No, the DPP didn't "brainwash" Taiwan into "forgetting it is Chinese"

She couldn't have engineered a turn away from Chinese identity because she was elected after it happened!

I keep trying to write this post, and I keep failing. Or something happens in my life -- this week it was a migraine -- and I sort of wander away. Part of it might be that I keep trying to give it an "article-like" opening even though this is a blog, and then I get bogged down in trying to sound a certain way, and it comes out all weird. 

So, if I have any hope of saying what's on my mind, let's forget that and jump right in. 

Anyone who advocates for Taiwan online will eventually come across a particularly virulent strain of poor reasoning and straight-up falsehood: that Taiwanese identity is robust because the DPP made it so, and that Chinese identity in Taiwan is on the decline because, again, the DPP "brainwashed" Taiwanese into thinking it was true. This is often used to lament the 'letting go' of an understanding that Taiwan is part of some concept of China, or 'forgetting one's roots' because data show Taiwanese in general have moved away from the notion that having ancestral heritage in China means they are Chinese.

I've been seeing it more these days, which might be attributable to it becoming a CCP troll talking point, though many real people seem to hold it as a sincere opinion. Another possibility is that it's harder than ever to point to unclear or inconclusive data to claim that, at best, Taiwanese don't know what they want. We know most identify as solely Taiwanese, and we now know that although the infamous 'status quo' survey is often (ahem almost always) poorly analyzed, that most people see the status quo as sufficient to consider Taiwan an independent country -- no name change needed.

Or maybe people are just jerks, or acting out the fantasies their KMT parents taught them, and pinning it all on the opposition. I dunno. I'd rather look at the problems with the argument than speculate about this.

Chinese identity is not the default

The first issue is easily dispensed with: "Taiwanese forgot their true heritage, that they are Chinese" absolutely begs the question. It assumes that the default state of Taiwan is Chinese identity, that Chineseness is the baseline, the neutral state, and any change from that is the only thing that can be "political", and therefore the only thing that can be engineered or forced onto a population.

This is wrong. 

Remember when I said in a recent post that every KMT accusation is a confession? (Not originally my words, by the way). This is one, too. They accuse the DPP of using state power, including education, to force an identity on Taiwan. But that's what they did! The KMT implemented an education system that emphasized Chinese identity and either outright ignored Taiwanese history, or reduced it to a footnote within a greater Chinese framework. The KMT forced Mandarin on people who didn't speak it natively, actively banning other languages in school and government and highly discouraging their use in public (as in, speak Taiwanese or Japanese and we'll be watching you and maybe we'll send Officer Chang over to your house to check out your book collection, and if we can't find any "communist" literature we'll say we did anyway.) The KMT banned discussion of their own repressive acts in Taiwan. The KMT destroyed markers of Japanese culture in Taiwan, including not just language but modes of dress, temples and shrines. The KMT censored songs simply because the lyrics were Taiwanese, even if they held no inherent political meaning. In a twist that's going to matter later in this post, the KMT's own action to repress these songs is part of what led to them being used as acts of political symbolism! 

Arguably, the KMT engaged in this far more than the DPP ever has, which I'll get into further down.

Unless you take as a default that Taiwanese should think they are Chinese, and therefore it's okay for the KMT to force that identity on Taiwan but not acceptable for others to deconstruct it, this is inherently a political and non-neutral series of actions. I don't take it as a baseline that Taiwan is Chinese -- and why should I? Most Taiwanese don't either! Besides, historically China either didn't rule Taiwan, or ruled only part of the island. To that end, Taiwanese history overlaps with Chinese only to a degree, and I'd argue it's not a very great degree. Most of Chinese history is not relevant to Taiwan (just about anything up through the Ming Dynasty) unless you're talking about ancestral, not national, history as the island of Taiwan wasn't ruled by China in those centuries. And the few centuries where they do overlap, well, China not only didn't rule the whole island for the most part, they treated it as a backwater worth little attention and even fewer resources.

Perhaps the settlers' ancestors came from China, but from a political perspective, that ceases to matter after a few generations. The 1949 diaspora came more recently, but they were always a minority and their grandchildren have closer ties to Taiwan for the most part. It's fundamentally a flawed assumption to believe Chinese identity in this circumstance is immutable.


So, what is the default identity for Taiwan? 

The default identity for any group of people is what they want it to be. Not in an "I'm 1/16th Cree so I have decided I'm First Nations even though I don't participate in the culture and have always been treated as white" way. I mean in a "we live this identity and bear the full weight of it, so we get to decide what it means" way. 

Whether it's Chinese people furious that Taiwanese don't see themselves as Chinese, or white wannabe anti-imperialists who talk big about accepting different identities unless that identity is Taiwanese, in which case suddenly 23 million people don't get a say, it astounds me how people can be so two-faced. That is, talk one minute about how nobody else can tell others who they are or dictate their history to them, and the next about how Chinese say Taiwanese can't be Taiwanese, so we can't recognize Taiwanese identity out of respect for China. 

How is it not just important but imperative to respect every identity, but then whip around and call Taiwanese identity separatist, ethno-nationalist or even Sinophobic/anti-Chinese? 

How can you insist, if you are Chinese, that nobody else can explain your heritage and culture to you (which is true) -- and then feel comfortable explaining your version of Taiwan's heritage and culture to them? 

If you're not Chinese, how can you go around insisting everyone respect gender and sexual identity, heritage identity and neurodivergence (all great things to respect, and I agree) and then dismiss Taiwan as the one identity you don't have to respect? 

If you're an Asian American, how can you consistently leave Taiwan out of identity debates, and in some cases simp for the Chinese government, totally disrespecting your fellow Asian Americans who happen to be Taiwanese? 

Finally, if you're Taiwanese American (including the descendants of the KMT diaspora), how cam you tell Taiwanese in Taiwan that your grandparents' vision of an island they only briefly inhabited is the only correct one, and they better fall in line? How can you insist that your legitimate and valid view of yourself as Chinese must therefore apply to all Taiwanese? 

It boggles the mind! If Taiwanese say they are Taiwanese, fucking listen to them. 

(If the majority said they weren't Taiwanese, you should listen to that too. But they don't.) 

This is especially true as the tenor of pro-Taiwan discourse has trended increasingly towards accepting that some portion of the population will disagree. This is fine, as people have a right to their own views and identities. It is imperative, however, for the pro-China side to offer that same respect. Currently, I don't see that this is the case.

Seriously, I'm starting to think the fastest way to tell a real anti-imperialist for a straight-up fraud -- or a truly socially-conscious person from a self-righteous jerk -- is to bring up Taiwan. If you're not interested in respecting Taiwanese identity, I now assume you are a hypocrite who doesn't respect identity unless you personally approve, and therefore not worth my time.

Get your timelines right!

The final issue takes longer to talk about. It's a straight-up reverse cause fallacy in which time, for people who believe the DPP "forced" Taiwanese into "forgetting they are Chinese", apparently moves backwards. Or at best, it might be considered a cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy in which one historical trend is falsely fingered as the cause of another roughly concurrent trend.

For the DPP to credibly be the evil masterminds engineering Taiwanese identity, they'd need to be in a position of sufficient power or influence before the movement away from Chinese identity and toward Taiwanese. Otherwise, how could they have effected the change? With what exactly would they have forced their nefarious plan through, protest signs and...frequently getting arrested? 

Seriously, just look at the timelines. In what years did Taiwanese identity spike? First, starting around 1995, when it overtook solely Chinese identity, and climbed steadily until 2000. That's significant, and I'll talk about it in a moment.

From NCCU

It overtook "Taiwanese and Chinese" identity between 2006-2008. At that time, the DPP's star was falling thanks to the rumors swirling around Chen Shui-bian, reaching what might be described as a nadir with the election of Ma Ying-jeou.

A lot of people seem to think Chen was some sort of ogre forcing Taiwanese identity through schools and society, but during his presidency, Taiwanese identity rose far more slowly than in the preceding years, with a few dips. If he was trying to evil-villain Taiwanese identity to greater prominence, he didn't do a very good job. How could he have, when the legislature was still KMT-controlled?

The next significant spike hit around the Sunflower Movement, with the increase leading up to it following the descent of President Ma into deep unpopularity. "Aha!" you might shout. "It does follow the rise and fall of political party influence!"

Not so fast. Ma was still in power, and the legislature majority KMT. People often reference education as a site of struggle where these sorts of so-called "brainwashings" are engineered, but Ma's big education policy was to make the curriculum emphasize links with China, not Taiwanese identity! If anything other than the Sunflowers led to a spike in Taiwanese identity (and there was one), it was the electorate's reaction against policies like this, not the government's evil plotting.

Besides, if the DPP were able to control local identity so much before Ma, then how did Ma get elected in the first place?

The Sunflowers themselves wielded a great deal of cultural capital but not much institutional power, so while they certainly impacted the national conversation and societal beliefs, they could not have engineered or masterminded any sort of authoritarian changes intended to "brainwash" anybody. They occupied the legislature but weren't elected to it. They protested lawmakers, they weren't lawmakers themselves. 

Some will still claim that perhaps it wasn't Lee, or Chen, or the Sunflowers responsible for this "brainwashing", but Tsai. If that's so, explain how Taiwanese identity actually dropped a bit in the years following her election -- that is, when she began to actually wield power?

It's true that the most recent spike occurred around the 2020 election, gathering momentum from its 2018 "nadir" (well, compared to the years surrounding it. Overall it was no nadir at all.) But Tsai was already in power then and had not managed to elevate Taiwanese identity in the previous two years. It's unlikely that her knockout defeat of Han Kuo-yu and re-election caused this spike. Rather, they were probably the result of it. Fears about China and the overall incompetence of the KMT candidate are more likely possible causes.

Think about it: in what universe does "you elected me, therefore I will brainwash you" make any sense? Just in terms of, y'know, linear time?

To put it succinctly, if the "evil DPP" was "brainwashing" Taiwanese into thinking they were Taiwanese, how is it that Taiwanese identity hit milestones around the time KMT presidents (and legislatures) were elected, and leveled off or dipped a bit after DPP ones were? 

It's not even post hoc reasoning. It's just backward.

More likely, these changes occurred naturally, and the DPP was the beneficiary of changing public sentiment regarding identity, not its architect. Just as likely, they were a reaction against the newly-elected KMT turning back towards China once again -- so if anything caused a shift toward Taiwanese identity, it was probably (and unwittingly) the KMT!

Let's rewind. What happened in 1995, when that first spike happened? Well, Lee Teng-hui offered imminent democratization, and the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis. Who got elected in 1996? Lee, who despite ushering in a more nativist approach, was KMT, not DPP. Who controlled the legislature and most mayoral posts? The KMT, though the DPP had a loud minority and the coveted Taipei mayoralty. A voice, but a minority or subordinate one in terms of power structures.

If it could not have been the DPP -- again, they lacked the actual power -- and the KMT was, if anything, reacting to a broader social change, the only reasonable explanation for the shift towards Taiwanese identity is probably best explained not by the machinations of political parties, but democratization in general. Democracy: that amazing thing where either party can be elected!  

No, education is not the cause -- it's the effect

"But the education system was changed to emphasize Taiwan in the 1990s," some might shriek. "The evil DPP pushed for that, it's their fault!"

Not really, though. Yes, textbooks were slowly deregulated and curricula decentralized. Local history and "getting to know Taiwan" were introduced. The 228 Massacre could finally be discussed, and the role of local languages in education debated (the preeminence of Mandarin still remained, however). But the authorities allowing these changes on their preferred timeline were the KMT, not the DPP, though you could say they were forced to make concessions to the opposition and even adopt some of their nativizing rhetoric into their own platforms as a result. Do not forget, however: the KMT retained most of the actual power. What's more, these changes merely allowed Taiwanese history, society and geography to be discussed in an expanded version of a "local curriculum" where Taiwan was still ultimately treated as part of a larger China, or as the site of the ROC on Taiwan, not a nation in its own right. 

If simply talking about Taiwanese history and not hitting or fining children for speaking their native languages in school is enough to turn people from Chinese identity to Taiwanese, then Chinese identity in Taiwan must have been resting on pretty weak legs to begin with, eh? Maybe that alone could topple a popsicle-stick house, but not a monolith. So either it wasn't the cause, or Chinese identity was a stick house. Regardless, the final authority that approved these changes was the KMT, not the DPP -- a KMT reacting to this social change to retain power, not engineering it. 

In other words, democratization, national educational curriculum changes and the move toward Taiwanese identity all happened around the same time. They probably didn't cause each other (although if any one of them is a root cause of the others, it's probably democratization -- don't quote me on that, though). The common cause of all of these effects was a reaction against decades of brutal, repressive KMT rule and enforced institution of Chinese identity, not some sort of evil DPP plan. Not only is there nothing wrong with wanting to learn about one's local history,  but a push to do exactly that -- and decouple that history from some larger story of a larger civilization as well as talk about the parts of that history that don't overlap with it -- usually follows a change in identity. It doesn't cause it.

That's the case, at least, when the push to do just that comes from a newly democratized society, or a minority voice in the government who can't change the rules at will. Chinese identity through education was a top-down project, fed to schoolchildren through the education system by the KMT. Taiwanese identity entered the education system from the bottom-up, when the DPP didn't have institutional power. 

A quick summary for the tl;dr crowd

The DPP certainly played an important role in pushing for democratization and being that minority voice once the KMT stopped arresting and torturing them (though remember, the last political prisoners were still in jail in the early 1990s!). They pushed for changes to the education system, but ultimately needed KMT acquiescence to realize them. The KMT caused a backlash thanks to its own repressive rule, and stands guilty themselves of forcing Chinese identity on Taiwan, which was not a neutral act as Chinese identity was not the default state in Taiwan any more than Mandarin was always the lingua franca (it wasn't). Even if you try to argue it by timeline, it doesn't match up and if anything is backwards reasoning. 

Whatever you want to name as the cause or origin of Taiwanese identity, it was not the DPP. If anything, they were an effect of that change, and to some extent, you can say the KMT did this to themselves. 

But really, if you absolutely need a "cause" (do you?) -- look no further than democratization. Do you hate democracy? I sure hope not. 

Book Review: Taipei, City of Displacements

Taipei, City of Displacements

Joseph R. Allen

During Taiwan's Level 3 restrictions, I've been enjoying diving into books that have been around for awhile. Taipei, City of Displacements was the first book I grabbed, because it came so highly recommended and the premise intrigued me. A book all about the historic movements and displacements in the Taipei basin -- from the Ketagalan Indigenous through the Qing, Japanese and KMT colonial eras, which can help one understand why the city is the way it is? Sign me up! 

I'm not quite sure what to make of it, though. I was absolutely entranced by parts of this narrative of displacements throughout the history of Taipei, and found others a bit of a slog. The author is obviously passionate and deeply knowledgeable about his subject and the city, and anyone writing from a place of such dedication about a city I also hold dear is certainly going to engage me. 

A displacement within a displacement: the reason for my ambivalent review is that I'm not exactly sure what audience the book is aiming for. The first chapter, which is a quick history of Taiwan, can be skipped by anyone already knowledgeable about this topic. But soon, one gets to the real meat for a person like me: the little gibs and gobs of deep history that make the city tick. Curious about why Hsiaonanmen exists? Why the Taipei City walls seemed to go up and come down so quickly, and why they were built where they were? Why the city fans out from its riverside historical core into what is more or less a grid, and why many of the parks exist where they do? Then this is the book for you. 

I was enthralled by the chapters on the history of statuary, including the fairly well-known Mystery Horse of 228 Park (I knew about the horse before I ever read the book, but the level of detail provided is astounding) as well as the aforementioned history of the roadways and parks. 

Less interesting was the story of 'displacement' through the National Palace Museum, mostly because the treatment of the subject is more surface-level and didn't cover much that was new. Hence the ambivalence: a reader for whom the history of the National Palace Museum is new information will probably be bored to tears hearing about statues in parks or random museum alcoves. But the person -- me! -- who wants to know about the statues probably doesn't need the Palace Museum chapter. The comparison to the historically neglected National Taiwan Museum is an interesting angle, however. (Even more out of the public eye? The Nylon Deng Memorial Museum). Why some old buildings in the historic center are two stories and some three? Why some of the land plots are so oddly shaped? Fascinating. A surface-level treatment of the general push eastward of the 'downtown' area? Perhaps useful for the newcomer, but again -- who is the book for, when it tries to be for everyone?

I was also a bit less interested in the discussions of film and photography: film is fine but I want to know about geography, and a lot of the photographs discussed were displayed in exhibitions long since closed. It's not clear how or if they are viewable now. More illustrations -- especially in the photography chapter but also locations of maps, roads, gates and walls -- would have also made the book come alive a bit more.

Throughout, I also wish proper names -- especially of books -- had come complete with their names in both Chinese characters and Romanization. Anyone wanting to dig a little deeper into any of the tempting rabbit holes this book offers has to go to extra effort because this information is not always included. For example, Allen mentions Greater Taipei: Investigations of an Old Map. No Chinese name -- Romanized or not -- is offered. It almost implies the monograph is available in English (as far as I can tell it isn't). I had to do some asking around, but apparently it's 大臺北古地圖考釋, with the full text available here. You would have a hard time finding it by the information offered in City of Displacements, however.

Because of this, while I want to rave about this book for its most entrancing content, I found it a bit too uneven to give it a perfect review. So instead I'll say this: do buy this book (in Taipei it's available at Southern Materials 南天書局 and possibly the Taiwan Store 台灣个店, as well as on Amazon). Overall, the parts I liked outweighed those that held less interest, and I suspect the chapters I was not as captivated by are also the ones which haven't aged as well, about photo exhibitions long closed or films I'll never see (is there any reason to try to watch Twenty Something Taipei? Doubt it.)

But, pick and choose what you read based on what you're interested in, and your own knowledge level. Don't feel like it's necessary to pick through every chapter. 

I will leave you with an interesting story, however. The book takes a cool detour of the displacement of the statue of General Claire Lee Chennault from central Taipei to the outskirts and finally Hualien.

Chennault, you say? 

I've heard of that guy before! From my post on Green Island: 

In 1937, the SS President Hoover was diverted from Hong Kong to Shanghai to evacuate US nationals living there during the Sino-Japanese war. Despite draping a massive US flag draped across the deck to identify to both sides that they were a neutral US ship (they were at war with neither side as of 1937), the ROC air force mistook them for a Japanese ship and bombed them, wounding 8 and killing 1. The ship aborted the mission and returned to San Francisco for repairs. The Americans were evacuated by other ships, as this Transatlantic Accent Guy will tell you.

Wondering who could be so stupid as to bomb the President Hoover, Chiang Kai-shek vowed to execute whomever had given the order. Apparently, this wasn't because it was a US ship so much as that it was owned by Dollar Lines, and Chiang had known Robert Dollar. This was strictly a "you hurt my dead rich friend's toy, and I am also rich!" sort of anger. 

Robert Dollar, by the way, not only seems like he looked and acted just like a robber baron, but here's a quote for you:

He travelled himself all over the Orient, seeking products to take back to the US in empty timber ships. In doing so, he made friends with all the key people in business and politics. One observer said that the ordinary people of China idolised him and that on one of his trips a three hour procession of thousands of men and women passed by his hotel to honour him! “A power in his own land, he was all but a god in the Orient”.

BARF. 

Anyway, it turned out that the person who gave the order was Claire Lee Chennault, who had been hired by Chiang's wife Soong Mei-ling just months prior. So, instead he paid him a bonus! My opinion of Soong is highly unfavorable, but instead of harping on how bad she was for Taiwan, let's take a look at how unqualified Chennault was instead:

Poor health (deafness and chronic bronchitis), disputes with superiors, and the fact that he was passed over as unqualified for promotion led Chennault to resign from the military on April 30, 1937; he separated from the service at the rank of major. As a civilian, he was recruited to go to China and join a small group of American civilians training Chinese airmen.

It seems he got a little better at his job later on, but at this point he was basically a dude who bumbled into his job and mucked it up. But "well, my wife hired you, so here's ten thousand dollars" was just how Chiang rolled. Seriously: instead of executing him, Chiang paid Chennault a $10,000 bonus. That was 10 months' worth of his regular salary!

Anyone who thinks a guy like Chiang was a brilliant military strategist against the Communists is sorely mistaken.

By all means, go read up on the fate of the Hoover in that post. Liquored seamen are involved. 

So it turns out the not-great military strategist Chiang's brutal dictatorship on Taiwan installed a statue of also-not-great General Claire Chennault in what is now 228 Park in 1960, in a ceremony presided over by Chiang's wife, who hired Chennault in the first place. Then it was moved to Xinsheng Park in 1995 for unknown reasons, and then to a Flying Tigers memorial in Hualien. And of course many of Chiang's own statues -- of himself, because he loved himself -- now reside at Cihu where their utter mediocrity (they all kind of look the same) is made more obvious by their proximity.

That's a hell of a lot of statues of crappy and kinda-crappy men being maneuvered around northern Taiwan's parks, I'll tell you that.

A Concise History of Taiwan (Bilingual Edition) Review, and more!

The Concise History of Taiwan: Chinese-English Bilingual Edition

By Tai Pao-tsun, translated by Ruby Lee

I know I haven't been blogging that much in the past week or so: in part I needed a break, but I've also been busy with other things. I did a podcast with Startup Taiwan on the Bilingual by 2030 initiative (similar to my other podcast with Taiwan Context on the same issue). And perhaps you've noticed an article in the Taipei Times about my debilitating insomnia-driven push to get Last Week Tonight to do an episode on Taiwan. While I'm not spending a huge amount of actual time on this, I did take the time to give the Taipei Times an interview. The petition is still going, so by all means please do sign. 

But mostly, it's that these days I live in front of the computer for work, so I just haven't wanted to spend more screen time blogging. But anyway, down to business. 

A year or so ago, I realized that Brendan and I had, combined, managed to read almost every general history book on Taiwan in existence in English, and that no direct comparison exists. So we made a final push. I'd been working through the politically subjective works (think Taiwan's 400 Year History) while Brendan read the drier tomes (such as Taiwan: A New History, which is more of a collection of articles than a true general history). We both read the works we consider to be most seminal (Forbidden Nation and A New Illustrated History of Taiwan). 

Then, just as we were about to write the piece together, another publication popped up on my radar: The Concise History of Taiwan: Chinese-English Bilingual Edition by Tai Pao-tsun, translated by Ruby Lee. As it is indeed concise, I thought I'd give it a review before including it in the longer article. 

The book itself lives up to the name: it's not particularly thick, and with half the pages in Mandarin and a double-spaced font, it can be read in an easy day. It follows the same notion of how to cover history as many other 21st century publications (this was published in 2007): rather than a chronological telling of events, it covers areas of interest. Specifically, these are Indigenous Peoples, Immigrants, Colonization, Towards a National State and Taiwanese and World Citizens (which has the least clear title and is also the least clear chapter). Chapters 1-3 look at the whole of history, although only Chapter 1 goes into pre-written Indigenous history, and only at the very end does the narrative follow a clear chronology, from KMT authoritarianism to democratization.

I appreciated certain elements of this book: the clear case for Taiwanese sovereignty without fiery political soapboxing or outdated references to long-dead compradores. (I admire what it would have meant at the time for Su Beng to call them out by name, and the fact of their existence is worth including, but in 2021 I'm not sure we need a list.) I noted the attempt to discuss Indigenous affairs through the modern era, rather than relegating all discussion of Indigenous culture to "prehistory". And anyone could improve on Ong Iok-tek's (A History of Agonies) abject anti-Indigenous racism.

In some ways, Tai outdoes Chou Wan-yao: at no point does this book pretend that it is in any way acceptable for an occupying foreign government to force a "national language" on a people who've never spoken it before. (I've said it before and I'll say it again: this was the single worst line of reasoning in Chou's book, which was otherwise a delight to read. It brought the whole thing down.)

In others, however, the Concise History leaves a lot to be desired. The chapter on immigrants considers Taiwanese with Han ancestry to be immigrants, which is correct (or settlers, or colonizers: choose your discourse) and handles this well. It then covers "New Taiwanese" (the KMT diaspora that accompanied the 1940s occupation) and it handles the topic critically but fairly. It even covers immigration from Southeast Asia. But -- I dunno man, call me selfish -- a single sentence pointing out that there is a small community of long-term Westerners who also call Taiwan home would have been appreciated. Truly, just a sentence would have been enough. I don't want Westerners in Taiwan to take up too much space when we are a tiny minority of immigrants, but we do exist. 

In Colonization, Tai considers the Dutch and Japanese eras, but completely elides the Qing colonization and the ways that the ROC is itself a colonizer of Taiwan. Other historians have dealt with this in different ways: Su Beng was anti-Qing but pro-Han immigration. Manthorpe (Forbidden Nation) says obliquely that there is a case to be made for both the Qing and the ROC to be considered colonizers. Chou (A New Illustrated History of Taiwan) doesn't quite take that step, but she does offer up all the objective evidence for coming to that conclusion oneself. 

By not engaging with the issue at all, Tai is essentially saying that there is no need to question whether the Qing and the ROC acted as colonizers: it is assumed by their exclusion from this chapter that they did not. I disagree, strongly. What is the justification for this? How did they act meaningfully differently from any other foreign occupiers? Is it because some people still argue that the legal structures that kept (and keep) these governments in place are not generally considered "colonial", even if the actions of the government absolutely are? Is it because the colonizers came from China, so they aren't different enough to be "colonizers"? None of these options is convincing, so it doesn't really matter which assumption informed Tai's thinking. 

One final matter must be dealt with: the translation. I don't want to say too much about this, as I am not against a non-native speaker doing a translation, and don't want to come across otherwise. However, there are some real issues here. Some of these are mildly humorous rather than overtly confusing ("The Taiwanese are a generous and tolerable people" -- a stereotype, but I understood what was meant).  Other areas, however, simply don't cohere well, and small mistakes come across as unprofessional, such as calling the DPP the "DDP". 

Even native-speaker translations benefit from a good editor, and that's what this book needs, too. Translators are not editors and shouldn't be asked to do both jobs: in an ideal world, there's funding for both. It's a shame that dedicated and sincere Taiwanese voices are perhaps not being heard more widely because the funding just isn't there to hire a good editor. 

There are reasons to choose this particular book, however. Like every other general history we've read, it takes a pro-Taiwan stance. Honestly, I think this is because reality leans pro-Taiwan: the case for Taiwan is based on certain objective truths, such as the traumas of the authoritarian era or the simple fact that the Taiwan is not currently controlled by China, and does not wish to be a part of China, period. There's probably another reason at play, however: if you're so in love with the concept of Taiwan-as-China, why would you write a history book focusing on Taiwan? You'd probably just write a history of China and include Taiwan as a small part of it. 

(Which, incidentally, is exactly how China would treat a subjugated Taiwan: as an unimportant backwater, a footnote. That is, after the genocide.) 

And it is short: if you are a newcomer to Taiwan and don't even know things like the fact that the ROC is a decorative name underwriting a concept on life support, that Taiwan was once a colony of Japan, that the KMT have an awful history or that there even are Indigenous Taiwanese, this is a quick way to get up to speed on the basics. That said, Forbidden Nation covers most of that as well, and is only a little bit longer. 

Mostly, I'd recommend A Concise History of Taiwan: Chinese-English Bilingual Edition for one specific purpose. If you are looking to read about Taiwanese history and want to actually practice your foreign language skills, this could be a place to start. Say you studied Mandarin in college, maybe spent a year in China but also learned to read Traditional characters. Then you move to Taiwan because -- let's be real -- it's a better country to live in. You can read Chinese but aren't that well-versed in local history. Start here, and read in both languages. Or say you've lived here for awhile and your Chinese reading comprehension is okay. You already know the history, so you want to practice reading in Chinese on a topic you're already familiar with -- the way Taiwanese teens read Harry Potter in English after having seen the movies or read the books in Mandarin. Perhaps you need the English there to support you. 

In those circumstances, this would be a good book to pick up. A learner of English could do the same, although I'd warn them to be aware that the translation is not always polished and clear. However, if we're considering English as a lingua franca or an international language, it's good enough for that purpose. 

A Concise History of Taiwan: Chinese-English Bilingual Edition is available on books.com.tw, and the price is quite attractive.

Voting in Taiwan: Gender, Age and Wild Speculation

Yes, yes, this picture is meant to be tongue-in-cheek (or tunic-in-loins)

Recently, political scientist Nathan Batto wrote about youth turnout in the 2020 vote on his blog, Frozen Garlic. He speculated that gender might be an interesting area to explore in voter differences, as women tend to support the KMT more than men by a surprising amount:

Newcomers to Taiwanese politics are always shocked that women are about 5% more pro-KMT than men since the much-publicized gender gap in the United States favors the more progressive party. My suspicion is that older women are much more conservative than younger women (ie: the age difference for voting behavior is much larger for women than men), but I don’t have any hard evidence of that right now.

This seems likely. The youth surge in 2020 was overwhelmingly pro-DPP -- men and women both. Women might support the KMT at a higher rate than men overall, but that doesn't mean a majority of women support the KMT. This all points to a difference in beliefs between younger and older Taiwanese women.

Like Frozen Garlic, I don't have any hard evidence either, but that won't stop me from throwing the nerdblogging equivalent of a kegger to explore the topic. 

Although the main cleavage between the two parties is still China, these days it's not ridiculous to consider the KMT the more socially conservative party and the DPP the slightly more socially liberal one, in some areas. (Marriage equality? Yes! Labor rights? Not really.)

Beyond a little speculation that older Taiwanese women are more likely to be KMT voters (and more conservative) than younger ones, Frozen Garlic stopped there. Freewheeling political analyst Donovan Smith agreed with him, and pointed out that he was in a position to speculate wildly about why this might be (but refrained from doing so).

I also tend to agree, and because I'm literally just a hobbyist, I'm at liberty to go hog-wild and talk about why.

Of course, a full and reliable answer would require real research. I'm not in a position to do that research, so the best I can offer is Lao Ren Cha Gone Wild.

So if you think Donovan is free to "speculate wildly", then when it comes to me, grab your tunic and gird your loins because here we go. 

Let me lay out the few key points before we begin. 

First, that (admittedly imperfect) parallels can be drawn to the political histories of other countries.

Second, that higher KMT support among women probably is driven by older women, and this has a lot to do with intentional targeting by the KMT on many fronts, over several decades.

Third, that the opposition which coalesced into the Tangwai and DPP was not necessarily friendlier to women than the KMT in the early years, and the feminist movement's initial aim for political neutrality meant that they were not a direct conduit turning women to the DPP. In fact, the Taiwanese feminism of the 1970s was, by today's standards, simply another flavor of conservatism.

And finally, that while there is a lot of overlap between social conservatism and KMT support, there are also areas of divergence -- women might support the KMT or DPP for their own reasons, which may not intersect entirely with where they fall on the spectrum of social liberalism/conservatism.

Even more importantly, I'm not attempting to explain why all women who support the KMT do so. There are many reasons, motivations and interplays of personal preference and societal conditions. The best I can do is offer a few reasons from history on why women support the KMT at a slightly higher rate than men.

I am not a Taiwanese woman, however, so I can't claim to speak for them. I suppose I count as "older" now, but I'm younger than the women I'll be discussing. I've talked with a few local female friends about this, even though they aren't KMT supporters themselves and also cast a slightly broader net, which resulted mostly in articulations of the varied reasons why individual women support the KMT and further speculation that this was almost certainly driven by older women. Women I spoke to cited their mothers, grandmothers or aunts, not themselves. This is not the same as actual research, but insights from those conversations have informed my own analysis. 

This is a (somewhat) global phenomenon

The reason why (I think) older Taiwanese women are likely more conservative than younger ones, and thus possibly more likely to vote KMT, is that this is not a phenomenon unique to Taiwan. Older people, in many countries, to tend to vote for the more conservative party than younger ones. The US and UK are clear examples of this.

Research shows that political views don't tend to change as much with age as folk wisdom indicates, although if this does happen, the trend is toward conservatism. This may be the by-product of what generation one was raised in. In other words, social norms tended to be more conservative in the past than they are now, and people stick with what they know. There's no reason why this wouldn't also be true for Taiwan.

Of course, this trend doesn't necessarily hold outside the West. South Korean youth have helped propel center/liberal-leaning parties to victory, but they tend to turn away fairly quickly and young South Korean men are much less likely to support them. In Japan, the youth seem to trend conservative. However, when comparing democratic systems, it seems to me -- again, wild speculation time -- that most Taiwanese would be as or more likely to measure their country against Western democracies than neighboring ones. 

If I'm right, there is surely a discussion of white supremacism and cultural imperialism to be had here, which could be its own post. However, it's also important to point out that Taiwan also has historic reasons to look westward, as its friendliest ally has generally been the US (despite some, well, bumps), and biggest neighbor has always been openly hostile. 

You might be thinking, okay -- but what does this have to do with older women? Aren't we talking about the gender dimension?

Yes, but the same holds true. Although women identifying with the more progressive party holds true across generations in the US, younger women are far less likely to be conservative than older ones, and white women are more likely to be Republican, period.

What's more, research also shows that while women across all age groups tend to be more liberal than men, that the tendency of older voters to be more conservative still holds. 

Although British women were once more likely to vote conservative than British men, that's changed in the past few years, and younger British women are more likely to vote Labour. 

In other words, the notion that women will be more likely to support the "more progressive" party because that party is more likely to advocate for their interests doesn't actually hold up when you look at the details. Women are not a bloc: they're divided by race, class and age. If that's true in the US and UK, why shouldn't it be true in Taiwan, as well?

Authoritarianism is also anti-feminist

In Women's Movements in Twentieth-Century Taiwan, Doris Chang beautifully lays out the women's movements women from these cohorts would have experienced. You can read a summarized version of much of her work here, with institutional access.

Essentially, although autonomous (not government-controlled) women's associations existed in Taiwan in the Japanese era, and in China, the May Fourth Movement also held a more liberal ideology toward women's place in society, these events are now almost entirely beyond living memory. 

Japanese-era attempts at organizing women to fight for equal rights were of course washed away by the arrival of the KMT. For the May Fourth Movement, these ideals were intentionally attacked.

I'm going to quote at length here because not everybody has institutional access, and I'm going to lose my own access soon:

From 1927 on, radical women, including feminist women, were under attack not only from conservative elements in Chinese society generally but also directly from the Kuomintang....

In the 1925-1927 period....the left wing of the KMT trained women organizers, set up women's unions, provided marriage and divorce bureaus, and educated local women in the meaning of the revolution. Several hundred women were trained to work as propagandists with the army. But after Chiang's coup, these women were in direct danger. Only a handful of the top leaders were able to escape the purges that followed....

In early 1934, Chiang Kai-shek launched the New Life Movement from his Nanchang headquarters....With the endorsement of the national government, the movement spread and became a part of the official ideology....It was at this time that Chiang looked to Germany, rather than the Soviet Union, as a model....The new order of fascism, with its emphasis on military power and total control, struck a chord of response within the KMT. So too did its emphasis on the patriarchal family and male supremacy.

This destruction of the left wing of the KMT by the right had a great effect on the course of women's issues in Taiwan after the KMT's arrival.

Neo-Confucianism and the New Life movement imitated a sort of modernism and claimed to promote greater civic participation, but were fundamentally illiberal, tradition-oriented and, as some have speculated, fascist, and this greatly affected the nature of the women's associations promoted by the KMT.

These associations were spearheaded by Chiang Kai-shek's wife, Soong Mei-ling -- if not as the founder, then as chair. Her Christian views, which were not incongruous with New Life, likely also played a role. (In fact I've often wondered if that's the reason why there are so many churches on Xinsheng 新生 -- New Life -- Road.)

These included the National Women's League 婦聯會 (which I believe is the same as the China Women's Federation, but please correct me if I'm wrong) and the Women's Union, established by a KMT committee. There was also the exclusionary International Women's Club, open only to elites.

Soong Mei-ling might have chaired women's organizations but she did not fight for women's rights. (From Wikimedia)

Soong took such initiatives because allowing "civic society" to exist was considered important to prevent (more) rebellion against the authoritarian KMT, but only if the government was solidly in control of them. The idea was to promote civic participation, but in a pro-establishment way. 

Soong's women's associations were organized around supporting the nation -- the Republic of China, not Taiwan -- and the traditional duties of home and family. They promoted motherhood, domestic sanitation and "being a wife that a husband can rely on, so our soldiers can keep on fighting".

These organizations were designed to prevent women's movements from gaining a political voice, and to keep women in traditional roles, not to help them speak out and break out. Explicitly founded on the illiberal ideals of New Life, there was no chance of any sort of reform or women's equality movement arising from them.

It's no surprise that many (though not all) of the women raised in such a society would have carried the echoes of these social norms from their younger years as they grew older. Surely there were women who disagreed with the roles society had given them, however, whether they were from Taiwan or China, they would be aware that the punishment for vocally dissenting from these prescribed norms was, at best, government scrutiny and at worst a trip to the prison at Green Island.

Did this attempted social control create women who were more conservative than men? It's difficult to say. I do think, however, that it influenced a few generations of women t0 be more likely to remain loyal to the KMT.

As far as I'm aware, there was no China Men's Federation / National Men's League. Women got their own group because, despite being half the population, they were Other. Within the greater attempt to subjugate society, there was a targeted attempt to subjugate and control women.

This sounds like a fantastic way to get women to hate you, but that's probably not what happened. 

These women's associations put a friendly face on the underlying misogyny: spinning acceptance of male supremacy into seeming like a form of patriotism. Anti-communism with feminine characteristics. 

Don't be shocked that it mostly worked. In the US, Republicans do it too. Where do you think all those white women voters talking about loving "America" and "family values" came from? This can be a very successful technique to turn targeted demographics under the right conditions. There may also be cultural reasons why it worked, but I won't speculate on those and do not want to overstate the culture factor.

The opposition groups that were quietly forming, which would later coalesce into the Tangwai, appear to have been mostly male. Additionally, they did not seem particularly concerned with the status of women -- at least not yet. In Chang's words: 

Due to the male-dominated structure of Taiwan's democracy movement, the professed ideals of liberty, justice and equality did not necessarily translate into male activists' equal treatment of and respect for women activists. 

(This is still kind of true, by the way.)

Okay, so what did the Tangwai have to offer women? Not much, at that point. Is it surprising that they didn't join en masse?

This is also why I don't think trying to tie women's political affiliations to "Taiwanese culture" is helpful: although the KMT could not exert perfect mind control, their distorting effect on Taiwan was so palpable and severe that it's very difficult to say how Taiwan would have evolved culturally without them. 

The 1970s women's movements were liberal for their age, but conservative for ours

What The Feminine Mystique -- a deeply problematic book in some ways, but the cornerstone of second-wave feminism -- did for American feminism in the early 1960s, Annette Hsiu-lien Lu's New Feminism (新女性主義) did for Taiwan a decade later. She was not the only feminist of this era, but was indeed one of the founders of the that era's Taiwanese feminist movement, and her beliefs and the impact they made serve as an interesting case study.

Annette Lu from Wikimedia

While it was a turning point for Taiwan, certainly not all women would have boarded the women's rights train, even as Lu sought to equate women's rights with human rights. Movements take time, and this is no exception. 

Martial Law was still very much in force, so it wasn't really any safer to start expressing feminist views than it had been for the past two decades. Lu herself was subject to surveillance, harassment and eventually arrest. After decades of being told to accept their place in a patriarchal society -- and having that order backed up with very real threats of harassment and violence -- 1970s Taiwanese feminism was never going to win the hearts and minds of all. No early movement does.

Some accuse Lu of simply appropriating Western-style feminism and importing it to Taiwan. This is not true, although her own brand of relational feminism crafted to suit Taiwanese society at the time was not without its problems. 

Again, I quote at great length to get around barriers to academic work: 

Although the substitution of “human rights” for “women’s rights” and contributions over entitlements might be regarded as a rhetorical strategy to make her “new feminism” compatible with the conservatism of Taiwan in the 1970s, Lü in fact had strong points of disagreement with American feminism as she had encountered it. First, Lü rejected the “sameness feminist” position that equality meant elimination of gender differences.

Supporting instead “difference feminism,” Lü argued that women should not strive to be like men, but should be “who they are.” In effect, she endorsed women's pursuit of higher education and professional careers while maintaining traditional gender roles within the family. Lü championed the image of the new woman who “holds a spatula with her left hand, and a pen with her right hand (左手拿鍋鏟,右手握筆桿)(Lü, 1977b,32;   Lee, 2014,35). She furthermore advocated that talented women should show their femininity by using dress and makeup to cultivate a “soft” and “beautiful” appearance. 

Finally, understanding that sexual liberation would be a flashpoint for resistance in Taiwan’s highly conservative society of the 1970s, Lü proclaimed that “new feminism” endorsed “love before marriage, marriage then sex” (Lü, 1977a, 152–154). Hence, Lü fought against institutional gender discrimination, while simultaneously upholding certain traditional standards of femininity, domesticity, female beauty, and chastity. Lü's relational feminism, as Chang writes,“suggested that one's individual freedom should be counterbalanced by fulfillment of specific obligations in family and in society”(Chang, 2009, 92). 

Despite Lü's concerted efforts to make feminism compatible with aspects of Confucianism [ed: I'd say Neo-Confucianism], and to avoid challenging Taiwan's capitalist socio-political order, she drew fire from conservatives, and was soon subjected to political pressure and government surveillance. The martial law regime feared any political radicalism, and treated Lü's women's movement as a potential anti-government activity. 

In other words, Lu -- who would go on to serve as Vice President under Chen Shui-bian -- was a "women can have it all" feminist. In favor of equal rights and opportunity, but still admonishing women to continue to perform traditional roles. Letting men off the hook from having to evolve their thinking, pushing a 'second shift' on women, and not holding any space for women to be "who they are", if they don't feel a traditional role fits them.

Her conservative views extend to love, marriage and sex, and generally, they don't seem to have changed very much in the intervening decades. 

You may be wondering what her current views are. In 2003 (the same year that the Ministry of Justice proposed a human rights bill that would have legalized same-sex marriage, which didn't pass), although Lu was Vice President at the time and devoted a lot of time to human rights, she remarked that AIDS was "God's wrath" for homosexuality (she insists she was misinterpreted but has never offered a coherent explanation of what she claims to have meant). 

Notably, some versions of that 2003 bill which included same-sex marriage credit Lu with the drafting. This source cites her as the convener of a related advisory group but does not mention same-sex marriage, and there's no evidence her commission was directly related to the bill. I don't know how this squares with her obviously homophobic comment in the same year, so all I can do is lay out the facts.

Now, 2003 might seem recent, but it was actually quite a long time ago in terms of the evolution of discourse and public belief around social issues. Has she evolved her thinking as well?

Not really. 

More recently, she's tried to evade the issue by saying she "supports" LGBT people but that the courts were wrong to find a ban on same-sex marriage "unconstitutional", using some rather dubious logic. She went on to say that while she has no issue with it, society isn't ready for it, and the Tsai administration should focus on that rather than legalization. That equates to keeping it illegal, but with more steps. She also helped found the Formosa Alliance, which was pro-independence but opposed to marriage equality.

That sure sounds like someone trying to have it both ways: to oppose marriage equality without openly admitting it. Like someone trying to obstruct without looking like an obstructionist, trying to politic her way out of admitting she's not really an ally.

She also appears to be opposed to modern sex education, saying it will lead to an "overflow" of sex, which should instead "have dignity" (anyone familiar with, well, sex can affirm that it is many things, but "dignified" isn't really one of them. At least if it's good sex.)

All that said, Lu was one of the few early feminists who took a political position on the green-blue divide: 

Inasmuch as the freedom to openly debate Taiwanese national identities was severely circumscribed under the martial-law regime of the Chinese Nationalist Party (i.e., Kuomintang or KMT), feminist activists strategically adopted a nonpartisan stance and refrained from discussion of this controversial topic (Chang, 2009: 160; Fan, 2000: 13–19, 26). Yun Fan posited that it was not until the era of democratisation in 1994 that most members of the Taipei Association for the Promotion of Women’s Rights (女權會, nüquanhui) explicitly voiced their support for Taiwan independence (Fan, 2000: 28–35). Hsiu-lien Lu (呂秀蓮, a.k.a. Annette Lu) was a notable exception to the political neutrality in Taiwan’s feminist community during the 1970s. As a citizen of Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan, she advocated that Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) should peacefully coexist as two ethnic Chinese states (H-l. Lu, 1979: 241).

What did that offer to the young women coming of age in the 1970s, and their mothers -- some of whom are still alive to vote? A choice between KMT-approved traditionalism, and a feminist ethos that, by attempting to render itself more palatable to Taiwanese society, became something that sounds more like conservatism today. 

Certainly, some women simply chose to walk away from both models. Many, however, would have chosen a perspective that fit somewhere within what public discourse was offering.

The KMT finally began listening -- somewhat -- to feminist groups after the lifting of Martial Law in the mid-1980s, and granted some of their requests (the legalization of abortion happened around this time). While Annette Lu was in prison, Lee Yuan-chen and others formed a publishing house to keep the message of Taiwanese women's movements alive. 

At the same time, while the DPP did have prominent female public figures (Chen Chu 陳菊 comes to mind), they weren't necessarily a beacon of women's equality.

 

Chen Chu, still in politics and one of my faves (WIkimedia)

The women's movement in general supported women voting across the political spectrum, and took pains to remain non-partisan. Of course, in that political climate, many of their adherents would have chosen the KMT. And chances are, they have simply stayed that way.

At the same time, their daughters and granddaughters have grown up decades later, after society had moved beyond Lu's "exhaust yourself trying to have it all" brand of feminism. More role models and more complex and varied discourse exists: there's simply more to choose from. It's no wonder that they don't seem anywhere near as interested in the same values.

Where does that leave us, in terms of women's support for various parties throughout Taiwanese history?

It's Wild Speculation Time

So, there are certainly women who support the KMT due to their background regardless of their views on women's rights, and the same for the DPP. Then a women's movement came along, aiming (mostly) to be non-political, which pushed the post-Martial Law KMT to be a little more amenable to women's rights, while the DPP was not necessarily a beacon of egalitarianism for women. If you put it that way, it seems clear why the women's movement didn't necessarily move the party identification needle for women.

Liberal women might therefore have voted for either party, not necessarily providing a large bump to the DPP. Some disaffected "radicals" (whose beliefs we'd see as pretty normal today) were certainly around, but not enough to make a difference.

And those "liberal women"? The 1970s-80s movements were liberal for their time, but not liberal as we'd define the word now. By today's standards, they are conservative.

And they likely hold the same views today as they did then.

Is it any surprise that Millennial women (and the Zoomers who can vote), who never experienced those decades and have known only democracy and more contemporary forms of liberalism, would almost certainly be different?

Men, of course, lived through all of this too. But men have a history of not being affected as much by women's movements. One of the principal questions women's rights activists face now is essentially 'he for she': how do you get men to change?

In other words, men chose their political parties without really having to think too much about what those parties were saying about their position in society. As the dominant group in a patriarchal culture, that place was assured by both major parties, so they could choose purely based on other ideologies they held.

Perhaps this allowed "liberalism" to take on a different meaning for men, as some came to embrace it: free to ignore the back-and-forth of the feminist cause, and free to simply 'not see' the misogyny that didn't affect them, they might come to a more DPP-friendly political sensibility through simply looking at the KMT's past and deciding to support the party that pushed for democratization, instead. 

While I do think that older women trend far more conservative than younger women, and it's demonstrably true that Taiwanese women support the KMT at higher rates than men, I'm not sure this makes a case that women, as a whole, are more conservative than men. I would love to see a breakdown of the voting pattern of older vs. younger women, compared to that of older vs. younger men.

I bet you anything that the same trends we see in other countries holds true: political ideology tends to remain static, which is why older generations tend to be 'more conservative' as society liberalizes, but at the same time younger women are moving away from older ones ideologically. This may not show up in the data, however, perhaps because older women vote at higher rates, or because younger liberal women are more likely to turn to a smaller party instead of the DPP.

The party identification disparity is almost certainly not an artifact of the way the data was analyzed. It's highly unlikely to be due to factors such as longevity (women have a longer life expectancy than men, so there ought to be more very old women than very old men). According to Frozen Garlic, older men and women vote at about the same rate, but very old men vote at a higher rate than very old women. 

I would be interested to see what happens with all of this in the next few years, as the KMT digs into the culture wars it's trying to manufacture. Will it push younger women to the DPP?

Anecdotally speaking, I do know at least one woman who hasn't tied her support of the KMT to conservative values.  A thirtysomething, she supports marriage equality, and the LGBTQIA+ community as well. She has a career and aims to excel in it. She loves her family but doesn't necessarily feel the need for a 'traditional' life. Things like living with a boyfriend are not beyond the pale. I'd consider her a liberal, but she was also a die-hard supporter of Han Kuo-yu and reviles President Tsai. 

I do not think she sees those things as remotely contradictory. She doesn't see the KMT as a socially conservative choice. Yet.

Targeted Marketing

This is my wildest speculation yet, so please don't expect academic rigor. 

Think about the older female Taiwanese conservatives you know, or have seen on news shows talking about how Ma Ying-jeou is "handsome" or Han Kuo-yu is "charismatic". 

No party in Taiwan has ever fielded a truly handsome man for president (Freddy Lim hasn't run...yet.)  However, the KMT has a habit of fielding candidates appealing to older women, and I suspect this is intentional.

Ma Ying-jeou was once described to me as "my mom's idea of what a good 'catch' for a husband should be". Apparently, he once came across as refined, educated and upstanding. I understand that he was once conventionally "attractive" but honestly, I can't get past those cold, dead eyes. 

Whereas Freddy...

                   

There's really just no comparison, is there?

Ahem. Anyway. My friends mostly don't agree with this assessment of Ma as a 'catch'. But their mothers and aunts often do! Even boring Eric Chu could be seen as a suitably "good" fellow if a woman could not snag herself a Ma. I guess.

Another way of putting this: the men the KMT fields for top positions tend to remind some women of their husbands or fathers.

Suffice it to say, Chen Shui-bian, Frank Hsieh and Tsai Ing-wen had no chance of winning the "aunties think he's handsome" vote. Although Chen has a certain charisma, it doesn't come from his looks. He might remind some of their lively friend, but perhaps not their dad. 

Tsai is an older woman herself, educated and refined. You'd think she'd attract those votes. But of course not: similar magnetic poles repel. She's everything their own mothers raised them not to be: single, childfree, leaning into her education and career. A woman like Tsai takes a look at the patriarchy and doesn't even bother to give it the finger before walking away and doing what she pleases. 

Shamelessly stolen from Chris Horton on Twitter. I hope he'll forgive me. Follow Chris Horton on Twitter!

The Ma dynamic seemed to play out with Han Kuo-yu. I think Han has a creepy look to him, personally. I don't know if the gambling, womanizing, temper and drinking rumors are true (well, we do know about some of it, seeing as he killed a guy and once beat up Chen Shui-bian.) 

But, there is a certain charisma about him that I can see some women finding appealing. It's not quite toxic masculinity (just look at the shiba inu t-shirts) but it's in the same genus.

He even slightly resembles Chiang Kai-shek who, for all his faults, was not physically unattractive -- his repulsiveness was on the inside. (Click the link.)

Han looks like he's good at making friends in local businesses and down at the town rechao 熱炒 place. Like he'll buy his wife a string of high-rise luxury condos and a BMW if she doesn't ask too much about his sketchy business, or helps him run it. A real Lin Xigeng type.

A friend once described Han -- as with Ma -- as the kind of man your older relatives would advise you to marry. 

To quote that friend -- after I gave her a look of utter horror -- "they think he's good looking, can be a provider and head of the family, and good at making money. They just expect husbands to cheat and gamble so they don't think that's important."

I cannot believe that most older Taiwanese women are influenced by this strategy, but the KMT wouldn't keep doing it if it didn't have some effect. Marketing is powerful. It's not an indictment of the target market when it works. They're even trying to export it to the "youth" with Wayne Chiang, despite the objective fact that the opposition has far more fanciable men.

Conclusions

There is so much I haven't explored here that I'd like to. Class surely plays a role, as it does in every other democracy. Is there a class divide in the voting behavior of Taiwanese women?

I have intentionally avoided too much discussion of "culture", because I don't think it's useful here. Culture is not static, and in any case, it's quite clear that how "Taiwanese culture" treats women has been deeply influenced, not only by the Japanese era (which allowed spaces for the modernization of women's spaces in some ways, but was deeply misogynist in others) but by the superimposition of the various pro-KMT "women's associations". What directions might Taiwanese culture have taken, if these colonizing influences had never imposed themselves on the country? I have no idea.

One area of culture I'd have liked to explore more is the way that traditional gender roles in Taiwan differ from the West, most notably (to me) in terms of accounting and financial responsibility. That women were entrusted not just with family budgets but often had a hand in running family businesses might offer insight into how the go-go-go capitalism of the Asian Tiger era affected women's views. 

Women's support for smaller parties would also be an interesting area to look into. Is it the case, as in Korea, that liberal women are turning not to the DPP but to smaller parties? I'd like to know. 

There is an entire contingent of families settled outside Taiwan, with Taiwanese heritage, where the older members are strong KMT supporters whereas their children and grandchildren may not be. Many of them can and do vote in Taiwan. They wouldn't have lived through the same things, and I have intentionally not discussed this group.

I have also stayed away from the most tempting argument: that a lot of older people were educated in a time when education was twisted to serve the KMT's goals and punish those who asked questions. First, although the Taiwanese education system has undergone reforms, I'm not sure it has changed enough. They're not making kids write about The Three Principles anymore, but neither are they really teaching critical thinking skills (which is not to say people don't develop them, just that they're not taught that in school). Second, because it would have affected women as well as men. 

All I can say is this: women are not a monolith. Even in Taiwan, they are not a singular voting bloc.

However, the trends we see are indeed real. It's easy to ascribe them to "culture", or worse, "Confucianism", and offer a few generalities about gender norms in East Asian societies. 

I think it's a lot more complicated than that, however, and has just as much to do with the history women of different generations lived through, and how they related to it. 

I've talked mostly about older women here, and almost completely ignored Millennials and the Zoomers who can vote. This is because I don't think the same trends will hold for them, and the reasons why should be fairly obvious: pan-green politics in Taiwan is a lot more woman-friendly than it used to be (though there's still some way to go), the old KMT attempts at subjugating women have ended, and there's an overall turn away from the KMT by the youth. 

It's impossible to wholly answer this question without doing dedicated research, which is not at all in my field. I hope, however, that this has provided a little historical insight into why women in general support the KMT at higher rates than men: that it's very likely a trend driven by older women rather than younger ones, and that there are likely large areas of overlap with social conservatism, but they're not exactly the same thing. That is, older women likely have their own reasons for supporting the DPP or KMT which may or may not align with their social views.

By the way, I've downloaded all the PDFs of the articles I've quoted here, so I'll be able to refer back to them when I lose institutional access. I am also fairly easy to find online. Email exists. Just saying.