It is really hard to support Taiwan (Part 3): being pro-Taiwan doesn't mean being pro-US!

Westerners pushing into Asia is not always a great idea - just ask this guy.
(But when it comes to East Asia, I'd rather have the US around than China.)

I'm aiming for this to be the final set of ideas that I express in this series of posts (though you never know). In the previous two posts I took aim at Taiwan's domestic issues and the state of Taiwan advocacy - this time, I want to shift my focus to other Westerners.

I've had a few friends and Facebook people say things which have caused me to worry about the relationship between Western liberals: that no matter how bad the threat from China is, Taiwan must find a solution that doesn't involve the United States because we're evil; surprise that China even wants to be the next global superpower; that seeking the best possible realistic solution for Taiwan amounts to being pro-right wing or pro-Trump; that saying continued US influence in Asia is the only realistic way to counter China is "dangerous propaganda"; that Taiwan being annexed by China is actually preferable to its having close ties to the US because "the culture and history is the same".

All of these (wrong-headed) statements carry an implication that advocating for any realistic solution that contains Chinese influence in Asia (especially vis-a-vis Taiwan) amounts to being pro-USA. 

This is one pushback that doesn't seem to have been mentioned in critical essays on China's United Front efforts. Michael Turton wrote an excellent piece on weaponized narratives for American Citizens for Taiwan, of which I have no criticism. In it, he describes the ways in which China supporters tries to twist narratives to make those who criticize the Chinese government's actions seem ignorant, uncivil, hysterical or racist. Some of these notions were echoed more recently in The Monthly:


Relentlessly, and through a thousand different channels, the Party was working to collapse the categories of “Chinese Communist Party”, “China” and “the Chinese people” into a single organic whole – until the point where the Party could be dropped from polite conversation altogether. From there, the Party’s critics could be readily caricatured as “anti-China”, “racist” or even “Sinophobic”.


But, I have to say, I'm not afraid of being seen in these ways. No real person (leaving aside the fifty-cent trolls) would look at what I have to say and declare that I am "ignorant" of China or the region. I'm not an academic in this field, so I'm not worried about incivility. Hysterical - well, yes, okay, my criticisms of Chinese government actions are numerous. However, when I point out that I live in a sovereign democracy that China has openly said they intend to annex by force, most reasonable people do understand that the threat to my home is very real, and it is not hysterical to point this out. I've had "racist!" leveled at me a few times - but any reasonable person will note that I live in and advocate for an Asian nation, not a majority-white one.

No - what I'm afraid of instead is being labeled "pro-America" or "pro-Western imperialist".

That is a difficult one to fight, because a strong case for Taiwan does tend to include a case for liberal values, and an argument against attempts to eradicate and replace them with what China might call "Asian values" but I call "authoritarian, pro-oppression, anti-human rights" fascism. However, it's hard to make that case without sounding too much like a booster for the West as a whole and the US in particular.


Liberal values are universal, not Western

I consider "liberal values" to be universal - freedom, human rights, equality. Democracy too, though there are a variety of ways to structure it (some being more democratic than others), but a lot of people have been convinced to see them as distinctly "Western". This is misguided: it assumes there is no bedrock of historical fact and a philosophical history (in many cultures, not just Western ones) of ethics that have brought about the idea that human rights are for all, not just some.

But, if you see my stance as fundamentally "Western" (which, again, it isn't) that makes it sound like one is totally fine with a continuation of a system in which white folks continue to be on top - it can be twisted around and interpreted to mean that one doesn't want to give up a position of power and privilege to Asia because you as a Westerner may stand to lose from that. 


We're not unaware

It also sounds as though one is unaware of how systemic exploitation is either accepted or encouraged with those at the top (that is, white people) allowing the rest of the world to continue to toil for their benefit by, say, making clothes in Bangladesh or iPhones in China in dangerous, slave-like working conditions. It sounds like one is in favor of the continued supremacy of a country whose foreign policy has completely screwed a large chunk (though not all) of Asia. 

Of course, I'm not in favor of a system in which the West is on top forever and necessarily keeps the rest of the world down to maintain its primacy. I'm not particularly pro-US - if anything, my views veer in the opposite direction.


What China wants vs. what's best for Asia

It's difficult to argue that, however, when it sounds so close to advocating for the status quo, especially when one then directs criticism at China's goal of global hegemony.

A lot of people don't believe this is the case: I've met many who believe that China has no desire to take America's place as the global hegemon. This is clearly untrue: China barely tries to conceal what it wants - total global supremacy - but people believe it nonetheless.

It wants a world in which other states are economically dependent on it. It wants to control the world's main transport networks. It wants to impose at least a tributary acceptance of Chinese censorship on the world. It wants, if not wholesale adoption, then at least acceptance of authoritarianism as a viable and "right" system of government and that human rights are not universal.

It wants to start by replacing the US as the biggest influencer in Asia. This sounds great on its face - Asia for Asians, yeah? - but remember that China is a dictatorship that wishes to impose its own will on the nations that surround it, including many successful, developed democracies (like Taiwan!) whose political values are actually closer to those of the West. An authoritarian system such as China's - and being subordinate to it - is actually a massive problem for successful Asian democracies. 

The US may not be an Asian nation, but working with them rather than China is actually in the interest of countries like Taiwan (and Korea, and Japan...) if they want to maintain their current level of freedom and democracy. Try saying that, though, and not sounding like an Evil Imperialist Capitalist Exploiter to a certain kind of liberal. 

It also requires that one ignore that so much of Asia is now at the top of the economic food chain: the only way the "you're an American imperialist!" narrative works is in a paradigm where there is only oppressor and oppressed, rather than an entire set of successful developed economies that counter this notion. I wonder what Koreans, Japanese, Singaporeans, Hong Kong residents, Taiwanese and residents of some Chinese cities would say to being told that they are victims because the West is their oppressor.


It smells like a right-wing narrative, but it's not

Two more issues compound this problem: the first is that this whole "freedom and democracy!" bass drum has been banged so much by the American right (well, until recently anyway), alongside the "anti-China" snare drum and "capitalism!" cymbals. Trying to separate all of that out and advocate for Taiwan (which involves being anti-CCP, but not anti-China) and for the spread of democracy and human rights is difficult: people expect to hear the rest of that conservative rhetoric along with it, and it seems more difficult to process when it's not there. 

They expect you to be a right-winger, because you sound a little bit like one. And they expect the same level of insincerity about "freedom of democracy" that the American (and increasingly European) right shows. Because of course, they are totally insincere. You can't be a strong ally of Saudi Arabia, or decline to comment on how your nation does not share so-called "Chinese values", and still call yourself the leaders of the free world. 


Anti-democracy liberals

The second is that believing that the US is evil and anyone who advocates for continued US dominance in Asia (regardless of the subtlety of their actual argument) is advocating for Western imperialism, and that China is the victim in this story, is a terribly anti-democratic view to take.

It is essentially using liberal precepts and twisting them around to support fascism. It is taking the idea of "equality" (which really means equality of people under the law) and turning it over to say that some people can live under dictatorship because all narratives - including CCP propaganda - are equally valid (which they are not), and disagreements can be brushed away with "eh, different cultures".

It totally ignores how many Asian cultures are in fact already democratic, and successfully so. That complicates things too much apparently. 


I got nothin' ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 
I don't know how to solve this - I'm not pro-US. I'm not pro-status quo. I want to live in a world where nobody is the superpower, where there is no hegemon. Nobody to act like the 'world police', because the world police never actually act for the benefit of all. They always prioritize themselves. This means a world in which the US plays a more egalitarian role, and also one in which China either cannot or does not take the US's place.

That sounds like fairy dreams, but it is my ideal. It may not be possible, but I'd love for other Westerners to at least understand the real case Taiwan advocates like myself are making, rather than knee-jerk assume that because we are pro-Taiwan and anti-CCP, and that happens to hew closely to a strong Taiwan-US relationship, that we are pro-Western imperialist or pro-US.

Because that is simply not the case. 

It is really hard to support Taiwan (Part 2)

So, I've tried to write before about certain issues I see in who Taiwan's 'friends' are in the US government, and why that's a problem. I didn't do a very good job, and I won't bother to link it. I do still think it's an issue though, so consider this my attempt at refining and re-articulating what I want to express.

Overall, it does seem clear that Taiwan has more bipartisan support in the US than you'd think at first glance. I've written about this before; more recently, you can see evidence of this in the fact that the Taiwan Travel Act was passed unanimously by the Foreign Affairs Committee and both houses. The situation is not as dire as it seems.

But, despite this, we do still seem to get the most vocal support predominantly (though not entirely) from conservatives, some of whom are otherwise just...dire people. The Taiwan Travel Act was Marco Rubio's bill. Ted Cruz likes us...so, uh, okay. Dana Rohrabacher has submitted a resolution for formal US-Taiwan ties, which of course I heartily support.

Note above that I said "conservatives", not "Republicans" (though they are that too) - that's intentional. I'm sure what I'll say below will be dismissed as "tribalist" or "partisan", so I want to make it very clear that this isn't about parties or tribes: it's about values. If a dodgy Democrat (and they do exist - I'm not a huge fan of Andrew Cuomo for example) or an upstanding Republican (I don't have many problems with, say, Susan Collins although we don't agree on everything) were to show support for Taiwan, I'd judge them on their values and history of elected service, not their party.

I also understand the importance of taking help where we can get it: I may not like it, but in Taiwan's position I can't get behind abandoning the few people who have actually spoken up for us, while those I'd like to see in our court have, frankly, failed to live up to the universal values they claim to support.

With that in mind, I don't think I have to list the many ways in which people like Rubio, Cruz and Rohrabacher are, in almost every other respect, horrible. (I say "almost" very intentionally. Cruz occasionally stands up for what he thinks is right, Rubio is a big supporter of Hong Kong's political freedom, and Rohrabacher is pro-weed, which has all sorts of race implications that people don't always think about: people of color are far more likely to be incarcerated over a marijuana-related drug violation than white people, with the discrepancy not explained by rates of use).

From being anti-choice (and comfortable, therefore, with condemning more women to death as anti-choice policies only lead to fewer safe abortions) to climate change skeptics, to not supporting marriage equality, our allies on Taiwan are not good people. Period. The sort of world they want to build is one in which a huge swath of Taiwan ends up underwater, and on other issues such as marriage equality, a woman's right to bodily autonomy and health care access (and more - this is just a shortlist), I worry that the sort of Taiwan they would like to see would not be the one that other independence advocates like myself (and many others, including most young Taiwanese) hope to build.

That shouldn't matter - after all, they don't have any say over Taiwan's internal governance, but it still makes it difficult to support Taiwan for a few reasons. I find it unfair, then, to dismiss these concerns as mere partisanism or tribalism.

The biggest one is that liberal pro-Taiwan American citizens don't have many choices in terms of voting for pro-Taiwan candidates (this is why I haven't mentioned people like John Bolton, and am sticking to people one might actually see on a ballot). It's not a huge problem for me as a New Yorker (Chuck Schumer signed the letter summarized in the first link in this post; Kirsten Gillibrand studied in China and Taiwan so while I worry that she might be too forgiving of China, at least she doesn't lack basic knowledge of the issue, and nobody who runs for Congress in my district seems to have anything to do with Taiwan regardless of party), but it is a problem for many others. What do you do if you're a pro-Taiwan liberal, for example, and your choices are pro-Taiwan Ted Cruz or a not-so-pro-Taiwan challenger who is better than Cruz in every other way? Or your choice is between pro-Taiwan Dana Rohrabacher and his not-as-pro-Taiwan challenger, who again is better than Rohrabacher on every other platform?

Another problem is that it is starting to feel as though any critique of this issue among pro-Taiwan advocates initiates an immediate, reflexive and frankly unfair pushback of "that's PARTISAN!", which - while I know this isn't the case for many (most!) people on our side, kind of lends the whole endeavor of fighting for Taiwan a veneer of being far too closely tied with the conservative agenda in the US.

I know, for example, that FAPA is not "overly" focused on Republican lawmakers; they'll talk to whoever is in power. I have no issue with them. However, they are widely seen* as being in bed with the American Right, and have done little to dispel that notion. I would imagine that Taiwan independence advocates do - and are willing, even happy - to talk to the left, but the public perception seems to be that they don't make an effort (rather than that the left has failed Taiwan), and that is a problem. Of optics, but a problem nonetheless. That concerns me.

And, of course, the issue I so inarticulately brought up in the past: that it's easier to compartmentalize when talking to odious people in government as a man. The people you are discussing Taiwan with aren't trying to take away your ability to access important health care (forget even the abortion issue: they want to shut down Planned Parenthood which does a lot more than perform abortions. For some women it's the only way they have access to regular pap smears, STD tests and birth control.) They aren't trying to oppress you. You have the privilege of compartmentalization. I don't. I can't talk to them, and therefore I cannot be more deeply involved in the Taiwan independence movement in that way.

In fact, it is a privilege to be able to do so. It is a privilege to have the ability to treat every cog in the American power machine as a neutral actor who might help your cause, because your bodily autonomy is not on the line. For me, it's like knowing there are some men in power who would very much like to be Commanders and turn women like me into Handmaids, and being told to be nice to them, to approach them (or their office - same difference), to engage with them, maybe to even hope they are re-elected, because they might help you on another issue. To be told that if you support Taiwan, you can vote for people like them who will fight for recognition of Taiwan in the US government (something I have been told) - oh, but they want to turn you into a Handmaid.

And the answer there is a strong non-negotiable no to all of that. In fact, it is a privilege to be able to say yes, or even maybe.

This worries me, because it is not a great leap from "but that's PARTISAN!" to "if you can't be involved, that's your fault", when, frankly, it isn't. There is not a moral equivalency between their wish to oppress me and my insistence that I will not hold my tongue against people who both wield power and wish to oppress women. It's the fault of the men who hold these views.

Nobody has said this as of yet, and I know most wouldn't, but to be honest, some days I feel like it's inevitable that someone will. I suspect that if it comes down to just a few votes between turning American women into Handmaids (or not), and the deciding votes are held by conservative pro-Taiwan candidates, that some (many?) who lobby for Taiwan will stay silent for the sake of Taiwan, because Taiwan allies winning seats is more important to them than women's rights.

And as a woman, I just can't support that. I love Taiwan, but I also have a vagina, and I cannot work with the same people who want to oppress me. I can't stay silent, and I do hope many friends of Taiwan lose their seats.

In other words, it's not "tribalist" or "partisan" when my actual bodily autonomy is at stake. It's about my bodily fucking autonomy, not a tribe or party.

This leads me to a final issue: with this tug-of-war between liberal values (which often leave women in the cold regardless) and fighting for Taiwan, and calls of "partisan!" and "tribal!" on one side and calls of "you're all sellout imperialists!" (or whatever) on the other, it is very hard to support Taiwan when everybody else who supports Taiwan seems to hate each other, the whole thing is a fishbowl, and when you bring up concerns about our 'friends' who are manifestly anti-woman as a woman, it's your turn to be the center of that fishbowl and everyone hating each other and whatever.

(For the record, I don't hate anybody, and those in Taiwan whom I dislike are not Taiwan advocates although some are pro-independence.)

I'm not suggesting we change anything per se - I don't see how we could reasonably and realistically keep up this fight if we ditch our allies, odious as they are (I've heard a few proposals and am sympathetic to some, but none that are actually workable). But, I am concerned that the privilege of treating everyone as a neutral potential ally is not fully understood, and that attempts to point this out are met with reflexive and unfair critiques of "partisanship" rather than a true attempt to understand that one only has the privilege of advocating in this way if one does not stand to lose as much from some of these people staying in power (and if you are a woman who stands to lose, that it can be extremely stressful to join the fight anyway, or to decide not to do so because you simply can't abide your would-be oppressors.)

OOH! OOH! BONUS PROBLEMS
That Taiwan advocates don't seem to make much of an attempt to reach out to the general electorate at all is another problem - publishing only in outlets that people who are already knowledgeable about Taiwan read (like the Taipei Times), or niche publications that the average Western liberal wouldn't read regularly. I know it's difficult to get published more widely - I'll admit that I've tried and failed - but we have to. We're not reaching the voters. One can find non-Palestinians who care about Palestine, and non-Tibetans who care about Tibet among the electorate of any Western democracy, but it is rare indeed to meet a pro-Taiwan person who has no personal connection to Taiwan.

We need to change that, and we aren't trying.

Finally, I worry. What happens if a "friend of Taiwan" then slips into his speeches some sort of appeal to ensure marriage equality never becomes a reality, or supports people like Katy Faust returning and meddling in our business? What happens if links between some pro-Taiwan conservatives and the  American Christian right groups that are trying to influence the future of marriage equality in Taiwan are found to exist? (Sounds crazy, but they are on the same side in the anti-equality fight.)

This whole constellation of issues which are interrelated (although their relationships might not seem initially clear) are why, yet again, it is really, really, very hard to support Taiwan.

*I'm using past tense here because it's important to me to protect the identities of the people I know who have said exactly this. I won't name them and as this is a blog, not a journalistic endeavor, I don't have to. 

Eldritch Memes: the (clear-cut) case for US support of Taiwan

Memes inside memes inside memes inside memes. A fractal of zombie memes. 

Some issues are difficult and complicated, and have no clear "good" answers. Others are clear-cut. Syria may be complex and difficult, but Taiwan? On that, the path forward is clear.

In recent weeks, talk of further intervention in Syria, punctuated by the recent airstrikes, has inspired countless memes - because you know that's totally an intellectually engaged way of communicating - which now march, seemingly of their own volition, across my Facebook feed. Of course these memes are not really self-propelled: they are shambling digital corpses animated by the clicks and likes of real people. They put on a show of being whole thoughts, but are not.

Because I'm a liberal who hangs around liberals, most of these half-formed wights express disagreement with any sort of intervention in Syria.

Of course, what worries me about these sans-serif haunted-meat memes about Syria isn't so much the question of intervening in Syria. My opinion that is something of a Newtonian liquid: hardening at times but subject to fluidity. I don't know enough about Syria to have a firmer opinion on it. Naw, what scares me is how easily I could see the same memes - possibly with the same pictures and text but "Syria" scratched out and "China" inserted - deployed in the event of US assistance to Taiwan, should it come under Chinese attack. What scares me more is that many of them will originate with the 50-cent troll army, but be animated and marched across Facebook by people like my friends. Good people spreading zombie memes opposing US assistance to Taiwan.

Of course, I won't see these eldritch memes for long, because I'll be dead.

More broadly, they express disagreement with the idea that the US should intervene in any international crisis, ever (though to their credit I can generally assume the people sharing these buzzing demi-thoughts do support strong refugee acceptance and settlement programs). They are isolationists - that's not a criticism, I'm just calling that perspective what it is - usually driven by two key worldviews:

1.) That the US cannot be trusted to do any good, and cannot be supported in any attempt to intervene in any international conflict, given our history of being unable to use our military might for good (at least since World War II), instead using it mostly to advance corporate/money-driven or power-driven interests. The US will never intervene for any other reason than to spread its selfish, people-killing empire.

2.) Intervening in any international conflict would create another quagmire the US cannot afford and will not be able to escape from, and will destroy the country in question in the same way that Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam were left in shambles, to name a few examples.

I won't deal with the first here - I agree with the sentiment to a great degree, yet not when it comes to Taiwan, and that deserves its own write-up. I'll tackle it later. Today, I'm focused on the second.

Even just a cursory brainstorming makes it clear to me that the "it will be a quagmire! We'll never get out! It will destroy the country!" line of thinking is simply incorrect when it comes to Taiwan. It is often true in other circumstances, and my support for Taiwan does not extend to support for what we did in Iraq.

Here are a few reasons why:

There’s a clear good guy and bad guy.  China is the obvious aggressor, a dictatorship claiming a self-ruled, sovereign liberal democracy as its own on specious "historical" grounds and a frankly racist call to ethnicity (they might say "cultural and historical roots" but they really mean that they think Taiwan and China should be the same country because they are ethnically the same). In many other conflicts, there are no clear 'good guys' - look at Syria. There are good people around the world and in Syria who genuinely want something better for their country, but the only players in the war whom we might back, who might be installed as a government, are frankly awful. In Taiwan that's not the case. Our side is very clearly in the right. China wants to not just take Taiwan but delete its freedoms. This isn't "Assad or the rebels, who are also terrible?" This is more like "Europe vs. the Nazis". (The CCP aren't exactly Nazis but the comparison is warranted given their rampant human rights abuses, fascist Big Brother system and straight-up massacres, the comparison is warranted. And who doesn't love punching Nazis?)

What I'm saying is, this is a clear-cut case of dictatorship vs. democracy, self-ruled successful nation vs. expansionist aggressor.

In other conflicts, there was no clear government or path forward after US intervention. Taiwan is a developed democracy (unlike other countries which were turned into a quagmire upon deposing a dictator or junta) with an imperfect but basically successful government. There are clear institutions which, while imperfect, are not horrible and can rebuild. There is no need to replace it - there is no leadership crater left behind. It would be more like Europe rebuilding after WWII than the morass of Iraq.

Unlike in other conflicts, Taiwan actually wants the support. In fact, it's not fair to call it "intervention" - it would be assistance. They can already provide a good amount of military support themselves. Not only does the Taiwanese government want the assurance of assistance, the general consensus in Taiwan is that the people do, too. This isn't Iraq where nobody asked us for help but we barged in anyway, with no real plan. If you are asked for help, you aren't barging in. You aren't intervening. You are supporting and assisting. That's what it means to be an ally.

Taiwan is an important ally, and this isn't about oil. We're one of the US's top trading partners (not as big as China but still essential). We are a bastion of liberal democracy in Asia. We are one of the freest, if not the freest, country in Asia. We are geostrategically important. We are a key global supply chain player, and a lot of global technology runs through us (ever heard of TSMC? Foxconn?). We are ranked the 22nd biggest economy in the world by GDP by the IMF (other organizations don't keep data on Taiwan because China is a jerk about it.) We are developed. We are successful. We have a population similar to Australia's. We do matter. The US economy will take a hit if we go down, not least because we make the chips that run your smartphones. You don't think you'll feel it, but you will, far more than the results of any other conflict.

The US is doing one thing right already. They aren’t just showing up with bombs in Taiwan, nor should they. They are wisely stepping back (well...there’s an interesting discussion to be had here) while peace is maintained. There would only be a question of stepping in if China invaded. Not before. We aren't starting this war, we're stepping in to help an ally if and only if an aggressor attacks. Again, this is the right way to go about being a world leader. 

It's actually the right thing to do. Yes, this makes me worried that the US won't do it. We never seem to do the right thing, at least not in my lifetime and not really in my parents' lifetimes either. But for once, we're on the right side! That's amazing and we shouldn't mess it up just because we've done wrong things before. If you get in a bar fight, feel bad about that and swear off fighting - dude, you still step in if you see someone about to get raped, even if it means a fight. "But I swore off fighting" doesn't put you in the right.

Destruction will happen whether we support Taiwan or not (so will casualties). That destruction will come from China, but it will still be destruction. Staying out of the conflict will not stop Taiwan from being destroyed (and if they want to use nuclear weapons - though I doubt they will - they'll do that regardless of whether the US gets involved). Yes, people will die, but people will die in the event of a CCP invasion, and will die under CCP dictatorship. Do you really think Taiwanese people will sit down, shut up and be force-fed a total lack of political freedom and human rights? 400,000 of us went downtown because we didn't like the way the government passed a trade pact. Take away our actual rights? And expect us to accept this? LOL, no. But if you fight the CCP you die or rot in jail.

Destruction is not the worst possible outcome. Destruction can be rebuilt from. CCP oppression is forever. Think of it more like “do we help Europe kick the Nazis out?” - the non-negotiable is kicking out Nazis, not peace and not preserving infrastructure. Destruction is an acceptable sacrifice. Ask most Taiwanese, and they'd rather have to rebuild roads and bridges than be ruled by the CCP.

Taiwan is better-equipped to rebuild. We are a developed, successful nation. We will need aid for a time, but it will be far more limited. We are not a black hole. We have resources and means. This isn't Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else that has turned into a horror story. Look at what Taiwan did, in the midst of Martial Law, coming off a massive decline from relative pre-war prosperity. We went from "economic basket case" to "Asian Tiger", and under a horrible dictator at that. It won't be fun, but we have the wherewithal to rebuild.

Taiwan wants peace. We give up a lot, not least our dignity, for peace already. The US assisting in the event of a Chinese invasion is an extreme worst-case scenario which Taiwan also doesn’t want. We're the ones who stand to suffer and sacrifice the most, and obviously we want to minimize the pain. It’s not a country of various groups hell-bent on destruction - we have strong democratic norms in place already. Given that the people and government do want peace and can rebuild, intervention could be limited and short. Nobody here wants war, and so we want that war to end. It won't be an eternal horror show of rebels and gangs driving around shooting things up.

The main goal (and the US is actually right this time) is not war but deterrence. What I - and Taiwan - really want is to avoid this whole scenario by convincing China that Taiwan isn’t worth a fight. But we only get that if we can actually make it look like a fight. We only get THAT by allies that pose a real threat voicing a commitment to assisting Taiwan. It’s a fine line but we’ve done it so far. China cannot be negotiated with on this. This is all the CCP understands when it comes to Taiwan.

This is a real situation, not an abstraction. I am not joking when I say I personally could die. It demands real solutions. Nobody here actually wants this to happen but we need to consider what is available to us, not what we’d like. I doubt many Taiwanese actually want to rely on the US for assistance, and many - including many pro-independence and Third Force thought leaders - are just as disgusted by the horrors and excesses of US global hegemony as I am, and my Western liberal friends are. But if China invades and no better option exists, we must take the best one available to us, imperfect as it is. At that point there is no time for ideology or soapboxing: the non-negotiable isn't "but the US is horrible", it's "we are going to die and if the CCP wins it's literally game over." There is no "but we'll protest!" - no, you'll die. There is no "we'll keep fighting" - you will, because that's what Taiwanese do when they want something better - but you will lose and also die. "We'll refuse to be ruled by them!" Yup - I guess the CCP can't rule you if you are dead. "We'll occupy" - and die. If you don't believe me, ask people from Tiananmen - - oh wait, you can't, because they are dead.

(OK they're not all dead, but enough of them are to make my point.)

This is real life, and in real life there is a time for ideology, and a time to look at your real choices and decide what your non-negotiables are. If your non-negotiable is that the CCP can't win - and it really should be - you have to take options you don't like. If your non-negotiable is not accepting aid from an evil hegemon, then congratulations, you're about to be ruled (or just killed) by an even more evil hegemon.

It doesn't have to take away from benefits to US citizens. Really! Our military spending, just from a quick Google, is upwards of $600 billion. China's is estimated to be maybe half that, upwards of $200 billion (not that we actually know anything about China, so this is an educated guess). I am not a military or defense analyst, so I won't belabor this point, but there are a lot of numbers between $200 and $600 billion where we'd still have the best-funded military in the world and still be capable of a stronger military than China. We could cut our budget in half and still have better funding. (If any actual analysts think I'm wrong, please weigh in).

Carry On, My Wayward Sun

Took me awhile to realize this: the choice of a light sea green for many pieces of pro-Taiwan merchandise wasn't made for merely aesthetic reasons. It was chosen because the color is associated with the old window and door frames as well as Datong electric fans that were once common in Taiwan and can still be seen occasionally today. The color has a deeper association with Taiwan than many people realize. 

The other day, I walked to the nearby general store to replace my dying external battery. I didn't know external batteries could just stop working like that - turns out, much like American democracy, they can. Many of the choices were already decorated, but I noticed the only ones with Taiwan-themed covers were slathered in the Republic of China flag. This of course means they all prominently featured the KMT 'white sun on a blue field'. Many also had "I love Taiwan!" or "Taiwan" printed on them.

There was no option to buy a Taiwan-themed battery that had any other design on it. It was the ROC flag or nothing. I bought a plain battery.

As I thought more about this, it didn't bug me that as a consumer, I couldn't get a pro-Taiwan design that I liked, or made sense to me, or was even pro-Taiwan to begin with (there is nothing pro-Taiwan about the KMT's history, and nothing pro-Taiwan about allowing one party's symbol to dominate the national flag of a country whose official name doesn't even contain the word 'Taiwan'.) It bugged me that the ROC flag, in many instances, is still the default symbol of Taiwanese identity.

When we complain that Taiwan can't even show its national flag at certain events, we are not complaining about the "Taiwanese" flag. That doesn't officially exist, although concepts abound. We are complaining about not being able to wave the Republic of China flag, which I have already written about. When a pop star is abused by Chinese trolls for waving her country's flag, they're not mad about a Taiwanese flag, they're mad about a Chinese flag that they don't like.

The problem here is that when waving the ROC flag is the default show of support, it pushes the idea of waving any other, more pro-Taiwan flag (really any one of the designs will do) into the realm of what some would call "extremism". When it's "sensitive", causes a kerfuffle or is an open act of protest to wave that sun - although still within the bounds of moderate discourse - you suddenly become a crazy extremist nutbag for saying "hey that flag actually sucks", and are left to choose from an array of not-quite-national-symbol designs, which further cement your status as a nutbag. In this worldview, nutbags reject officially approved symbols of "protest" - the ROC flag - and design their own (more extreme) symbols instead.

When the international media writes about people like Chou Tzuyu getting in trouble for waving the ROC flag, imagine what they'd write if she'd been abused for waving a flag that was actually Taiwanese.

This annoys me to the point that I can't even make a good meme about it without feeling all sorts of angst over my choices. Do I go with what's clear to international audiences, or do I get rid of that damn glaring sun the way I want to?

HOW TO EVEN MEME??

Further to that, when international discourse mainly recognizes two narratives - the CCP one and the KMT one, as evidenced by the dueling flags - to say both of them are riddled with problems becomes an 'extreme' position. Perhaps not in Taiwan so much anymore, but certainly on an international scale. At Exeter last year, I felt that arguing a pro-Taiwan position as 'not a part of China' was taking something of a controversial stance, without even getting into the ROC compared to Taiwan. Going further and arguing that not only was Taiwan not a part of China, it was not in fact Chinese (that is, that not even the ROC was legitimate) felt like arguing an extreme view.

Like, oh, you support the ROC? Hold up there bucko, that's a sensitive issue! Okay, but just remember, it's a sensitive and complex situation...

...wait, what? You support the Republic of Taiwan? You don't even think Taiwan is fundamentally Chinese? You don't even want to wave the ROC flag - that's not enough for you? That doesn't fit in with the framework I've adopted, which was written for me by the CCP, the KMT and media reporting on the issue! Therefore it must be extreme! 

This is especially troubling, as being pro-ROC at least in the US is (usually) a conservative stance. Being sympathetic to China is generally a liberal one. Moving beyond the ROC to support Taiwan, then, must be an extreme conservative view - even though in Taiwan it is very much a view espoused by most (though not all) of the left. Not even the extreme left. These days, just the normal, albeit young, left.

Nevermind of course that these days being pro-ROC is at least being nominally pro-democracy if you don't really understand the history of the ROC, and being sympathetic to China is being pro-dictatorship, when in the West the right-wingers are the ones who have a more authoritarian bent. The left assuages its guilt for being sympathetic to a brutal dictatorship by reassuring itself that "well they do things differently in other countries and we have to respect that, so we can't hold it against them or criticize them for not giving their people the basic human rights we demand for ourselves. Democracy is great for us but they don't need or want it because they're...Asian or something."

This bothers me because arguing a pro-Taiwan stance is not an extreme position. It's actually quite moderate. It's reasonable.

It's the position that reflects a desire to recognize what is already true.

It is a stance that recognizes the full breadth of Taiwanese history, simply from having read it. It is the stance that respects the will of 23.5 million people who are already self-governing in a liberal democratic system. It is the stance that understands the nature of the ROC's coming to Taiwan, their past crimes here, and how the label of being "Chinese" has been externally imposed rather than organically grown. It is the stance that understands how little support the last, wheezing scions of the old ROC order have as they face the short march to their inevitable sunset. It is the stance that is pro-democracy and understands that the ROC is a formerly authoritarian government which is only now democratic because the people of Taiwan insisted on it. It is the stance of someone who actually believes in liberal democratic values and is willing to apply that to global situations. It is the stance of understanding that doing so is not cultural imperialism when the people you are applying it to agree with you.

In a post-Sunflower world, it is the stance that reflects reality.

I don't even think it's terribly extreme to say that Dead Dictator Memorial Hall should go. Certainly the grounds are pretty and we can preserve them (without the dead dictator), but it's not insane to want to burn the whole thing to the ground. After all, it rhapsodizes the murderous rule of a horrible foreign dictator, turning him into a personality cult icon. Why shouldn't it go? How does this not make sense?

"Masquerading as a man with a reason

My charade is the event of the season

And if I claim to be a wise man,
it surely means that I don't know"

In fact, I'd say being sympathetic to China is the extreme position, being pro-ROC is only slightly less extreme, and being pro-Taiwan is the normal choice. I can't even begin to assign 'right' or 'left' labels to this, though, because the original framework has been so skewed that it doesn't make sense in this dimension. It doesn't fit in with our laws of nature.

And yet the rest of the world only knows Taiwan's story through the media they consume. The vast majority have never been here and never will. The media reports the CCP and KMT narratives, and when they bother to include pro-Taiwan narratives, marginalize them so much that they're easily dismissed as the ramblings of a group of crazy ethno-nationalists who won't face the reality that Taiwan is fundamentally Chinese, or that it "shouldn't matter". Why "shouldn't it matter"? Because the left especially has grown so anti-nationalist/separatist that any attempt to assert sovereignty, even sovereignty a group already has, is seen as "extreme". The media isn't reflecting reality, it is helping to create reality. What scares me is I'm not even sure they realize it.

I'll leave you with this: when I was at Exeter, if the topic came up, I would argue a pro-Taiwan stance. I do not suffer the foolishness of the ROC. People listened, certainly they were too thoughtful to dismiss it out of hand. And yet more than once, a comment slipped out among my professors and cohort that made it clear that they still saw Taiwan as fundamentally Chinese (e.g. "Taiwan and the rest of China", or "we have a few Chinese students" when in fact we had only one, from Macau. The other identifies as Taiwanese.)

If that was their default, what did they make of my pro-Taiwan views?

Do they take for 'extreme' what I see as - what I know to be - merely normal?

In other words, get out of here, wayward sun.
There will be peace when you are done. 

Taiwan is the canary in the coal mine, and it's getting hard to breathe

Emperor Xi Jinping of the Pooh Dynasty

Lots going on in the news this past week or two on China, its strategy abroad, the West's reaction to it, the rise of Emperor Xi, and what this could all mean for Taiwan.

I noticed, as international media outlets began reporting on Xi Jinping crowning himself Emperor Winnie of the Pooh Dynasty, that a number of them - most, in fact - curiously left out Taiwan, like the BBC, The Guardian, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the NPR News broadcast I listened to while making dinner yesterday. Only a brief mention of how he has "toughened China's stance" on Taiwan in this other Washington Post article (I can't read the New York Times coverage as I've used all my articles for the month and it's not one of the two papers I subscribe to). Even though that last one is about how Xi might use his throne - despite there being at least a fair chance, if not a likely one, that he will eventually use it to make a move on Taiwan - it doesn't factor in at all.

This is unsettling for anyone who cares about Taiwan - not just that this changes the game vis-a-vis a potential Chinese threat, but that the West doesn't seem terribly concerned about it. If you don't believe me about that threat, by the way, Donovan pointed out clearly why Taiwan is right to be terrified of Emperor Xi in The News Lens:


Most analysts (including myself) have thought the only way China would risk an invasion of Taiwan in the short to medium term would be if the China faced enough of an internal crisis that the power of the Chinese Communist Party was threatened, who would then use an invasion as a distraction and nationalist rallying cry....

This is where the terrifying part lies. Xi may consider actions purely for glory that his more institutional predecessors wouldn’t or couldn’t have.

This should make China’s neighbors very nervous. An absolute ruler of a massively powerful nation with ambitions to enter history is potentially very dangerous and unpredictable. China wants the Senkaku Islands from Japan, several border areas from India and to consolidate power over the South China Sea. But the obvious big prize to achieve glorious “reunification” of China and finally end the “century of humiliation” would be to take Taiwan.

That would be hugely risky and destructive course to take, potentially igniting a massive war involving many countries. But we can no longer assume that only a Chinese Communist Party facing an existential internal crisis is the only likely scenario whereby China would consider an attack.

Xi might just consider it for himself.

He is absolutely correct and I could not say it better myself.

I have no idea what Xi might do - there's a lot to consider. He wouldn't have made this power play if he hadn't been quite sure it could be accomplished fairly easily, meaning that there would be no need to 'distract' angry Chinese citizens by manufacturing a pretext to attack Taiwan. That said, China has underestimated resistance before (I genuinely believe they didn't see the Umbrella Movement coming, for example, and note how they only worked to send its leaders to jail once it became apparent they could actually get elected to LegCo in Hong Kong. I don't think they'd planned for that at all), and might be doing so now. I don't know. Within the CCP, there might still be a number of people who had thought, until this past Sunday, that they might be potential heirs to the Chinese presidency, and might be less than happy about this change in plan, but not necessarily saying so outright, given what Xi does to his rivals. That does mean, however, that it is not guaranteed that he is as surrounded by syncophants and True Believers as he might think he is, and there might be a crisis they truly don't see coming, for which they need to manufacture a distraction in the Taiwan Strait.

Yes, the CCP claims to value stability above all else - but what they claim and what they actually believe are not necessarily the same. They value what suits them, and nothing more (they're very Trumpian in this way, although perhaps less venal). They value "peace and stability" when it suits them, and are also quite willing to manufacture instability and crisis when that suits them instead (and keep that door open by continually rattling their saber at Taiwan). So I would not base a belief that Taiwan is basically safe on any CCP talk about "stability".

And yes, I do believe the CCP as a whole - as Donovan wrote so well - is as keen on actually taking Taiwan as they say they are. They want to keep up the claim, sure, but they know perfectly well we're more trouble than we're worth. Xi, though? I think he wants this just for him - for his historical legacy He's not doing this for the power. He could step down in 2023 and still have that. He's doing this because he wants to be a big name in the history books. Whether or not he actually believes his blah-blah-blah about the Chinese Dream, the Rejuvenation of the Great Chinese Nation, Reunification of the Motherland and Xi Jinping Thought (barf, barf, barf and barf, by the way) - that I don't know. But that's the kind of stuff that makes it into textbooks, not the more tepid reigns of people like Hu Jintao.

Sure, this takes off the pressure of him accomplishing "Reunification of the Motherland" (BARF) by the original end of his term, but it also means we have a president-for-life who is an ideological hardliner, especially on Taiwan. 

So, we have every reason to believe he plans to make a move on Taiwan in his lifetime. 

And this is terrifying. For Taiwan, and also for the world.

All of this "Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation" (which includes annexing Taiwan) talk stems from China's "century of humiliation" victimhood mentality - they talk about it as though it's an internal confidence-building and great-nation-building exercise, but it's really about vengeance for being the one-time top dog who was laid low by the (admittedly crappy and colonialist) ascendant Western powers. They don't just want to be "a confident nation at ease with itself", they want to be on top again. They want global hegemony. They want to take the US's place.

Taiwan? We'll just be the first domino to fall. We've seen this coming for awhile - because China already claims us, they'll go for us first. In this scenario, Taiwan's beautiful, imperfect but vibrant and fierce democracy will fall. Assuming the country is not completely pulverized, for awhile, a sham democracy will take its place in which we are able to choose among "candidates" pre-selected by China in "elections". Eventually that might be scrapped too. Not immediately - the attrition must be slow, similar to their strategy in Hong Kong. This not only wears down resistance but also makes it easier for Western nations to pretend they don't see it happening. After all, they grow tired of most stories in the news after awhile. They might be mad at first, but nobody will want to upset the new global economic order - that could mean instability (oh no!) - so they won't actually do anything. And after awhile they'll forget that they were mad at all.

The world will have 23.5 million fewer free people, 23.5 million fewer people who lack basic human rights...and the rest of the world will hardly notice.

The US - well, our superpower status has kind of sucked. We're not great. A lot of Westerners angry at the abuse of our position as we supported the toppling of governments we didn't like and propped up regimes friendly to us, regardless of what was best for the countries involved, at our failed attempts at "spreading democracy" one bombing at a time, and our take on the global economy that reeks of modern mercantilism would be happy to see us fall and to see a non-Western (and non-white, because they're sick of white people taking the whole pie, as they have every right to be) power take our place. Triumph of the people of color, that sort of thing. The rise of the oppressed, toppling the oppressors.

It all sounds really wonderful if you blur your eyes. But, if you think about it, China is just an Asian version of Killmonger in Black Panther - his idea to funnel resources to the oppressed to they can overthrow the oppressors sounds great on its face ("it's a good idea!", some people said), but in the end he just wanted to institute another kind of oppression, a different sort of hegemonic rule.

But, it's easy to get people on board when the new bully in town isn't white. It looks a lot like liberation. It's not.

So why isn't the rest of the world worried yet? When (almost) every piece of news from Taiwan includes a reference to China no matter how unrelated, how is it that when something China does really is a threat to Taiwan, nobody seems to even realize it?

Brian over at New Bloom says this is because Westerners lack a conceptual framework in which to consider Chinese neo-colonialism (phrasing from Michael Turton) and he has a point - Westerners don't seem to have the necessary lexicon to really talk about China's global ambitions. They sure get tongue-tied if they try!

But, I don't think that's because they "lack the vocabulary" or even a "conceptual framework". The framework and vocabulary exist - neo-colonialism. Expansionism. Neo-imperialism (or, in the case of Taiwan, just 'imperialism'). Hegemony. Global domination. Economic subjugation. Checkbook diplomacy. Economic imperialism. The spread of authoritarianism. We have all of these words and frameworks.

It's just that Westerners are afraid of using them to describe China (or really any non-Western/non-white nation) for fear of seeming - or being labeled - racist. They're afraid someone will say they don't understand how the historic injustice of white privilege means that anything non-white people do can't be considered the same, or as bad, as anything white people do. (A worldview which has its uses, and which I am often sympathetic to, but which doesn't apply here.)

That's really all it is - it's a race thing. All they need to do is take their old frameworks, dust 'em off and apply 'em to a regime that happens to be Asian. There's nothing new or uncharted about it. Just stop being afraid of criticizing China because someone might think you're racist if you criticize shitty things non-Western powers do, and call China's actions what they are using words you already have.

What I'm saying is, the thing Westerners lack isn't vocabulary or conceptualization, it's balls.

Feeding into my idea that this is actually a race thing: the Western world seems content to ignore China's increasing reach - including its attempts at controlling or even abducting foreign citizens - when its levers of control are used to oppress other Asians (not just Chinese - this affects Taiwanese too, and the majority of Taiwanese identify as Taiwanese, not Chinese). Their increasing control over Australian citizens is ignored by the rest of the world - though kudos to the Sydney Morning Herald for continuing to report on the story - because most Australians affected have Chinese ancestry (but, remember, are not Chinese citizens). The world ignores Lee Ming-che - a Taiwanese citizen - because he looks Chinese. They ignore Gui Minhai - a Swedish citizen - because he looks Chinese. They ignore Hong Kong because they are Chinese, regardless of what Hong Kongers want or feel they were promised.

Yes, reports are filed, articles occasionally appear, but most of the West just doesn't care much. I suppose it's too bad that these problems are happening, they might think, but deep down, they don't think too much about it, because the victims don't look Western, and it's easy to ignore a bunch of Asians. Just an internal matter. It sucks, but, well, that's in China. No matter how much the people being threatened, persecuted and prosecuted might align themselves ideologically more with Western thought than "Xi Jinping Thought", and no matter how much it is not just in China - it's happening in their own countries - and not just Chinese citizens. That they look Chinese seems to be enough to get the West to turn the other way.

So what does this have to do with Emperor Xi, Taiwan and the coal mine?

Well, we are the bellwether. The new Emperor has his eyes on Taiwan. Don't think Taiwan is in that much trouble? I do. I don't see a good outcome here - either there's a massive crisis in China, in which case we're invaded as a distraction as the CCP tries to hold onto power. Or there's no crisis in China, and the slow march of their invasion plans continues forward without much resistance from the rest of the world (although I am heartened to see a little pushback). Or, there's a massive world war because Trumpo was bored with porn stars and Big Macs and couldn't keep his finger off the trigger, and China takes advantage of the chaos. No matter how this shakes out, good potential outcomes for Taiwan are few, and the possibilities leading to catastrophe are massive.

And what happens in Taiwan - perhaps an invasion, perhaps the slow erosion of our democracy under Chinese pressure, perhaps we get pulverized by missiles and then pushed into a sham 'democracy' where 'candidates' selected by China run for 'election', perhaps we spiral into economic ruin - is a sign of things to come under Chinese global hegemony over the rest of the world. Not in terms of outright invasion (of countries other than Taiwan), but in terms of the ways in which China will seek to influence what happens within those countries - who gets elected and what they do in office. Putting pressure on foreign governments to bring their own citizens in line regarding what they can and can't say vis-a-vis China (and perhaps anything else the Chinese government doesn't want us discussing, as well), through diplomatic and economic influence. If that doesn't work, threatening them directly.

In other words, to dust off some old vocabulary that we absolutely have, we'll all be tributary states.

Don't think China would care to reach that far into the affairs of other countries? They're already doing it, to citizens of those countries. Australia (and to some extent New Zealand) seem almost like test cases for how they'd do this - want to know what they'd like to do in the US and Europe? Watch Australia.

You just haven't noticed, because your fellow citizens being threatened by China don't look like you. Taiwan is getting the brunt of China's wrath, but they're already branching out, and there's a point at which they'll no longer care if criticism comes from someone who looks Chinese or someone who doesn't.

By then, you might care, but it will be too late. The canary is suffocating, and the time to pay attention is now.

Island of Women

"I want much more than this provincial life!" 

I'm a little punchy after doing so much work for grad school and finishing my first teacher-training program (as the trainer, not trainee), so please forgive my flights of fancy, mostly dreamed up in the shower.

With that out of the way, I invite you to recall Beauty and the Beast, the animated classic that hasn't aged particularly well in terms of feminist themes. One thing that does strike me, though, is how Belle's worming away from Gaston without ever overtly telling him to just get bent - even though her disgust is palpable - flattering him even, when she shouldn't have to, as she removes him tidily from her home - is about as perfect a cinematic metaphor for the way Taiwan deals with China (at least when not under KMT rule) as any I can find. Faced with a bully and a cohort of villagers who aid rather than stop him from tormenting her, Belle (literally "beautiful woman") deals with him the only way she can, even though she deserves much, much more than some provincial life.

Consider this: when we watch that movie, we all like to think of ourselves as sympathetic viewers. At the very least, we want to think we'd be Belle's father or the kindly village bookseller. Nobody thinks they are just another villager helping a predator corner a woman who isn't interested.

Not to be too oblique about where I'm going with this, but if you replace Belle with Taiwan, Gaston with China and the villagers who abet his predatory behavior with literally the rest of the world - most of whom probably aren't even aware of the role they are playing - well...

Consider this as well: when we hear about real-life cases of men treating women badly, or of women simply being ignored or their concerns dismissed - their words not even really heard let alone considered - we like to think we're "the good guys" who are "better than that", who support women, listen to them and take them seriously. Sometimes we are. Often, though, we're just a bunch of casually sexist villagers who let perpetrators get away with cruelty.

Here's my point: we (by "we" I mean "other countries, including the West, and liberal thinkers around the world") want to think we're doing right by women, and we want to think we're doing right by Taiwan. In fact, we're failing both, and for similar reasons - the way the West dismisses women and the way it dismisses Taiwan have a lot in common. No, really. Hear me out.

Women have been historically treated badly in liberal circles (and in conservative ones too, but that's a different topic), from abolitionists who valued Black men's lives and rights over those of any (including Black) women's to the Civil Rights movement to the LGBT rights movement. (Even today, women's rights leaders' historical legacies are called out, and rightly so, for their white supremacy, but Black and abolitionist leaders' legacies are not called out for their sexism).  For a movement that exhorts women to join because their views are best aligned with feminist ideology, they just haven't been too great to the female gender.

Considering the issues facing women often requires a level of abstract thought that people don't seem to want to engage in. Not only are women not a small, homogenous group, it's also that the issues facing us express themselves differently depending on background and context, and connect in unexpected ways. Here's an example: to really understand what women face, you have to consider things like the relationship between the wage and achievement gap at work and sexual harassment in the workplace - two related issues that nobody seems to have put together until recently. Thinking in this way, connecting these kaleidoscopic issues, is daunting and unappealing. It requires standing up for what is right, even if the "right" values are abstract with abstract benefits, whereas there are clear real-world incentives to stay in the good graces of the old boys' clubs.

Maybe, for a lot of people, it's just easier to be dismissive - to not listen, or pretend the problems we face don't exist.

Professional connections matter - money is money - and men's stories are told louder than women's. And it's easy not to hear voices that are not given space to speak out by dominant narratives.

Liberalism has been just as unkind to Taiwan. From valuing peace over justice (especially abroad) to creating false equivalencies between divergent value systems to not even realizing that there are gaps in Western education on Taiwan to believing narratives spun by non-experts in the media, we've created a belief system that excuses and apologizes for Chinese Communist brutality and dismisses - either by explaining away or not listening to - narratives from Taiwan. After all, they're all Chinese, right? We've insisted on diversity and respect in our own countries while flattening the other half of the world into the image the Chinese government wants to promote, and we don't even realize we're doing it.

In short, we treat Taiwan the way we treat women. That is, like garbage.

Thinking about Taiwan requires a similar level of abstract thought - it necessitates understanding a complex history to the ins and outs of identity among people who, from 10,000 miles away, "all look the same" to the average Westerner (though most would never admit it). It requires not only understanding KMT and CCP history, but also understanding indigenous, local, Southeast Asian and Japanese history as well as the identity issues behind home rule and de jure independence movements. It requires looking beyond economic incentives and the dominant narratives peddled by China about culture, identity, history and what is rightfully theirs. It means acknowledging that, although there is some relativity between cultures and some things that cannot be compared and ought not to be judged from a Western cultural lens, that there is also a line between right and wrong, and winning doesn't always make one right. It requires deciding to stand up for what is right even when there are clear incentives to selling Taiwan out. Abstract notions such as self-determination, self-identification, freedom and democracy may not be as straightforward as the clear world of business and trade, but their absence will manifest in very real ways if Taiwan loses this fight.

But money is money, and China is very loud - it's easier for a lot of people to explain away Taiwan. To dismiss it, if one is listening at all. After all, it's easy not to hear voices that are not given space to speak out by dominant narratives. 

Of course, if Taiwan is the feminine that we dismiss, ignore, ask to supplicate because it's easier than angering a large, powerful country, then of course China is masculine. And it is - it controls the narrative, it has the voice (and it just will not shut up), the muscle and the money. Not to get too Daoist because I'm not into religion, but if Taiwan is yin, China is very, very yang.

This idea of China as masculine (and dominant) and Taiwan as feminine (and ignored or unimportant) isn't a new concept. In Taiwan's Imagined Geography, Emma Teng devotes a whole chapter to conceptualizing Chinese thought (in the time period she covers, although it's just as true today) as "masculine" - Confucian, patriarchal, and often consciously so - and perceptions of Taiwan as "feminine". That is, an "Island of Women" where many indigenous tribes had matriarchal, matrilineal, uxorilocal practices and often had female chiefs. This was also a common conceptual device to link Chinese culture to being morally upright, powerful, and civilized, and Taiwan to being barbaric and - although Teng doesn't say this directly - weak.


Despite a brief interlude in the worst years of the 20th century, China has more or less upheld this domineering patriarchy, this masculine hermeneutic (can I use that word that way?) as its driving national narrative, affecting business and politics.

Images from Moga (魔魔嘎嘎) used with permission of the creator -

Go check them out, they do great work!

Taiwan, on the other hand, seems to have leaned into feminine self-representation. I don't have any decisive links for you right now, but consider how China talks about itself: 5000 years, Confucian values, strong country desiring global hegemony. Now consider how Taiwan talks about itself: the beautiful island. In one of my favorite comics, China is male, the ROC is androgynous, and Formosa is a voluptuous woman. I will also point out something that struck me recently as I thought about the subtler themes in Shawna Yang Ryan's Green Island. While the protagonist's father (representing Taiwanese political ideology, including notions of freedom and sovereignty) was absent for a portion of the novel and never really recovered from his incarceration, her mother (representing the land of Taiwan, including home and family) was always there. It's not offhandedly that, as a young woman, that same mother quotes Du Fu, saying "國破山河在" - the country is broken, but the mountains and rivers remain.

It is not a great leap to see that, despite China's talk of two sides of one family "reuniting" (huge barf on that link, by the way), in fact, it wants to be the domineering patriarch, forcing Taiwan into the role of feminine supplicant. It wants to be the controlling husband to Taiwan's obedient wife.

It doesn't take much to further leap to the realization that, if China is masculine and Taiwan is feminine, the West is treating them exactly as we treat the genders. We listen to China. We give them space. We try not to upset them, and respect their feelings even when they are disingenuously upset or being blatantly unfair. We try to explain away their worst behavior. We treat them the way we treat men.

And Taiwan? We treat her as we do women: we ask her to take up less space (by literally giving her less diplomatic space). We ask her to keep China calm, to bend and contort herself - whatever it takes to keep that man happy. His happiness is key - her discomfort is not important. Whether or not it's fair doesn't matter, and the more abstract problems beneath this remain unexamined. When Taiwan tries to speak up, we get annoyed, because what she says might anger Big Man China. It's much easier if she pipes down - after all, why does she have to be such a bitch anyway? So shrill. Doesn't she see this would all be easier if she just stopped making trouble?

China just likes you, Taiwan. He just thinks you're cute. It's a compliment, jeez, can't you take a compliment? You should smile more, Taiwan. He doesn't mean to be sexist, that's just how China is. I know, I know, but just be nice. You catch more flies with honey, Taiwan. God, Taiwan, why do you have to be so difficult? So many countries have it worse than you. Why not just give him a chance?

(American) Conservatives are just as bad about this as liberals, by the way. They are often, though not always, more pro-Taiwan than their liberal counterparts, but it has more to do with Masculine America challenging Masculine China for dominance in Asia. It's two chest-thumping men fighting over a beautiful island woman as a projection of their influence and power. Or, considered another way, their support of Taiwan is almost always translated as support of the Republic of China - just another masculine, militaristic power structure. Buddies protecting buddies. Bros before hoes. (In this metaphor, the US and the KMT are bros, local Taiwanese independence movements are the...you get the point).

It's not about Taiwan - the feminine Formosa - at all.

We quite literally dismiss and ignore Taiwan the same way we ask women to keep quiet and push them aside.

In other words...

And for once it might be grand
To have someone understand
I want so much more than they've got planned...

Half the world is flat: Western liberals and conceptions of Asia

Caffeine Cafe in Dilijan, Armenia

We hadn't had a lot to say over breakfast to the Danish couple sharing our homestay - I am notoriously antisocial in the mornings - but the golden evenings of the Armenian summer gave way to local wine, local vodka, homecooked food and talk of global affairs.

We had come up to Debed Canyon, our last stop in Armenia before heading across the Georgian border less than an hour to the north, from Yerevan via Dilijan, where we had spent a glorious few days doing very little except reading books on a wide wooden balcony overlooking a verdant hillscape. Caffeine Cafe was near our hotel in Dilijan and provided for all of our cafe needs. I remember thinking as we hung out there, The Black Keys on the sound system and single-origin coffee in the pot, young hipsters on their laptops with hair that screamed "Yes, I drink that single origin", that as much as world travelers like to think they're going to places where everything is different, and even the people think differently, in fact Caffeine was a place that would have been just as at home in Brooklyn...or Tainan. And I bet if I'd had a political conversation with any of these young Armenians, we would have agreed on quite a bit.

In contrast, Debed was taxing physically and bracing mentally. During the day we hiked from a monastery perched on one end of the canyon all the way down to the river at the base, crossed it and crawled up the vertiginous wall on the other, over a meadow and to its sister monastery on the opposite side.

Afterwards, stuffed with home-cooked Armenian food chased with entirely too much alcohol, we climbed vertiginous walls of conversation with the Danes. 

"But these ideas - human rights, democratic government - they were all created by Western cultures, and they serve Western cultures," he said. "They work there, because Westerners are individualists. But to insist that these ideas must be applied globally, that's cultural imperialism!"

I liked him. He was eloquent. He was also wrong.

Debed Canyon: Vertiginous walls

"The whole point is that they're not Western rights, they're human rights. They are meant to apply to all humans. Perhaps the idea of spelling out these particular rights came from the West, but there's a reason why the United Nations - not the United Western Nations, but the United Nations - has a human rights commission. And the whole idea of the right of self-determination - a democracy, I suppose - is that everyone has it. Otherwise, you are essentially saying Westerners deserve rights that others don't."

"It's Westerners who conceived of these rights, so yes, they apply to Westerners. It's Westerners who conceived of democracy, so we can assume it works best there. Asia is more collectivist, those cultures are not individualist the way we are. So these ideas just don't work the same way in those cultures, if they work at all. We can't impose our idea of how people should live on the rest of the world!"

"Well, I can agree that telling other people how to live is generally a bad idea," I replied, "but how can you say that we created human rights for us, and other people don't need the right to express their opinion, or to not be arrested or tortured without cause, or not be enslaved, or choose what kind of government they want. Maybe that government wouldn't be what we want, but there is no good argument for not caring if they get to choose at all. And I'm not saying we should go into any given country and just tell them they're going to reform into democracies at gunpoint. We tried that, and look what happened. But that doesn't mean we should just abandon people who want something better."

He had lived in Asia for years, in Indonesia. He'd spent quite a bit of time in Southeast Asia, been around the continent, certainly visited China. I asked; he had not been to Taiwan. 

"We're not abandoning them, we're leaving them alone. They are able to come up with a system of government and way of doing things that suits them, and it's not for us to say."

"I certainly agree that people should come up with their own systems of government without being told by an outside force what to believe, but what you are essentially saying is that some cultures would be okay with arrest and torture without cause, enslavement, or being jailed or even killed simply for speaking one's mind. In a lot of countries that is the reality, but I have a hard time believing, having been to those countries, that most people prefer it that way."

"No, what I'm saying is, by insisting that everyone adopt the same norms we have, we are forcing something from individualist cultures onto collectivist ones, and it's just not going to work the way we'd hoped. In any case, given Western global hegemony and the history we have of colonization and destruction of other cultures, it's also imperialistic. It's forcing our values on the rest of the world. There is no such thing as universal values."

"So...slavery is sometimes okay?"

"What you conceive of as slavery might be considered differently in another culture, and not seen as slavery at all."

"I highly doubt that. It's a basic concept. I live in one of these 'other cultures' you speak of. They fucking know what slavery is, and their idea of it is not that different from mine, or yours. They're Asian, not stupid. They're not Exotic Orientals from the Mystical East who think up is down and circles are triangles. They're people. Normal people with a normal conception of things like slavery. You lived in one of these cultures too. Don't tell me Indonesians have a 'different conceptualization' of slavery because they come from a 'collectivist' culture. Nobody, regardless of where they come from, wants to be a slave...unless they're into that in, like, a sex way."

"Uh..."

(Hey, I actually said that. I'm just being honest. I've cleaned up the conversation in other ways, but that last bit is absolutely real.)

"But," he said, recovering, "look at what happens in non-Western countries that adopt Western models."

"Well, let me give you a positive example. I live in Taiwan. One of those 'collectivist' cultures you like to talk about. You know what Taiwanese think are very important? Human rights and democracy. This is a country that is actively resisting being annexed by a dictatorship, because they want to keep their democracy. Their human rights record isn't perfect but it's a damn sight better than China's. This is a country where people care so much about their democracy that they take to the streets because they want marriage equality and the government is being too slow about making it happen, where 200,000 people march downtown because a young man doing his military service died from overly harsh punishment. 200,000! This is a country where students occupied the legislature for nearly a month because they didn't like the way a trade bill was being forced through undemocratically, and 400,000 or so people showed up to support them. In a country of 23 million! That's more than one in every sixty people! They absolutely want these things, and while they come from a different culture, they're just people who want human rights. There's nothing wrong or culturally imperialist about that.

Many if not most of them think of free nations - including Western ones - as natural allies, not enemies. They want our support. Perhaps their culture is more 'collectivist', although that seems like a very broad term and we'd have to break down what you mean by it. And yet they have a thriving, successful democracy, welcome Western allies, want more American support than they are getting, and this in no way interferes with their culture. Japan and Korea are democracies too, and they work. Hong Kong wants democracy. When they didn't get full rights, they voted in a bunch of pro-democracy legislators.

In fact, you say we're 'leaving them be', but what you're really suggesting we do to Taiwan by saying China's actions are not our business because it's 'a different culture' is abandoning an ally who wants our support.

So when you say these ideas are Western - maybe they came from the West, but in my life I meet Asians every day who believe in these things just like I do. Nobody forced it on them. America didn't come in and say 'you have to be a democracy now!' The people of Taiwan fought for it and won it themselves. So how can you say these ideas only work in the West or are inherently and inseparably Western or 'individualist' when I live my life in a non-Western, 'collectivist' culture that shares such values and they work?

In fact, if you tried to tell the average Taiwanese person that democracy and human rights are inherently Western ideas brought to them via cultural imperialism, in effect that by believing in them they are tools of Western neocolonialism, I suspect they'd be pretty offended that you think they don't deserve these values or rights that they want and hold dear, or these things are somehow not for them. As though you get to decide which values are appropriate for them - which is just another form of imperialism. Or, they'd just laugh at you."

* * *

Hiking between monasteries in Debed Canyon

This is what it's like to argue with me. Vertiginous walls of response. At least, this is how I remember the conversation - there's always a chance that, recalled from deep memory, my mind has created a narrative in which I look way smarter and more 'victorious' than I actually was. I'm actually kind of a dope, to be honest, so take all of this with a healthy suspension of disbelief.

In any case, I've thought a lot about this conversation in the intervening months, and always circle back to two main problems with this very typical Western liberal narrative on Asia.

First is the notion that all of Asia can be lumped together in this idea of 'collectivist' culture, and that because of this (and a few other cliches, such as 'Confucianism' and 'face'), they are so different from us that there is no set of universal, fundamental values that apply to all of us. Therefore, according to this line of thinking, we can't say anything or even be upset when Asian countries turn authoritarian: it's "their culture" after all, and our concepts of "human rights" and "democracy", being inherently Western, can't be applied.

Of course, this assumes that Asia is a continent of flat, continent-wide, immutable values that are diametrically opposed to our own. It distills every difference and uniqueness across cultures, regions and even people down to "well they're Asian", which is just another form of the old reactionary rhetoric on Asia where everyone is a stingy liar in a conical hat. It's just cloaked in a thin film of being 'woke' by using words like 'collectivist' instead of, I dunno, 'sideways vagina'. If 'they're Asian', they can't be like us, and so all of those great things we want like rights and freedom clearly don't apply to them.

Take this further, and one can even justify China's expansionist rhetoric: "well, we wouldn't stand for that in the West but they're Asian and you know, they have a different concept of what it means to be Chinese, so it's not for us to say." Little or no thought given to the idea that China's annexation-happy dictatorship is just espousing yet another form of the old-timey ethnic nationalism that we already know doesn't work, and which is already in the process of being actively rejected by Taiwan in favor of civic nationalism and Taiwanese identity. Same bullshit, different continent. It's not special just because this time it's happening in Asia.

When you get to the end of that rabbit hole, what you end up doing is arguing for China's authoritarian rule and threatening rhetoric on Taiwan, or at best being a useful idiot for CCP propaganda. You end up arguing in favor of an expansionist threat taking over a friendly democracy, simply because you've applied a surface-level knowledge of the cultures of Asia to your understanding of a specific political situation. You've effectively argued that freedom, self-determination and human rights are non-negotiables for you, but not for other human beings.

Three days of reading books in Dilijan

I understand the impulse to come at it from this direction: a lot of these ideas did originate in the West, so applying them globally feels like yet another iteration of forcing Western culture on non-Western contexts. It feels wrong to argue that something from your culture is inherently superior to the way things are done in other cultures, and there is a fear among many Western liberals of criticizing other cultures in any way - doing so might be construed as racism, as though the person arguing this has a problem with an entire culture or group of people rather than with a specific idea. It's just easier to be a relativist. But, I'd argue, it's also somewhat cowardly to not stand up for what's right, or even the concept that some values are universal, out of fear of looking like yet another whitey criticizing the way "foreigners" do things.

This sometimes morphs into an even stronger argument: that Western values simply don't belong in Asia, and any instance of them being espoused there must be the result of Western meddling because they don't suit a "collectivist" context. I don't even know where to begin refuting this - it's that nonsensical. It's about as nuts as thinking that slavery is not a fundamental concept that all people understand because of "different cultures".

However, this stems from a misconception that we are irreconcilably different from them. That our half of the world is round and varied - it has ethical topography - but theirs is flat: "Well...but...collectivism. Confucius! Face! That's all there is! It explains everything!" It was a part of what fueled the entire discredited 90s debate about "Asian-style democracy" - an invention of authoritarian governments (often ones in Asia) to justify remaining in power, not a legitimate interpretation of values. It also stems from a weird holdover of ethnic nationalism in the West: it's not so bad if China annexes Taiwan because after all they are all Chinese, aren't they? 

We wouldn't make that argument about our own countries, so how can we make it with a straight face about countries in Asia? By deciding what values are and are not appropriate in Asian contexts, are we not just performing yet another form of cultural imperialism, big brothering and white man's burden? Who are we to decide what people can and cannot think in Asia?

What's more, if someone argues that we cannot criticize what certain groups and governments do because we're Western and they're Asian, how is it that they can then talk about what the Taiwanese should and should not accept vis-a-vis China, or which values - "Western" or "Eastern" - they should espouse?

Asia is not flat: it is varied and complex. Within Taiwan, there are yet more layers of complexity. Between groups and people, yet more. Many more than you would think not only buy into these "Western" values, but came to believe in them of their own accord. It was not forced on them by us (if anything, we are to blame for supporting the dictatorship that the Taiwanese people overthrew).

Taiwan's destiny ought not to be determined by biology, but by what the Taiwanese want, no different from anyone in the West who strives for a representative government and basic human rights. They don't deserve these things any less than we do simply because we've decided to view "Asian" cultures in the same flat, monochromatic way.

Not only can we criticize authoritarianism in Asia without being racist or culturally imperialist, but I would argue that we must, based on certain universal values that can work just as well in Asia as they do in the West, because people there are no less deserving. It's the only way to firmly support a friend an ally like Taiwan. We don't need to go in and force people to change - that's ridiculous - but we do need to stand up for what is right.

Yes, there is a sense of "collectivism" in Asia that sets cultures there somewhat apart from our own, and yes, Confucianism has had an influence on cultures here. But you know what other things have had an influence? Daoism (or as I call it, the "yo guys just chill and be yo'selves" philosophy), political activism, political intellectualism, international travel, protests, education in both the Asian and Western traditions, occupations, marches, coffeeshop culture (which lends itself well to political discourse) and progressivism. Don't shunt those to the side in order to make Asia seem flatter and more 'exotic' than it really is. Don't turn it into one of those Star Trek or Star Wars planets where the entire planet is just one way - the Volcano Planet, the Desert Planet, the Planet of Half-Black-Half-White-People, whatever - with no variation. Engage with it as it is, and see exactly how many people have come to embrace the universal values of freedom, self-determination and human rights - on this "far away" continent. Support them.

I thought about all of this and more as we ate our last, quiet breakfast in Armenia before taking off in a shared car across the Georgian border. I am Armenian by heritage, and there are many in Armenia who, despite wanting Armenia to be considered a Western nation, hold "Old World" views. There are many other young Armenians who want something more modern and progressive and, to my mind, better. Taiwan is no different - despite being a non-Western country, there are values they hold that can be considered not only Western, but universal. It's time Western liberal embraced that, rather than pushing it away in favor of a "Confucian" othering and flattening of Asia.