If you like Pride, you'll love Trans Pride

Yes, of course, neither parade is 'for me', I'm the cishet lady who shows up to support the community but whose presence and opinion aren't really needed. But I'm gonna write this anyway because I just am.

Taipei Trans Pride has been held since 2019, and takes place the night before the main Pride event. Participants gather around 6:30pm -- at Red House Theater in the past, but at the amphitheater at 228 Park this year -- and set off about an hour later. I've heard differing accounts of why the start point changed, either that it can accommodate more people, or due to the significance of 228 Park in Taiwan's LGBTQIA+ history. It's probably a little of both. The route runs through Ximending, starting down Hengyang Road. 

Trans Pride doesn't get much publicity, and can be almost impossible to find information about in English -- it exists, but good luck. I knew in advance and should have written about it, but didn't, so I'm not immune to that criticism either. You'll have better luck searching for 台灣跨性別遊行 (Taiwan Trans Pride Parade), which will bring you to the Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association event page, among others. It amuses me somewhat that UDN wrote about it in advance, but seemed more concerned with traffic routes than equality. Maybe that's a good thing, though -- let's make trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming acceptance and celebration just that utterly commonplace.

                  

While not many sources write about the event in advance, plenty reported after the fact, including CNA, ICRT and UDN. Around 2,500 people attended -- that sounds about right, I would have guessed 3,000 -- and all performers were from the gender non-binary and diverse communities, according to Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline. These included stage hosts Shuhong and Orange and parade hosts Feifan and Viva. 

If you're thinking "Feifan? Isn't he that Sunflower Movement leader?" Different Feifan. Quick side story, I once met Feifan the performer, and they told me that during the Sunflower Movement he was doing his military service, and was deployed as a guard to a government building (they told me which one, but I've forgotten). Their peers, also doing mandatory service, kept joking that they could stop the movement at any time. I found it amusing, anyway. 

Some people held signs that blended international politics with trans rights, including "I don't want an independent transphobic Taiwan" (我不要恐跨的台獨, which I agree with and is also a pun on "I don't want transphobic attitudes").

Another sign said "Taiwan doesn't want Taiwan's radical advancement" -- a reference to the Taiwan Statebuilding Party (台灣基進黨), which was accused of transphobia not long ago. It's a long story and I probably don't understand enough of the details to write about it yet (if ever, but I'll try), but former party member Liu Pin-you (劉品佑) wrote a long, somewhat difficult to read post blasting Statebuilding for supporting the continued requirement of gender reassignment surgery to legally change one's gender in Taiwan.

Statebuilding's post doesn't exactly specify that they support a surgery requirement, but it's a bit weaselly -- they acknowledge the financial and health difficulties of such major surgeries, but go on to say that if the government doesn't explicitly define gender, that "women's spaces" should be determined by "sex representation", that is, one's genitalia. 

Which is, of course, just another way to say that sex can be reduced to genitalia, a position I -- as a woman and vagina-haver, so the sort of woman that transphobes think should be welcome in "women's spaces" to the exclusion of others -- do not agree with. I don't want to be in exclusionary spaces regardless. 

Statebuilding is getting lots of heat from the Taiwanese left on this. Good.

Anyway, I have no time for TERFs. I may have a vagina, but I don't want their "vaginas only" spaces, so let's not pretend that all cis women are in agreement on their agenda. We're not.

Back to Trans Pride.

The parade included many international participants, especially from other parts of Asia where acceptance may not be as high as Taiwan (which is hardly perfect, either). I saw Malaysian and Thai flags, and attendees came from the Philippines, Japan and elsewhere, as well. 

Taiwanese human rights, LGBTQIA+, corporate supporters and political groups also attended -- a full list can be found on the Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline website. We noticed flags for the Green Party and Taihu Brewing, but they were hardly the only ones.

Hua, the organizer of Thailand's Transgender Pride Parade, was quoted on Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline's page as saying that when "transgender people can develop freely, all genders in society can benefit." I couldn't agree more. I'm cis, but honestly, I wasn't always 100% sure of that. A long internal dialogue was necessary for me to come to that conclusion, and increasing dialogue about and acceptance of gender diversity gave me not just the lexical resource but the confidence to have that conversation with myself. In the end I realized I was the gender I was assigned at birth, but the process was deeply beneficial, helping me to better understand and be myself. 





Specifically, this personal experience has taught me that increasing acceptance of transgender people and open-minded discourse on these issues also increases acceptance of gender non-conforming preferences even among cisgender people like myself. Despite greater theoretical freedom to be oneself -- from laws that don't allow employers to discriminate based on gender to basic access to things like healthcare (still a battle) and bank accounts -- there are still a lot of bitter idiots who believe men should think, act and be one way, and women another. Hell, the Republican presidential nominee, who happens to be a rapist, and his weird minion who isn't a rapist as far as I know, but has some extremely scary views on women, seem to think as much.

As a woman with a loud mouth who prefers cats over children, I've come to realize that greater transgender acceptance and embracing the infinite diversity of people, personalities and preferences regardless of their genitalia fuel each other -- and yes, that does benefit all of us.

The fight is far from over, though. To legally change one's gender in Taiwan, one must undergo both psychiatric and gender reassignment surgery, which are massive barriers. As someone who doesn't think her vagina is what makes her a woman and has witnessed societal discrimination against not just cis women but gender non-conforming people as well, I just don't think surgery should be the bar. 

As a cis woman, I am not just happy but enthusiastic to welcome trans women, including those who haven't had surgery, into women's spaces. I don't think merely having a penis (or not having a vagina) makes a person unsafe in such a space.

In fact, I don't want to be in spaces that don't welcome them as well. 

This is improving in Taiwan, with court cases such as those of Xiao E and Nemo, ruling that they did not have to provide proof of surgery. Nemo in particular was unable to undergo this surgery, whereas in Xiao E's case, the court found that the Ministry of the Interior's requirement of reassignment surgery violated both an abstract legal principle (reservation of statutory power) and violated such persons' right to "health, personal traits, and human dignity."

Societal discrimination is still a problem, as is discrimination against transgender people within the greater alphabet community. At Pride, one may unfortunately still come across people who talk about LGBTQIA+ acceptance and, well, pride -- but leave out the "T" in that acronym. I'm not really qualified to talk more about this as I'm not really part of either community, but I know it exists. I've witnessed it personally, and it's disheartening.

To be honest, it was also a lot more fun to walk through Ximending at night rather than from City Hall down Ren'ai Road on a hot day, although I know it can be hard for people to make it to the Friday event after work. The numbers were more manageable as well. The main Pride event matters, of course, and I attended that too. But it's a hell of a lot easier to walk on a balmy evening with 2,500 people. Still, let's hope it's even more next year. 

All in all, I was happy for the chance to walk in solidarity at Trans Pride. I know I don't get to label myself an ally, but it's what I want and hope to be. An imperfect person who just wants to be herself, let others be who they are, erase whatever residual discriminatory tendencies or beliefs I might still have lurking in my subconscious, and be part of a more accepting world. 

Book Review -- Taiwan's Green Parties: Alternative Politics in Taiwan

Taiwan's Green Parties: Alternative Politics in Taiwan

Available from Routledge and on Amazon

Most political research and scholarship on Taiwan focuses on the major political parties, or at least the ones that have something of an election track record. Much energy has been spent dissecting the KMT and DPP from an academic perspective, and I suspect more successful small parties like the TPP and NPP will receive similar scrutiny in the future. Perhaps, given the New Party and People First Party’s erstwhile success, they’ll get some attention too. 

Then there are the tiny parties: the TSU (effectively dormant), the Social Democratic Party (whose only elected official happens to serve in my district), the Trees Party (still around?), the Statebuilding Party (perhaps an interesting subject of inquiry given that their only elected legislator was just recalled), Can’t Stop This Party (composed of Youtubers) the Minkuotang  (MKT, which later merged with another odd little party) and, of course, the Green Party Taiwan (GPT). 

Nobody seems to write about them much, mostly because they’re either quite new or don’t have much political influence. They don’t win a lot of seats, so they don’t get a lot of attention.

That has changed with Dafydd Fell’s Taiwan’s Green Parties: Alternative Politics in Taiwan, an insider account of the formation and evolution of the GPT, with ancillary-but-important looks into their frenemies, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the Judean People’s Front Trees Party. 

 “We’re the People’s Front of Judea…listen, the only thing we hate more than the Romans are the Judean People’s Front.”

When reading Taiwan’s Green Parties, I kept thinking about how, well, incestuous Taiwan’s progressive and activist political scene are. Many of the fallouts recounted in the book seem to be just as much the ups and downs of personal friendships — and friendships often end — as they are any real difference in concrete political beliefs or policy ideas. The Trees Party didn’t form because they are different in ideology from the GPT. They formed because they had different approaches to the same ends, and they realized they were being marginalized in the GPT. Imagine finding out you weren’t invited to movie night, because the new guy has convinced everyone you’re awful for always ordering pepperoni pizza instead of only vegetarian options. Yes, we’re talking about you in the group chat.

The Green Party went on to form a brief alliance with the SDP, only to have it fall apart with recriminations on both sides. Again, the SDP and Green Party aren’t really that different in ideology and you can be sure they all know each other. They — and everyone else in their ideological ballpark — all attend the same lectures, readings and protests. They probably go to the same cafes. The DPP can poach them because the DPP has already recruited some of their friends. (Yes, that is how it works.) 

In this respect, the Statebuilding Party seems to be actively forging a different path: forming in southern Taiwan and not necessarily recruiting from the same pool of Taipei cafe-goers. For that alone, they’re worth keeping an eye on, especially as their one legislator has just been recalled. In fact, future comparisons between Statebuilding and GPT might be interesting to consider: of the KMT revenge recalls, the NPP have survived whereas the GPT’s Wang Hao-yu (defected to the DPP right around the time of his recall) and Statebuilding Party’s Chen Po-wei have both gone down. Statebuilding actively avoids recruiting from the same pool of activists but will form alliances with them, whereas GPT can’t seem to form lasting alliances, and doesn’t seem to realize that the frequent poaching they experience is indeed detrimental.

On this claustrophobic theme, it also struck me how small Taiwan politics really is. I’m nobody at all, neither an academic nor an activist, and I’ve personally met enough people mentioned by name in this book that it might take more than one hand to count them. Mostly, we’ve perhaps talked briefly at the same gathering. In one case, a good friend’s name popped up, as it always seems to. 

As for the research itself, it’s impeccable. For details, head to Frozen Garlic’s review. He’s a trained political scientist, I’m not. In more general terms, however, I appreciated how in looking through the GPT’s past, Fell adjusts the benchmarks that might be used to determine whether a party is competitive, and then goes to some length to justify that modification. It has a magnifying effect: from far away, using benchmarks met by parties with records of real electoral success, the GPT looks like a failure from start to finish. Zooming in, however, and adjusting the scale and field accordingly, the ups and downs of the GPT can be better teased out and analyzed. 

Frozen Garlic categorizes these waves as “clear failure,” “dismal failure” and “utter failure”. He’s not wrong, but looking at what factors underpinned each era of various failures still provides a wealth of information on what it’s like to work for a small party, how these parties get funding and how much, how they campaign (or not) and how they interact with each other as well as other parties. 

From that time I met SDP politician Miao Po-ya, who gets a mention in the book. 

The short of it: it’s stressful. It isn’t a way to build an actual paid career — instead, dedicated members find themselves pouring their own funds into keeping the party afloat. It’s a constant balancing act between trying to figure out how to get votes, and sticking to your principles. But then you make that choice, and others in your party strike that balance differently, and that disagreement spills over into disorganization: not just presenting a chaotic face but actually being unable to get their act together. Then the elections come and go and, while perhaps the GPT could have won more if they’d been better able to cooperate and seize very obvious opportunities that came their way, they don’t. Recriminations follow — either their leaders were too focused on votes and blowing up social media, or not nearly focused enough on actually wining votes. People leave. Perhaps they are poached by the DPP, or leave politics, or start a new party. A new era begins…

Through all this, this same group of people seems to be more interested in dissecting ideological differences or severing ties with each other than it does facing any sort of common enemy. This is why they can’t seem to agree on a coherent policy regarding how much support to give the DPP, work with other small parties on their own side to form alliances or even take a clear line on national identity, even though they have one. They can’t work with the ideologically similar SDP, they’ll work with the TPP (often seen as light blue) to attack their ideological cousins the NPP, but one of their candidates did a photo op with an MKT candidate because it made sense vis-a-vis local Hakka clan affiliations — even though the GPT and MKT are worlds apart? Hm. I would question the strategizing, to put it mildly.

Because the GPT tries to be more about ideals than building a political legacy, they not only have very little influence in actual politics -- all of the things the more powerful parties have done in line with the GPT’s ideas don’t seem to have been inspired by the GPT in any direct way). It’s hard to keep committed people this way, however. If there isn’t a realistic path to actual political impact through the GPT, you’re going to get true believers — those are great, but people do need money to live. So only a few of the most committed will actually do the work, and everyone else will float in and out.

Why? Because while they may agree on the politics, there’s a point at which people start focusing on building actual careers. So often, activism takes a backseat. And the ones doing the work complain about how disorganized it is, how branches of the party are withering, how people aren’t showing up. And to be honest, it seems they've got a point.

When someone does get an opportunity — to, say, garner some support from a popular presidential candidate like Tsai Ing-wen, or work in a DPP cabinet in environmental affairs — they face criticism from their original party for selling out. I would ask: are you really sticking to your ideals if you are insisting on paths that will obviously and clearly never lead to getting any of those ideals enshrined in policy? At what point does an idealist act as contrary to their own ideals as they claim the “sellout” does, if they’re always creating their own insurmountable hurdles to getting their ideas injected into popular and influential discourse? 

If a party can’t figure out who your own voters are and where to focus your efforts, is that party indeed showing more ideological purity than those who choose differently, and actually get some change pushed through? What good is ideology if you can't win a lick of influence?

Other than squabbling, factionalism and general disorganization, there was some discussion of the GPT’s actual platforms, and to what extent other parties, activists and voters were even aware of them. One interviewee noted how challenging it was to clarify these positions: when you post a policy analysis and proposals on Facebook you get essentially zero attention. When you post an attack on a hated figure like Han Kuo-yu, the views, likes and comments come pouring in. Other parties seem to think the GPT only cares about the environment, and the GPT doesn’t seem to have done much to counter this except ask people to read their charter. 

I sympathize with this: as a blogger I know what it’s like to see something ultimately meaningless take off, when your favorite or most in-depth work doesn’t. However, every other party of moderate success has figured out this balance. The GPT could do this, if it could set goals, agree on them and work towards them as a cohesive and organized unit. What doesn’t work is telling people to do more work to learn these things. They won’t. It doesn’t matter if they should. They won’t. 

Another thing that jumped out at me while reading Taiwan’s Green Parties, which is an unqualified positive for the GPT: their willingness to engage globally. I don’t just mean their work with the Global Greens, but also intra-party. Robin Winkler is a naturalized Taiwanese citizen who seriously considered running for office more than once (I don’t think any other party has considered running a naturalized citizen, but correct me if I’m wrong). Linda Arrigo headed their international affairs department. While every party is willing to employ foreigners, the GPT seems a breed apart in not just welcoming people like Arrigo and Winkler, but not necessarily thinking of them as different or ‘apart’ simply because they’re not originally from Taiwan. 

All in all, however, Taiwan’s Green Parties is an excellent book — equal parts enjoyable reading and academically grounded — and well worth a read for anyone interested in obscure corners of Taiwanese politics, especially on the left. It's academic, but written engagingly. However, the ideal reader will already have a strong notion of Taiwanese party politics before they pick up this book, so as to properly contextualize the names, small parties and other affiliations that crop up. 

Recommended food pairing for Taiwan’s Green Parties: a pint at your local and lots of popcorn

The Chen Po-wei recall: a local victory for the KMT at the cost of national goodwill?

I don't have a relevant cover photo, so enjoy a pleasant one.

I'm tired and sad, but I have a few thoughts on the Chen Po-wei (陳柏惟) recall.  Also I was writing this during the big earthquake today so I'm both literally and figuratively all shaken up.

Update: Yep, I didn't think to check the predictive text on his name. Fixed now.

Since I'm just not feeling it today, I'll let someone else -- probably Frozen Garlic -- do the numbers properly. But, from a quick look, it seems that while turnout would have been enough to unseat Chen under the old recall system (it just about topped 50%, which was the old turnout threshold), the signatures needed to recall him would not have been sufficient in the first place. 

But the recall did happen, and he did lose his seat, and I have thoughts.

First, many note that the reformed recall procedures were actually a push from the left -- mostly post-Sunflower Movement activists after a failed attempt to recall the widely-hated legislator Tsai Cheng-yuan (蔡正元). Now, they seem to be used exclusively by the KMT to go after small-party Third Force types, as revenge for the DPP daring to back an ultimately successful recall of Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) from the Kaohsiung mayorship. 

Did the activists pushing for the relaxation of recall procedures know the opposition would use it against them, or did they unwittingly provide the weapon of their own defeat?

From everything I know, it's the former. The groups that pushed for recall reform are not made up of unintelligent people incapable of forethought. Of course they were aware that the KMT would use it against them. So either they thought the KMT's days as a popular party capable of successfully unseating opposition lawmakers were numbered if not over, or they believed so singularly and purely in the fundamental correctness of changing the regulations for the betterment of society that they were willing to face the future obstacles they put in their own way. 

Think Socrates and the hemlock -- the elementary-school history version of it, anyway. 

You can commend these activists for pushing through something they felt was inherently right for society, even knowing they were handing a weapon to the bad guys. I don't. Honestly, if we're not dealing with critical human rights such as freedom of expression, assembly, religion, non-discrimination etc., I just don't think changing the requirements of a recall threshold count is one of those vitally important things. 

Yes, the old thresholds (13% of eligible voter signatures to get a vote, over 50% turnout on that vote) were high, and yes, the Republic of China guarantees citizens the right to recall elections -- it was part of Sun Yat-sen's original philosophy and is enshrined in the constitution. Yes, reform would not have been a bad thing. But did the new ones really need to be so low? Frozen Garlic thinks not, and I agree. The pan-greens and left did not need to stake so much on those specific new rules. Certainly, there's nothing ethically or morally "better" about the current 10% of voters needed to sign a petition and 25% of voters needed to actually recall.

While the pan-blue forces -- and all their patronage networks/gangster friends/local factionistas -- have had a spotty record on actually recalling people, they've also been the only ones trying. Typically, they've targeted not DPP legislators but people from minor parties, succeeding about half them time. Huang Kuo-chang (NPP) and Huang Chieh (now former NPP) survived, Wang Hao-yu (Green Party until just before the recall, then switched to the DPP, which didn't save him) and now Chen did not.

They're going after independent legislator Freddy Lim (林昶佐) next: we'll see what happens.

On the other side, you could say that the pan-greens are trying to use the recall responsibly: they've only turned it on Han Kuo-yu. But Han had dug his own grave: I'm speculating here, but Han probably would have lost re-election on his own. Recalling him saved Kaohsiung from bad governance -- he was pretty clearly not doing his job -- and had a morale-boosting effect for the pan-greens. 

Now that the KMT is consistently using the same recall tools, however, the DPP and Third Force essentially can't. It would become an expensive, time-wasting, pointless game of dueling recalls, which won't foster any goodwill with any voters. 

I'm generally on the Third Force's side in most things. That said, I honestly think reforming the recall procedures as they did was a bad idea and was not worth the eventual cost. I don't care how strongly they believed in it. It wasn't a good call. You do the right thing against your own best interests when it's human rights on the line, when it really matters -- this amounted to shooting themselves in the foot over recall thresholds that could have been lower, but never needed to be that low for any reason pertaining to any greater good. 

There is hope, though. The KMT recalled a young, energetic, high-profile legislator from the left who, while friendly with the DPP, is not the DPP. They attacked him over ractopamine pork, but they're the same party that voted through ractopamine beef: it's just not a valid complaint from them. They said he wasn't doing his job, but unlike with Han, I see no evidence that was actually the case. And he's not only locally prominent, but nationally as the first elected legislator from a small, new, overtly pro-independence party. 

What does the KMT have to offer in Chen's place? More under-the-table politics, more geezers or sons-of-geezers, more gangster-affiliated factional crap in Taichung. More of the same. Nothing inspirational. 

Perhaps the KMT thought this would be a galvanizing moment for them, the way Han's recall was for the pan-greens. But I doubt it: whoever takes Chen's place is going to be a local factional pol, not a nationally-popular figure. They may gain one seat in the legislature, but I don't see this as particularly beneficial for them simply because they have nothing to offer but more of the same. This is unlikely to have much positive effect beyond the actual seat they just opened up.

That it was an obvious revenge recall and not based on any unfitness or incompetence on Chen's part, however, will likely galvanize the exact people they are seeking to demoralize -- the pan-greens. They're pissed. They know what this is and they're gonna fight harder because of it. 

The KMT tried to send the message that if you mess with them, they'll go after your most prominent figures, and sometimes succeed in taking them out. 

The message they actually sent was "we're shitheads and you can't trust us to use the tools of democracy responsibly." Not on a local scale, perhaps. Not in that particular district -- but nationally. 

Imagine a weird gun that, every time you take a shot at an opponent, whether you hit your target or not, also discharges a bullet into your foot. It doesn't take you out completely, but you injure yourself a little more every time you use it. Nobody would ever design such a weapon, but that's how I picture the current state of recalls in Taiwan.

I can only hope that by handing the KMT a potent weapon in recall reform, that the activists who pushed it through will ultimately benefit in an unlikely way: the KMT will use it so much, so viciously and so clearly without grounds or reason, that for every shot they fire at the pan-greens, whether they take someone out or not, they're also shooting themselves in the foot. 

Sexy Legislator Freddy Lim Is So Smart

Paper Ninja Stars (or: Fear, Foreboding and the Taiwanese Left)

The graphic that appeared by the names of some Taiwan Statebuilding Party candidates in the 2020 election on official ballots

First, an announcement: you’ll be seeing fewer (and shorter) posts from me between now and June. I am now officially shoulder-deep in dissertation writing and really must concentrate on that. I’ll update occasionally, but in the meantime I’ll be posting relevant content by others on the Lao Ren Cha Facebook page (yes, that is a thing which I never formally announced). 

Anyway, let me tell you a story. 

When I was in junior high, I was the target of a not-very-successful bully (everyone else hated him too; his bullying did not win him any popularity). He’d randomly trip me in the hall, push or whack me for no reason. Once, he ran into a classroom I was in, put some tape he’d pulled from a cassette around my neck and ran out holding both ends. One day, he made a paper ninja star and flung it at me just as a class we had together was about to start. It nearly hit me in the eye.

I lost it. I got up, slapped him hard across the face, picked him up by the neck - lots of adrenaline going - threw him into a row of desks, and then kicked him so he slammed further into those desks. I may have done more; I was a whirling dervish of rage and I truly don’t remember. 

My response was way out of proportion to his throwing a paper star at me. But honestly, considering everything else he’d done over the past two years, it had been a long time coming. I don’t condone violence and would not do this as an adult, but I’m also not sorry for beating the crap out of him as a teenager. 

So what? 

In the past few weeks, I wrote about my feelings on the common (though not universal) sentiment in Taiwan that the Chinese families of Taiwanese businessmen in China - Taishang - should not be evacuated to Taiwan in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, with some feeling they shouldn’t be able to come here at all. 

I’m not talking about those who pointed out the logistical issues or the question of priority. Those opinions are reasonable. I’m talking about those who expressed that the lives of those people were not Taiwan’s concern - despite their being family members of Taiwanese nationals.

I had been trying to start from kindness - that is, recognize that it’s important to treat even people you don’t like as human beings whose lives matter. I’ll be the first to admit I don’t care for the attitudes of Taishang generally. And, just as importantly, that it’s not right to dismiss children as ‘not our concern’ because you don’t like the decisions of their parents - decisions the children had no say in. 

After acknowledging that, talk of logistics becomes possible, and the same decision may have been made in the end because China has left Taiwan with so few options - but the process of the discourse matters. 

I stand by that view, but here’s what’s changed: I should have also started from kindness when considering Taiwanese public opinion. 

With a few exceptions of some extreme comments online that do not represent the norm, I highly doubt most people actually want to punish those children by refusing them evacuation because they dislike their parents. Most people are quite capable of realizing that those children did not choose to be Chinese nationals.

Rather, it was a howl of rage from Taiwanese who’ve chosen to stay and engage with their country, who are sick and tired of both China’s bullshit and Taishang opportunism and sellout behavior that actively harms Taiwan. Howls of rage are not always politically correct, but that does not render them unjustified. This one was a long time in coming, and I should have seen that immediately. 

In other ways, I’ve tried to be empathetic to these expressions of anger. While I appreciate the discussion of Sinophobia in Taiwanese discourse, generally I feel we should always - always - view statements that may seem aggressively nationalist or anti-China on their face in the context in which they are made. 

Taiwan has been treated like garbage by the Chinese government for so long - and individual Taiwanese have been insulted by a large number of Chinese citizens so regularly - that honestly, can you blame them for lashing out? Maybe give the victims in this game a break instead of (yet again) putting the burden of assuming a conciliatory tone on them. 

Especially when they already know that it’s logistically impossible to do much for those children and accompanying spouses, it becomes easy to vent one’s justified rage at Taishang who expect special treatment and whine and writhe with entitlement when they don’t get it. 

That said, my actual conclusions remain the same: a different active response is not logistically possible, but I still cannot condone a “those children aren’t Taiwanese so they are not our concern” attitude. Even when their parents often have an opportunistic, have-your-Chinese-money-but-get-Taiwanese-benefits-too attitude to Taiwan (to put it gently).

The difference is this: I’ve come to realize the public anger mostly did not stem from the question of the Taishang children specifically, just as my throwing that kid into a desk in junior high wasn’t really about a paper ninja star. 

And that’s just it: while remaining true to ethical convictions that do matter to me, I could have started from kindness when evaluating a facet of public opinion that bothered me deeply. Both were possible. 

So where did my original reaction come from? 

Fear, honestly.

I don’t think the ethical divide on this issue is really that great, if it’s there at all. But where I saw “people lashing out at foreigners...and I’m a foreigner!”, I suspect most people saw “we’ve been bullied for so long by China and people who sell out to China, and we’re sick of it!”

“Foreigners” as a general class was never really the point.

This fear also includes worries over the unstable life situations all immigrants face. I do wonder, for some people (though not all), at what point in a crisis I might be deemed “not Taiwanese enough” to receive the same assistance as everyone else, as a taxpayer and part of the system. 

I’ve had a few experiences in the past where expressing a political opinion that a Taiwanese local did not personally agree with caused that person to default to “well, you’re not Taiwanese” (implied: so you don’t matter). That a lot - if not most - locals might actually agree with my opinion didn’t seem to register. I’ve had people just assume that if Taiwan faced a true emergency I’d just leave, because theoretically I "can" (I wouldn’t - and there are real questions over whether I actually "can"). 

At what point does a reaction like that spill over into views on who should get access to what services?

But, overall, I doubt most people would think I should be denied, say, medical care in Taiwan during a pandemic. I pay for NHI just like everyone else, after all, and don’t try to game the system the way a lot of Taishang do. In any case, there’s an element of white privilege which would blunt such an effect. 

Remember, however, that the vast majority of foreigners in Taiwan are not white, they are Southeast Asian, and they have neither the privilege nor often the resources to weather a public opinion backlash against their access to health services in Taiwan.

Is it any wonder, then, that when I hear “Taiwanese citizens first!” that it puts me on edge, even though I know that’s not meant to include me?

But, there’s an even more complex fear: fear that the Taiwanese political left I generally support does not actually support people like me. 

As much as I hate them, I can’t deny that the immigration reforms the KMT passed under Ma Ying-jeou were genuinely helpful for foreigners and conveyed a more welcoming attitude (though, again, that was very much contingent on white and Han privilege - rules were relaxed for Chinese accompanying family, and foreign professionals like me, but nothing really improved for the blue-collar workers who make up the backbone of Taiwan’s foreign labor and community). 

I also don’t doubt that the Tsai administration is more or less on our side: they passed some pretty striking immigration reform themselves, though again they seemed to encode privilege into law, demarcating in even more detail which immigrants were ‘worthy’ and which were not (spoiler alert: I’m not). 

But those left of Tsai - think the NPP, back when they mattered? They were key voices in scrapping the proposed relaxation of rules on hiring foreign workers, such as the required salary floor and required previous work experience for professionals. (Their arguments did not make a lot of economic sense, either - they just ensured that people who wanted to move to Taiwan either could not do so, or got stuck teaching English when they really didn’t want to, which isn’t good for the profession.) I hear noises from them that immigration should be controlled to ‘protect Taiwanese jobs’ and no specific support from them on the ever-present dual nationality issue, despite their putting forward an ‘internationalized’ face more broadly. At the end of the day, a few (though not all) of them are still localists who may be friendly to ‘foreigners’, but will always consider immigrants in Taiwan to be just that - only foreigners, never ‘new’ members of a common community. That is, if they consider us at all. 

So, when newly-elected legislator Chen Bo-wei made the news saying that “foreigners” (外籍人士) should pay more for health insurance in Taiwan, surely it is understandable that it sounded as though he were referring to all foreigners. After all, the term he used is fairly broad: I might be considered 外籍人士! 

Several people asked his office for clarification, at which point it was explained that he specifically meant Chinese accompanying family, who are covered under a different category of National Health Insurance (foreign residents like me are covered like ordinary taxpayers as we work here), and whose 'residency requirements' were relaxed under Ma Ying-jeou. Simply put, Chen - a known localist - should have made himself clear from the beginning and not spoken so carelessly. 

In a world that made sense, I’d still disagree with Chen: Chinese are foreigners, just like me. Therefore, eligible Chinese nationals shouldn’t obtain NHI coverage under a special category, any more so than any other foreigner. Acknowledging that they’re not like other foreigners, if anything, implies that there is a special quasi-intranational relationship between Taiwan and China when I’d argue that there shouldn’t be. 

However, the world doesn’t make sense, and I don’t know that we’re at a point in international relations where adjusting the law in that direction would be feasible. 

In any case, surely one can see how a statement like Chen’s would raise concerns. The KMT is out of power and they’re awful (and Han supremacist) anyway - they might’ve passed some strong immigration reform, but to them Taiwan’s fate is ultimately Chinese, period. The DPP under Tsai is more internationally oriented than in the Hoklo chauvinist Chen years, when there was essentially no forward momentum on immigration policy. 

But, the Tsai administration is also slow and cautious. The Taiwanese left - those whom I’d otherwise tend to agree with - are not necessarily strong allies of the foreign community. This makes it hard to know quite who to support.

With all this in mind, is it any wonder that criticism of “non-Taiwanese” getting access to “Taiwanese” resources would cause worry in Taiwan’s foreign community? We’re not exactly sure who our allies are, though we know we have them.

And we're the most privileged foreigners (after perhaps overseas Chinese who have obtained ROC nationality). What about the most vulnerable?

But, there are times when something that looks on its face like an anti-foreigner backlash isn’t really that at all: it’s a reaction to years of being bullied (by China) and really has nothing to do with “foreigners”, or “children”. I can’t ever agree with the more extreme comments I saw (e.g. “bastard children of traitors and their mistresses”) and I still think that the child of a citizen deserves to be treated as more than just a foreigner regardless of their nationality. Context matters, however, and the anger I witnessed certainly has a a fraught one.