All the unfounded "evidence" Ma Ying-jeou used to attack the DPP on 6/4 (Part Two!)

Does this look like the face of a liar to you?

(Yes.)

It's easy to spout bullshit. It's easy to lie, or take a kernel of truth and present a slanted and ultimately inaccurate perspective on it, calling your take the real truth. It's been done since the birth of political discourse because it's efficient, it's simple, and people will believe you.

What takes a long time? Refuting someone else's lies and bad takes. That requires reams of free time and tracts of verbiage. 

Fortunately, I type fast and am in quarantine, and a blog has no word limits. Why not debunk every accusation Ma Ying-jeou hurled at the DPP in his offensive post on June 4th? Sure, he briefly mentioned the Tiananmen Square Massacre, but it's clear what he really wanted to do was compliment Xi Jinping and trash his own country's democracy and elected leader. 

At least, he wanted to trash Taiwan's democracy. I'm reasonably sure he believes that China is his country and Xi Jinping currently leads it. 

Regardless, the crux of his argument is worth refuting point-by-point. Much of what he references was barely covered in English-language media, if at all. He uses specific terms even the most fluent second-language Mandarin speakers might be unfamiliar with (I know I was). And there are people who will believe it. 

I discuss the entirety of his statement in my previous post. Here, I'll address the specifics, starting with the middle of the post where he goes into detail.

Although Taiwan still flies the banner of democracy, under the Democratic Progressive Party's governance, it has gradually slid into "unfree democracy":  closing television news stations, liquidating opposition parties, "checking the water meter" of the people [this is a slang term], interfering with the judiciary,  an all-around 'greening' [turning pro-DPP] of independent agencies, revising the law to exonerate the corrupt former president [Chen Shui-bian], using internal propaganda to mislead citizens and sowing hatred simply to follow the 'political correctness' of the so-called 'anti-China protection of Taiwan'. International public opinion turns a blind eye to these initiatives, which harm Taiwan's freedom and democracy, but I am deeply concerned.

There's a lot to cover here, so let's go point-by-point, news item by news item.

"Closing television news stations"

The television station in question is CTiTV, which has severe editorial integrity issues and has been known to broadcast disinformation.  

It was done because they breached regulations several times and were routinely broadcasting false information without fact-checking. They were also found to lack editorial independence from their owner, pro-China Tsai tycoon Tsai Eng-meng, whose Want Want group receives funding from China. Want Want China Times Media Group (of which CTiTV is/was a part) was also accused of taking orders directly from the Chinese government. The original Financial Times piece is here, but paywalled.

Even if you oppose the closing of CTiTV, it wasn't done to crush dissenting voices. Plenty of pan-blue networks are still on television, and CTiTV is still alive on Youtube. While other networks may have fact-checking, editorial and general quality issues (including pan-green ones, which are hardly a bastion of fantastic journalism), CTiTV is the only one the NCC has actually refused a license renewal to. Typically a network won't fall afoul of the NCC if they plausibly believed false information was true at the time it was broadcast.

Some critical responses to this incident described Taiwan's media environment as being solidly "green" -- Han Kuo-yu even stated that "90% of media is pan-green" during the 2020 election -- and taken CTiTV's downfall as a harbinger of some sort of authoritarian DPP crackdown. That's simply not the case. It's true that by viewership the pan-green channels dominate (at about 66% as per the above link), but that doesn't mean that pro-DPP news channels are the only choice; it means more people choose to watch them.

In other words, it's possible to sincerely disagree on the NCC's decision, but it's not possible to credibly call this a grab to dominate the media or a sign of "Green Terror". 


"Liquidating opposition parties"

This probably has to do with transitional justice. Essentially, Ma is saying here that money the KMT can be credibly accused of stealing over the decades of its brutal, corrupt, totalitarian rule should not be taken from the KMT and given back to the nation it was stolen from. Not great.

"Checking the water meter"

This is Internet slang for the police entering a home on false pretexts, for example, to say that the home's water meter needs to be checked when it doesn't. It's also a catch-all for general intimidation of anyone who opposes you -- usually through a real-life visit -- while making excuses for your presence. 

The KMT likes to complain about this -- Alex Tsai at one point said it would lead to a modern Wuchang Uprising which...what? At first I thought it was pure projection: one thing I've learned in life is that people who make preposterous accusations against others either have engaged in those actions themselves, or want to. If someone (or a group) is screaming "all these bad actors are doing this to me!" but offers little evidence that it's happening, chances are they're the ones actually doing it, and trying to deflect scrutiny. 

Certainly, when I think of police intimidation to quell political dissent, the KMT has far more of a historical legacy. There is flimsy evidence for the existence of a "Green Terror", but the "White Terror" is a matter of historical fact. And frankly, even in modern times the KMT is not blameless.

However, a few cases did pop up after a search. Apparently some police showed up at a KMT think tank symposium saying protests could break out as the discussions were related to upcoming referendums, and protests were happening elsewhere. The KMT insists it wasn't a public event and only the press was notified, calling the excuse for the police presence "farfetched". In another incident, an elderly woman was visited by police after posting disinformation about the then-upcoming 2020 election.

Neither of these incidents, if true, looks great. However, the symposium was not stopped and no one was arrested or harmed. (I also couldn't find any proof that there's some DPP-led crackdown on freedom of expression). The woman was asked to explain her post at a police station in accordance with the Social Order Maintenance Act -- not great, as authorities paying someone a personal visit over something they've said sends a specific kind of message given Taiwan's political history -- but as far as I can tell was not arrested or further troubled. 

While the DPP is hardly perfect and their methods of handling disinformation potentially problematic, neither of these incidents definitively proves that the DPP is turning Taiwan into an "unfree democracy" or instituting a reign of "Green Terror". 


"Interfering with the judiciary" and "turning independent agencies green"

These accusations are more vague, but seem to refer to a variety of issues. This KMT News Network post is barely readable (no, it's not a machine translation) but provides little actual evidence of judicial interference, stopping at an insistence that it is happening. The KMT took a comment about the "Political Investigation Office" out of context in regards to the recent by-election between gangter Yen Ching-piao's son and DPP candidate Lin Jingyi -- there appears to be a lot of booming anger but very little actual evidence that anything illegal took place.

In terms of that "all-around greening of independent agencies", there have been a few accusations of nepotistic activity in various agencies, and an insistence that the NCC (the agency that revoked CTiTV's license, discussed above) has been "turned green" -- all with very little proof. 

I'm not saying that the DPP is perfect and incorruptible; that would be risible. All parties do unsavory things. However, when it comes to these specific accusations, I don't see much there.

"Revising the law to exonerate the corrupt former president"

This is getting very long, so I recommend reading the Taipei Times coverage of this issue if you want to know more. I'm not going to opine on whether the law being amended is actually unclear, or the types public funds in question are functionally the same, as I'm not an expert in that area. I'm also not going to spend a lot of time discussing Chen Shui-bian, as that's old news. 

Sure, it doesn't look great to change a law in a way that would exonerate someone convicted of corruption from your own party, although the KMT hardly has a spotless history when it comes to corruption and inappropriate use of funds (that's why the Ill-Gotten Assets Committee exists), and the article notes that they've done the same thing:

While saying that the KMT set a bad legal precedent in 2013 by amending the same article to exonerate former KMT legislator Yen Ching-piao (顏清標) from allegations of misappropriating public funds, the NPP said the DPP yesterday again set a bad precedent by forcibly passing the bill at the legislature.

 

Think what you like about Ma's accusation here, but remember that he's probably not too interested in discussing the KMT's similar political maneuvers.

"Using internal propaganda to mislead citizens and sowing hatred simply to follow the 'political correctness' of the so-called 'anti-China protection of Taiwan"

Look, honestly, this just sounds like mad ranting. There's no actual accusation here: Ma is just mad that society rejects his and the KMT's insistence that Taiwan is Chinese and should embrace a Chinese identity. They don't want to admit that the CCP is a threat to Taiwan and attempts at warming relations with them will only hand them opportunities to render Taiwan economically dependent on and politically tied to China, making a move away from unification more difficult. 

They simply cannot accept that Taiwanese do not think they are Taiwanese and that this angers China, and the DPP acknowledges and works with these facts. Acknowledging the general consensus on Taiwanese identity is apparently "propaganda" and being pragmatic on the threat of invasion from China is "politically correct" maneuvering to make Taiwan "anti-China". 

The KMT will never admit that their own forcing of Chinese identity -- including the attempted destruction of the Taiwanese language in favor of Mandarin -- onto an island they occupied was the "internal propaganda" they speak of. They'll never admit that the social change toward Taiwanese identity took place before the DPP took power in 2016, and in fact spiked when Taiwan fully democratized and grew throughout Ma's own administration. They'll never admit that China is a threat, not a friend. And certainly they'll never admit that Taiwanese by and large do not want to be part of China. They'll never admit that their own attempts to force Taiwanese to identify as Chinese failed, and are unlikely to succeed in the future.

There is literally nothing else there, so let's move on.

Furthermore, the coronavirus pandemic has shown over the past two years that the government has not done enough to procure vaccines, and their chaotic 'rapid screening' policies show that the government's "proactive deployment" is a falsehood.  DPP leaders and the so-called "1450" [the so-called DPP "Internet army", named for an amount of money said to be allocated toward cultivating it] attack and discredit any critics [the actual phrase is "smear red"].  

I discussed these particular distortions in my previous post, but I think they belong here as well, so I'll quote myself in green:

 

I'll admit that Taiwan's pandemic response has not been perfect in every aspect, at all times. There have been poor decisions, politically-motivated choices and lags. However, I'd describe the overall pandemic response as sterling -- no, gold standard. Anyone who thinks that Taiwan did a poor job handling the pandemic is straight-up full of it. All you need to do is look at how the entire rest of the world save possibly New Zealand handled it. Most accusations to the contrary distort what actually went on with the early vaccine purchases or blow up small mistakes into catastrophic ones. Most of it is based on lies.

As for the "1450" Internet troll army, well, I'm sure every party has people working on influencing public conversation. I won't pretend it's beyond the pale to say the DPP has one (and the KMT surely has one too -- I recall an ad surfacing years ago promising free bento boxes to attendees of a seminar on how to post online to bolster the KMT's image, but can't find a link).

That said, I can't find any proof that the "1450" army actually exists, and it would be very weird to allocate such funds through the Council of Agriculture, no? What's more, people decrying the "1450" have been known to misattribute the origin of the phrase to mean NT$1,450 paid to each Internet troll working for the DPP. 

Basically, there are a lot of accusations and very little proof here.

In sum, Taiwan actually has done an overall excellent job handling the pandemic. When you see people online praising that, it's because there's good reason to do so. If the KMT is sore that it's not very popular now, perhaps they should look at their own poor governance and attempts to force Taiwan toward closer relations with China. 

That is to say, there's nothing here but more distortion, including some statements that I suspect are outright lies.

When we shouted that the opposition should be treated kindly in order to establish core values in common on both sides of the strait, the ruling party is suppressing or even eliminating dissidents, while falling into "unfree democracy" and "elected dictatorship." 

 

Ah yes, because the KMT is renowned for always being so kind to the opposition. They were so friendly when they threw the Tangwai in jail. Their torture and interrogation techniques were employed in an attempt to establish core values in common! The KMT has never, ever attempted to "suppress or even eliminate dissidents", the White Terror is called that because it was just very bright outside for decades!

Obviously, there is no evidence -- I don't even have a link -- that the DPP is doing this. I discussed the inclusion of "cross strait common values" and the impossibility of an "elected dictatorship" in my previous post and won't repeat them here. 

Needless to say, this is the part of his argument that slides from plausible, debatable issue into lies and hokum.

Not just hokum, but more projection. Didn't the KMT spend decades during Martial Law lying about how the ideals of the Republic of China included democracy, while not instituting democracy beyond the local level in which every candidate was KMT-approved?

When someone like Ma bangs on and on about what the other guy is doing, you can be pretty sure he's done it, or he's aware that the KMT has. What was it that someone said on Twitter? Every KMT accusation is a confession? Like that.

Liars like Ma follow a second pattern, in my experience: they start out with claims that, while refutable, are based on real events or issues. You have to take time and energy to actually refute them. So if you know they're garbage, you ignore them, but if you don't, you might well believe it. In any case, at least some of them might be up for some kind of real debate, even if the actual claim made by that person is fundamentally flawed. 

Then, after you've been tired out, they go for vague accusations and outright bullshit. In other words, there's a veneer of plausibility to start out, which gradually drops as the case being made grows more and more deranged. 

If you ever find yourself reading something that starts out sounding pretty good, makes a few questionable claims that are nevertheless worthy of discussion, and then devolves down the road to Crazytown, be suspicious. This is a perfect example.

🎵 Ma Ying-jeou is a sack of trash 🎶 (Part One!)

This is the first of a two-parter. You can read the deep dive into Ma's actual claims here.

I was going to write a post going after an issue I'm angry about in a sort of general, ambient sense. But this other morsel of news I'm also angry about is timely, so at the risk of blogging only when I'm angry about something, here goes.

Yesterday was June 4th, the 33rd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Certainly, in Taiwan and around the world, politicians who put out statements about Tiananmen anniversaries generally avoid the overtly offensive. Some are sharp criticisms, whereas the worst of them are simply too anodyne. 

Take President Tsai's Facebook post for example. She touched on how Taiwanese people and their leaders, as in any democracy, hold a variety of opinions that don't always agree, but can hopefully be united through transparency, sincerity and communication. She touched on the crackdowns in Hong Kong, saying they won't destroy the memories of the people. Perhaps it wasn't necessary to talk about the pandemic and vaccines, but overall it's a perfectly acceptable statement.

Then there's former president and human dingleberry Ma Ying-jeou. I started out calling him a "garbage person" but honestly, I don't want to insult Taiwan's hardworking sanitation professionals by implying their necessary and respectable jobs might also describe such a man.

Ma spent most of it trashing the democratically-elected government of his own country, and included some brief praise -- yes, praise -- of genocidal dictator Xi Jinping. In this swash of effluent, he added a few admonitions that June 4th should be recognized and "rehabilitated", with vaguely-defined addressees. In other words, there are a few okay sentences in a big ol' gurgle of vomit. 

I'm not a professional translator and Mandarin isn't my first language, but I'll take a stab at parsing what he said in English. I think this is important because, having checked the machine translations available from Facebook and Google, the former is unreadable and the latter, while okay, will be unclear to anyone unfamiliar with the issues Ma touches on.

I've broken his words down into chunks for analysis. It's easier this way, and anyway "chunks" are a good descriptor of what Ma is spewing. At the end we'll look at why his post matters at all. 

Today marks the 33rd anniversary of the June 4th Incident. On the one hand, I once again call on the mainland authorities to courageously face history and accept responsibility so as to move forward. On the other hand, I also feel the need to use this opportunity to reflect on the fact that although Taiwan claims to be a "democracy", it is slipping step by step into "unfree democracy." It's highly worthy of vigilance.

This paragraph is hardly the worst. Note however that Ma calls on "the mainland authorities" to recognize the Tiananmen Square massacre. Yes, the use of "mainland authorities" is a huge eye-roll -- not the Chinese government, and nobody in particular -- but is expected coming from him. He'll continue the trend of calling China "the mainland" throughout the post. 

I can't imagine why he would think the Tiananmen Square Massacre deserves to be "one hand" of a larger argument -- it stands alone as its own issue -- but this is Ma Ying-jeou. 

I noticed that he couldn't even use the words "Tiananmen Square", let alone "massacre." Tsai also calls what happened an "incident" (a common way of naming historical atrocities in Mandarin), but at least she uses the word "Tiananmen." That's nothing, however, compared to the straight-up offensiveness of using June 4th as an opportunity to rant about how "on the other hand" Taiwan is so "undemocratic" that it deserves more space in a post about Tiananmen Square than the actual Tiananmen Square! 

As a quick reminder, Taiwan is consistently near the top of democracy rankings in Asia and the world. Ma alone is screaming into the wind that Taiwan is somehow unfree. 

Note as well that this "unfree democracy" tripe is one of Ma's common refrains; this isn't nearly the first time he's used it. It's pretty ironic, isn't it, that Ma is able to go online on social media from Taiwan and say whatever he likes about Taiwan, including scathing (if untrue) criticisms about its government, overall level of freedom, and ruling party. It's almost as if he has the freedom to talk about this issue. Huh! 

The world is unsettled lately. The trade war launched by the US against the mainland in 2018, the explosion of the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, and the Russia-Ukraine War that began in February affect global peace and stability at each step. Therefore, I would like to remind the mainland that although the so-called "anti-China" trend initiated by the United States has complicated the situation, that the mainland can turn passivity into action and send a more positive message to the rest of the world.

So instead of talking about Tiananmen Square in a post ostensibly about Tiananmen Square, Ma decides in the second paragraph to attack the United States for starting a "trade war". I don't want to throw the Trump administration even the tiniest of bones, but was it a trade war, or was it the US finally standing up to China's unsavory trade practices, IP theft, tendency to tear up any agreements it doesn't like and realization that dealing with genocidaires is maybe a bad thing?

What's more, isn't his own party trying to rebuild friendly ties in the United States by opening a representative office, after ceding so much political ground to the DPP there? Isn't KMT chair Eric Chu there right now? It's not just offensive (and parroting the language of the CCP on US-China ties) but politically unwise to write a post about Tiananmen, and then use it to attack the United States right now. Is he trying to sabotage his own party, or does he assume this is vitriol for a purely domestic market -- that nobody in the US will pay attention to his words?

Anti-Asian hate crimes against individuals are indeed a problem, and certainly Trump harmed rather than helped in this regard. That said, the Chinese government bears responsibility for its own poor image as an institution in the United States and beyond.

Notice as well that he addresses this to unnamed authorities "on the mainland", not any specific leader or government body. Rather than scathing criticism, it reads as "c'mon you guys, all you gotta do is just recognize this so you can put a positive image out there!" 

Commentators kinder than me might call this diplomatic. I call it overly-gentle and downright delusional.

In October last year, Mr. Xi Jinping, the mainland leader, spoke of democracy at Central People's Congress Work Conference, extolling the principle that the people hold all the power in the country, and that as masters of the country they rule it to the greatest extent possible.  I sincerely believe this is the right direction to build a society with rule of law. If the trauma of June 4th can be truly faced and dealt with [rehabilitated], not only will it project a good image internationally, but it will cause the two sides of the strait to cease moving further and further apart.

By the third paragraph, he's praising Xi Jinping for his words and "the right direction" he's taking. This compliment is the only time he will address Xi by name in the entire post.

Nevermind that Xi's words are a straight-up lie: people in China hold none of the power, they are not the masters of their country and they don't rule it to any extent. Ma surely knows this, but he never lets an opportunity to bestow some compliments on Xi no matter how inappropriate the timing, and how inaccurate the compliment. This can't be the "right direction" if Xi literally isn't doing what he says here, and is straight-up lying! Which he of course is, and Ma knows he is. Indeed, taking the time in a post about Tiananmen Square to praise Xi Jinping is easily the most offensive part of this whole thing.

Not only that, he's praising Xi Jinping for talking about democracy and governance by the people! In a post about the anniversary of Tiananmen Square! What in the actual name of Jesus is going on here?

To quote respected activist figure Chou I-cheng, Ma can praise Xi and denounce Taiwan's democracy if he wants, but it's particularly disgusting to do so on such a significant day.

He adds at the end that such a recognition might bring "the two sides of the strait" (note: not "China and Taiwan" because he doesn't recognize Taiwan's sovereignty) closer together. Which perhaps it could, but the gulf between the two nations exists not just because of June 4th, and not just because China isn't a democracy, but because China wants to subjugate Taiwan -- and Taiwan does not and will never want to be annexed by China. 

Nevertheless, what does democracy mean when the two sides of the strait have different systems, their narratives and practices are different. Beyond appealing to the mainland, we should also turn inward and examine our own democratic development more carefully.

Democracy means the thing that Taiwan has where the people elect their leaders and have human rights, including the freedom to criticize and remove those leaders. It also means the thing China doesn't have. 

It's inappropriate and offensive to attack Taiwan in a post that purports to be about events that took place in China, especially as Taiwan is indeed democratic and China is not. 

Reading it, you'd almost think China wasn't so bad but Taiwan was a mess, when the opposite is true. 

Although Taiwan still flies the banner of democracy, under the Democratic Progressive Party's governance, it has gradually slid into "unfree democracy":  closing television news stations, liquidating opposition parties, "checking the water meter" of the people [this is a slang term], interfering with the judiciary,  an all-around 'greening' [turning pro-DPP] of independent agencies, revising the law to exonerate the corrupt former president [Chen Shui-bian], using internal propaganda to mislead citizens and sowing hatred simply to follow the 'political correctness' of the so-called 'anti-China protection of Taiwan'. International public opinion turns a blind eye to these initiatives, which harm Taiwan's freedom and democracy, but I am deeply concerned.

I have so much to say about this litany of accusations against the DPP.  In fact, I dive into it here.

Each is worth diving into for several reasons: they provide the "evidence" for Ma's perspective and case against the DPP in the most detail, they're commonly reported in Chinese-language media but not so much in English, and they form the backbone of the DPP's argument for why they're better leaders than the DPP.

They're mostly bullshit -- though the most plausible ones are listed first -- but breaking down why each one is indeed its own uniquely-shaped steaming turd will take a lot of time and verbiage.

It's fascinating how Ma tries to claim the high ground and make it look like he has a detailed and multi-faceted case against the Tsai administration, which is mostly founded on a heaping pile of garbage.

Finally, he seems upset that the international community has a generally positive view of Taiwan (or that understanding of and sympathy for Taiwan is growing among Western nations). Why? Does he want the world to think Taiwan is a shithole? Does he want everyone to disparage Taiwanese democracy the way he does? 

Furthermore, the coronavirus pandemic has shown over the past two years that the government has not done enough to procure vaccines, and their chaotic 'rapid screening' policies show that the government's "proactive deployment" is a falsehood.  DPP leaders and the so-called "1450" [the so-called DPP "Internet army", named for an amount of money said to be allocated toward cultivating it] attack and discredit any critics [the actual phrase is "smear red"].  

I'll admit that Taiwan's pandemic response has not been perfect in every aspect, at all times. There have been poor decisions, politically-motivated choices and lags. However, I'd describe the overall pandemic response as sterling -- no, gold standard. Anyone who thinks that Taiwan did a poor job handling the pandemic is straight-up full of it. All you need to do is look at how the entire rest of the world save possibly New Zealand handled it. Most accusations to the contrary distort what actually went on with the early vaccine purchases or blow up small mistakes into catastrophic ones. Most of it is based on lies.

As for the "1450" Internet troll army, well, I'm sure every party has people working on influencing public conversation. I won't pretend it's beyond the pale to say the DPP has one (and the KMT surely has one too -- I recall an ad surfacing years ago promising free bento boxes to attendees of a seminar on how to post online to bolster the KMT's image, but can't find a link).

That said, I can't find any proof that the "1450" army actually exists, and it would be very weird to allocate such funds through the Council of Agriculture, no? What's more, people decrying the "1450" have been known to misattribute the origin of the phrase to mean NT$1,450 paid to each Internet troll working for the DPP. 

Basically, there are a lot of accusations and very little proof here.

In sum, Taiwan actually has done an overall excellent job handling the pandemic. When you see people online praising that, it's because there's good reason to do so. If the KMT is sore that it's not very popular now, perhaps they should look at their own poor governance and attempts to force Taiwan toward closer relations with China. 

When we shouted that the opposition should be treated kindly in order to establish core values in common on both sides of the strait, the ruling party is suppressing or even eliminating dissidents, while falling into "unfree democracy" and "elected dictatorship." 

I have more to say here, but I'll save that for my next post.

Obviously, there is no evidence -- I don't even have a link -- that the DPP is doing this. Name one dissident who has been "suppressed" or "eliminated" by the DPP. 

Now, how many dissidents has the KMT suppressed or eliminated in its history?

There ya go.

There are two more points worth making here: first, tying "finding common core values" to "cross-strait relations". This implies that Ma's complaint isn't that the DPP hasn't tried to find common ground with the KMT -- it's hard to say whether they have or not, as the KMT doesn't seem very interested in finding common ground with them -- but rather that they haven't tried to find common ground with the Chinese government.

This is, of course, a euphemism for refusing to engage in talks that are aimed at eventual unification between Taiwan and China, or a recognition of the (fabricated) 1992 Consensus. It means that the DPP can't and won't work with China's insistence that all negotiations and discussions must begin with mutual agreement that Taiwan is part of China and Taiwanese people are Chinese.

Which they can't -- Taiwan isn't part of China, Taiwanese mostly don't identify as Chinese, and it goes against both the public consensus and the DPP's ethos. That's literally the whole point.

That line about "elected dictatorship" is another howler, barely worth acknowledging: there is no such thing as an elected dictatorship. It's possible for democracies to be less free or even unfree -- and there is such a thing as a sham democracy (I mean, even Vladimir Putin gets "elected"). But there is no such thing as an elected dictator. If you are elected and you can be removed, you might have authoritarian tendencies, but you are not a "dictator". 

On the 33rd anniversary of June 4th, we hope that the mainland will face history and move forward, but we cannot sit idly by and watch Taiwan's democracy fall backward, or advance toward "unfree democracy" and "elected dictatorship." We must begin with ourselves and defend Taiwan's true democracy.

There's not much to analyze here: this paragraph just concludes the post and re-iterates the justification for using a post about Tiananmen Square to attack the Tsai government, Taiwanese democracy and the general trend away from identification with Chinese nationhood and ideals in Taiwan.

It is worth discussing why this matters, however. Who cares about this old fuckbucket's post? 

Well, first of all, because the media is paying attention. New Talk posted Su Tseng-chang's response calling his words a "laughingstock". KMT-friendly outlet United Daily News, widely seen as reputable, simply reposted it without comment. People predisposed towards pan-blue sentiments will read that and not see all the problems inherent in his post, or question whether it's appropriate to use the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre to attack their own government, implying that China might move in the right direction (and indeed is, according to Ma, already doing so) and Taiwan is the real authoritarian state. 

What's more, Ma still unfortunately holds a hell of a lot of power in the KMT, keeping it from reforming into a party Taiwanese might actually want to vote for (that is, one not so laser-focused on insisting Taiwan is Chinese and the CCP is a friendly government and good-faith negotiator when it is clearly neither). He's very good at rhetoric -- I might think his post is a steaming turdpile, but I have to admit it's a well-written turdpile -- he's pulling a hell of a lot of strings in the KMT, and he's probably not going away. He almost certainly has a hand in the general tenor and perspective the KMT wants to project into the world and Taiwan.

That's a shame, as he seems to have nothing useful, inspirational, thoughtful or even truthful to offer.

Were the four referendum issues small, or just boring and rank with hypocrisy?

Ma Ying-jeou gives Eric Chu a warm package

(Yes, I know I'm translating it oddly, that's the point)

I haven't said anything about the referendum vote yesterday because the straight-up fact is this: I just haven't cared enough.

Now that all four have gone down in flames -- neither reaching the vote threshold nor garnering more 'yes' votes than 'no' -- I figure maybe it's time to offer up an opinion, such as it is.

Frozen Garlic has pretty much said most of what's worth saying about why voters stayed home, and why those who came out voted as they did. Notably, the fact that the DPP made it easier to get referendums going, the KMT managed to use this against the DPP once already, and despite these issues not being linked to the KMT's unpopular stances vis-a-vis China and Taiwanese identity, they still couldn't eke out anything close to a win. As Frozen Garlic points out, they did this to themselves. 

I also agree that very little of the result had to do with detailed policy arguments, but quite possibly a lot to do with widespread distrust of the KMT. To wit:

One possibility is that when these issues became associated with the KMT, they became a lot less popular. That is, perhaps people were willing to support the LNG/reef policy, but they weren’t willing to support the KMT LNG/reef policy. The KMT was a dead weight that not even a popular issue could save.

Perhaps I like this because it's a great analysis of why the liquefied natural gas/reef referendum failed. Perhaps it's because I too, regardless of policy, simply do not trust the KMT to run the country. I don't think the DPP is perfect by any means, but Tsai mostly seems to do a solid job. I trust her, and she's given me reasons to trust her. 

In other words: 

Maybe this referendum will be a message to the KMT that it can’t paper over its unpopular identity and China positions by distracting voters with shiny objects. Maybe they will be motivated to finally start thinking about altering those unpopular stances on the most critical issues.

Probably not though. Eric Chu has already signaled that he is more comfortable finding excuses than reflecting on the causes of defeats. I keep waiting for the KMT to reform itself, and it keeps disappointing me.

I get the feeling that Eric Chu spends a lot of time not realizing how disappointing he is, which is perhaps why he's a spot-on choice to chair the party that always disappoints and doesn't even seem to realize it.

But there's one area where I differ just a bit. Frozen Garlic says:

In their ungracious remarks tonight, Johnny Chiang and Eric Chu put the blame for the defeats on the DPP. Chiang said that the DPP had unfairly twisted these narrow issues by claiming they were about broader things, like international trade, relations with the United States, overall economic development, and what China wants. Apparently, when the KMT tries to deal the DPP government a serious policy setback, he doesn’t expect the DPP government to fight back to defend its agenda.

Yes, all correct. The thing is, I think the DPP is right about that. These referendums did tie in to broader, more important things like international trade, economic development and energy security. Does ractopork matter? No, not really.  But in terms of international trade and relations with the US, it does matter. 

Does the Gongliao nuclear power plant matter? Not really. Ma Ying-jeou himself mothballed it, and it's unlikely that it'd ever actually get restarted. But public sentiment on what role nuclear power should play in Taiwan's energy policy does matter.

Does the LNG plant matter? Now that there are revised plans to move it further out to sea, I don't think so. But the DPP asking the public to trust them that the LNG plans were both environmentally safe and necessary to Taiwan's energy policy and security? Yes, those things matter. Taiwan's energy security and ending dependence on coal? Yes, that matters very much indeed.

And the referendum timing? I'm honestly not sure it matters, though I think Donovan is right that the initial decoupling from elections was a blatant strategic move by the DPP, though I'm not sure about the weather angle. However, whether the public thinks the DPP can be trusted to make such decisions -- or whether they care at all -- does matter. 

The thing is, the very fact that each of these items ties into a broader discussion about Taiwan's present and future seemed to matter less than the fact that each individual issue was boring. I can't vote in Taiwan, but when I vote in the US I choose people to represent me whom I trust to deal with these fairly small things in a general direction I support -- the big things these issues all tie into -- even if I don't agree with every little thing. 

It's possible that many Taiwanese voters ultimately decided they felt the same way: we elect people to figure these things out. If we don't like the general direction, we vote for someone else. Please don't ask me to vote on everything from algal reefs to ractopamine, when I am an expert in none of it! 

What's interesting, though, is that the KMT couldn't seem to win whether we're talking big or small. Whether you think ractopork was just about ractopork or the grand theatre of international trade, either the KMT picks bad issues, or they have bad policies, or the public doesn't trust them regardless. 

Beyond that, it's amusing just how weirdly hypocritical the KMT is on just about every single issue.

On nuclear power, as noted above, the fourth plant was mothballed by President Ma. Now Ma seems to be the strongest voice in favor of restarting it, to the point that I think he's been giving both Johnny Chiang and Eric Chu his warm package for awhile now.

On the LNG terminal, this source states that it's been an active project since 2016, which means it must have been drafted and proposed before that. Who was in power before 2016? The KMT. Despite some media making the whole thing about the DPP's energy goals, this feels like yet another KMT turnaround.

On ractopork, remember that once again, the KMT allowed ractopamine beef imports and tried to allow in pork, but withdrew from that position amid public backlash. It's true that the DPP opposed it then, but the fact is that we now have some idea of what standards for ractopamine levels should be, which we didn't back then (interestingly, the safety data came out right around the time Taiwan was fighting about this in 2012, so it's not like the KMT doesn't know about it). So on that, too, the KMT come out looking like the bigger hypocrites. 

Ma Ying-jeou, Mr. Ractobeef and Wannabe Mr. Ractopork, out there fighting ractopork if the DPP is doing it? Come on. 

In fact, I suspect both parties know that these imports are important to US-Taiwan relations and are perfectly aware that if they're in power, pushing for their approval is a no-brainer, but they'll resolutely oppose the other party doing so. I'm curious to see whether 2026 will be the year of the DPP opposing KMT President Hou's approval of American racto-lamb. Will 2035 be the year of the KMT opposing DPP racto-venison? I hope we live through the climate wars to find out! 

On referendums, Donovan's already pointed out that the KMT has found itself in the very weird position of defending the DPP's old stance. Once again, I have to wonder what the KMT even stands for other than thinking Taiwan is Chinese and they Taiwan's superior Chinese leaders, and opposing the DPP. That's it, really. It's not like they can be trusted with the economy, or the environment, or China, or fighting corruption, or even defending Taiwan. Even on infrastructure, they seem to favor bloat over utility.

I'd love to see real opposition that one could reasonably vote for to keep the DPP accountable, but I fail to see the point of the KMT at all, except as opposition for the mere, shrieking, hypocritical sake of it. 

If you're wondering how I would have voted if I'd been able, I would have given the LNG/reef and election/referendum items serious consideration. The first for environmental reasons, and the second because holding elections and referendums at the same time doesn't seem like an obviously bad idea on its face (and was also how things worked in Taiwan until recently). But in the end, I probably would have gone no on both. 

The first because energy security matters a lot, and while I don't know who's right on the environmental angle, I certainly don't trust the KMT as stewards of Taiwan's fragile algal reefs. The second, because after the 2018 disaster I'm just not huge on referendums in general. They're an important democratic tool but I don't necessarily want every single issue to be up for a majoritarian vote. It may seem more democratic, but I'm not at all sure it actually is.

On the other two, I'd be a clear no: if both parties intend to allow ractomeat imports when they're in power, then I'm not voting for some ridiculous cudgel. On the nuclear plant, even if they've resolved the 'garbage in the cooling tanks' issue from a decade ago and had a safe way to store waste, I don't think Taiwan's plants could withstand a Fukushima-like event.

I'm not actually anti-nuclear per se, I just don't think it's right for Taiwan. And as long as there's still nuclear waste non-consensually present on Indigenous lands, there are ethical issues to consider as well.

Could Taiwan make nuclear safely and ethically? Certainly, if the government really wanted to. Would they? Doubt it. So that's a no.

In other words, the KMT picked four boring issues to be hypocritical about, all of which should be the purview of the leaders the people have elected to deal with rather than a big annoying resource suck. I'm not feelin' it.

KMT (and yes, DPP) hypocrisy and a pragmatic case for vouchers

A doorway to the green...

There was an interesting Taiwan This Week...this week, where the debates over economic stimulus were discussed with Donovan Smith and Michael Turton.

(That might be the most boring sentence I've ever opened with in the history of Lao Ren Cha, but bear with me). 

The DPP wants vouchers, very much like the ones given out last year where you'd pay NT$1000 and get NT$3000 worth of vouchers in return. The new round would be the same, but raise the payout from $3000 to $5000. The $1000 is likely to be waived for economically impacted, low-income or disabled people, and they seem to have already decided that APRC holders will be included as well as the spouses of Taiwanese citizens, the latter having always been included in such schemes. 

Interestingly, the KMT has been saying the program would be better implemented if cash payouts were offered instead of vouchers. From the Taipei Times:

Since the detection of a local COVID-19 outbreak in May, many restaurants and food stalls have been forced to suspend business, and some have closed permanently, Chiang said.

Individual workers are also struggling, he said, adding that public opinion on a universal cash handout scheme was “clear.”

Two-thirds of people want such a program, he said, citing the results of a poll released on Friday by the KMT-affiliated National Policy Foundation.

The economic benefits of last year’s Triple Stimulus Voucher program, which allowed people to purchase NT$3,000 of vouchers for NT$1,000, were not good, Chiang said.

Moreover, the distribution of the vouchers created “chaos” and increased costs, he said.

Briefly, he's right that individual workers as well as business are struggling, but doesn't provide a clear line of reasoning from that to using cash (there is such a line, but he doesn't appear to offer it). The poll numbers may well be somewhat correct, but he's citing an unreliable poll from an KMT-affiliated foundation, so it's hard to say. 

The claim that the first round of vouchers didn't work is dubious at best: I don't think we know yet whether they worked, but we do know that Taiwan's GDP jumped in the months when they could be obtained and spent, and that Taiwan's overall 2020 growth outpaced China's (well, according to reported data, which is not reliable for China) and was the best in the developed world. We may not know if they helped, but we know they didn't hurt. 

The closest we can come to figuring this out is to look at an earlier stimulus voucher program, implemented by the KMT at the beginning of Ma Ying-jeou's first term. One paper -- the only one I could find in the limited time I have to write this -- claims it had little or no effect (that link goes straight to a download and I haven't checked the reliability of the paper). But, the circumstances were very different. New president in power, no pandemic -- although there was a big economic downturn which arguably slammed Taiwan harder than coronavirus, economically speaking.

Did it create "chaos"? I didn't see any. What chaos? Would you like to be more specific, Johnny? Taiwan was probably the least chaotic country in the world in 2020. What are you talking about?

Did it increase administrative costs? Yes, but I would guess not by a huge amount. Cash would be less administratively burdensome; that's a valid point. But, was it prohibitively so? I don't see any real evidence that it was. 

Here's what's more interesting. I've buried the lede and I apologize. It's a bit rich for the KMT to be banging on about offering cash now. As I mention above that the last time the KMT had power, their economic stimulus program was also voucher-based.

Why are they so against it now, when the Tsai administration plan is just a fancier version of the Ma one? (There are some differences: Ma's plan did not require an NT$1000 payout, and had fewer restrictions on how they could be spent.) 

I'm sure they could come up with some reasons that didn't reek of hypocrisy: that people waiting in line to get the vouchers could cause outbreaks (there was no pandemic in 2008-2009), or that the restrictions make it harder for the working class to use them as they'd like (true enough). But they seem to be going for plain old "forget history, we favor cash and we've always favored cash" politicking over actually trying to make a good case. 

To be fair, the DPP didn't seem too fond of vouchers in 2008 either -- lashing out at the KMT for it -- and yet here they are, doing vouchers. It's almost like the two parties actually agree on a bunch of stuff but just can't admit it for political reasons, even if not everything they agree on is actually a good idea.

It's worth pointing out that they can be hypocrites too, and as a result each side keeps saying the other is wrong, but then recycles many of their ideas anyway.

That said, there's nothing I hate more than bad argumentation (okay, I also dislike late-night half-assed Marxist "analysis", but I can forgive it if the person doing it is otherwise cool). 

If you thought I didn't respect the KMT because of all the mass murder and colonialist brutalizing...well, that's true. But I also don't respect them because even when there's a good argument to be made for whatever they support, they don't bother to make it. They literally just bend over, drop trou and show their whole ass. Administrative costs? You guys are the absolute kings of administrative costs, and you were during your 2008 voucher program too! Individual workers? Good point, but since when has the KMT been the party of the working class everyman, not the "my parents were born in China and maybe reported your parents to the secret police" princelings?

Do they even know how to do politics responsibly? It seems not.

Oh, and the People First Party under James Soong has argued for checks. That's cute. My reaction to this suggestion can be seen in the visualization below:
    

"Checks? Okay grandpa."

 
In a "gossiping over wine voice": Checks! Could you even imagine?

One case for vouchers is that they won't increase inflation. But, I don't think the amount of money would be enough to do this, as Donovan points out on Taiwan This Week. I do think the "waiting in line" aspect could be an issue, as both point out. I do think people can be trusted to use the money in a way that best suits them. However, under Ma, people socked away extra cash and used the vouchers to pay for their regular purchases. So, vouchers don't necessarily solve that problem when you want to stimulate the economy, not bump up people's savings accounts by a fairly marginal amount. 

Frankly, this is probably what the restrictions on what they can be used for are trying to prevent: if you can't use them to pay most bills, but only for consumer goods, you might use them to buy food but you're less likely to save an equivalent amount, and you might be tempted to treat yourself especially if you've had a hard time during the outbreak.

I do tend to agree with Michael that this is just another flashy program covering up the lack of a strong, comprehensive social safety net.

Basically, the question is: what is the goal of the Tsai administration? There are two possible objectives: helping those who've been hard-hit by the pandemic (which a series of relief measures and subsidies also do), or stimulating business and getting people back in stores. Honestly, they probably want to do a little of both.

If the former, cash payments would be the better choice as struggling people would be free to do whatever they wanted with that money, and they know their own situations best. 

If the latter, vouchers make sense. It's the most likely way to push people to go out and shop for consumer goods. It's not a bad goal -- such businesses have been hard-hit, especially restaurants, and the faster they can recover, the more people they can employ who might be temporarily out of work. And it does indeed seem to be the priority. There tends to be an assumption in government here that for the very poor, they can and should turn to family to help them out in times of need. Broke as a joke? Go live with your parents!

That sometimes works, but it often doesn't. It would be better to update our understanding of how family may not be an option for some struggling people.

I would posit, however, that this wouldn't be the same discussion if Taiwan did have a real social safety net. So perhaps rather than arguing over vouchers or cash, we should get on that instead. (It's still okay to laugh at checks though. Checks!) And, of course, the foreign community should have more access to them: it would be better for businesses that cater to the Southeast Asian community for sure if more of them could get vouchers, and it might help rouse more discontent over the fact that many are still being locked in their dorms in an extremely racist fashion, let out for only two hours a day. 

So here is the case for vouchers: If the other relief measures liked above were aimed at helping the needy, and the Tsai administration sees vouchers more as a way to jumpstart consumer spending (which would theoretically lead to renewed employment opportunities -- but only theoretically), then the administrative cost of the vouchers may be worth what they are trying to achieve. I suspect the $1000 payout might be aimed at defraying those costs, or possibly as a psychological impetus to push people to go out and spend them.

However, I have a hard time signing on to that fully, when people who are truly struggling don't have a reliable public assistance option and can't pay their major bills with vouchers. 

But this is the most pragmatic case for vouchers: clearly the KMT is actually fine with them, seeing as they used them too. So, theoretically, this is the most unifying view among people in power, it's just that right now the KMT won't admit it. 

As for me personally? I don't have a strong preference, because I don't think it's the biggest problem. The lack of comprehensive public assistance is. If you put cash in my hand I'd be just as happy with that.

Tsai (or Han's) popularity is not a measure of support for unification

I want to clarify something from my Sunday night rant about the misconception that, if not for Hong Kong, China would have still had a chance to win over Taiwan. 

Of course it's silly to say that the events in Hong Kong haven't played any role in Tsai's popularity resurgence. They've obviously had an effect, though I'd still disagree that they are "singlehandedly" responsible for reasons I discussed on Sunday. Tsai's improved marketing, Lai's primary loss, Han acting like more and more of a racist idiot who doesn't do his job, the passage of same-sex marriage and other domestic events have also played a role.

The bigger point is this, however. Election results in Taiwan aren't the best way to measure how open Taiwan is to unification. Polls of Tsai or Han's popularity aren't either. 

Despite this, people looking for some sort of 'in' to say that China is 'hurting its chances' of winning over Taiwan, which implies China had a chance to begin with, tend to look at electoral politics to support their arguments. That's exactly what happened in the Bloomberg piece that annoyed me so much on Sunday.

The way to measure whether China has a chance of 'convincing' Taiwan is to look at more stable long-term data regarding how Taiwanese view themselves and their country.

That is, Taiwanese identity and Taiwanese independence (de facto or status quo, regardless of name). Regardless of who they vote for, if a sense of Taiwanese identity and nationhood is strong, you can be sure that China could hire all the free candy vans in the world, and Taiwan would not budge.

And that's exactly what we've seen. Sure, pro-unification half-burnt department store mannequin former president Ma Ying-jeou won in 2008 and 2012, but Taiwanese identity only grew, and attempts at pushing Taiwan closer to China were met with massive protests that destroyed his legacy. Even when Taiwanese are open to closer economic cooperation, thinking it's not a big threat, they're still not interested in unification.

Similarly, Tsai's popularity could be in the gutter and it wouldn't change the fact that Taiwanese identity recovered quickly from its hiccup, starting in around 2018. Even when that number began to dip, it never came close to being overtaken by "Chinese" (or even "both Taiwanese and Chinese"). 

In fact, Han could win in 2020, and it still wouldn't change that. It makes the landscape more dangerous, as he and his CCP/KMT handlers would probably take that as a mandate to head in that direction. But there's no reason to believe that Taiwanese identity will take a hit any more than it did either time Ma won, which means there's no reason to believe that China's 'chances' of convincing Taiwan to move toward unification will improve either.

It's just deeply simplistic to think of Taiwanese politics as two boxes voters can tick: "the KMT/unification/Chinese identity" on one side, and "the DPP/independence/Taiwanese identity" on the other. There are strong correlations, with China being the biggest cleavage (heheh, cleavage), but to assume that a vote for the DPP is a vote for independence and a vote for the KMT is a vote for unification is such a jejune way of looking at it. 

So why do people believe otherwise? I have no idea, but I suspect they think it just makes for a clickable lede.

Anyway, there are lots of reasons why who wins in 2020 isn't a good measure of support for independence or unification, so please allow me to opinionate in your general direction about them. 

The first is that not every independence supporter sees China as the biggest threat to Taiwan's sovereignty, as Frozen Garlic so insightfully pointed out. I won't summarize his post as it's not that long - go read it. I'd characterize the voters I'm about to describe a little differently, though. While his 'fundamentalists' might feel angry at the DPP for promising nationhood and failing to deliver, there's a subset that is willing to vote for the KMT if they are convinced unification is off the table. During the Ma years, I knew a few of these: generally green, had voted for and grown disappointed with Chen, and then voted for Ma to 'punish' the DPP while at the same time assuming that, as Ma was the US's preferred candidate, that the US would have Taiwan's back.

And yet, these voters clearly don't see the KMT or the ROC military as potent symbols of the old regime, being more like the pragmatists Frozen Garlic describes. A part of why they were willing to vote for Ma was that they saw the KMT as a viable political party that had evolved with democratization. 

I am hopeful, at least, that most of this "I'm green but Ma is acceptable" crowd is not going to vote for Han this time around.

Then there are the true fundamentalists - the "Never Tsai" people who do see the KMT and the ROC colonial structure as the biggest threats to Taiwanese statehood and would never vote for them - these are the folks drawn in by people like Annette Lu (so that's like, four people) or William Lai, who don't like Tsai's lack of nationalist hot air. Their refusal to vote (or voting for some last-minute third party candidate - I think James Soong is running for the 456th time) is also a factor.

But then there's another group, the ones who could potentially swing the election to Han, if it can be swung. Those are the born-and-raised deep blues who still think that Taiwan is not a part of China, or at least not the PRC. The old-school KMTers before the KMT turned red, and those who are smart enough to see Taiwan's reality clearly, but not willing to break from the party identity they inherited from their parents.

Don't laugh. I know one of these guys. The older son of a father born in China, he grew up in a military village in Taiwan. He was raised with an "ROC" identity and a sense that the KMT was an above-board political party, but his observations of life in Taiwan made him realize that Taiwan was truly a different place from China. He calls himself Taiwanese. He thinks "retaking the Mainland" is a pipe dream, and supports independence. Although he's 華獨 (a supporter of independence keeping the Republic of China framework), if a peaceful de jure independence were offered with the condition that Taiwan must be "Taiwan" rather than the "Republic of China", he would consider it "a difficult decision" but indicates a willingness to sincerely consider it as a far lesser evil than unifying with the PRC. He supports marriage equality and somewhat begrudgingly concedes that Tsai is handling China well - in fact, he has plenty of views more at home with the DPP than the KMT. He hated Chen's overt Hoklo nationalism.

And yet he intends to vote for Han. Identity is a powerful thing. 

The point is, people like him may vote as though they're pro-China, but they're not. They're anti-unification and anti-PRC (as opposed to "pro-Taiwan"), with views often constructed during their formative years in which the KMT was emphatically not "the natural ally of Beijing" (as Richard McGregor put it in Bloomberg) the way it is today.

In other words, the sort of people who can swing an election in Taiwan and put a KMT president in power are not necessarily people who will support steps toward unification.

Looking at it that way, there is no meaningful support for unification in Taiwan and there hasn't been in some decades, regardless of who wins elections. If that's the case, then events in Hong Kong have not, in fact, "ruined China's chances" with Taiwan, because those chances never existed in the first place. 

To finish this off, that's why things like this piss me off so hard: 

What if Han wins the general election and calls for “peaceful reunification” of the two Chinas [sic sic sic], based on “one country, two systems”?  Solve for the equilibrium!  I see the following options: 

1. They go ahead with the deal, and voila, one China! 

2. The system as a whole knows in advance if this is going to happen, and if it will another candidate runs in the general election, splitting the KMT-friendly vote, and Han never wins. 

2b. Han just doesn’t win anyway, even though his margin in the primary was considerable and larger than expected. 

3. The current president Tsai Ing-wen learns from Taiwanese intelligence that there are Chinese agents in the KMT and she suspends the general election and calls a kind of lukewarm martial law. 

4. Han calls for reunification [sic] and is deposed by his own military, or a civil war within the government ensues. 

5. Han foresees 2-4 and never calls for reunification [sic] in the first place.

What bugs me about this (other than the absolute howler that is #3, lol) is that none of these options includes the most obvious one. 

It allows for government intervention, party intervention and current administration intervention (again, lol) but not the actual intervention likely to occur.

In fact, here's the most likely outcome of that scenario:

Han wins, calls for unification, and faces protests so massive that they make the Sunflowers look like a school trip to learn about government.

If Han wins and attempts #1, this is almost certainly what will happen, because a vote for Han is not a vote for unification, just as a vote for Ma wasn't one, either. Forget the legislature as the seat of all the action - entire government ministries are occupied. Traffic at a standstill. Marches every weekend. Graffiti everywhere.

And because this hypothetical President Han is Beijing's toy, and would be quite serious in his attempts to allow a "peaceful" annexation, those protests grow so massive and so angry that in order to assert control (and carry out his Chinese masters' orders) Han very well might tacitly permit more police violence than Taiwanese find palatable, which is any police violence. Remember that a whole song - the other one, not the super famous "Island Sunrise" - was inspired by a few water cannons on a single night in 2014. They fight back, as Hong Kongers have done, and bam. That tsunami I warned about in my last post? That's what it is.

I don't have a conclusion. I just want you to sit there and roll that around in your mind for a bit. 

China will never 'win over' Taiwan: an anatomical discussion of dopey ledes

Another day, another opinion piece about whether the Chinese government's reaction to the Hong Kong protests will hurt their image in Taiwan, and therefore their chances of convincing Taiwanese that closer ties or even eventual unification. This one comes from Bloomberg, a perpetual font of bad writing about Taiwan. It's become so commonplace, though - the well-founded criticism of China, backed up with some nonsense about how the Chinese government could alienate Taiwan and sour any hopes that Taiwan might willingly "return to the fold" - itself an inaccurate description of the situation.

Or, as Richard McGregor puts it in Bloomberg: 

Without a change in its approach, the Communist Party risks making the already difficult task of winning over the self-governing island next to impossible without force.... 

Amid the Hong Kong protests, the last thing the Communist Party should want is a rebuff from voters in Taiwan. Yet Beijing has shown little interest in modifying its stance. The inevitable result is that Taiwan has become even more alienated from China.... 

A decisive victory for Tsai in January’s election might chasten Beijing and cause it to return to a more consensual strategy. But the example of Hong Kong doesn’t so far give much hope that Xi will change course. If China continues to double down, the eventual denouement for Taiwan may be far more dangerous. 

What these sorts of articles universally overlook (or intentionally ignore) is that the CCP's stance and behavior only play a small-to-moderate role in Taiwan's desire for independence and lack of enthusiasm for unification. In fact, it wouldn't matter much if the CCP adopted a more conciliatory stance on Taiwan: there is no "consensual" strategy available to China because it's quite clear that Taiwan wants independence regardless.

That's not just my opinion - it's reflected in the data as well.

Poll after poll shows that deepening Taiwanese identity, which tends to go hand-in-hand with belief that Taiwan simply is independent and should remain that way. Most strikingly, these beliefs have not only blossomed since democratization in 1996, but only grew during the Ma Ying-jeou era, when the CCP was at its most conciliatory.

According to data published here, in 2008 (when China-friendly Ma took office) 64% of poll respondents said that Taiwan, even as the 'Republic of China', was an independent country, though only 22% of people thought China would use economic tools to force political concessions. According to this more detailed account, the number of people who identified as solely Taiwanese and those who identified as both Taiwanese and Chinese were both in the mid 40% range, with solely "Chinese" identification being quite low, at 3% - about the same percentage as non-respondents. This source says the same thing.

Then what happened? It was an era that some people still label as having "warming" or "closer" relations between Taiwan and China. You'd think that it would result in Taiwanese feeling closer to China as well, right?

Wrong.

Look at that data again. Taiwanese identity only increased from 2008 to 2016 - especially after the 2014 Sunflower Movement. The sense that Taiwan/the ROC was independent increased as well. Fear of China's 'conciliatory' economic gestures being guises for political force spiked, because...duh, they were.

It didn't matter how friendly China was to Taiwan. It didn't matter that Chairman Xi and President Ma got cozy in Singapore. Taiwan wasn't having it. If anything, CCP efforts to be 'nice' only exposed the truth: that none of it was sincere, and none of it came for free. All of it created greater economic dependency that would make eventual extrication under 'colder' ties more difficult, and it didn't even benefit Taiwan that much. Economic growth under Ma was not more impressive - and in some ways it was less so - than during other less 'China-friendly' administrations.

Taiwanese identity blossomed not just in response to this realization about China, but also as a part of a natural upward trajectory. That makes sense. Before democratization, it was difficult to freely form, let alone express, a true sense of identity in Taiwan. Taiwanese history was taught as a part of Chinese history in schools and you could face repercussions for expressing a different view. It's only reasonable that once those restrictions were lifted, Taiwanese people would look back at their own history - which was by and large not as a part of China, even if their ancestors came from there - and form a stronger sense of identity, which would increase over time.

It doesn't make sense that a friendlier stance from China would stem this tide, and indeed it did not.

While some of these 'Taiwan identity' numbers dropped again after Tsai assumed office in 2016, note that none of them dropped very much and all of them are on the rise again. Dipping from around 65% in 2016 back to the mid-50th percentile, and "Taiwanese and Chinese" identity experienced a slight bump from about 32% to about 38%. At the time, people worried that the Sunflower effect might be ephemeral and numbers might dip even further, but that didn't happen. Instead, sometime around 2018-2019 numbers began to rise again. The gap between "Chinese and Taiwanese" and "Taiwanese only" identity that began in 2008 - again, during China's "friendly" years! - only widened over the next eight years never came close to closing.

The reason for the change probably has something to do with Hong Kong and China's response - it would be silly to say it's not a factor. But if these poll results were released in the summer of 2019, the actual poll was probably conducted a fair bit earlier, that is, before the protests really got underway, if not entirely so. That was also around the time that Han Kuo-yu started to gain popularity among some segments of the population, and strongly turned off others - reminding them, perhaps, that games with China cannot be won and are best not played at all.

Considering this, I'd put that 2016-2018 blip down to Taiwan's natural tendency to grow critical of its leaders. Tsai was elected, the Sunflower high wore off, and now that "our person" was in office, and it was time to start nitpicking on her inevitable flaws.

It's also worth noting that during this time, "Chinese only" identity - the one most closely tied to openness to unification - did not experience a bump. In addition, if you read that Washington Post article again, you'll see that Taiwanese youth have a huge role to play. The current generation of young adults overwhelmingly considers itself Taiwanese, and those numbers don't seem to have budged much at all. Anecdotally speaking (because I have no data!), that generation was also the most strongly critical of President Tsai during the labor law and marriage equality wars. But it was also quicker to re-embrace her when the terrifying spectre of President Han began to loom, Hong Kong started getting dicey, and marriage equality finally passed.

And if you grow up simply thinking you are Taiwanese and your country is Taiwan, and there's no reason to question that because why would there be?, the chances that China could ever "win you over" are remote indeed.

So why do people still think China has a chance?

Because they're looking at only recent data, not going back to the 1990s, or even 2008. They've also been convinced by an international media that posits every issue facing Taiwan as being related to China in some way because China gets more clicks (even when they clearly not), when in many cases the reasons behind why Taiwan feels the way it does are mostly, if not entirely, domestic.

When you look at it that way and ignore the history of Taiwanese identity, things like this sound more plausible:

Over the past year, Beijing has single-handedly revived the electoral prospects of its political adversary, incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party. At the turn of the year, Tsai’s approval rating was a miserable 24%. Now polls show her with more than 53% support versus about 31% for Han, whose Kuomintang is the natural ally of Beijing. That Nationalist party retains deep ties to the mainland as the former government of China until it lost a civil war to the Communists and fled to Taiwan in 1949.

When, in fact, almost everything about it - and other opinion pieces that use this data point as evidence - is wrong.

It's true that Beijing has helped Tsai to a degree, but "single-handedly" reviving her electoral prospects? I think not. Domestic issues have played just as much of, if not a greater role.

"...the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party"? True, but misleading. It makes it sound as though being pro-independence is a platform of the party and not a common, majority belief in society. That's not the case. The will of Taiwan leans toward independence, and the DPP happens to better match it than the KMT, which often has to hide its closeness to China behind obfuscatory language. Even if Han wins in 2020 and the CCP puts its "the abuser is being charming to win you back" on again, don't expect the general pro-independence sentiment to change much.

Plus, "a miserable 24%"? Rick, do you even follow Taiwanese electoral politics? 24% is pretty normal for Taiwan, and every president who has eventually won re-election (a grand total of two people so far) experienced a huge dip in their first term approval ratings. Taiwanese love to criticize their leaders, so while that wasn't a great number, it also wasn't "miserable" or even out of the ordinary. Besides, that number seems to have come from a KMT poll - unless someone has evidence to the contrary - with another non-KMT-funded poll published around the same time, in May 2019, showing her support at 33.8%. 

Let me finish by simply re-stating the obvious: articles like these are harmful to Western perceptions of Taiwan, and to Western readers' understanding of the Taiwan-China situation in general. I mean that: a good friend emailed me recently positing that China's harshness with Hong Kong might "turn Taiwanese off" to "reunification" after reading the New York Times. (He got a kind talking-to, don't worry.)

People like Richard McGregor and media outlets like Bloomberg, then, actively peddle untruths and misleading notions. The "denouement" for Taiwan was always going to be dangerous, because China might offer some economic enticements or use friendly language, but it's never going to give up on unification/annexation. It's only possible to envision a violence-free denouement if you believe that Taiwan could possibly be persuaded to embrace unification - but that's highly unlikely.

It's clear from decades of research that the Taiwanese sense of identity and national sovereignty has deep, domestically-grown roots - history, cultural evolution, geography, democracy - that anchor it firmly as a place apart. How China approaches Taiwan is just one tiny tendril of a massive banyan that neither China, nor the international media, nor Bloomberg, nor Mr. McGregor here, seem to understand.

In fact, we've seen this play out recently. When China tried to reach out to Taiwan again in hopes of raising the prospects of its flailing puppet candidate Han Kuo-yu with its "26 measures", the reaction was one of near-universal disgust. It's clear to Taiwan that when China 'buys' you, they're not the ones paying the price.

This isn't just about China's treatment of Hong Kong in particular so much as China's vision for all territories it considers to be "Chinese" in general. The only way not to see this is to assume that China's vision is fungible, and that what it offers Taiwan and Hong Kong could ever be anything other than oppression. In events like the Hong Kong revolt, all China is really doing is showing its true face. Taiwanese people aren't dumb; they see that.

So please quit it with the fearmongering that China is "driving away" Taiwan. It's not, really. Taiwan got in the car and drove its own damn self away decades ago, and it's not coming back.