Defining Ma Ying-jeou's "relevance"

He deserves an unflattering screenshot

I recently read with interest Donovan Smith's analysis of the continued relevance of former president and slightly burnt mannequin Ma Ying-jeou. Smith argued that despite being called "irrelevant" by the pan-green camp, that his power player position in the KMT meant he could not possibly be so. 

Donovan makes a good point. When it comes to shaping KMT policy and which puppet or inveterate Very Good Boy he'll trot out as his skin mask at rallies and for elections, and whose prior image he'll eviscerate in order to turn him (they're always male) into his next puppet, Ma is frighteningly relevant. 

In fact, I'd argue one cannot discuss KMT policies and directions without at some point discussing Ma. Even when he's not got his talons into this or that KMT candidate, his vision for what the KMT -- and Taiwan as a whole -- should be still shape the policies, platforms, desires and wet dreams of hardcore deep blue supporters. While their numbers may be dwindling, they're still a political force and not dismissed so lightly. 

So yes, in that sense, Smith is right. Perhaps, though, we should consider what these commentators mean when they call Ma "irrelevant" -- because it depends somewhat on how you define the term. 

The thing is, one might interpret political relevance as requiring being at least somewhat in touch with the general (or at least popular) consensus. You're relevant if your own ideas and commentary reflect the national mood, however roughly. If what you say resonates with the public and perhaps most importantly, the voters. 

In this sense, Ma is indeed irrelevant. It would be easy to point to his Deutsche Welle interview just before the election. He laid down some real whoppers here. Leaving aside "Taiwan can never win a war with China" (debatable, but I'll give him that based on the power imbalance), Ma stated that we should "trust" Xi Jinping, a point so ridiculous that it was basically an own goal for the KMT. I don't think it lost them the election, but it didn't help. However, if we're talking about Ma's relevance, I found this bit more alarming (and mendacious): 

Unification is something that our constitution says [sic]. So it's actually acceptable to Taiwan. But it has to be done peacefully, and through a democratic process. If that can be done, the chances are people in Taiwan may be interested in accepting this.

He says that again later on -- "if it is peaceful and democratic, the people of Taiwan will probably accept this." It's not a slip.

The constitution doesn't actually say that -- if it ever did, the series of amendments adopted from1990s through 2005 extirpated it -- but whatever.  It's not even the ludicrous notion that unification could possibly be peaceful or democratic when the government Taiwan would be unifying with openly doesn't care about democratic norms, and their massive military preparations indicate they don't care much about peace, either. 

What renders him irrelevant is the second half of that quote: the idea that because the constitution says it and theoretically it could be voted for (which would mean no immediate war), that "chances are" Taiwanese people would be "interested in" such a path. 

Every major poll, whether we're talking status quo or Taiwanese vs. Chinese identity, and the past three presidential elections have shown that the people of Taiwan are not interested in peaceful unification. Whether or not it's peaceful is not the point; they don't want unification period. They want to continue to govern themselves under the sovereignty Taiwan has as a result of the so-called 'status quo'. That is, a form of independence  (depending on how you define 'independence' -- my definition includes Taiwan's current state and so does President Tsai's). 

For such a thing to be "democratic", Taiwanese people would have to vote for it in a state of non-coercion and without political interference from China. Ma seems to think they might, if dialogue continues. The polls, however, say otherwise. If unification is deeply unpopular, and most Taiwanese don't even identify as Chinese, chances are that won't change. 

It wouldn't avoid a war, by the way. In the highly unlikely event that Taiwan chooses this path, once they see that they've quite literally used their democracy to vote away said democracy, and brought all sorts of oppression upon themselves the second they 'democratically' diverge from Beijing's plans for Taiwan, all hell will break loose. It will make Hong Kong look like a children's birthday party. There will be a war of some sort, and there will be violence and slaughter.

There is no such thing as peaceful unification with the PRC, because even if Taiwan 'agreed' to it (which they wouldn't, because most people are not that stupid), the mass death starts when they realize what they've lost and begin to resist. 

To even imply that democratic and peaceful unification is possible, and that Taiwanese would be interested in it -- or that they'd be so gullible as to believe it were possible -- is such an extragalactically out-there thing to say with a straight face that I simply cannot reconcile it with any notion of "relevance". Ma's finger isn't even on his own pulse, if he has one, let alone the pulse of the nation. 

He doesn't stop the Chundertown Express at any point during this interview, by the way. When it's pointed out to him that Taiwanese don't identify as Chinese, especially among the youth, and reject unification and the 1992 Consensus, he says those young people need to "understand" what cross-strait relations and the 92 Consensus mean "to them" -- one China, respective interpretations. He takes it for granted that this interpretation (which China has never agreed with, they've never accepted the 'respective interpretations' aspect, so it's not a consensus at all) would be popular and accepted among Taiwanese. 

But it wouldn't, because to do so, they'd have to fundamentally believe they are Chinese, which they do not. (Ma does not engage with the poll results showing most Taiwanese do not identify as Chinese; most likely he believes that forcing pro-China changes to the education system will sufficiently brainwash that notion out of their minds). 

His off-the-rails commentary (or lack thereof) on public opinion and what Taiwanese "will probably accept" is so far removed from what Taiwanese seem to actually be thinking that I simply cannot call it "relevant". 

When the presidential candidate you taxidermied into your own little puppet boy publicly distances himself from your words, you might still be a political player but when it comes to public opinion and the path Taiwan is on, again, you're not exactly relevant. 

On that note, Ma only remains relevant within the KMT because their stance on China has not evolved to be more palatable in Taiwan. You might argue that they're hanging onto him because they have nothing better -- he's the last KMT candidate to win a presidential election. I'd argue the opposite: the KMT's platform is stuck in the dark ages because Ma has his talons in it; he won't let it evolve or modernize. 

I suppose that's a form of relevance, but not in the way most people likely mean.

To be truly relevant, you do indeed need to have some basic understanding of current public opinion, why it is what it is, and how to present your ideas in such a way that they might at least be considered in that light. Ma is constitutionally incapable of this -- pun intended.

It's not surprising, of course. This dude is deeply in love with Chinese-style authoritarianism and seems to wish more than anything that the KMT itself had the ability to be just as authoritarian. You know, like in the bad old days when they could just drag anyone who disagreed out back and shoot them.  

Looking at it another way, consider commentary about Ma's irrelevance to be a backlash against the way he acts every time he goes to China, and much of the resulting media coverage. He certainly traipsed around that country like he was some sort of ambassador on an official dialogue and peace mission. Whatever part of his brain had a stroke leaving him unable to empathize with Taiwanese people seems to have been filled with delusions of grandeur, that he can represent a side of the 'Republic of China' that China can talk to, because they agree they're part of some interpretation of China.

Even basic reporting on the visit implied (without saying outright) that his visit was somehow relevant to Taiwan's current government, even though Ma wasn't there in any official role. He was basically a glorified tourist-cum-useful-idiot. Other media make it sound like he is some sort of rational, peace-seeking emissary with the potential to "build ties" and -- again it is implied -- reduce tensions. That no serving Taiwan president has visited China is mentioned in such reports to imply that it matters to Taiwan if a former president does so. But I'm not sure it does, when his party doesn't even have the presidency. In terms of Taiwan's policy vis-à-vis China, he is irrelevant and his visit is irrelevant.

I even heard a radio segment in the Western media on his visit that I can't find again (so it's not linkable), but which astoundingly managed to get every basic fact right, while getting the story completely wrong. It implied again that he is some sort of peaceful messenger from Taiwan, creating hopeful dialogue and averting war unlike that dastardly Lai Ching-te whom Beijing dislikes for unspecified reasons. 

No discussion of how Ma's party had just lost the election in a historic third term for the DPP, possibly helped along a bit by that DW interview. No discussion of why Beijing dismisses Lai, or who exactly is refusing official dialogue (hint: it's not Lai). No mention of how unpopular Ma's opinions are in Taiwan, and how profoundly he misunderstands and outright ignores public opinion. 

Listeners abroad who don't follow these issues might take that hopeful note to heart -- oh look, a former Taiwan president is looking for dialogue with China, that can only mean a reduction in tensions! They'll completely miss the context that he's not speaking for the government, his trips are not affecting current policy, it's not even Taiwan who doesn't want dialogue but rather China gumming up the process, and his views do not enjoy broad social support.

That is, the take-home impression might be that Ma Ying-jeou is more relevant than he actually is.

When that's what the rest of the world is reporting about the guy who left office as the most unpopular elected president in Taiwan's history, like he's a beacon of hope in ever-escalating tensions (which are implied to be created by the DPP when in fact they are entirely manufactured by China), then perhaps one does want to call him irrelevant in response, no?

Because he's not an emissary. He has no official role. He's not in China to build ties between the two governments, because he no longer works for the Taiwanese government. He's not "building cultural and social ties" because his own views are completely out of tune with Taiwanese society and culture. He's promoting himself and the KMT to their support base.

While he's not quite sunk to the level of "local resident surnamed Ma" or "Taipei area man", he doesn't enjoy the broad social respect that a former president might expect. According to one poll, less than 40% of voters approved of his last trip to China in 2023, and that one was ostensibly of a more personal nature. 

Of course, it really wasn't: he was attempting to set the groundwork for the KMT's China policy, giving the KMT's presidential candidate less room to offer their own interpretation of cross-strait affairs. That worked for awhile, with Hou Yu-ih seeming to capitulate to Ma on matters of policy.

As we saw in the DW interview, however, Ma eventually seemed to take it a step too far and ended up with Hou declining to sign on to the broader Ma vision for the rejuvenation of the great Chinese nation.

Ma himself seems to think his actions, and especially these trips to China, have an effect on cross-strait relations, but from what I can tell, they don't. He seems to believe he can convince Taiwanese voters of the fundamental correctness of his vision, and their Chineseness. It has not worked. He tried to Frankenstein an opposition candidate to the DPP, and failed.

So when we say he's "not relevant", we mean that his actions do not reflect a broad social consensus and don't actually change much in Taiwan. When his actions are reported on as though he actually were the highly-respected elder statesman he believes himself to be, it gives the wrong impression to readers who don't know the whole context. 

When Ma actually has a policy success as an elder statesman that enjoys the support of the electorate, maybe we can talk about his return to relevance. When he lays out a groundwork for cross-strait policy that the ruling party doesn't feel they have to distance himself from, that might matter. And it would be unfair to dismiss him as completely irrelevant. His lightly-melted spectre haunted Hou's campaign and continues to rattle his chains in the halls of KMT headquarters too much for that to be true.

But if you define 'relevant' as "taking actions which have a tangible impact on Taiwan's governance", or as "engaging in statesmanship which enjoys broad support", he's not exactly relevant, either. If you include "has some understanding of public opinion and incorporates it into his actions and statements", he's so deep in left field that he's left the stadium and is wandering alone in the woods. He doesn't even seem to understand that public opinion exists, let alone that he should consider it.

And if a rando in the woods babbles on and on about how Taiwanese will choose "peaceful unification" and no-one's there to agree with him, did he really say anything at all?

Abusers lie: everything wrong with that horrid Foreign Affairs article

My two expressions while reading this tedious Foreign Affairs article

Note: this is far too long, and I know that already. I know I end up repeating myself. Frankly, you only need to read the first half or so to get the point, but I offer quotes from most of the article, until I too got too tired to continue. There's just so much to refute!

Stop wherever you like; I won't blame you. 

***

I want to respect Bonnie Glaser. You probably don't believe that, because I dunk on her more than I agree with her, but in fact it would be preferable for someone in a position as influential as hers to put out good ideas and thoughtful analysis. I want to admire women of her stature, as well, in a world (and a field) that is so painfully male-dominated. 

If anything, this is why I am so disappointed in what she actually has to say. She likely has access to all sorts of data and intelligence that most people do not. She has the ear of people whose decisions matter. This is her actual career; I'm just a blogger. I should really listen to her.

But I can't. I just can't. Almost everything she puts out makes me cringe so hard, I can barely write about it. For me, it's worse than with her co-authors on the Foreign Affairs piece that's stirring up so much commentary on Taiwan Twitter: I haven't followed the career of Thomas Christensen, and Jessica Chen-Weiss is already a known China sellout who doesn't have Taiwan's best interests in mind. Dunking on the latter is hardly worth it, because there is no dimensionality to her (bad) opinions and analysis. 

Glaser, on the other hand, claims and occasionally appears to actually care about Taiwan and isn't an active unificationist pretending to be unbiased. That makes it all the more tragic; she seems to really want to stand for something regarding Taiwan, while at the same time must fool herself into believing China is a rational actor that can be talked to and reassured rationally. This results in what can best be described as cognitive dissonance in her work. 

Enough with the vaguery -- why do I feel compelled to say all this now? Again, it's that awful Foreign Affairs article. Pretty much nobody I've seen liked it, and with good reason. To that end, let's break it down to better understand exactly where it goes wrong. I'm focusing on Glaser specifically because she's since taken to Twitter to defend the views expressed, insisting they were "taken out of context" by critics (they were not). 

The growing might of China’s military and its increasingly aggressive posture toward Taiwan have made deterrence in the Taiwan Strait a tougher challenge than ever before.

This is correct, but fundamentally the piece calls for doing exactly what Taiwan and the US have already been doing: working on improving defense while not, say, declaring the independence that everyone knows Taiwan already has.

Which is fine, but if China's military might is "growing" and Beijing is becoming "increasingly aggressive" toward Taiwan, doesn't that indicate that these measures are either insufficient or simply not working?

Washington can help Taiwan’s military stockpile and train with coastal defense and air defense weapons, field a robust civil defense force, and create strategic reserves of critical materials such as food and fuel to deter and, if necessary, defeat an invasion or blockade of the island. 

This and the rest of the paragraph are fine; indeed the US should continue to assist Taiwan in these regards, not only for Taiwan's security but its own interests. My only gripe is calling Taiwan an "island". It's multiple islands that together comprise a country. 

A threatened state has little incentive to avoid war if it fears the unacceptable consequences of not fighting. As the Nobel Prize–winning economist Thomas Schelling wrote years ago, “‘One more step and I shoot’ can be a deterrent threat only if accompanied by the implicit assurance, ‘And if you stop, I won’t.’”

Right, and this is the fundamental problem. To China, Taiwan not moving toward unification -- in fact, moving toward not wanting unification now or ever, which is already the consensus in the country -- is an "unacceptable consequence". China was never content with just the status quo; that's why they've always made Taiwan accepting that it is at least conceptually a part of China a prerequisite for any dialogue at all. 

This implies that there is a way to deal with China that does not reveal this very extant "unacceptable consequence", a way to convince China that there's still hope for achieving the only outcome Beijing deems acceptable (unification) without war. 

But there isn't, because Taiwan will never choose or accept peaceful unification, now or ever, and Beijing surely knows this. Glaser should, too. 

The quote she proffers ends: "And if you stop, I won't [shoot]".  But I have to ask -- stop what?

Was Taiwan about to declare formal independence? It doesn't seem so, as the KMT thinks Taiwan is China, the TPP is a laughingstock, and the DPP has made it clear they currently have no such plans. What exactly is Taiwan meant to stop doing in order to incentivize China to reduce its aggression?

From here it seems that no matter what Taiwan does, China gets ever more aggressive. And again, Glaser of all people should realize this. 

The three parties involved in the Taiwan Strait are not providing one another with sufficient assurances. For example, to enhance deterrence, Washington must make clear that it opposes any unilateral change to the status quo, not only an attempt by Beijing to compel unification but also a political move by Taipei to pursue independence.

That would be fine, if it were actually working. It's not -- the United States is already doing that. That's quite literally their position right now. So what exactly is supposed to change here? The implicit point of the article is that current assurances are insufficient or not credible, but what other assurance other than the ones already given can the US provide? Despite already doing exactly what Glaser is recommending, China continues its threats, military buildup and march to war. 

The assurance China actually wants from the United States is one that the US simply cannot give; it wants an indication that if it were to instigate war, the US would not intervene in any way, even if -- especially if -- things got violent. Which they absolutely would. 

The US cannot assure China in this way because they don't want to. They want China to realize that the threat of a US reaction is very real, and Glaser herself seems to agree this is wise. 

Combined with a conditional and credible threat of a military response by the United States and Taiwan to the use of force, such assurances will help prevent a war.

Will they? Because this is exactly what the United States and Taiwan are already doing, and it hasn't stopped Beijing from ramping up the aggression and threatening ever more imminent war. The three authors make it sound like this would be a helpful change in policy that can take everyone off the current path to bloodshed, but it's not a change, so what change do they expect from Beijing?

I also don't appreciate the phrasing of "help prevent a war", as though wars just sort of happen for no no reason, or have no agent. Worse, it implies that it's the United States and Taiwan that might "cause a war", when China is the one threatening it, and China is the only country that wants it. The entity that can prevent the war is the one threatening to start it in the first place!

The advised action for the US and China to not "cause a war" (scoff) is to, again, do exactly what they are currently doing...which has landed us on this path to the war we must somehow prevent? Can someone explain to me how this is anything other than hamster wheel logic?

Ill-advised statements made in the past by former and current U.S. officials suggesting that the United States should formally recognize Taiwan as a sovereign state or restore a clear alliance commitment to defend the island would, if adopted, undercut assurances and weaken deterrence as surely as would a lack of military readiness.

At what point has the US government seemed to entertain the notion that the opinions of any of these officials -- I assume she means Mike Pompeo, among others -- be enacted into policy?  The closest we ever came to that was Pompeo saying it; if I recall correctly, he was already out of office.

Maybe Glaser has some sort of intelligence indicating that Beijing actually cares about these statements, even though it's plain that the US is going to do no such thing. Okay, but that's not something the US government can do; it amounts to advice to individuals not to run their mouths. 

Here's how we know that the US isn't going to move toward a formal recognition of Taiwan: the ruling DPP doesn't actually want that, right now. I mean, philosophically they absolutely do, but practically they're aware it's not a good time to make such moves because Taiwan is already doing everything it can to avoid a war. 

Maybe if Glaser spent more time in Taiwan, she'd realize this, and see that it hasn't had much of an effect on China's warmongering threats. 

Yes, I do know this for a fact. An election cycle is upon us, and there is zero chance the other parties in the race want formal recognition for Taiwan, either. So why would the US extend the offer? The implication that it might makes no sense.

Although the DPP is not always a unified voice, generally speaking the US doesn't make big moves regarding Taiwan without unofficially checking in with Taipei. This is another mistake analysts like Glaser make (and in fact Glaser herself has made). They assume the US just sort of...decides to do favors for Taiwan, and never asks Taiwan if they want those favors. Presumably, offering formal diplomatic recognition would fall into that category, if it were a thing? (It is manifestly not a thing). 

U.S. military threats will lose their potency if Chinese leaders believe that the United States will take advantage of their restraint to promote Taiwan’s formal independence or to prevent unification under any circumstances, even if it were to result from peaceful, uncoerced negotiation. Beijing may determine that refraining from an attack would mean it would forever lose the possibility of unification...

This is the biggest farce in the entire article. Do the authors truly believe unification from "peaceful, uncoerced negotiation" is ever going to happen? It isn't, because Taiwan does not want this, and public opinion has been (steadily, with a few bumps) moving away from ever wanting it. It's safe to say that the Taiwanese public wants peace, doesn't want to make any big moves, is willing to put off the big domestic questions of the country's name and constitution until some future date, but does not want unification -- now or ever. 

Besides, can such negotiation ever be "uncoerced"? This disregards all the ways in which China tries to non-violently coerce Taiwan into accepting concepts of 'one China' that it never actually agreed to. From the attempts at an economic stranglehold to cutting Taiwan off from the global pandemic response, to disinformation campaigns, election interference, cybersecurity threats and attempts to denigrate Taiwan to any and all international entities, China is already trying to coerce Taiwan to "non-violently" negotiate! 

This is as offensive as looking at an abusive relationship -- except it's not even a relationship as Taiwan and China aren't together -- and seeing a controlling narcissist try to control their partner's finances and movements, as well as isolating them from their friends. Then, the couple announces to everyone they know that they "agreed" to marry...everyone knows the controlling partner bullied their victim into "agreeing", and perhaps it was not "violent", but it would absolutely be "coerced". 

China is already doing this to Taiwan, so it is not possible -- let me make myself absolutely clear, it is not fucking possible -- for such negotations to be "uncoerced". 

And fuck you, you abuse-excusing shitbag, if you think this is acceptable. 

(If you're thinking "did Lao Ren Cha just call three 'eminent' China scholars 'shitbags'...well, not directly, and they're probably very nice people to have coffee with I guess, but if this is actually what they believe, then look at their beliefs and judge for yourselves.) 

One more thing before we move on: it is also not possible to provide this assurance. The authors say it more plainly than I expected: Beijing needs to believe that peaceful unification is possible in order to not start a war.

They openly admit to the possibility, implying to some degree that it might be preferable, as at least it would be peaceful (yeah, and an emotional abuse victim who obeys because it's easier than having a lamp thrown at their head is also technically living in a 'peaceful' house). 

But it isn't, in any sense -- it isn't possible, and it isn't preferable. The Chinese government, as it exists today, but hopefully not forever, will never allow Taiwan to continue to have all of the things the people hold dear. Things like free and fair elections, freedom of expression, a free press and...not gulags. Wouldn't ya know, Taiwanese people remember what it was like to get disappeared and shot for having a contrary opinion and they're not fans. 

So why would Taiwan want to enter into "peaceful negotiations" when it knows that would be the result? It wouldn't, and we can see that from poll results showing Taiwanese don't. 

Hence, it's not only not preferable, it's not possible. This is not an assurance that the US and Taiwan could ever credibly give Beijing, because Taiwan will never choose "peaceful unification" of its own volition. 

What's more, Beijing certainly already knows this. So they know such assurances are hollow. 

If you don't think Beijing realizes this, either you think CCP officials are unimaginably stupid, or you yourself are. 

We all know Chen-Weiss is already a bootlicker, but Glaser -- who claims to care about Taiwan -- should know this. Is she grappling with cognitive dissonance, or just atrocious at her job?

Perhaps she has some inside information that we don't, indicating that Beijing would be willing to accept an obviously false "assurance". But I doubt this, because again, everything she is advising is something the US and Taiwan are already doing and it doesn't seem to have 'assured' Beijing at all. 

Besides, assuming Beijing is not stupid -- which Glaser et al. don't seem to believe -- we can be quite sure that the 'intel' and 'red lines' they are signaling to the US and its coterie of analysts who don't spend nearly enough time in Taiwan, are probably lies. Beijing lies about everything else; feeding bad intel to all those pesky experts far away in the US so they'll jabber on about irrelevant crap while they build up their capacity to subjugate Taiwan would be very on-brand for the CCP. 

And if China comes to that conclusion [that peaceful unification is not possible], then Washington’s focus on beefing up military power in the region may still fail to prevent a war.

If you think Beijing has not already come to that conclusion, you're either extraordinarily deluded, you have head trauma, or you are grappling with cognitive dissonance so profound that the best therapists probably can't help you. 

For effective deterrence, both threats and assurances must be credible. As the scholars Matthew Cebul, Allan Dafoe, and Nuno Monteiro have noted, “Power boosts the credibility of threats but undermines that of assurances.” This dynamic is what political scientists have long described as the security dilemma. 

Except, again, it is not possible for those assurances to be credible, because the only thing Beijing wants is the one thing it already knows it will never have.  

To issue credible threats and assurances simultaneously, leaders must cultivate “a reputation for restraint in the face of compliance” rather than simply a reputation for unconditionally inflicting punishment.

Since when has the US unconditionally inflicted punishment on China? If anything, the US has been restrained in the face of an ever more aggressive China. And what compliance are we talking about? With the ramping up of threats and active campaigns to undermine Taiwan's government and sovereignty, China is already not compliant. 

So the key question -- the one these three brain trusters never bother to ask -- is how can we provide an assurance that is actually credible, not an obvious lie like "Taiwan might choose peaceful unification", so as to render an uncompliant Beijing more willing to back off? 

It's not even clear that will work. The other question these geniuses don't ask is what China will do, nay, what China is already doing, to undermine Taiwan that is not exactly military in nature. 

Do they believe that assuring Beijing will stop the cybersecurity threats? The attempts to rig Taiwan's elections? The arbitrary detainment of Taiwanese in China? The absolute flood of disinformation corrupting Taiwanese grandparents the same way Fox News corrupted most of mine? 

Continue to "assure" China all you want with "credible assurances" that aren't remotely credible. Why not? It's what we're already doing. Just see if it stems Beijing's attempts to undermine Taiwan's sovereignty at every turn. It won't, because this is exactly what's happening now. 

So, again, what restraint? We're already restrained. What compliance? China is already not complaint!  

Beijing hopes to prevent Taiwan from further consolidating its separation from the mainland...

Taiwan doesn't have a mainland.  

Taipei and Washington hope to deter Beijing from attacking Taiwan to force unification.

Sure, but this implies that unforced unification is possible or even preferable. It is neither. Such an assertion cannot exist without the assumption that uncoerced unification is a possibility, because without that, no credible assurance is possible. 

But it is not a possibility, because Taiwanese people already know that it would be a disaster. They know this by looking at China's words and actions. Only Glaser and the other authors don't seem to have figured this out.

Yet all three parties have neglected corresponding efforts to signal to one another that these military preparations are not meant to alter the status quo or to preclude the prospect of an eventual peaceful resolution of cross-strait differences. 

This is false. I don't mean I disagree, I mean they are factually incorrect. The Tsai administration has said repeatedly that they have no intention to "alter the status quo". All they have done is note that the status quo means Taiwan is sovereign, because it is. The DPP has shown admirable restraint in not seeking a formal declaration of the independence Taiwan already has. It has faced down critics who think provoking a war would be worth such a declaration (for the record, I don't think it would be). It has been called "not actually pro-independence" for pursuing sovereignty alongside peace, yet it has stood firm. 

Where exactly is the failure here? 

President Tsai has said on multiple occasions that she welcomes discussions with Beijing. She is rejected every time, as Taiwan does not accept the concept that it is part of China. Beijing is the one stalling the peace process. This is a failure on the part of China, not Taiwan. 

As for the US, the same is true. Biden has said a few times that the US would stand with Taiwan were China to attack, but he has never said that he intends for the US to alter the status quo or stand in the way of the peace process. 

Where, again, is the failure? 

Only Beijing has failed. It has failed in being a partner in peace, in coming to the negotiating table with no prerequisites, in truly seeking a solution between equals without concurrent attempts to undermine Taiwan. 

The authors utterly fail to examine how unequal such a peace process would be, given China's current actions. At every turn, China tries to coerce Taiwan. Why would they assume that negotiations would be any different? 

I understand that it's not helpful for them to issue quite as many recommendations to Beijing, as Beijing simply won't take them. Taipei and Washington, on the other hand, actually listen to these three people. (Perhaps they shouldn't, but they do.) I get it -- you give advice to the one who might actually heed it. 

But in doing so, they imply unification would not be a bad thing, and place the blame on Washington and Taipei for a situation that is created entirely by Beijing. They refuse to assign Beijing as the originator of the threats of war, instead opting for a tired, outdated framing where Beijing has no agency, but is merely "provoked" by the actions of others. 

What is their advice to end these "provocations" (in this case, a lack of assurances?) For Beijing and Taipei to continue to do more or less exactly what they are already doing -- and yet somehow, call these actions a "failure"! 

Senior Biden administration officials have reaffirmed that the United States does not support Taiwan’s independence...

Here's where they give away their bias. Taiwan already is independent and anyone with two brain cells to rub together realizes this. They don't phrase it as "formal", "recognized" or "de jure" independence (though there is an argument to be made that Taiwan actually has de jure independence). They call it "independence", as though Taiwan is not currently sovereign. 

The only fair thing I can say here is that the Biden administration phrases it this way, too. They're wrong, too. Taiwan is independent; the only thing to 'not support' is formal recognition at this time. 

Unfortunately, officials in all three capitals have also expanded the scope of what they believe are legitimate measures to signal resolve in response to perceived threats, fueling a potentially dangerous spiral of actions and reactions.

Wrong. Only China has done this. The US has basically stayed the course, not entering into a formal defense pact but doing exactly what it has always done under the maze of policies created in the late 1970s. Taiwan has actually shown remarkable resolve not to rock the boat, although it has every moral justification for doing so.

Beijing, Taipei, and Washington have not reiterated key statements that once made an eventual peaceful resolution at least conceivable.

The only "peaceful resolution" Beijing will ever accept is to annex Taiwan, and everybody else knows this, so either the authors actually think it would be acceptable for Taiwan to be non-violently coerced into this, or they need to see a neurologist. 

Such assurances were never meant to promote a near-term resolution or to specify the details of any eventual resolution; they were meant to convey that there still might be peaceful ways of settling cross-strait differences.

The fundamental problem is that there probably aren't any peaceful ways to settle this.

Not while China can accept no peaceful resolution other than unification. Taiwan will never accept any peaceful resolution other than sovereignty (with admirable restraint, they have not demanded international recognition so as to prevent a war, so I'm not sure what Glaser et al. think they are doing wrong). 

I hate to say this. I don't want there to be no roads to peaceful resolution. But unless and until China recognizes that it cannot have Taiwan and will never have Taiwan, I don't see what those roads might be.

Glaser, Chen-Weiss and Christensen try here to play the 'unbiased' card, insisting that they aren't outlining details of such a potential resolution. But that they seem to think that the government of China, as it exists now, might be 'assured' into good-faith negotiation with Taiwan as equals -- and that right there is where they show their asses. 

To not even ponder the notion that Beijing deliberately pretends to act in good faith while doing everything it can to undermine the other party is astounding to me. It is not serious. So how can we take these three seriously?

For instance, Beijing’s proposals regarding the governance of a future Taiwan unified with the mainland have grown less generous over time. The “one country, two systems” offer that Beijing made in a 1993 white paper included allowing the island to “have its own administrative and legislative powers, an independent judiciary, and the right of adjudication” as well as “its own party, political, military, economic, and financial affairs,” and a pledge that Beijing would not send troops or administrative personnel to be stationed in Taiwan. 

Uh huh, and if you think this offer was in good faith, and would not be walked back the second Beijing felt like it, I present to you Hong Kong's Fate. 

The former assurance disappeared in China’s 2000 white paper on the topic, and the latter was removed in its 2022 iteration. “One country, two systems” was never a popular concept in Taiwan, and it has become even less so now that Beijing has tightened its hold on Hong Kong, where it had pioneered the approach. Combined with increasingly aggressive and frequent Chinese military operations near Taiwan, the failure to offer more attractive options for Taiwan’s future only makes Beijing seem both more threatening and less trustworthy.

If you mention Hong Kong you have to admit that what was offered in the 1990s was a promise that Beijing was never intending to keep. 

Regardless, in 1993 Taiwan was not a democracy, and two dictatorships uniting is perhaps less impactful and problematic than a democracy uniting with a dictatorship. Are the authors unaware that Taiwan has changed a lot since 1993, as well?

Besides, this implies that Beijing possibly could make an offer that Taiwanese would find attractive. It cannot, because Taiwanese -- unlike Glaser, Chen-Weiss and Christensen -- are smart enough to see that Beijing only knows how to lie. 

It implies that there is a form of unification between a (comparatively small) democracy and a (large) dictatorship in which the democracy might come out ahead, or even get to keep its democracy. There never was, not in 1993, not after democratization, and not now. Not ever. 

Let me repeat, because some people clearly need to hear it more than once: the fundamental problem is that China has never made Taiwan a tempting, credible offer, because no such offer exists. There is no iteration of unification that would be good for Taiwan and Taiwanese know this. 

The only assurance China will accept is that unification without war is possible (they never intended to drop the coercion). That assurance is not possible to give, because Taiwanese do not want it and never will. Therefore, it is not credible. 

Tell me again, what "credible assurances" are we meant to offer Beijing, when all the truly credible ones have been rejected?

And although she has resisted pressure from radicals in her own party to pursue measures that would likely be interpreted in Beijing as moves in the direction of independence—such as ceasing to use the Republic of China national anthem or insisting on the use of the moniker “Taiwan” rather than “Chinese Taipei” at international sporting events—Tsai has allowed the teaching of Taiwan’s history separate from the history of China in high schools.

Everything they say before this is fine; it's simply a summary of how the Tsai administration has handled China. Nothing in it deviates from their advice, despite their saying that Taipei is one of the actors that has "failed" to "assure" the other side. 

This, however, is actively offensive. The implication that it is somehow bad to teach Taiwanese history in Taiwan is deeply troubling. 

What's more, Tsai can't allow or not allow this; the president doesn't set the educational standards. This isn't a totalitarian state where a person or a party can unilaterally decide what may or may not be taught in schools, and it is deeply, overtly offensive to Taiwan to imply they can.

What is the alternative? Teaching history as though Taiwan is a part of China? Unless you're a dirty unificationist, how is teaching your own country's history a problem, but teaching a history that mostly has nothing to do with Taiwan correct?

If you didn't think the authors had a pro-China bias before, this should seal it. This whole thing reads like their plan for Taiwan is to first, teach Taiwanese kids that they are Chinese, second, look the other way as Beijing undermines Taiwan during negotiations (pretending that non-violent coercion is not coercion), and three, accept unification and call it "peace".

It's nonsense. Dirty unificationist nonsense.

I don't know how else to say it. Anyone who thinks Taiwan should placate China by not teaching its own history to its own citizens can. get. fucked. 

And questions remain about the sustainability of Taiwan’s restraint in the future. The current DPP vice president and front-runner in the presidential election scheduled for January 13, 2024, Lai Ching-te, has in the past advocated for independence more stridently than Tsai, describing himself in 2017 as a “political worker for Taiwan independence.”

It is true that he had this reputation and retains some vestige of it, but he has said and done no such thing in the current campaign. So what's the problem? Do you think the DPP should only run candidates who aren't "political workers for independence" or "strident" independence supporters? 

Almost all of them are! Would the authors prefer that the only candidates in Taiwan's elections be pro-China? You know -- exactly what China wants?

This reads not just like a China sellout screed, but like some Y2K era nonsense where DPP candidates were "troublemakers" simply for existing and not thinking Taiwan is part of China. 

More recently in July 2023, Lai told supporters at a campaign event that his party’s ambition is to have a sitting president of Taiwan “enter the White House,” which implies his goal is to upgrade Taiwan’s relationship with the United States, raising alarm in Beijing and prompting a request for clarification from Washington.

Is there currently an actual law or rule that says this can't happen? Or is it just precedent? Can a president not visit another president without a formal or official change in relationship? 

Besides, what is wrong with this as a future ambition? Did he say he wants to do this now, or even soon? I don't think so.

But the credibility of those statements [that the US doesn't support Taiwan independence] has been called into question by Biden’s repeated insistence that the United States would come to Taiwan’s defense if attacked because it made a commitment to do so, even though the United States has not had a formal obligation to defend Taiwan since it abrogated the alliance with Taipei in 1979 as a precondition to normalizing diplomatic relations with Beijing.

Ah, so you agree that what Beijing really wants is not an assurance that the status quo will continue, but an assurance that it can attack Taiwan and the US will let it happen? 

Thanks for admitting it so overtly. 

Biden administration officials have also noticeably failed to confirm that the United States would accept any peaceful resolution of cross-strait differences achieved through negotiations and without coercion. The Biden administration’s omission of this assurance has increased Beijing’s suspicions that Washington would never accept any form of cross-strait integration, even if achieved through nonviolent means.

Isn't this exactly what US policy currently says? It's as if you're admitting that Beijing can't have what it wants and everybody already knows this. 

And again, how exactly do we achieve the "without coercion" aspect, when Beijing only knows coercion? 

To do what the authors suggest would be to signal to Beijing that they can do everything but start a war to twist Taiwan's arm, and as long as there are no shots fired, it's all good. 

I've known abusers who never laid a finger on their victims, and this makes me sick. 

I cannot express this strongly enough: I have seen this dynamic in real life. The "it's not force, I never touched them" controlling abuse. I've seen the people who believe the abusers when they say this because no shots were fired, no hands were thrown. I am not talking metaphorically. I mean I have seen this. As with people, so with countries. Beijing is a government that knows only abuse.

It is no exaggeration to say that, in pretending Beijing wouldn't do this, Glaser, Chen-Weiss and Christensen make me want to vomit. It's disgusting. They should be ashamed of themselves. 

But U.S. actions, paired with the rhetoric of American officials, have also raised fears in Beijing that the United States seeks to “use Taiwan to contain China,” as China’s State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi charged at a press conference in August 2022, and to restore something akin to the alliance that existed with Taipei before 1979. 

Has it not occurred to the authors that the reason nonviolent integration is not possible has nothing to do with what the US wants, but rests entirely with the fact that Taiwanese people do not want it? And they do not want it not because China has not made a good enough offer, but because they see (as the authors don't) that no author from an abuser could ever be credible? 

I'm used to Chen-Weiss not thinking Taiwanese people have agency. She's a well-trained bootlicker. But Glaser? Come on. 

Besides, if you quote Wang Yi even remotely uncritically, you are not serious. 

I'm skipping a lot here, but let's move to the authors' recommendations for Taiwan (China isn't going to do what they advise, anyway). 

For its part, Taiwan must accompany needed measures to bolster its defense with credible assurances to Beijing that as long as the Chinese military refrains from attacking Taiwan, Taipei will not pursue independence or permanent separation. Taiwan should refrain from potentially provocative actions, such as holding a referendum to change its official name, the Republic of China, or revising its territorial claims to exclude mainland China—changes that would indicate a declaration of formal independence.

So...exactly what Taiwan is currently doing? What exactly is the problem? What is the failure? 

Do you secretly want Taiwan to marry her abuser?

Regardless of who is elected Taiwan’s next president, Taipei will need to convincingly reassure Beijing that it has no intention of fundamentally altering the status quo.

The problem is that while Taiwan has no intention of doing so currently, in fact, they do not want to move toward peaceful unification -- only you three, and Beijing seem to want that -- and they actually do want to keep the independence they currently enjoy. If it were formalized, all the better, but the authors repeatedly conflate "independence" (which is a current reality) and "formal independence" (which even Taiwanese aren't asking for right now). Their bias is showing.

But the need for such guarantees will grow in the event of the victory of Lai, the DPP candidate; Chinese officials deeply mistrust him since he has endorsed the pursuit of formal independence for Taiwan in the past. 

CCP officials distrust any candidate they did not personally help elect, and deeply distrust any DPP official. Either we accept this, or we advocate that China should get to choose who gets elected in Taiwan. Is that what we want?

The pledge that Lai made, in an October 2023 speech in Taipei at a dinner attended by nearly 100 foreign dignitaries and guests, to maintain Tsai’s cross-strait policy, with its emphasis on refusing both to bow to Chinese pressure and to provoke Beijing, is a good start. If elected, Lai could use his inaugural address to reaffirm the commitments Tsai made in her inaugural speech in 2016 to conduct cross-strait affairs in accordance with the Republic of China’s constitution and the 1992 act governing relations between the two sides of the strait, Taipei’s law on how the island should manage relations with Beijing.

Right, so, exactly what he has been doing and has indicated he will do? What's the problem? Why did you say earlier that Taipei had "failed" to assure Beijing, when they are "assuring" them in exactly the way you suggest?

Why the fearmongering that he's going to suddenly veer off-course? 

Regardless, this is what Taiwan has indeed been doing since 2016. China has not responded in kind. It has escalated, not scaled back. It has shown aggression, not restraint. What good are these assurances you call for, if we already know they don't work?

Also, it's not an island. It's a group of islands that together form a country.

As the third party to this dispute, the United States must also think carefully about its mix of threats and assurances. Its priority is to prevent the Chinese military from attacking Taiwan, but deterrence will not work if Beijing does not believe U.S. assurances. For instance, it is in the United States’ interest for China to remain hopeful that sometime in the future it might be able to resolve its differences with Taiwan without resorting to violence. 

The problem is that Beijing probably should not believe these assurances, as they are false. If they have hope for nonviolent resolution, fine, but as of right now there is, indeed, no way for China to peacefully get what it wants. 

The biggest issue here, which the authors do not seem to understand, is that Beijing probably already knows this. This is why assurances to the contrary cannot truly be 'credible', and why Beijing cannot be trusted to act in good faith. 

China would have to persuade Taiwan’s public of the merits of some form of peaceful integration—a hard sell, but not impossible given China’s economic clout...

Yeah no, sorry, Taiwanese aren't that stupid. Maybe you are, but they're not. Promises from abusers are worthless. All they know is abuse. 

If you spent more time in Taiwan, you'd know this as most Taiwanese do. 

...and the possibility that a more attractive government may someday emerge in Beijing. 

Do you honestly think that "maybe you can have Taiwan if your government totally changes and the CCP basically loses power" is something Beijing can be sold on?

Besides, I'm not sure Taiwan would want to "integrate" -- to use the authors' silly euphemism -- even if the Chinese government underwent radical reform. 

It doesn't matter, though. You know the old adage that one should only be friends with an ex after they no longer care as much if they're friends with that ex? 

Any government in Beijing that might tempt Taiwan toward unification would be such a good government, that it would no longer demand unification, and respect Taiwan's right to self-determination! 

But hey, if Bonnie Glaser, Jessica Chen-Weiss and Tom Christensen are actually advocating for the overthrow of the CCP, on that I agree. The CCP should be overthrown and Xi Jinping should spend the rest of his life in prison. Better yet, he should get the Ceaucescu treatment. 

To the extent that Washington can influence Chinese President Xi Jinping’s thinking on this crucial issue, it should do so; the United States should avoid making statements or taking actions that could lead Beijing to conclude that unification can only be achieved through force.

I don't know how many times I can say this. There is no possibility for unification without force now or in the near future...and probably ever. So how are we meant to 'assure' Beijing or 'give them hope' for something they know as well as I do, and most Taiwanese do, that such a possibility simply does not exist?

I am asking you, Glaser, Chen-Weiss and Christensen. How exactly do you recommend that we lie to Beijing? What words should we use to make a lie seem potentially true?

Consistent with its “one China” policy of not supporting an independent Taiwan or seeking to restore a formal alliance with Taipei, the U.S. government should not use in its official communications symbols of Taiwan’s sovereignty, such as the flag of the Republic of China, or refer to Taiwan as either a country or an ally, as the Trump administration did in a 2019 Defense Department report. If U.S. officials do so inadvertently, such as when U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken referred to Taiwan as a country on two occasions in 2021, a correction should be swiftly issued.

So, you do want the US to lie? Taiwan is a country, it is sovereign, and it has symbols of sovereignty. You want the US to pretend these things are not true. You want your country to overtly, transparently lie.

Glad we cleared that up. 

And since Beijing fears that Taiwan may merely be a pawn in a wider American game of containment, U.S. officials should not imply that Taiwan is a strategic asset essential to U.S. national security.

Beijing probably realizes more than it will admit that Taiwan isn't interested in unification because Taiwanese people don't want it, not because the US won't allow it. 

In fact, it's really weird that the authors are implying that the US is some staunch supporter of independence or is actively pursuing this goal, when that's simply not true. 

But let's say Beijing does fear that Taiwan is a 'pawn' even though it's not, and pro-Taiwan sentiment stems entirely from Taiwan. Okay...the problem is that Taiwan actually is a strategic asset. (A country can be an asset without being a pawn). 

So, again, you want the US to transparently lie?

In the most egregious misstatement of U.S. policy on Taiwan to date, Biden told reporters in November 2021 that Taiwan “is independent” and “makes its own decisions,” a description that contravenes long-standing U.S. policy that does not recognize Taiwan as an independent, sovereign state.

The problem here is that Taiwan actually is independent and actually does make its own decisions, so again, you want Biden and the US government to lie. 

Sure, yeah, policy, whatever. But these things are true, policy or not, and to deny them is to lie. 

A more complete statement, such as a speech by the national security adviser or the secretary of state, should restate the positions that Biden has reportedly made clear to Xi, including that the United States does not support Taiwan’s independence, opposes any unilateral change to the status quo by either side, does not pursue a “two Chinas” or “one China, one Taiwan” policy, and does not seek to use Taiwan as part of a strategy to contain China or embolden Taipei to push for independence. Such a statement should include the assurance provided by prior administrations that the United States will accept any outcome reached peacefully by both sides and that has the assent of the people of Taiwan.

I do understand that "does not support independence" and "does not pursue a 'two Chinas' or a 'one China, one Taiwan' policy" does not necessarily mean the US opposes an outcome where Taiwan's current independence is formalized. They are, very technically, different things. Not pursuing a policy doesn't mean one won't accept an outcome.

But, this could easily be misread as pushing for unification because it seems on the surface as the most "peaceful" outcome. It's not well-worded and, I think, reveals a pro-China bias on the part of the authors. There's a lot of talk about potential unification. Where is the discussion of what an outcome of independence could mean?

I would still love to see a framework by which we could be assured that any agreement truly has the assent of the Taiwanese people. With China trying to interfere in Taiwan's elections, and throwing a baby hissy fit every time Taiwan does even the smallest thing -- like, oh, teach its own history to its own people -- I don't see currently how that is possible. 

Until recently, no Biden administration official had publicly called for the resumption of cross-strait dialogue to reduce misunderstandings and manage problems, a position that was central to U.S. policy before the Trump administration.

Perhaps they have realized that Xi and his minions are not capable of dialogue in good faith -- something Taiwanese realized years ago?

Even though Beijing is responsible for the breakdown of cross-strait dialogue, the failure of the United States to encourage a return to talks has been interpreted by Beijing as further evidence that Washington does not want the two sides of the strait to settle their disputes.

I believe that is what Beijing has led the authors to believe. This is exactly the sort of lie they tell, which analysts believe as Beijing's true, good-faith position. 

In truth, Beijing has no intention of resuming dialogue unless Taiwan accepts the concept that it is part of China. Beijing has made this clear to Taiwan. Perhaps if these analysts spent more time in Taiwan, they'd realize it too. Abusers lie, and Beijing is a government of abusers.

At least they recognize that Beijing is entirely to blame for the breakdown. Frankly, that's more than I expected of them. In this, they are correct. 

***

Alright, I'm tired and this article is long. There is not much else to say that isn't a further repetition of what I've already said. There's more to this piece, but I don't have it in me to keep refuting the same nonsense in the same way.

This article is mostly nonsense, undercuts Taiwan's sovereignty and agency, ignores an atmosphere of abuse perpetuated by Beijing, and both advises Taipei and Washington to do exactly what they have been doing, while implying somehow that they are not doing things correctly. It offers solutions to 'assure' Beijing that have been tried -- that are currently implemented -- and have not worked. It pushes unification as a real possibility far more than independence, conflates independence with international recognition, and criticizes Taiwan for even the tiniest steps toward taking pride in itself and its achievements. 

The fundamental disconnect here is that the three authors -- not all of whom I'd taken for China sellouts and CCP bootlickers until I read this tripe -- assume that good-faith negotiation with China is possible, and therefore an "uncoerced" solution is therefore, well...possible. It is not, because the situation is already not uncoerced. China is trying to coerce Taiwan right now. Assuming that free and fair negotations can even happen with a government like China's is like assuming a controlling narcissist might be a good relationship partner. They can't; it is not possible.

How, then, do we convince Beijing that peaceful unification is possible when it fundamentally is not?

It's nonsense, and that nonsense was never taken out of context. 

Which Taiwanese party offers the best chance for peace? (Not the KMT)

Here's a random picture from Hyderabad because I have somewhere to be and haven't got time to be messing around with photos

Lord forgive me, but I'm gonna pull a Tom Friedman and start with a taxi anecdote. 

If I have work at 9am, I usually take a taxi because I simply cannot with the morning rush hour. Sometimes, we talk politics, and I've heard all sorts of opinions, from the standard-issue to the positively bizarre. This morning, my driver was a middle-aged woman from Tainan with big hair and a bright green skirt who insisted that Taiwan was indeed independent, but there was no need to keep "saying we're independent" because it "upsets the mainland."  She insisted that she wants "peace" and that Taiwan is very small so “there's nothing we can do." 

Crucially, she seemed to think that people calling for Taiwan independence simply should not do so. Not because Taiwan isn't independent, but because it puts Taiwan in danger. 

We didn't exchange views on specific political parties, but her views are fairly consistent with the KMT's current campaign platform: that they're the party of no war, not declaring independence and improved dialogue with China. The only real difference between her views and the KMT platform is that the KMT fundamentally does not believe that Taiwan is independent of China. 

As she talked -- and mostly, I just let her talk -- it occurred to me that a lot of people are still judging presidential candidates based not on their actual platforms, but on some weird fantasy of what they believe those platforms to be.

For example, I've heard people still say they fear that DPP candidate Lai Ching-te will "go for independence" or that the DPP is dangerous because they will "declare independence" if they win again.

Others believe that the KMT only favor "improved dialogue" with China for the purposes of averting war; they'll insist that the party won't sell out Taiwan's sovereignty despite the fact that China's preconditions for dialogue -- that Taiwan recognize that there is "one China" and that this China includes Taiwan" -- do exactly that. 

The first is based on a semi-reasonable deduction from DPP party philosophy. They do, indeed, favor an independent Taiwan. The second is based on zero evidence. Such people are taking the KMT at their word that all they want is "dialogue", without considering their fundamental orientation to unification. 

But why take the KMT at their word, while insisting the DPP has some sort of ulterior motive or secret plan to pivot toward a formal declaration of independence when they've been quite clear that they don't intend to do so?

It not only feels a bit unfair to deduce that Lai is being dishonest about the DPP's intentions if they win the presidency again but to take Hou's word as bond, it also assumes that there is a bigger difference between what the two parties are saying than I suspect actually exists.

No, really. Hear me out.

And yes, I'm leaving out Ko Wen-je and Terry Gou because I don't want to talk about Ko, and Gou isn't worth my time. 

If we take Lai and Hou's platforms as they are presented, here is what they say they want: 

The DPP has consistently said it does, in fact, want dialogue with China, and they do not intend to declare independence. 

The KMT also says it wants dialogue with China, and does not intend to declare independence. 

I have no reason to doubt either party is lying, so whether you vote for Lai or Hou, you're getting a party that welcomes discussions with China, and won't declare independence. (I happen to know for a fact that while the DPP does, of course, envision a future of globally-recognized sovereignty as an entity independent of the PRC, there is no current intention to 'declare independence'. There's no ruse, no secret agenda). 

That, in my opinion, is where the similarities end. The DPP's reasoning is that they'd be happy to speak with envoys from another country, as long as Taiwan isn't forced to abrogate its sovereignty to do so. There's no need to declare independence, as Taiwan is already independent. No other country feels the need to put out such a statement. Why should Taiwan?

The KMT is staking their presidential bid on that dialogue with China. The key difference, of course, is that they're perfectly willing to denigrate Taiwan's sovereignty in order to do so. They'll agree to just about anything -- that there is one China as per the (fabricated) 1992 Consensus, that Taiwan's a part of it, whatever the CCP want them to say about "brothers" (兄弟) or "one family" (一家人).

Their reasoning is less overt; they won't come out and say that they consider Taiwan a part of China, but their stances don't make any sense unless you take it as a given. If any party has a secret or poorly-clarified agenda, it's the KMT. They know perfectly well that their pro-unification orientation is not popular with the public. 

In other words, when greens point out that the KMT is willing to sell out Taiwan, they're not wrong. When blues say the DPP are secretly gunning for formal independence even if it means war, they're full of crap. 

Yes, I'm biased. But come on...I'm also not wrong.

Perhaps my dislike for the KMT is causing me to notice it more, but it feels like, as usual, there's a double standard at play with the two parties. The KMT can screw up royally but "well, you know, they've always been that way." They don't even need to make meaningful changes! Their fundamental philosophy regarding Taiwan's status is laughably out of touch with the public but "but Taiwanese like to change out the ruling party" (true enough, I just wish one of the two biggest options wasn't so awful). The KMT can slaughter the defense budget, but the DPP gets blamed for Taiwan's lack of military preparedness.

The KMT can all but say they'd sell out Taiwan, but people will still believe they only want "dialogue". The KMT can have a barely-concealed desire to make Taiwan as 'Chinese' as possible, but somehow people think the DPP are the ones who are hiding their true intentions. 

Frankly, I'm sick of it. 

Okay, you might say, but which party will actually prevent war?

Honestly? The KMT may be running on a "no war" platform, but it's most likely the DPP. 

What do you think is more likely to dissuade China from attacking? A party that will kowtow to the CCP's every demand but perhaps not agree to true unification with the PRC (because the public would never accept it)? Or the party that will do what they can for Taiwan's defensive capabilities and court support from other countries, making the country less of an appealing target? 

Let's say the KMT wins, Hou lets Xi give him a good old-fashioned rawdog, but crucially doesn't actually set a timetable for unification because he knows it would result in mass riots and essentially ruin the KMT's chances for future electoral wins, if not their very existence as a party. China realizes they're not going to actually get a peacefully-unified Taiwan out of the KMT, at least not anytime soon. 

In fact, I suspect China already knows this, unless they've believed their own lies that Taiwan's desire for sovereignty is some top-down DPP invention and not the general public consensus. 

Let's say that the KMT pivoting Taiwan toward China alienates those who might have previously supported its cause -- if you're going to vote in the party that wants unification, why should we support your fight for de jure independence? Domestically, Taiwan's defensive readiness is in shambles because the KMT doesn't actually think Taiwan should need to defend itself. 

What do you think China is going to do? Say "oh well, we tried, good luck in your future endeavors, Taiwan?" 

No, they're going to attack. Not because they have to, but because the KMT will have made it easy.

On the other hand, what do you think will happen when Lai steers the same course as Tsai: cultivating a sense of existing independence for Taiwan, growing global support, rendering the question of a declaration moot as there is no need to declare what is obviously true? 

China will refuse to meet with him for sure. It will look like a more dangerous path, and China will see to that with increase war games and military exercises, various economic coercions, perhaps some financial or cybersecurity sabotage, you know...blah blah blah, the usual. Insist that the 'troublesome' DPP is bringing it on Taiwan, when in fact China is deciding to engage in this. 

They won't do that to Hou. At first, Hou will seem like the candidate for peace, because the random sanctions, military drills and fighter jet excursions will stop. For a time, at least. 

But you know what else is more likely to happen? CCP top brass will look at the costs to a bloody war that Taiwan has purposely built up, from its own defenses to international support, and decide that continuing to rattle the saber is smarter, for the time being, than actually attacking. 

That's not ideal, but it's also not war exactly. 

So if you want peace, don't support the guy that will make it easy for China to start a war when it doesn't get what it wants. 

Because it won't get what it wants -- not ever, because the Taiwanese public is unlikely to pivot toward desiring unification or any kind of strong Chinese identity -- so Taiwan's only option is to make it a bad decision to grab.

Hau Pei-tsun is dead now

So that’s a thing.

In this post, I will attempt to say things which are not specifically negative, per se. I will make factual comments, but facts are facts, they are not negative for the sake of negativity.

Let’s see...

He was alive until recently.

I feel bad for his adult offspring, who did lose a father. That's always sad.

The Presidential Office was super classy about it and expressed their condolences. Regardless of my personal views, that was the right thing to do.

He was not notably ugly, at least in physical appearance. 

The New Party, which he had supported in the past, has not been popular in the past few years.

He opposed Taiwanese independence and identity. It was his right in a liberal democracy to have these views. It is my right in a liberal democracy to have an opinion about those views, and I do.

At some point in the past, he did in fact oppose the CCP. His support of the New Party (unificationists who are known to actively work with the CCP) calls that into question, but his previous dislike of that regime is well-documented.

Further to that, his opinions on Taiwan’s destiny being ultimately as part of China do not enjoy popular support and therefore he can be said to have been fairly harmless in his later years, mostly due to irrelevance.

This shift in Taiwanese identity came about naturally - or was able to emerge thanks to the efforts of activists that brought about democratization, and he was powerless to stop it. 

He was rich.

Stupid and terrible are not the same thing. He was not stupid.

He played a key role in modernizing the military.

He probably actually believed the things he said.

He wanted peace, of a sort. 

He was once expelled from the KMT for being too much of a hardliner (well, for supporting the New Party, which is basically the same thing). Then the KMT decided they were into hardliners and he was allowed back in. 

His son, whom he tried to maneuver into power, was not able to inflict significant damage on Taiwan because, while I have no opinion of his general personality, we can all agree he isn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier. 

People I know who don’t follow politics had thought he was already dead. 

He never attempted to sing KTV-style and then release an embarrassing YouTube video announcing his lack of talent to the public, as far as I am aware. 

He was slightly more interesting as a person then Eric Chu.

He seems to have identified as male. 

I am reasonably sure he did not personally murder any democracy or Taiwan independence activists with his own hands.

Although a friend of mine who knows him said he apologized to political prisoners and 228/White Terror victims, this source says otherwise, and he has tried to minimize the number of deaths that occurred due to 228.

He had black hair. Well, it was probably white toward the end.

His wife died a few years ago, also at a ripe old age.

He was very old. 

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

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

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

Whatever happened to those guys?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The connection has been made by many:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From the KMT's own mouthpieces, of course!

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

It's all a farce.

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

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

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

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

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