Book Review: Social Forces in the Re-making of Cross-Strait Relations (or, the KMT is worse than you ever thought possible)

 

This is a bit long, but I've fiddled with it for such a long time that I'm just going to publish it as-is.

Here's an excerpt from a conversation I had with Brendan recently:

Me: So I just finished this Routledge book, Social Forces in the Re-making of Cross-Strait Relations. 

Brendan: Gonna write a review?

Me: Obviously. This one was interesting because it took the evolution of social movements, mostly under Ma Ying-jeou, and analyzed them in a Gramscian framework. 

Brendan: Huh.

Me: Y'know, Gramsci, the guy American right-wingers think taught nursery school kids about critical race theory in the basement of a pizzeria, and that's why now there are transgender people.

Brendan: It was probably pretty hard for him to do that from a jail cell in Fascist Italy a hundred years ago. 

That's what happened while I was reading Social Forces in the Re-making of Cross-Strait Relations. As you might imagine, it starts out very academic: if you need a primer or refresher on Gramsci to better understand the theoretical framework, author André Beckershoff has you covered. If you don't, feel free to jump ahead to the Taiwanese history and analysis.

The SparkNotes paraphrase of Gramsci is that he's most famous for his dissection of cultural hegemony: the process by which a ruling (capitalist) class dominates the culture of a society, including diverse societies, to establish or maintain control of that society's norms, perceptions and expectations in order to legitimize their place at the top. It's not exactly Marxism in the traditional sense, but it is absolutely rooted in Marxist thought. Gramsci's hegemons are the same Boss Class that rule every capitalist society, who then disseminate pro-capital opinions until they become foundational to that society's ethos, thus supporting the continued existence of the Boss Class.

That is, accumulation is always good, we're at the top because we deserve to be there, what we want is what's best for society and therefore should also be what everyone else wants, and what's best for society is oh-so-conveniently exactly what keeps us in power.

Let me also lay out my personal stuff, so that you'll know where I'm coming from in this review.

This may be shocking for some, but I'm not a communist. At best, I'm quasi-anarcho-socialist, to the left of parties like the Democrats and the DPP, but able and willing to find common ground and compromise with many. When it comes to Taiwan, I believe in a pragmatic approach which sometimes necessitates dealing with the worst people on Earth, although I refuse to be a part of it.

I do not believe in a Leninist praxis in which a 'vanguard party' leads a revolution, because I don't like to be told what to do. Not by a billionaire pig, and not by some asshole who insists his dictatorship is 'of the proletariat' when it obviously isn't. In short: yes to mutual aid and community-building, no to sending people to the wall for thought crimes, and no to 'political tutelage', which is just another name for manufacturing consent. An opinion which, of course, would get me sent to the wall for thought crimes.

So I'm the sort of lefty that right-wingers think is turning everyone gay (that'd be awesome, yet is unfortunately untrue), but I'm not-quite-leftist enough such that the purists think I'm just another capitalist. I may not be a communist, but I'm mostly okay with Gramsci.


Gramsci in a Taiwan Context

As such, the theoretical framework of Beckershoff's book makes intuitive sense to me. In the context of Taiwanese history, the process by which the KMT came to Taiwan, set up systems that redirected capital accumulation toward themselves, and used education, "the rule of law" and the media among other tools to consolidate their wealth and power.

The KMT's hegemonic strategy differs, however, in that they didn't just use non-violent 'cultural' means. They also used violent ones: 228, Martial Law, the White Terror. No one serious denies these events happened, but it's telling that the excuse-mongers' only tactic to legitimize them is typically along the lines of "the ROC needed to cement their rule over Taiwan". 

But of course, that begs the question: it assumes the permanent KMT/ROC governance of Taiwan is fundamentally legitimate, and therefore that end justified both violent and non-violent means. That legitimacy is usually tied back to non-binding declarations made by the leaders of other countries, not any sort of political will or choice of the Taiwanese people. Thus, I'd argue, there is no inherent legitimacy to the ROC on Taiwan, so excuses for its actions not meaningful arguments, they're thought-terminating cliches.

That's a slight digression, but these sorts of thought processes are fundamental to the book. It spends some time discussing KMT strategy during the Chen Shui-bian administration, but the greatest focus is on the interplay between the Ma administration that succeeded Chen's, and the social movements that sought to cripple his agenda and mostly (though not entirely) failed, until they succeeded. The Wild Strawberries, Anti-Media Monopoly Movement, various anti-land-expropriation movements and, of course, the Sunflower Movement. The end of the book is where this interplay (I suppose you could call it a dialectic?) comes out most strongly, although the activists of the 2010s were not the first to oppose both pro-China and pro-capital cultural hegemony. 

One excellent reason to read Social Forces in the Remaking of Cross-Strait Relations, therefore, is to consider an analysis of Taiwanese identity and its evolution through a fundamentally leftist lens. It's refreshing to read, as a counterpoint to all the conservative slugs who support (and claim to care about) Taiwan only because it stands in opposition to CCP-ruled China. It's not a simplistic nationalist or anti-communist argument: it looks at the struggle of social movements to define themselves and their country despite unrelenting attempts to undermine the existence of a Taiwanese identity by those with the most money and power.

The intended through-line, made clear right from the introduction, is that the driving force behind the narrative of capitalism being fundamental to Taiwan's identity and that Taiwan and China are (therefore) inextricably linked, is an invention of the bourgeoisie for their own benefit.

This may sound odd, as China claims to be communist, not capitalist, but the point is what benefits capital (that is, what's good for the wealthy) has been sold to Taiwanese society as something natural, inevitable, and decided by society despite having been created instead by the wealthy. The narrative that benefits the wealthy is the pro-trade, pro-China one. It doesn't really matter that the government on the other side claims to adhere to the principles of socialism. It matters that the people who push the narrative make money.


Capital and Politics, or, the KMT sucks

The party most complicit in this is KMT, both under Ma Ying-jeou specifically and in history more generally, positioning unification and Taiwan as culturally and historically Chinese as inevitable, a given. They do this through capital, that is, economic control. Early on, the KMT took control of just about all means of capital accumulation. Of course they did: they wanted all the money as well as all the power.

The importance of capital accumulation was placed alongside this positioning of Chinese cultural and political identity as foundational to the existence of Taiwan -- well, the ROC. Under Ma Ying-jeou, this strategy expanded to include CCP cooperation in manufacturing this narrative and public consent for it.

While they've pretty clearly lost the battle for identity, with most Taiwanese no longer buying into the Chinese nationalist worldview, the same can't be said for the capitalist ethos that's still seen as fundamental to Taiwan's (well, again, the ROC's) identity, if it's questioned at all. This manifests in the admiration society tends to have for wealthy businesspeople and the ineffectual pushback against long hours and low wages (or even defending mistreatment of workers as necessary for the country's economic success). There's also nostalgia for the 'Taiwan Miracle' era despite its political challenges, and most concerning of all, the belief that only increased cooperation with China will ensure Taiwan's economic future. 

This latter narrative has faced some society-wide interrogation in recent years, especially as it's become apparent how strongly Taiwan's business elite, along with the KMT and CCP in tandem, have pushed it as necessary, while condemning opposition to economic integration as foolish or short-sighted.

Beckershoff dives into all of this history in detail, which led me to a conclusion that I'm not entirely sure was intended: however bad readers of Taiwanese history might think the KMT is, the more you learn, the more you realize it's actually worse than whatever you'd previously thought. History never offers the KMT image rehabilitation -- it only makes it look more awful than it already did. 

Upon fleeing to Taiwan, the KMT first sought to consolidate economic control. They did this by stacking state-run enterprises with their own, and giving preferential treatment to large private enterprises, which tended to be run by KMT loyalists. Smaller enterprises, which were more likely to be headed by potentially disloyal local Taiwanese, were forced into the export sector. 

Land reform did increase the average income of farming households and limited land as a means of social mobility, but many farmers were unhappy with the government deals through which they acquired land to farm. The KMT then set up Farmers Associations which, under a Gramscian analysis, were used as tools to manufacture passive consent for reforms, and as a means of government control of the agricultural sector. They did this with mandatory membership in many such trade associations -- not so professionals in a trade could protect their own interests, but as a means of maintaining loyalty to the KMT.

Despite some benefits from land reform, that's all pretty bad. However, most of us knew these things already. If you didn't, welcome to the KMT Hater Train. I'll be your conductor -- Chugga Chugga Choo Choo, motherfuckers. 

But wait! There's more! Did you know that during this time, the KMT siphoned off about 50% of all rice production through the use of rice-as-payment for all manner of things, including strategically overpriced fertilizer? I hadn't, but now I do!

Did you know that compensation for expropriated land in the form of stocks and bonds was intentionally spread widely enough to ensure none became major shareholders, thus mitigating the economic power of potential dissenters? Again, I hadn't. But now I do. 

Oh, and did you know that most of that sweet, sweet US aid money (pre-1965) was granted by the KMT dictatorship to KMT loyalists, so that 'waishengren' mostly benefited, all while retaining the right to ban the formation of new companies to protect the interests of existing (waishengren-owned) ones? I could have guessed this, but I hadn't been aware of the details. 

However bad you thought the KMT was, it's actually worse.

I only have one small quibble with this section of the book: while most references to concepts such as "re-taking the Mainland" are properly contextualized in the book, on page 45 there's an unqualified reference to "retrocession". But, of course, this too is a manufactured concept. What is retrocession, exactly, when the ROC hadn't existed when Japan took Taiwan? The primary government on Taiwan between the Qing and the Japanese was the short-lived and beleaguered Republic of Taiwan, and the Qing had, for the most part, treated Taiwan as a colony, Until the last dozen years or so, they didn't bother to map, let alone govern, more than a third of the island. 

So what is 'retrocession'?

It's nonsense, that's what. 

There's more, and Beckershoff goes into detail about the role of capital in Taiwan's eventual transformation from the KMT's vision of a 'model Chinese province' from which to 're-take the Mainland' (barf) to a more liberal economic policy, but I want to jump ahead. 


The KMT is worse than you thought -- but the DPP kinda sucks too

By the mid-2000s, the KMT was already in full traitor mode, although not many people realized it at the time. I wrote about this a few posts ago, quoted below: 

Beckershoff lays out a devastating case for China's intentional smearing of DPP presidents as "the problem", making it seem as though they aren't open to or capable of initiating or engaging in any discussions, let alone peace talks or mutually agreeable rapprochement. 

In fact, the CCP was able to sidestep DPP presidents, making them seem like bigger 'troublemakers' than they have been, by engaging instead with the KMT directly, as though they were the ruling party even when they weren't. Beckershoff says of the Chen years: 

The DPP's limited success, however, was not for lack of initiative: after first overtures beginning with Chen's election in 2000, the government proposed negotiations on a variety of technical issues from 2004 onwards, but as the party-to-party platform between the KMT and CCP emerged in the same time frame, the Chinese government could afford to stall, decline or even ignore the overtures of the Taiwanese government. 

One specific example of this was undermining the Chen administration vis-à-vis tourism: 

The TSTA [Taiwan's Taiwan Strait Tourism Association] and the CTEA [China's Cross-Strait Tourism Exchange Foundation] held a third and fourth round of tourism talks in January 2007, and a fifth round in March. With both organizations having "reached consensus in many aspects", [Joseph] Wu was adamant that negotiations were "entering the final stages", a statement reaffirmed by his successor Chen Ming-tong on 27 April. 

The next day, however, the 3rd KMT-CCP Forum opened in Beijing to discuss the topics of direct flights and cross-Strait tourism. The composition of the delegation reflected the issues on the agenda: in addition to the usual party and business representatives, it comprised delegates from four Taiwanese airlines, several hotel groups as well as a number of associations from the tourism and travel sectors. Three of the forum's six recommendations dealt with issues of cross-Strait links....while the fifth recommendation endorsed the swift realization of a cross-Strait tourism agreement. The unilateral measures announced at the forum facilitated travel for Taiwanese citizens by allowing further cities to issue landing visas, and Taiwanese airlines were permitted to set up offices in China while also benefiting from measures designed to promote cooperation with Chinese airlines...

So, essentially, undercutting the work the elected government had already been doing by taking it up through a backchannel -- something that, if Wu and Chen were to be believed, was wholly unnecessary.

At the closing ceremony, Shao Qiwei, director of China's National Tourism Administration, contrasted the pragmatic and productive negotiations with the Taiwanese opposition parties through the KMT-CCP channel with the disruptive attitude of the Taiwanese government. He stated that the five rounds of negotiations between the TSTA and CTEA had reached a consensus on a large number of tourism related issues, and blamed the stalling of negotiations on the Taiwanese government's unwillingness to recognize cross-Strait tourism as domestic travel.

What 'disruptive attitude'? Not referring to Taiwan as part of the PRC? They patiently engaged in multiple rounds of communications and reached several agreements. How is a statement of fact "disruptive"? "Disruptive" is what you call someone when you know they're right, but you want to discredit them anyway.

The KMT was happy to sell Taiwan out in this regard, however, allowing the CCP to simply ignore the Taiwanese government, even when negotiations were going reasonably well. 

Then, of course, they turned around and campaigned in 2008 on the idea that only the KMT can talk to China, whereas the DPP is hostile or simply inept. But the DPP only failed to negotiate agreements on flights and tourism because the KMT cooperated with the CCP to undermine them.

I had not known these details, though I could have inferred much of it. Learning exactly how it all went down, especially as I was here to watch Ma Ying-jeou campaign on his ability to handle this specific issue, just makes me hate the KMT more. 

Again, however bad you thought the KMT were, they're worse. 

Certainly the KMT could not have done all this without the buy-in of big business -- that's one of the main points of the book, and Beckershoff catalogues in detail the ways that large corporations, or business associations comprised of their heads, worked hand-in-hand with both parties to promote the narrative in society that increased cooperation with China was not only good for Taiwan's economy, it was necessary. Yes, even the DPP, even during the Chen administration, although the KMT continues to successfully convince large sections of the electorate that this isn't the case. 

Neither party has interrogated the assumption that increased trade and other forms of cooperation with China benefits all of Taiwanese society, even when the push for such cooperation comes at the behest of the wealthy, for their own benefit. As a result, much of society hasn't questioned it either.

Do those benefits trickle down? I'm not sure, but they didn't seem to under Ma Ying-jeou. Mostly, it meant that Taiwanese had to look to China for well-paid jobs, while Taiwan itself began hollowing out for all but the ultra-wealthy. 

Following this, negotiations with China were described as economic in nature only, not political. Both parties underwrote this to some extent. The DPP was not innocent in it:

Chen, now under considerable pressure from Taiwan's bourgeoisie, convened the Economic Development Advisory Council (EDAC). This body was established to formulate a national consensus on Taiwan's economic development, with a particular emphasis on the issue of cross-Strait relations. The composition of EDAC suggests that it was not so much an open debate, but rather a vehicle to universalize the interests of Taiwan's bourgeoisie by giving hte appearance of general consensus.

There's a fair amount of detail about this in the book, focused mostly on the construction and packaging of the pro-capitalist narrative, but I'll save something for you to read.

Of course, the KMT were lying about cooperation being economic and technocratic only:

[Vincent] Siew developed the abstract framework of "economics first, politics later" into a set of concrete initiatives....the mutual trust engendered by this process wouuld also entail the potential for positive integration, a "step by step integration of politics", and thus pave the way for a "sharing of sovereignty" in the long term.

Siew said this in 2001, almost a decade before the KMT was elected on the artificially-constructed belief that they'd do a better job negotiating with China while safeguarding Taiwan's sovereignty, and people still voted for them. I don't really blame the voters for choosing Ma: Frank Hsieh was not a strong candidate, and Chen Shui-bian's corruption scandals had damaged the DPP a great deal. It's not a surprise that the KMT won in 2008.

Regardless, the DPP were not innocent in this, underscoring the ultimate big bad in Beckershoff's analysis isn't the parties per se: 

After assuming office, Chen demonstrated his willingness to reach out to China, not only suggesting that cross-Strait negotiations should take place in the pragmatic '1992 spirit' that had characterized the first meeting between the SEF [Straits Exchange Foundation] and ARATS [Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait], but even stating that unification would not be excluded as a potential outcome of these negotiations if the Taiwanese people supported it...

Me: "!!!"

It's not that the DPP has changed their rhetoric much since then. It's that I never expected Chen Shui-bian of all people to have said such a thing, which demonstrates just how deep the pre-packaged "KMT Say Right Things To China, DPP Bad At China" is buried in our understanding of Taiwan.

The KMT-CCP Forums were not just a vehicle for undermining the DPP's negotiations with China, they were also part of a concerted effort to promote Chinese culture as a binding agent between Taiwan and China, with associated exchanges, festivals, beneficial business regulations and more. This turn toward promoting a 'shared culture' continued well into the Ma administration:

During this latent phase, the site of struggle shifted towards the realm of culture. A first pebble that would signal the oncoming avalanche was loosened in September 2010 when the acting governor of Shaanxi province led a business delegation consisting of 500 members to Taiwan....First, we can observe a new emphasis on the cultural dimension of cross-Strait relations. In addition to meeting with Taiwan's political and capitalist elites, the delegation also visited universities and schools and attended cultural events that addressed the historical links between Shaanxi and Taiwan.

Me: What historical links?

Second, the visit was accompanied by extensive and favorable coverage in several of Taiwan's major daily newspapers, including a three-page special report n the China Times. As it would later turn out, official Chinese agencies had paid for these reports, which were disguised as news coverage rather than being marked as advertisements. 

Me: That's still a problem.

The rest of the book goes into detail on the social movements that began to contest this pro-China, pro-capitalist narrative under Ma Ying-jeou, covering much of the same ground as an earlier aptly-titled Routledge title, Taiwan's Social Movements Under Ma Ying-jeou, which I read before I began reviewing books. 


And now, the social movements

This is where the first Ma-era bubbles of true contestation of the pro-capitalist, pro-China narrative begin to surface, although Taiwan has of course always had leftists who were not necessarily communists or pro-CCP.

What would soon come to be known as the Wild Strawberry Movement provided a first challenge to the KMT's attempt to portray the negotiations across the Taiwan Strait as a mere technocratic project, the aim for which was to normalize trade relations without jeopardizing Taiwan's political status as a de facto independent country.

I do have an issue with this section of the book, in that it portrays the Wild Strawberries, the Anti-Media Monopoly Movement and the Sunflowers as three different sets of activists, with three different outcomes, the Wild Strawberries appearing the least successful and the Sunflowers the most.

This is not quite true. Many of the college and grad students who would go on to become Sunflowers who helped change Taiwan's political trajectory, had been Wild Strawberries first, and Anti-Media Monopoly activists after that. While some came and went (either joining the movement or getting tired of it, for whatever reason), for the most part a similar cross-pollinated cohort members of civic, political and student associations kept losing until they won. 

Not all of these groups were ideologically on the left, but many were. This leads to an interesting discussion in the book about what the activists themselves wanted their movement to accomplish:

Participating in the struggle against urban renewal in cases such as Wenlin Yuan, Huaguang, Shida and Shaoxing contributed to the conviction that activists were facing a deeper structural problem, exposing the need for more systematic analysis centred around the common denominator of neoliberal developmentalism. 

These movements went through a series of internal discussions, if not outright conflicts, over their long-term goals. Should they lean more toward nationalism (support for Taiwan independence) or radicalism (anti-capitalism)? 

Some activists argued that radicalism and nationalism go hand-in-hand. I tend to agree with this. Both are arguably anti-cultural hegemony, when that cultural hegemony is one of enforced Chinese identity. That said, one is indeed more radical and rooted in systemic change than the other. Arguably, Taiwan would be able to exist as a de jure country as it is now: the name would change, with the worship of wealth accumulation remaining the same. 

And I say that, again, as someone who isn't a communist; my leftist ethos tend more toward anarchy. 

Just so we're clear, however, the KMT is still the big suck here. Remember Huaguang? It was a major site of activism in those years. I thought it was bad enough that the government wanted to tear it down to free up land for the construction-developmentalist state, especially as the people living on that land were not offered compensation. 

It was actually worse than that, though: 

As the occupants of the area had constructed their houses on land owned by the Ministry of Justice, they were categorized as "illegal occupants" in 2006. This meant that the mostly elderly residents wer not entitled to rehousing or compensation and usually were asked to demolish their own houses and pay compensation for having conducted "illegal" business. 

Yeah, systemic indeed. Even if you think neoliberalism is great, free trade is the best thing ever, and negotiating with China can only ever be good, you have to admit this was a pretty filthy move on the part of the Ma administration. Most if not all of the Huaguang residents built their homes on that land because the government couldn't house all the KMT veterans and other refugees. The government tolerated these ramshackle developments, until they didn't feel like it anymore. 

That's gross, and it should make you feel gross. 

Here's another one: 

An insightful example is the case of workers who were laid off when factories, mostly in the textile sector, were relocated to China or Southeast Asia throughout the 1990s and 2000s. In many cases, the employers left owing severance and pension payments ot their former employees. These payments were first covered by the Taiwanese government, whcih lader changed its position and sued the workers for "unpaid loans".

This happened in 2012, so it was an anti-labor action by the Ma administration. Who even does this? It reads like a Reddit AITA about someone's parents sitting them down on their 16th birthday to insist they pay back all the money their parents "loaned" them in having raised them. 

However bad you think the KMT is, it's actually worse. 


Conclusion

I doubt the intended conclusion of Social Forces in the Re-making of Cross-Strait Relations was that the KMT is worse than most people think it is, even the ones who already know it's terrible. To be fair, the book makes a fair case that the bigger bad here is capital: wealthy elites deciding what narratives they want society to buy, and then disseminating them through political systems designed to keep them on top. In that way, every other party, including the DPP, is just as much a tool (or minion) of big business. 

However, I simply couldn't avoid that conclusion, even if I hadn't already been predisposed to it. The system set up to ensure the flow of capital to the already-wealthy? That was the KMT, though they were in many ways copying the Japanese colonial government before them. The patron-client networks that both parties engage in, through which these narratives of Taiwan-as-China and bourgeoisie-are-good are instilled in society? Set up by the KMT. The trade and business associations that push the government into pro-capital, and therefore pro-China. This makes them pro-Chinese identity and pro-moving toward unification, not because many people actually want these things, but because China insists on them as the cost of doing business, and the elite are more interested in making money than defending Taiwan's sovereignty.

That's the real point of Beckershoff's book, but I truly must reiterate just one more time: however bad you thought the KMT was, it's actually worse than that.

Go see Invisible Nation in Taiwan this week

I'd been hearing about Invisible Nation (看不見的國家) since it came out in 2023, but been unable to see it as it hadn't been released in Taiwan. Then it got a widespread (if short) theatrical release in Taiwan, in a run which ends tomorrow as of writing, though this may be extended if it does well.

Update: I've heard from a few sources that its successful run in Taiwan has ensured that it will stay in theaters longer, so you have more time to see it. I don't know how long, so this weekend is probably the best option.

I saw it with friends and all I can say is: go. It's worth your time. 

This documentary film broadly covering former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文)'s two terms as president, from 2016-2020, interspersed with contextualizing background. It's engaging throughout, avoiding the issues many documentaries have with getting all the information the creators want to include while keeping a tight pace and clear, coherent focus.

                    

While not a hagiography, the film does tend to look positively on Tsai's presidential tenure. To me, an ardent supporter of Taiwan independence and general admirer of President Tsai, I'd simply call it the truth. As Jon Stewart once famously said, though I paraphrase: the truth leans liberal. In this case, the truth leans toward Tsai Ing-wen having been one of the best presidents Taiwan has ever had, vying for the top spot with only Mr. Democracy himself, Lee Teng-hui. 

Tsai also led Taiwan through a fascinating era of Taiwan's political history. Eight years of an elected KMT president -- the only one since Lee, who by the end was seen as a turncoat or ideological traitor by his own party -- showed Taiwan exactly what it looked like to be governed by a pro-China party, although not everyone had realized yet that Ma wasn't just pro-China, he was (quietly, at the time) pro-unification as well.

What do you do with a country that's just been through a major social movement that turned its president into a lame duck well before his natural obsolescence, but whose biggest and arguably only enemy had invested in quite a lot to get their desired annexationist outcome? Invisible Nation seeks to answer this question, or at least provide the information viewers need to ruminate on it for themselves. 

All of the highlights are covered: the Sunflower Movement that helped usher in a new era of leadership, the fight for marriage equality (though this was handled far too quickly in my opinion; getting it passed was harrowing), dealing with China's threats, Han Kuo-yu's nonsense, the influence of the Hong Kong crackdowns, the pandemic response. 

The interviews with everyone other than Tsai come fast and quick-cut, but each is fascinating in their own right. Some are in Mandarin, some in English, but all are subtitled in both languages. Interviewees included diplomats, journalists, DPP and KMT politicians, analysts and academics. These include DPP political figures Enoch Wu, Audrey Tang, former foreign minister Joseph Wu and now-Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim, politician and black metal star Freddy Lim, former AIT director William Stanton, NCCU visiting professor Michelle Kuo, journalist Chris Horton and more. Having met some of them personally, it's a solid line-up. There are no weak links; everyone's contribution is valuable and on-point. 

Former president Ma Ying-jeou gives an interview as well, and KMT member Jason Hsu also gave the filmmakers some of his time. Nobody can say that the director Vanessa Hope and her team ignored Tsai's political opposition.

In this, Invisible Nation does gather voices from all sides, including widely-available remarks from Chinese leaders: ominous music tends to introduce these, but Xi Jinping does get his say. It's presented as-is -- that is, threatening and awful. The film doesn't say this exactly, but there's no other takeaway. The man is a monster. 

For people who already know Taiwan, there won't be many surprises in Invisible Nation, from the graceful introduction of the past few centuries of Taiwanese history to discussions of historical events. It's still worth your time, though, for the old footage from those eras, some of which I had never seen (childhood pictures of Freddy Lim anyone?) and some of which brought a genuine tear to the eye, such as Chen Chu ruminating on her time as a political prisoner. The film follows her to the Jingmei Human Rights Museum, where she finds what she believes is her old cell, and tells us why it's padded while showing us what all those democracy activists sacrificed during Taiwan's so-called "bloodless" revolution. 

It's only called that because there was no coup, no compact period of slaughter as there had been on 228. Don't let the term fool you, though: people absolutely did die so that Taiwan could not only have democracy, but have the sort of democracy that would elect a woman like Tsai. 

There are also bits of footage I didn't know existed or had perhaps blocked from memory, including Bill Clinton calling Taiwan Chinese (screw you, Bill), Henry Kissinger being the thank-god-he's-dead authoritarian bootlicker he always was, and Jimmy Carter announcing the switch in diplomatic recognition. What happened at the UN around that time was also fascinating, because the UN's exact words upon kicking out Taiwan have been either ignored or willfully misinterpreted in the decades since.

If you want loved ones who don't have that grounding in Taiwanese history to understand what this country went through between the Sunflower Movement and the pandemic, or just to understand the history of Taiwan a bit better, this is a solid recommendation. It doesn't exactly replace a history book, but it can review the basics and fill viewers in on what's happened since the classics like Forbidden Nation and A New Illustrated History of Taiwan were published.

It's also a good film for long-termers in Taiwan to show people who haven't visited what it's been like, politically, to have lived here through these events. It can be streamed, but I'm not entirely sure how. 

If I have any quibbles with the film, it's that it perhaps made the KMT look better than they are. It didn't paint Ma Ying-jeou as the bootlicker unificationist he is. It didn't show the full insanity of Han Kuo-yu. It was very, very kind to the opposition -- perhaps, in the name of seeming fair, too nice. This is a party that still wants to push towards a unificationist future that Taiwanese do not want.

Intense Chinese military build-up and grayzone tactics (such as the fake-news barrage that Taiwan has been under since disinformation on such a scale was possible) were also not given the time I felt they deserved. But, of course, in an hour and a half, you can't include everything.

It touched on Taiwanese considering themselves Taiwanese, but didn't back it up with numbers: there's long-term polling proof that Taiwanese don't generally identify as Chinese, and I'd have liked to have seen that mentioned. It did, however, showcase the clear line from former President Tsai that Taiwan doesn't need to declare independence, because it's already independent. 

For me, one of the most interesting lines in Invisible Nation came toward the end. I don't remember who said it, but to paraphrase, they noted that in the past, China has said they'd use force against Taiwan if it moved towards declaring independence. Now, however, they've changed their rhetoric to say that they'll use force against Taiwan if it doesn't actively move toward unification. 

That should send chills down your spine. As the film reminds us, nobody thought Putin would invade Ukraine because it wasn't in his interest. And it indeed wasn't, but he didn't know that because he's a dictator. 

Invisible Nation ends its run on June 19th, though there's a possibility it may stay in theaters if it does well. The show we went to, on a random Tuesday night, was pretty full, so I hope this happens. 

The Parable of the Night Heron

Sometime around 1916, my great-great grandfather converted to Islam. 

Five generations later, nobody in the family knew about it. It wasn't some diaphanous secret, whispered in the old language that none of the kids spoke, banished over the years to successive coffins. It was considered so trivial a thing that it was unworthy of secrecy; it wasn't discussed at all. 

Stories don't die if somebody, in some language, tells them. In a twisted form perhaps, I would have heard about it. Or something like it. Instead I had to learn it from an old xerox of typed yellow pages, scanned and uploaded to the Zoryan Institute website. So I suppose stories don't ever necessarily die. The possibility of resurrection is eternal. 

Movses, a canny businessman from a family made rich by silkworms, sat in some filthy Turkish government outpost in Hamah and was handed a choice: your  family becomes Muslim, or they're deported further south to Jerusalem. He and his wife were in their mid-fifties and might not have survived the trip. His youngest childen were growing weaker. His young cousins, named after the fox, had already lost their mother, grandparents and sister to typhus in the death camps, their father presumed dead after being dragged off to some labor brigade (he was). 

He truly believed in the Christian faith, and he had scruples of sort. He might have refused the officials and taken his family's chances on the death march. But he was also rich, and that gave him a third choice: he converted, and then bribed the official to lose the paper. 

I don't really care about religion, so a lie like that means nothing to me -- one god is as fake as another as far as I'm concerned -- but it would have meant the world to him. 

At least one other wealthy family took Muslim names because they thought it would help them in business. The town pastor refused the "offer", was sent to Jerusalem, and survived. As far as I know, Movses took no names and may not have told any family members. If he did, they never spoke of it. For his trouble, he'd lose his youngest son anyway. 

I only learned of it because those two fox cousins survived and one of them told the story to the Zoryan Institute. 

In that moment, Movses was told to either lie for the possibility of saving his wife and children, or insist on truth and likely condemn them. Being a business type, I don't think he ever considered asking the Turkish official to make a more ethical choice. Why, after all, would the official do so?

So what? Well, a few days ago, a friend posted about an old story, a parable about a bird and a wise man. I think it might have been Biblical; it's certainly religion-scented. He has faith, I don't, but that's cool. 

He wrote about how he told this story to his children: a man holds a small bird in his hands and approaches a wise man. To trick the sage, he intends to ask if the bird is alive or dead. The bird is moving and singing; it is clearly alive. If they wise man says so, the trickster will kill the bird. If he says it's dead, however, he'll set it free.

In the story, the sage tells the man "the bird is in your hands." The man asks again if said bird is alive or dead. "The answer is in your hands," the sage replies.

We're supposed to learn from this that our fate is in our own hands, so we should make good choices. His daughter, however, answered that she'd say the bird was dead. Why? Because, she explained, the objective isn't to be right, it's to save the bird. The power -- the ability to make a choice -- remains with the wise man until he decides to abrogate it and ask the trickster to make good choices. 

This is the sort of online story that some would insist never happened, along the lines of three-year-olds who spout implausible wisdom. Like the mom who claimed her kid said "everyone dies, but not words." I know them, though, and I think it did happen. Honestly, I don't care if it didn't. It's not the point. 

So, okay, the objective isn't to be right, it's to save the bird. And that's within the wise man's power until he relinquishes it, unless the trickster grows impatient and kills the bird out of boredom, misplaced rage, or a need to assert dominance. The man with the bird is clearly a bad person. Can we even trust him to release the bird if we lie? 

Movses chose to lie, and his youngest son died of typhus in a death camp in Hamah.

For the longest time, I struggled to reconcile another, modern-day lie with the world I know: that so many people who so clearly support a free and sovereign Taiwan won't take the next logical step and call it a country. In Taiwan, they won't amend the constitution, they won't change the "Republic of China" name. It's a lie, and it can read as undermining the cause.

Though it's debatable whether China has Taiwan in its hands, the sheer scale of military buildup over the past few years is an argument that they do, or that it's their goal. 

Insist that Taiwan is sovereign and has never been part of the 'China' that everyone understands to be China, change the name, change the constitution, be right or die trying -- and maybe you get a war. 

Tell the Chinese government that the bird's fate is in their hands, and you've condemned yourself anyway. You can't trust someone to make good choices as they try to trick the world into either lying, or destroying Taiwan. They're already not making good choices, and they have no motivation to be better people.  You may as well condemn Taiwan to die.

Put off the answer, implying that maybe, just maybe, the lie is acceptable -- the Republic of China isn't the dead name of an ideology and national concept that's little more than a coma patient on life support -- and you might not save the bird, but you retain some of the power and some chance that perhaps it will fly off to some uncapturable state. 

Let's play Bad Pastor -- no, not like that, gross dude -- I mean like clunky metaphors and a bored congregation. Let's make the metaphor plain: 

The US is the self-righteous sage who thinks telling a trickster to make good choices might actually cause them to rethink their path and consider peace. It doesn't even matter who's in power, from Obama to President Rapist to Biden to President Rapist again for some goddamn reason. Not taking a position, committing only to a peaceful resolution of tensions between villain and bird, is telling the bird to watch its neck and not a lot more.

China, the bad guy, desperately wants someone to speak the truth. Saying aloud that the Republic of China is a lifeless shell with no future, but Taiwan is a sovereign and vibrant nation that is culturally and politically distinct from China gives them an excuse to try and kill it. 

The KMT is trying to outright lie -- to say Taiwan is dead so that the ROC may live on as "part of China." Now that they're mostly run by bought-and-paid-for unificationists and overt CCP agents and traitors, they mean that literally as part of the People's Republic. 

But tricksters can't be trusted; this will still be the death of Taiwan. 

The rest of us are just trying to figure out exactly how much we can grease the system. Imply a lie without stating it outright. Keep a dead name, a government system and constitution that's got some ridiculous bits, and our lives for as long as we can. Placate the trickster until we can find a way out.

The objective, after all, is not to be right. It's to save the bird. 

Perhaps it's not exactly the same as converting to a religion you don't believe in but rather than live a lie, bribe someone to lose a paper. It's not incomparable, though. 

It might not work. China might grow irritable or scared enough at any moment and use Taiwan's willingness to imply a lie without confirming it as an excuse to crush its neck. 

But between certain death, another kind of certain death, and asking bad people to be better than they are, it's just about the only path left. 

Taiwan has something going for it, though: China doesn't seem to know what kind of bird it's threatening. It sees Taiwan as a little sparrow, easily captured and held, its bones easily snapped. 

I think Taiwan is a Malayan night heron: hefty in history and culture and uniqueness, strong of bone, with a long, sharp beak and unwavering eyes. (Seriously, those birds will stare you down. They judge you. I swear night herons can see your soul.) They look like they can't fly, but they can. 

I've never heard of a night heron messing up an attacker. They mostly seem to like to hang around and eat tasty things. But it doesn't look easy to kill one with your bare hands. As though if provoked, it would go straight for the face. 

This year's Double Ten design is U-G-L-Y and it ain't got no alibi

 

No, not this. This is actually pretty cool -- it came from here -- and I'm in favor. No, no, the 2024 National Day logo looks exactly like a design for the Republic of China, not Taiwan. It's also an aesthetic monstrosity:

IT UGLY.

If you immediately clocked this as a KMT "Chinese identity" throwback, you're absolutely right. Although I did not actively know that the design committee is organized by the Legislative Yuan and chaired by the speaker, I subconsciously inferred it from this absolute blight on the eyeballs. The legislature is currently controlled by the KMT, so even though the DPP is the "ruling party", this looks like something your crotchety grandpa who shouts that you call yourself Taiwanese because "those 太綠班 brainwashed you kids" would wear on a t-shirt he got for free and wore for the next 17 years.

Maybe it's the subliminal messaging from the giant "H" in the center, that some have already compared to the old Han Kuo-yu bomber jackets. 

Maybe it's the return to the ROC-flag inspired blue and red, or the plum blossom that just doesn't seem to be sitting quite right in the center: I can't quite pinpoint why it looks wrong, but I'll offer a few thoughts on that below. Maybe it's the failure to mention Taiwan in Mandarin, referring to it only in English. 

Just kidding -- it's all of these things. And yes, there's been an obvious design shift based on who runs the committee: 

From here

Seriously, it screams "a government committee designed this", which is exactly what happened. As a commenter below pointed out, it's got big Iron Cross energy, though that's probably unintentional. It's giving "we got super fucked up and watched old Practical Audi-Visual Chinese videos all night". It's giving "Taipei is the capital of Chinese Taipei". It's giving "I fed an AI a steady diet of TVBS for six months and then asked it to design a logo."

Actually, while I didn't feed an AI months of TVBS (not even AI deserves that), I did ask it to generate some designs based on the typical parameters for these logos. Perhaps my prompt engineering could be improved as it kept defaulting to circles, not double tens, but here are a few that made me chortle:

AI seems to show a similar level of commitment to the CCP as the KMT does, but remember, AI isn't sentient. Anyway, I think that thicc-bottomed sun in the bottom left is actually a better logo than the one the government actually unveiled. 

As with the KMT, the AI generator likes big suns and it cannot lie:

Also a fan of the retro zero: 

Artificial intelligence creates even simple characters like 十 about as well as a tattoo artist on one of the seedier Jersey Shore boardwalks who misread the dose on his edible. And yet, it still understands the KMT's secret heart: 

...although I'm not sure why it decided that Double Ten needed to imply beeeewwwwbs.

And this one just looks kind of like a stylized butthole, heh heh:

I'll throw in a few more at the end for your amusement.

My favorite part of this isn't the comment about the giant H or that it looks like the Super Mario warp pipes, it's the defensive commentary from the KMT on a design so many people seem to hate. 

I mean, as a Facebook friend commented, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and perhaps Luftwaffe officers would appreciate the aesthetic. I can think of some dead KMTers with close family ties to the early regime who would love it. But, you know, probably unintentional, right?

Legislative Speaker (barf) Han Kuo-yu called it a "beautiful work" that "carries Taiwan's deepest emotions" -- which is true, if you assume only KMT settlers and their offspring over the age of 60 have emotions.

I also enjoyed this quote: 

Interior Ministry Deputy Minister Wu Tang-an (吳堂安) complimented netizens’ rich imaginations and added that if you look closely, the colors line up with Taiwan’s flag.

He's not wrong exactly, but to see that it imitates the flag, you'd only have to look "closely" if you had glaucoma. 

Wu also said that the theme of 2024's National Day celebrations was "happy birthday to the Republic of China". Okay, but I thought that was the theme every year?

Wu is an absolute comedy machine, by the way. He tied the plum blossom -- a symbol of the KMT, which ran a brutal, deadly suppression campaign for decades under Martial Law -- to "respect for history", and said the blue and red symbolize "different opinions and voices coming together". Sorry dude, but the Republic of China flag that the KMT imposed on Taiwan, which is obvious in the design, isn't known historically for "different opinions and voices". It's known for one voice -- the dictator's -- coming together with his minions and cronies to use the military to disappear, torture and slaughter dissidents. 

According to several sources, the design was created by a team of "passionate young designers". They apparently prefer anonymity, which should surprise no-one. As is common in Taiwan, the committee trotted out "it was designed by a team" to avoid admitting that anyone in particular wasted their parents' money on design school. 

Also, I gotta say, "young designers" created this thing? At some point in my prompt journey I told the AI to make the designs "more retro" and it came up with some ideas that, while very weird, at least looked retro in a cool way. This is the sort of logo you'd see on a mug in your parents' cupboard that you'd immediately donate it to charity. Retro, but it's not a compliment.

Or maybe these designers are indeed "young", if measured on a KMT timescale. You know, the same scale on which Taipei mayor Chiang Wan-an is young (he's 45). 

The thing is, my dislike of the design isn't just because the KMT sucks, the flag is an ugly reminder of a dead dictatorship, and contemporary, democratic Taiwan deserves better than to be forced to swallow a party logo as a national symbol. 

It's also just a bad design. 

I keep looking at that plum blossom, wondering what in the absolute hell is wrong with it. Perhaps the two petals on the bottom and one on top (which is standard) make it look bottom-heavy when it's placed in the middle of that long, slim line. The blue field taken from the ROC flag cutting into the H makes it look off-center, even though I don't think it is. The design lacks balance: this might be the only time I'll ever say that there's too much going on in the left and center, and not enough on the right. 

The whole thing also looks a bit like it's being crushed? Stretching it out on the sides but keepin' it stumpy on the vertical doesn't evoke progress, innovation or the future. It gives "we're trying to expand our influence but are being crushed by the weight of history" -- which I suppose is an apt metaphor for the Republic of China. 

Long 'n Stumpy here also has a certain...je ne sais quoi. Except, oh wait, je very much sais quoi. You could call it Iron Cross, but I'm gonna call call it "I want to take a picture of my junk, but stretch it a bit so it looks normal and less like a chode." 

I'm not sure if the designers wanted the 十十 to look slimmer, or if they were trying to evoke stately columns or...what, but the edges read "serif" and if there's anything that just doesn't work on Chinese characters, even the simplest ones, it's freakin' serifs. 

Personally, although I'm a Century Gothic acolyte, I like a serif in some cases. I enjoy a nice Garamond or Cochin from time to time. I can ride with Baskerville, and if you're looking for something new, Self Modern isn't bad. I don't think they're hopelessly old-fashioned per se. 

But they don't scream "modern and clean graphics" as Wu Tang-an suggests. I see defensive borders, pushing anything new or foreign from the center. Or maybe they're closing ranks, keeping the riff-raff out. A serif is okay in some circumstances, but these absolutely convey the message that the KMT wants you damn kids to get off their lawn. 

That's not even getting into the clunkiness of the design language. It does not evoke. It does not reference. There is no subtle metaphor. It whacks you over the head with a dollar-store baseball bat. It's the difference between the person who references their love of retro sci-fi with hints of chrome and black in their decor, versus the one who hangs a papier-mâché UFO in their living room.

It does not hint at the ROC flag -- there's a literal ROC flag in the motto! Y'know, because the theme is "happy birthday to the Republic of China", which is a totally fresh and innovative theme to have! It's not symbolic of the KMT's Republic of China vision so much as a simple product of it. And I do mean "simple" in the cruelest possible way.

Something about the size, thickness and spacing of the English, compared to the relatively lighter Mandarin is just off. It's too long and fat, which is yet another thing I never thought I'd say. I know that slogans which aren't necessarily sentences sometimes have periods for emphasis, but something about this period feels wrong. Perhaps the phrase is so long that one's brain is tricked into thinking it could be a sentence, but it's not one.

I didn't always love the Double Ten designs created by DPP-led legislative committees. But at the very least they were contemporary. They weren't afraid to look at colors beyond red, white and blue. You could tell someone under the age of 70 had a hand in designing them. With the possible exceptions of 2019 and 2023, if someone gave you a mug featuring one, you might actually keep it. 

That's all I really have to say, so enjoy some more trippy AI designs for "Republic of China National Day". While I like the terrifying birds, the Alien Body Horror Sphere is also rather eye-catching. 

Book Review: Voices from the Mountain

Voices from the Mountain (2014)

Husluman Vava, Auvina Kadresengan and Badai

Translated by Dr. Shu-hwa Wu

Edited by David R. Braden

Recently, I've taken a greater interest in Indigenous Taiwanese literature. One big difficulty is the dearth of such literature that's both available in English and actually in print. It's also crucial not to lump all "Taiwanese Indigenous literature" into one category, as though the writers are interchangeable. All in all, it can be hard to know where to start. 

This is where Voices from the Mountain comes in. Containing excerpts of longer works by three prominent Indigenous writers -- Badai, Husluman Vava and Auvini Kadresengan -- it's a fantastic introduction to Taiwanese Indigenous literature. Instead of committing to a whole novel, you're committing to some of the most interesting parts of that novel, to get a sense of that writer's storytelling style, wordsmithing and the topics they tend to write about.

The only real issue with this is that if you like what you read, the full novel is not necessarily available in translation. It's not really a chance to read more if your interest is piqued, unless you can read Mandarin. As for me, I can, but I find novels challenging and I'm probably not going to. If anyone knows where to get full translated versions of Husluman Vava's Tattooed Face, Auvini Kadresengan's Wild Lilies or Badai's Ginger Road in English, drop a comment below. 

The effort taken to translate these excerpts is commendable, and although I'd have recommended a bit more editing to smooth out some of the rough bits (for example, the odd clause and collocation in the second paragraph of page 64), all three authors were a joy to read. It's not a long volume, making it both a quick read and an excellent choice to throw in a carry-on when traveling. 

Because Voices from the Mountain is a book of excerpts, not a novel, it's hard to review it per se. Each excerpt and author is different. Instead, I'll offer some thoughts on the stories that have stuck with me. I remember Tattooed Face (the first excerpt from the longer book of the same name) most clearly: the characters learn that a person from a different tribe with different traditions is not someone to be feared but respected. We learn, however, that Indigenous communities are not a monolith. Each tribe and sub-communities within those tribes may have their own customs, history and culture. So often, Taiwan is divided into neat little groups: Hoklo, Hakka, the KMT diaspora, Indigenous. Perhaps some include foreigners, mostly Southeast Asian, Western or Chinese. (Yes, China is a foreign country and people from China are foreigners in Taiwan just as British people in the US are). 

But it's really so much more complicated than that. Sure, there are the Zhangzhou and Quanzhou Hoklo, and there are different groups of Hakka (I don't know much about this but I am told that the Hakka community in, say, Meinong is culturally a bit distinct from Hakka communities in Miaoli. But don't take my word for it, I'm hardly an expert). And, of course, Indigenous communities have distinctive cultural and linguistic traits beyond even the 16 recognized tribes. 

Think about it: when I moved to Taiwan in 2006, 12 tribes were recognized. By 2007, it was 13. Several tribes (including Makatao and Siraya) are locally recognized, and several more are unrecognized but claim distinct identity. How can we possibly say that "Indigenous Taiwanese" are one cultural unit when even official recognition is so often updated? 

Auvini Kadresengan's excerpts more obviously follow the same characters, though it was a bit hard to figure out what was happening when. I enjoyed learning about the intra-village dynamics that gave rise to Er-sai's family situation. If you ever had any notion that Indigenous villages were bastions of purity where everyone got along and nobody followed their individual impulses to community chagrin, then please read these stories and wash the eau de sauvage noble out of your perspective.

I've read Badai before, so I know I like his writing style. His plot arc in Sorceress Diguwan was a bit nebulous until the very end, but he's engaging and readable. More than the other authors, Badai's writing focuses on the magic or sorcery aspects of his community's beliefs -- and if I remember correctly, his mother was just such a sorceress. Of these excerpts, The Shaman has really stuck with me. In it, a sorceress's son is in an accident, and she attempts to use her powers to save him, as he is being airlifted to a hospital and attended to by medical personnel. I won't reveal the ending, but The Shaman is a riveting story. It explores how magic works in Puyuma culture, and what the requirements of limitations of practicing it are. By contrasting it with Western (or modern) medical interventions, Badai makes it clear that the ability to keep someone alive through magic is possible in that belief system, but leaves you wondering to what extent that belief is in the mother's head -- or to what extent it might be real, and potentially more powerful than a modern hospital.

I don't actually think this is intentional on Badai's part: we're not meant to wonder, necessarily, if the shaman's magic is real. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I got the distinct impression that this was simply my own interpretation, as an atheist who puts no stock in the supernatural. But you know what else? If I've learned anything about such things after 18 years in Taiwan, it's that you just have to accept there are unknowable things, and ways of looking at those unknowable things that deserve respect.

I recommend Voices from the Mountain, and not only because Taiwanese Indigenous literature in translation is rare enough to find. Even so, on its own it's a worthwhile read for anyone who wants to understand more about Taiwan's Indigenous communities -- their literatures, cultures and histories. 

Deciding on Insides: Lin Yu-ting, gender conformity, Taiwanese identity and me

A scarlet ibis at Taipei Zoo

Even before the Taiwanese media began whaling on JK Rowling for stating female Taiwanese Olympic boxer Lin Yu-ting (林郁婷) is a man, with many commenters falsely believing she is transgender, I was thinking about issues of gender, identity and culture. 

For some background on Lin, I recommend Min Chao's excellent post on Medium. To summarize, Lin is not trans. She was registered as female at birth. The Medium post says she grew up in a single-parent home; Taiwan News says she took up boxing to protect her mother from domestic abuse. She has faced bullying for her androgynous looks. The controversy stems from an allegedly failed gender test at a competition in New Delhi. I say "allegedly" because both the test type and reasons for the failure are reported as "unspecified" and results "confidential", and the athletic organization running that event is mired in controversy and shunned by the IOC. Lin later passed eligibility requirements, including a medical examination in Hangzhou.

Claims that the test given by the Russian-backed International Boxing Association showed Lin, as well as Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, has having XY chromosomes seems to stem from a single Russian Telegram channel. We don't actually know much (anything really!) about the test or its results and I don't exactly trust one Russian official posting on Telegram as a reliable source of information. It's unclear if Lin has elevated testosterone levels, but even if she does, that wouldn't un-female her.

That hasn't stopped the TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist) squad from dismissing Lin outright as "male". It's not really a surprise: if one's chief goal is isntigating hate, one "unspecified" failed test by a sketchy organization is sufficient fuel for that fire.

It bothers me deeply, however, that refuting the hate directed at Lin forces one to reaffirm that she is a cis woman, implying that the criticism would be warranted if she were trans. That they'd be right to criticize if she were trans, but she simply isn't, or that there's something wrong with being trans. Truly, I don't believe this -- I would not care if she were. I don't think transphobes are blinkered just because they fell for what increasingly looks like Russian disinformation about two women who have never transitioned. I also think they're blinkered because they oppose full human rights for trans individuals.

A fair amount of the media coverage does seem to care; as much as I love watching UDN and others stick it to JK Rowling, I would not go so far as to call it enlightened discourse. I do commend UDN for pointing out that gender is not a binary, and neither testosterone levels nor chromosomes necessarily identify a person as specifically male or female. The article notes that we don't actually know the results of the tests, nor do we know anything about Lin's anatomy or whether she's intersex, and it's wrong to speculate. This is true. They take a non-position on the discussion of transgender athletes, correctly pointing out that it's irrelevant to Lin Yu-ting's career. It's a more thoughtful take than I'd expect from a conservative Taiwanese media outlet, but not exactly standing up for trans rights. 

All of this has snagged on a loose wire in my own brain. I've been thinking about it for awhile, both in relation to Taiwan and myself. 

One person's aphorism can so easily be another's thought-terminating cliché. Think about "wherever you go, there you are". As an adage offering traditional wisdom, it simply reminds us that we can't run from  our true selves. It can easily be twisted into something far more sinister, however: you can't change who you are, implying that your identity isn't yours to construct. Rather, it's decided by societal forces, doctrine, orthodoxy, others' perception of you -- and you must either accept it, or suffer. 

Some time ago, I read a tweet noting that many on the Western left stand up for trans equality and the right of any person to decide on their own gender identity and expression, but those same leftists will turn real pink real fast when it comes to Taiwan -- not giving Taiwanese any space to cultivate their identity. According to some, gender identity is fluid butTaiwanese are Chinese whether they like it or not (just as the anti-trans ideologues insist that your gender is your gender, whether that reflects who you really are or not). Who gets the right to decide who they are (and who doesn't) is thus unfair and arbitrary. 

I don't remember whose tweet it was and can't find it, but if you do, please comment below so I can give proper credit.

As with critics of Lin Yu-ting, such beliefs are based on scant or questionable evidence: incorrect references to international law, extremely biased interpretations of history that excise any facts that don't fit their narrative -- for example, that for most of their reign, the Qing only controlled about one-third of Taiwan, and as a colonial outpost at that -- straight-up wrong incantations of US policy or the Republic of China constitution. These critics demand that Taiwanese be Chinese, because it makes them uncomfortable that Taiwanese would have their own agency, or even just historical facts to back up their chosen identity. Taiwanese who disagree aren't conforming properly to the narrative, so they have to be attacked online, called 'separatists', threatened with execution, told they aren't who they say they are. Treated as less than human, not deserving of full human rights, including self-determination. Anything -- anything -- to keep them under control. Conformed. Y'know, doctrine over reality.

That doesn't sound terribly different to me from the TERF crowd insisting that one questionable test with unspecified results from one extraordinarily shady organization is enough to pounce on her for being "trans" or "a man", when she is neither. As a friend put it in a private conversation: 

"...people want to control gender expression and force everyone to fit into tidy little boxes, and anyone who violates that should be unpersoned in their view. Like, I feel like they're so obsessed over tamping down trans people, that they have to go after any kind of gender non-conformity. Trans people are the ultimate violators of conformity, so they have to engage in this witch hunt until everyone is back under control."

It also goes in the other direction. Some who will defend the right of Taiwanese people to determine their own identity -- politically, culturally and otherwise -- will then turn around and insist that it's different with gender. That Taiwanese have the right to identify as solely Taiwanese, but if you dare to state your reality over their doctrine on gender, or express yourself differently, you're not a person and don't deserve full human rights. 

This is why anti-trans ideology is so strongly linked to white supremacy: preserving the system, the hierarchy, the doctrine, at all costs. Frankly, you can say the same for Han supremacy, and keeping people in tidy little gender and ethnicity boxes is just as much cornerstone of the CCP's Han supremacists as it is to the West's white supremacists. If anything, it's worse. Have you seen the state of LGBTQ+ rights in China? It's pretty bad.

You know what else is linked to Han supremacy? Denying the reality of Taiwanese identity and Taiwan's distinct cultural heritage. For One China to Rule Them All, that simply cannot be allowed to exist. Conform or die. 

I have one more thing to say about this, and it's a little more personal. Beyond simply wanting to be a good person who respects the agency and self-determination of others, this bothers me so much because I, too, needed to have a conversation with myself to decide my insides. 

I am a cis woman, in that I was assigned female at birth and continue to identify as female. I've been told more than once that I am female because I was born female, and that's all there is to it. Something about that has never sat right with me. Since I was young, I have not felt specifically or quintessentially female, although being in a woman's body also doesn't bother me. 

How much of that comes from inside -- my own brain not accepting without question that I am a woman? How much from outside -- society presenting to me various 'roles' for women and ways to present and conform as a woman, none of which I particularly relish? I don't know. It's probably both. I spent years desperately out of love with myself because for far too long, I lacked the lexicon to have a true reckoning between my inside and my outside. 

That's why the trans rights movement benefits us all. Yes, even those of us who are cis. We don't all conform, we don't all feel exactly right in our bodies, or as though we naturally are a certain gender just because we were assigned that gender at birth. I didn't! Thanks to all of the trans people who fought for respect, recognition and rights, we now have that lexicon. Those of us who need to have the internal dialogue now find it a lot easier to do so.

I didn't not want to be a woman, but I also didn't entirely want to be one. I wasn't terribly interested in the expectations that come with it. Not just the sheer amount of external maintenance (diet, skincare, makeup, clothing, general 'ladylike' presentation), but also the life paths I was expected to inhabit. Wife? Okay, as long as he's a feminist (and he is). Mother? No thanks. Person discriminated against because of her gender and its presentation? Girl Next Door? Gawkable Object? Feminist But Only If You're Hot? Fuck off.

There have been times when I would have preferred to have been seen and treated as a man, though that might have more to do with how much more leeway society gives men in general than my own internal struggle to identify and come to terms with my benthic discomfort.

I navigated this as you might expect, from the cropped hair and army jackets of my late teen years to wondering why not being particularly ladylike didn't result in the benefit of a more athletic "tomboy" persona. I wouldn't have minded being fit! There was the rejection of Not Like Other Girls (that's a misogynist trope), but also wondering why Quirky Artsy Cool Girl is only an identity available to the thin and hot. Now that I'm older, even Fun Worldly Bohemian Aunt remains elusive. She remains slender and feminine with elegant poise as she sips her drink in some foreign café and buys one for her underage niece; I fart a lot, have terrible posture and a body more reminiscent of Angry Feminist Cat Lady (which I kind of am), or perhaps Overcooked Pierogi (but I do like pierogies). If I had a niece, however, I'd take her to Italy at 16 and buy her a drink.

Ultimately, I did decide on 'woman', which makes me cis. But it wasn't an obvious or foregone conclusion. I was unhappy because I needed to have that reckoning, and growing societal recognition of transgender and other gender non-conforming people -- a world where it is a little easier than it was before to be who you are -- also benefited me. It gave me what I needed to work myself out. 

I once commented in some anti-trans thread that I'm a woman because I decided to be one, and it's more coincidence than anything that my insides match (well, match reasonably closely) to the gender I was assigned. Someone shot back "no, you're a woman because you were born a woman!"

Which is just another way of telling me that they believe my identity is not my own to decide, they know who I am better than they do, my internal questioning threatens their conformity, their doctrine matters more than my reality, and their aphorism is my thought-terminating cliché -- except I refuse to terminate the thought. 

In fact, as a cis woman, I feel a lot more threatened by transphobes and their followers insisting that women have to act, look or be a certain way than I do by any trans woman, ever. Latching onto "but look, he's clearly A MAN!" (as though appearances and personal judgments decide gender), or unproven, evidence-free claims is bullying. And transphobes love bullying. As someone who's been called a man simply for standing with trans women, even though I have never been a man, it scares me. 

You know what doesn't scare me? Trans women.

And does that not sound quite a bit like the "Taiwan is Chinese! Taiwanese culture is Chinese culture!" people shouting as though they know Taiwan's identity better than Taiwanese people do, or that Taiwanese people have no right to determine for themselves who they are, that Taiwan's refusal to conform to a Chinese narrative threatens their ideology?

This has diverged quite a bit from the discussion surrounding Lin Yu-ting, but it grabbed hold of something way down in the depths of my own self, so I hope this has been as worthwhile for you to read as it was for me to write.