the way the CCP does things? 

If you're wondering "how did Taiwan move from that model to something far more free-market leaning?" - simple. The US government pressured them into it. Maybe you're a free-market bourgeois, maybe you're an edgy Marxist. Whatever. From a historical standpoint, it remains that reforms loosening the KMT's hold on the economy enabled small and medium-sized businesses to flourish, and that was the foundation of the Taiwan Miracle.

There is one final point to make as we discuss Leninist influences in the KMT - and that's land reform. I don't want to belabor this point. This is what land reform supposedly looked like in Taiwan:

It is only after these two [1949 and 1951 reforms] that we come to the famous 1953 reform, tendentiously called the land-to-the-tiller programme. This comprised the compulsory purchase of private tenanted farmland by the State and its resale, by installment purchase, to the former tenant....

Of course, even that is contentious (the whole piece is worth reading, although it is old). 

The KMT essentially used land reform to consolidate its own power (from Cheng's article linked further up):

[Leaders of early opposition movements] were not rooted in the contemporary social structure, which was basically composed of small farmers (a class politically captured by the KMT because of land reform) and state employees (a natural constituency of the KMT). Thus, not only was the political opposition of the fifties unprepared for strategic bargaining with the regime; society itself was not amenable to the mobilization of political opposition.

There's a lot more to be said about this which I am essentially skipping over, and a strong argument to be made that land reform was not as successful as some make it out to be - and I may write more about that in the future. The point is, from a theoretical perspective it sure sounds a lot like one of the stages of Marxist-Leninist revolution (Lenin envisioned it as one step toward the eventual goal of abolishing all privately-owned land). Of course, although one can make a case that "land to the tiller" is not an accurate description of the land reform the KMT actually carried out, for a number of reasons - one of the biggest being that they never intended to fully abolish private ownership.

The KMT wiped out a potential opposition base by appropriating the land of wealthier Taiwanese, and built up a support base of smaller farmers by distributing it (there's a lot more to say there, but that summary will do). The CCP, on the other hand, went straight to killing the landlords. One might have used far more violent means than the other, but ideologically, there isn't a huge difference.

All of this is to say that the KMT, from a historical perspective, was never as ideologically opposed to the CCP as people believe. There are differences, but they could be characterized as a strait, not a yawning ocean.

I repeat: the KMT-CCP conflict has always been far more about wanting power - rivals vying for the One Ring - than it was ever about core ideological differences. Now, I suppose we could say that by grabbing the Ring, the CCP has turned itself into Gollum. But the KMT is essentially Smeagol - having the power it actually wants (control of China) taken away, it pretends to play-act as a willing partner in the fellowship of Taiwanese democracy, but is ultimately trying to sabotage the whole project to get what it has really wanted this whole time.

No, not to abolish the CCP. They just want China. They don't want to kill Gollum - they are Gollum, in a sense. They just want the Ring.

(I didn't think that Smeagol/Gollum analogy would work initially, but you know, I think it does.)

The whole "they're damn Commies and we're Free China" talk, then? Where did it come from?

From the KMT's own mouthpieces, of course!

If you control the education system, you get to decide how you are portrayed in textbooks. It's extra helpful for you if you bow and scrape to the US and convince your buddies over there that you're the good guys, the Free China, the anti-Commies.

It's all a farce.

From quasi-socialist beginnings - claiming the same founding father as the CCP - to a basically Leninist party structure, to being quite comfortable with dictatorship themselves, the KMT cannot truly claim to be "against" anything the CCP stands for, ideologically. Their core ideology, therefore, can only be characterized as thinking of themselves as leaders of China, not Taiwan, and Taiwan's destiny as ultimately Chinese. Surely, leaders in the KMT have been offered plum positions in the new government, if they manage to make unification of the 'motherland' a reality. Surely, they believe that these rewards will actually materialize (they won't, but that's a topic for another post).

As such, their real ideological opponent is Taiwanese identity - institutionally speaking, the DPP (among others). Not the CCP.

One of the first links above concluded that the KMT has "accepted the paradox" of working with their former enemy.

I'd say that the paradox never existed, beyond what they tried to convince us was there. It was a chimera. A fake wizard behind a curtain. The KMT and the CCP were always more similar than they were different.

Knowing they won't get there any other way, and being offered a leg up by their former foe, wouldn't it make sense that they'd team up with them in order to defeat the people they actually disagree with - those who simply do not see themselves as Chinese or their land as part of China?

Nobody knows anything about coronavirus, and there are two reasons why

Source: Facebook (I've seen it in several places, I have no idea who to credit for creating it)

I noted in my last post that "we know nothing" about coronavirus, and I want to expand on that a little and talk about why.

...the international media is taking government data as gospel, which people in China know right now not to do. We don’t know what the fatality rate is because nobody knows how many people died before being diagnosed because they couldn’t get care. China keeps reporting “2.1%”, a number I don’t think anyone in China believes. We have no idea how contagious it is, either. We know nothing.

Let me be clear when I say "we don't know anything" - we don't know the fatality rate, as I noted. We also don't know yet where it came from (though as SARS originated in a wet market, coronavirus probably did too). We don't know how contagious it is, because if we don't know how many people have it, and how many have died from it, how can we know how easy it is to get?

We probably know that it's transmitted through aerosolized body fluids - that is, droplets of saliva from normal breathing - and you can get it by getting it on your hands and touching sensitive membranes in your face. At least, we think we know - that information also comes from China, but it seems highly plausible, even likely. In fact, it's hardly groundbreaking, that's how most colds and flus spread. 

In fact, if you're going to be worried about anything, don't let it be coronavirus. If you are not in China, you probably will not catch it (even if you are in China, you might be fine). Be afraid that we don't know anything about anything, the people fighting it don't really know anything, and even if the CCP did know, they'd probably lie about it.

But why? We can blame two factors - the first is that the Chinese government and health care "system", such as it is, is completely overwhelmed and it's likely they themselves don't have a clue what these data actually are. The second is that the Chinese government thinks it can decide what is true, and attempts to push a political agenda even to their own detriment, as well as the world's. 

So there are two layers of unreliability: the CCP is lying about data it doesn't even know itself. 

The first reason isn't entirely China's fault. I mean, it is absolutely their fault that they covered up the initial outbreak, allowing it to get worse. If they've learned anything from SARS, it's manifested in a slightly faster path from "pretending this doesn't exist and punishing anyone who says otherwise" to "admitting we have a problem", not in eliminating the first stage altogether. It is also their fault that they've allowed the nation's lackluster health care - which is absolutely not "free" or even "public" as many Westerners believe - to fester for so long.

But it is not their fault that the virus broke out there; these things happen around the world. So it's not their fault that they are the epicenter, nor that they had to be the first to fight it, while the rest of the world got a heads-up and some time to prepare.

The second - their consistent lies and cover-ups when SARS should have been a lesson against such behavior - obviously is their fault. That should not need to be explained. The lying, yes, but also their consistent opposition to Taiwan's participation in the WHO and other international organizations (such as ICAO) where their expertise and superlative health care and responsiveness to the epidemic could be of great help in combating it.

With all that in mind, let me hazard a few speculations about these things we don't know. 

First: coronavirus probably is highly contagious - we just don't know to what extent. We don't have enough data to compare it to the common flu, so please stop doing that. But the flu exists in China, and hasn't created an epidemic like this in previous years. If people going out for hot pot can infect much of their family and it's possible to contract it just transiting through Hong Kong, that points to potentially high contagion rates. It's possible that China is overreacting by locking down entire cities, but I doubt they'd self-destruct their own economy - through two sources I know that even Shenzhen is in full-city quarantine, which would be economically devastating - if they didn't have reason to worry.

But - how much of that contagion is simply because it is highly contagious, compared to how much is potentially caused by overwhelmed health care systems in China and poor public hygiene in general? I contracted bronchial pneumonia twice in one year in China; this is almost certainly a contributing factor. How much of it is due to an inability to practice appropriate epidemic-fighting hygiene protocol because masks, sanitizer and alcohol cleaner are all impossible to get, in a contagion zone?

I have no idea, but the fact that the virus seems to be spreading slowly and is basically under control in most of the rest of the world means that it probably can be contained, and isn't necessarily going to be a global pandemic. You might want to keep people in China in your thoughts, however. They don't deserve this and with every Chinese system on overload, it's probably going to get worse.

How much of the unknown fatality rate is caused by those same factors - an overwhelmed system, shortages of necessary hygiene supplies and poor general public hygiene, as well as paranoid quarantine policies that put people in non-virus-related danger and have resulted in at least one death?

It's impossible to say, but the fact that a lot of people are dying from coronavirus in China (though we don't actually know how many) and very few have died abroad shows that the environment and poor government response in China are factors. 

That brings me to my final points - first, I don't even know how much to blame China for actions which seem malicious. That charter flight meant to bring at-risk Taiwanese back to Taiwan, that ended up being full of wives and children of evacuees (who also deserve to be flown out, but not at the expense of at-risk people)? You know, the one which ended up containing at least one confirmed coronavirus carrier? Some have accused China of purposely putting infected people on that plane as an attack on Taiwan, but I honestly think, in conditions that have been described as "wartime", that it's far more likely that they didn't have the wherewithal to intentionally put a carrier on that plane, and just let a person who'd bribed their way into a seat take what they'd paid for.

Second, if you are not in China, please stop freaking out. Taiwan's response has been exemplary - this is what open information and quick responses can accomplish. Japan has done a good job as well; Singapore is pretty good at this sort of thing. In fact, it seems that even if this coronavirus is highly infectious and highly fatal, that a strong public health response can keep it in check. Again, it's not China's fault that it was the epicenter - only that it spread in a government-imposed information vacuum.

That the rest of Asia has done a brilliant job of organizing a strong response before it could spread further is good news for the world.

This is probably not the last epidemic virus that will originate in China - the huge population, generally poor public health care, poor public hygiene (think bad plumbing, undrinkable tap water, rarely-cleaned public toilets, public spitting - though that has decreased markedly in the last decade) and prevalence of wet markets almost guarantee it. I certainly hope for the people of China that coronavirus is brought under control, though I also hope that they can overthrow that useless CCP and create a government more capable of responding to such outbreaks.

In other words, sunlight is in fact the best disinfectant. Open information, strong public health and quick action seem to be pretty effective in combating coronavirus, and they are protecting entire populations. I can only hope China figures out those three coronavirus 'vaccines' sooner rather than later. 

But the ability of much of the rest of Asia to coordinate a containment response and share what information they have freely is good news for the rest of the world. Forget the "first island chain" and South Korea in terms of traditional defense - warships, airstrips, bases and whatnot. This is the front line when major epidemics originate in Asia, and rather than excluding a key node in that defensive chain from organizations like the WHO, maybe the world should stop pretending the CCP is a true ally, and start realizing that the rest of Asia - including Taiwan - should get more credit. 

The CCP's mind tricks are working better on the West than on China right now

Found on Twitter from user AlexTheBullet (I don't know the origin of the image)

Chinese people: The Chinese government has been thoroughly incompetent at handling coronavirus!

The Chinese Communist Party: We are doing an excellent job.

The rest of the world, including the WHO: You are doing an excellent job, also these are not the droids we’re looking for

Watching the coronavirus horror unfold in China, I’m acutely aware that I’m close by geographically but worlds away politically and in terms of public health and safety - and those differences are the only thing keeping those of us in Taiwan safe.

It also means that in Taiwan, people generally have access to what’s going on in both China and the West. Information from the latter is freely available and increasingly accessible. At the same time, many Taiwanese have friends or family in China, many of whom are currently waylaid in Taiwan. Speaking a mutually intelligible language (mostly), they have a better idea of what is going on in China than most Westerners, for whom ‘China’ is much further away geographically, historically, relationally and linguistically. 

It should be obvious that Taiwan, alongside Hong Kong, is one of the most informative places from which to observe the nexus of knowledge, belief and awareness in both China and abroad. 

And what I am seeing now is truly astounding. 

Alongside the unfolding of a national tragedy, China is also experiencing a brief window in which freedom of speech is somewhat possible. And if you listen, what you hear is a furious outcry - the howl of a nation. 

From my Wechat Moments:

"现在你我都知道了，杀死我们的并不是蝙蝠。“

"Now we all understand, it's not the bats that are killing us."#2019nCoV

— Frankie Huang 🐯 (@ourobororoboruo) February 6, 2020

And this:

Checking my Wechat Moments (the equivalent of a Facebook feed in China) this morning: It's almost entirely posts about Li Wenliang, the whistleblow Wuhan doctor who died of coronavirus. This appears over and over:

"A healthy society should not have only one voice." pic.twitter.com/X9vOqzP5JJ

— Anna Fifield (@annafifield) February 7, 2020

People in China - many of them, anyway - know that the coronavirus epidemic has been mishandled from the top down and is still not being handled well, that their leaders (whom they never chose) are throwing each other under the bus, that that Xi Jinping is missing in action and that the initial outbreak was mishandled and covered up so spectacularly that it (at least partially) exacerbated the spread of the disease. They are fully aware that Li Wenliang - who was not a dissident - was reprimanded for warning a private WeChat group of his fellow medical school alumni about the danger, and that he can be credited as one of the early voices to speak out about the disease.  Li recently died, and the government (so it seems) half-heartedly attempted to cover it up - and it’s causing an absolute meltdown on Chinese social media.

The replies demanded of Dr. Li when he was reprimanded - that he "was clear" and "could" follow the government's orders - have been given life as a form of protest:

你能做到吗？你听明白了吗？ https://t.co/c1h1Z7MCOB

— 桃味冬日饺子 (@ViolaInJuly) February 7, 2020

They also know that the government data on the disease can’t be trusted. 

And they know this because so many of them have known all their lives that the CCP is built on repression and lies, but have chosen until now to survive and endure rather than speaking out and going to jail, or worse. 

Compare that to what I’m seeing from the rest of the world, especially the West. It’s like some sort of Jedi - well, I suppose Sith - mind trick. 

Despite the international news reporting on the death of Li Wenliang, the consensus seems to be that the CCP is doing “everything they can” to stop the epidemic and that their response has been “great” and “transparent”. The WHO has praised China's response, as well. In China, people know that when you officially reprimand those who issue early warnings, that’s not transparency. Some are even saying that criticism of the Chinese government response is Sinophobic or anti-China. While there have been racist incidents against Chinese people - and that is obviously wrong - it is not Sinophobic to criticize a government.

This is despite international media (finally) starting to report on how badly they are actually doing:

This wonder at China’s logistical prowess is symptomatic of a recurrent trope among western commentators. We might call it the “if we could just be China for a day” view....

But when it comes to a public health epidemic, there are worrying limits to the Chinese Communist party’s control. To maintain authority, the Chinese Communist party (CCP) must convince the public that everything is going to plan. This hampers its ability to respond to epidemics....

People are praising the “hospital built in 10 days” (which I suspect plenty of Chinese people realize is a cross between a farce and a death camp - you wouldn't need to build a hospital that fast if you had dealt with the outbreak appropriately in the first place). All the old cliches are coming out: they sure know how to get things done (except for initial containment of the outbreak, I suppose), they’re taking such decisive action (which they hadn’t done before). From the link above, this guy is quoted in the BBC:

"China has a record of getting things done fast even for monumental projects like this," says Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations....

"The engineering work is what China is good at. They have records of building skyscrapers at speed. This is very hard for westerners to imagine. It can be done," he added.

I see numerous comments echoing this trash online.

They’re praising China’s health care system (this is just one example), even though it’s failing, and spectacularly, too. It seems a fair number of Westerners have believed for some time that China had universal or accessible public health care” simply because China calls itself “communist”. It does not.

They are talking about that ridiculous Bloomberg article about how “China sacrificed a province to save the world” as though it was some sort of heroic act and not the tragic consequences of endemic incompetence and corruption in a government ill-prepared to deal with this crisis. And if you think public figures aren’t quoting that nonsense, oh, they are: 

The fatality rate in Wuhan is 4 percent; outside Hubei province it’s .17 percent.

Without any democratic input China sacrificed the 50 million residents of one province in order to save the rest of the rest of the world. What a decision https://t.co/tDa9DGe5e7 pic.twitter.com/aRLRrnIHWZ

— Farhad Manjoo (@fmanjoo) February 6, 2020

To be fair I think he meant this to be somewhat critical? It's unclear.

Of course, while one might be able to try and justify the locking down of the epicenter, this is what Chinese social media is asking - and the West apparently is not: if the government has been doing such an excellent job, how did it get to the point that they needed to lock down several other cities and put a huge chunk of the economy essentially on hold? Was it necessary, or is it a massive overreaction? We have no idea which it is - and isn’t that even scarier?

Worse still, the international media is taking government data as gospel, which people in China know right now not to do. We don’t know what the fatality rate is because nobody knows how many people died before being diagnosed because they couldn’t get care. China keeps reporting “2.1%”, a number I don’t think anyone in China believes. We have no idea how contagious it is, either. We know nothing.

神奇的病毒，还是个数学高手
1月30日：170死/确诊7821=2.1%，
1月31日：213死/确诊9800=2.1%，
2月1日：259死/确诊11880=2.1%，
2月2日：304死/确诊14401=2.1%，
2月3日：361死/确诊17238=2.1%，
2月4日：429死/确诊20471=2.1%，
2月5日：493死/确诊24441=2.1%
2月6日：564死/确诊28605=2.1%

— 李隽 (@juanli324) February 6, 2020

If the CCP is doing such an excellent job, how is it that China-watchers in Asia are openly wondering if this will be the crisis - not just of public health, but of public fury - that brings down the CCP?

CCP's persecutions, lack of transparency, and its management of the #coronavirus could be the last straw to break the camel's back. The oppression & anger people have felt for decades is coming to the fore. Please, may change come for the good of China.https://t.co/G67g5Fhh4p

— Roy Ngerng (@royngerng) February 7, 2020

It’s like some sort of demented hypnosis. The media is waking up, but I'm shocked that the commentary has been so...so...tankie.

How did the CCP manage to dupe so many people abroad, when their own citizens after years of forced indoctrination seem to (mostly) know better? How is it that people outside China seem more susceptible to authoritarian propaganda than the people educated since birth to support that system? How is it that the rest of the world seems to put faith in Chinese state media - which is known for spouting government lines rather than the truth  - while being completely oblivious to - or simply ignoring - a billion furious people?

It's like they all read and believe this junk rather than actually listening to people in China who have a brief flicker of an opportunity to speak out.

And those same Westerners are probably patting themselves on the back for being aware of the crisis in China and sympathetic to the Chinese people - whose voices they ignore in favor of state-peddled lies. I don’t think they realize the level of vitriolic, potentially incendiary outrage brewing in China against the very government they praise from a distance.

Truly, it amazes me. 

In China and the region, we know that the biggest danger isn’t coronavirus, or isn’t only that. Far scarier is knowing that we can’t trust the government tasked with combating the epidemic. At all.

As Chinese citizens are showing the world that they don't buy the CCP's crap when it comes to coronavirus, the world seems to be saying "more crap, please!" The death of Dr. Li might turn that tide, but with the WHO expressing condolences, after praising the government that silenced him and not seeing the irony of it all, and then backtracking to say they "had no information" (!!!), I'm not sure.

I wish the rest of the world would realize it too.