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

 

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

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

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

Brendan: Gonna write a review?

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

Brendan: Huh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Gramsci in a Taiwan Context

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Capital and Politics, or, the KMT sucks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what is 'retrocession'?

It's nonsense, that's what. 

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Me: "!!!"

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

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

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

Me: What historical links?

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

Me: That's still a problem.

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


And now, the social movements

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was actually worse than that, though: 

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

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

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

Here's another one: 

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

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

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


Conclusion

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

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

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

Go see Invisible Nation in Taiwan this week

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

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

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

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

                    

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stop blaming the DPP for China's maliciousness

Somehow a bunch of drums one could beat seems appropriate

In recent weeks, a spate of opinion pieces have come out that lay out three very dangerous ideas: call for Taiwan to roll over and obey China as though it's the only possible option; romanticize the Ma Ying-jeou administration as some sort of golden era for Taiwan; and blame everyone but China for China's intentional maliciousness toward Taiwan.

You can read some examples in the New York Times, by former Minister of Culture and author Lung Ying-tai, and by some so-called analysts from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Foreign Policy, if you find them readable. It was a struggle, to be sure. 

Fortunately, these articles have received some sort of pushback. Unfortunately, although I like the Taipei Times, it doesn't have the readership of the New York Times or Foreign Policy, though those who meaningfully care about Taiwan surely include it among their regular news sources. This is (almost) as it should be: the original opinionators have every right to have and speak their minds, however misguided, and anyone can respond in disagreement. I only wish that the pushback would get as much press as the people who disseminated the original problematic views. 

All three of these opinions are problems for the same reason -- they blame the wrong people, and thus lay out a course of action that would utterly destroy Taiwan. I don't know whether this is due to the age-old problem with Taiwan "experts" pretending the Taiwanese electorate is still divided on whether or not China is a trustworthy negotiating partner (they aren't) because that sort of tension keeps them -- the analysts -- relevant, or they themselves being part of the anti-Taiwan opposition. The latter is certainly true in the case of Lung, who served under President Ma. 

Perhaps they're simply not informed about why China seemed friendlier when Ma was president and would probably be friendly again under a hypothetical future KMT administration. This is somewhat understandable, as a surface-level understanding of the mechanics of Chinese manipulation and KMT collaboration with Taiwan's only enemy implies that KMT politicians are better negotiators when it comes to dialogue with the CCP. Of course it looks like that! If they weren't, why would China be so much friendlier when they were in power? 

To this end, Lung says:

For decades, Taiwan and China were deeply estranged and essentially in a state of war. But after the Cold War, relations gradually thawed. They were at their best during the presidency of Ma Ying-jeou, of the Kuomintang, from 2008 to 2016. The Kuomintang emphasizes cooperation with China as a way to ensure Taiwan’s stability and prosperity.

Under Mr. Ma’s administration, exchanges in academia, culture and commerce flourished, culminating in his historic meeting in 2015 with President Xi Jinping of China. It seemed, after decades of hostility, that reconciliation was possible.

I see this echoed by others, as well: 

The Foreign Policy piece also begins by blaming Lai, calling him "hard-charging". I'm a far bigger fan of Tsai than I am of Lai: Tsai was calculating, smart, and tended to stand back, letting her policies and accomplishment speak for themselves. Lai's policies, however, are not fundamentally different even if his rhetoric is slightly more blunt. Both of them have always supported Taiwan's independence; this was never a secret, and the people elected them knowing this. 

That said, let's focus on Ma. The fundamental misunderstanding here is reading the China-Taiwan rapprochement as some sort of accomplishment of Ma's, not an intentional Chinese manipulation that made it seem as though Ma's approach were somehow superior. Forces within Taiwan -- business interests, mostly, and some traitorious politicians -- have also acted intentionally to make it seem as though the KMT is better for Taiwan-China relations than the DPP due to some imaginary flaw with the DPP's approach to China. 

Ma was the opposite of an independence supporter (he was, and remains, a filthy unificationist), but his stated policies, for the most part, weren't that different from the DPP's. The DPP has never been less open to trade or dialogue with the CCP than the KMT; the problem is that the CCP refuses dialogue with the DPP but accepts the same offers from the KMT. They further undermine the DPP by snubbing their repeated offers of dialogue by meeting with KMT officials instead. Let me repeat: every DPP president -- Chen, Tsai and Lai -- has re-iterated their openness to dialogue with the CCP and trade with China. 

It's not the DPP causing rifts, it's the CCP. 

It's worse than it sounds, too. Although I'm not quite finished, I've been reading André Beckershoff's Social Forces in the Re-Making of Cross-Strait Relations (review forthcoming). Beckershoff lays out a devastating case for China's intentional smearing of DPP presidents as "the problem", making it seem as though they aren't open to or capable of initiating or engaging in any discussions, let alone peace talks or mutually agreeable rapprochement. 

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

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

Beckershoff goes on to give examples of the CCP, with the KMT's help, deliberately undermining all attempts at dialogue with the Chen administration, from tourism (a KMT-CCP Forum directly undermined agency-to-agency talks between Taiwan and China), to agriculture (the CCP directly invited at least one farmers' association to China without talking to the Taiwanese government), to trade (China refused to engage with TAITRA as it framed Taiwan-China trade as international, not domestic) and direct flights (again, a KMT-CCP forum enabled final-stage negotiations with the Taiwanese government to stall). Those are just some examples.

This pattern has continued under Tsai and Lai, with KMT officials, including Ma Ying-jeou himself, visiting China with the purpose of removing the need for the CCP to engage with the DPP, thus undermining the DPP and making it seem as though the KMT are simply 'better' at handling China. The truth is that the CCP wants the KMT or their lapdogs, the TPP, to win elections, and thus makes it seem as though the DPP are the problem. 

If the KMT truly supported Taiwan, rather than being focused on Taiwan-as-China, they would let DPP goverments do their job vis-a-vis China and not intentionally get in the way.

Wang Hung-jen and Kuo Yu-jen also point this out: 

Lung romanticizes the so-called “golden era” of cross-strait relations under former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), but fails to mention that this era coincided with a more benign Chinese foreign policy under then-Chinese president Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and the early, still-cautious phase of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) rule....

The conditions that made diplomatic and economic detente possible no longer exist. Xi’s China is now more assertive, more authoritarian and more willing to use military and economic coercion. The idea that Taiwan can simply return to the “status quo” ante by embracing Beijing’s preferred narratives is at best naive, at worst, a prescription for strategic vulnerability.

Many Taiwanese today view the Ma administration’s overly deferential policy toward Beijing as one of the root causes of Taiwan’s current economic overreliance on China and the hollowing out of local industries.

The so-called “diplomatic truce” turned out to be an illusion, one that collapsed the moment Taiwan elected a government unwilling to parrot Beijing’s “one China” principle. Beijing’s punitive diplomatic and military responses were not triggered by provocation, but by Taiwan’s assertion of democratic choice.

Exactly. Ma was "successful" not because he was a great negotiator, but because he was a CCP collaborator and unificationist. The CCP wanted him to succeed in "rapprochement", so he did. It was never about Ma being great at his job (he wasn't), it was always about China supporting someone willing to sell out Taiwan. 

And make no mistake that Ma was and remains a unificationist. He and the KMT framed rapprochement as an economic benefit, something apolitical. It never has been. His vice-president and co-traitor Vincent Siew gave away the game all the way back in 2001 -- it was never apolitical,  but always with the goal of eroding Taiwan's sovereignty:

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

In what way could this ever be good for Taiwan, if it wants to remain self-governing and sovereign, which it does? Is this really adroitness on the part of Ma Ying-jeou, or simply China being friendlier to the administration that wanted to give away Taiwan?

The Ma administration did not respect Taiwan's sovereignty, and the progress made in economic ties and freer travel always came at a price. Ma and his people called them apolitical -- it's just about the economy, they said -- but Siew made it plain long before Ma was elected: this was never, ever apolitical. Unification had always been the goal.

With the KMT, it still is. 

Beckershoff also offers some fascinating dissections of cultural and historical ties between Taiwan and China being presented as a grassroots consensus when it was manufactured by the political and capital class, and the instrumentality of business associations in pushing pro-China policies for their own profit and benefit, not the good of Taiwan per se. Those will come up in my review, but I wanted to mention them here as they're tangentially relevant to this very false idea of what rapprochement under Ma was and most definitely was not. 

Beckershoff points out how so much of this was simply China's doing: 

Preferential policies have been assumed from the KMT-CCP Forum...are merely the announcement of unilateral measures taken by the PRC designed to benefit Taiwanese citizens travelling to or living in China as well as enterprises operating there. Delegating the announcement of preferential policies from the party-to-party channel to the Straits Forum entails an effect of obscuration: while in fact, these unilateral decisions are a double-edged generosity of the CCP that is conditional on upholding the 1992 consensus, their announcement at the KMT-CCP Forum make them appear as the outcome of negotiations between these two parties; their announcement at the Straits Forum, however, bestows on them an aura of inclusive grassroots cooperation, designed to contribute to the universalisation of these measures. 

It's also worth pointing out that if the Ma years were a "golden era" for Taiwan, then the Sunflower Movement would have never happened. It wouldn't have had to. 

I lived in Taiwan during the Ma years, and I never felt them to be any sort of golden age. I worried often about the suppression of true grassroots protests (though these various social movements did eventually overcome attempts to sideline them and promote the KMT and CCP's vision of a shared culture, economy and even sovereignty). I worried about filthy unificationists intentionally buying up Taiwanese media to promote pro-China editorial lines. I worried about black box politics, where China's ultimate control of the KMT was obscured by false claims that economic rapprochement was "apolitical". 

In fact, I would call the Ma years the eight worst years Taiwan has lived under since democratization. I'd call him the worst elected president Taiwan has ever had. All he ever did was undermine Taiwan. It's true that in the last few years, I've grown worried about China (not Taiwan, not the US) starting a war. But during the Ma years, I was worried about something far scarier: that Taiwan's own government would sell out their country, and there wouldn't be a goddamn thing anyone could do about it. 

It was not a good time. It was anxiety-inducing, just in a different, arguably worse, way. 

When opinionators praise Ma Ying-jeou, the other edge of that tends to be criticism of Tsai Ing-wen or Lai Ching-te. That's what Chivvis and Wertheim did in Foreign Policy. Rather than quoting them, here's a big chunk of Yeh Chieh-ting's rebuttal:

Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions in exchange for Chinese restraint, or some kind of brokered one-shot resolution — rest on the fantasy that Beijing wants peace and just needs a polite nudge. There is no evidence for this. For decades, the Chinese Communist Party has steadily escalated its military threats, cyberattacks and diplomatic isolation of Taiwan regardless of who is in power in Taipei or how careful they are with their words. When Beijing says it would use all means to annex Taiwan, “by force if necessary,” it is clear that it sees its goal as more important than peace.

Therefore, Lai’s recent language, including his description of China as a “foreign hostile force,” is not a wild provocation, but rather a blunt acknowledgment of reality. Beijing flies fighter jets across the median line of the Taiwan Strait, simulates blockades and treats Taiwan as a rogue province to be absorbed. Lai is simply responding to years of coercion. If Taiwan stating the facts “angers” China, that is a problem with China’s ego, not Taiwan’s messaging.

Telling the US to “rein in” Taiwan unilaterally does not signal to Beijing any goodwill to be reciprocated. It signals to Beijing that threats work — and that Washington would cave if pushed hard enough.

The recent rise in cross-strait tensions is not a result of Lai’s rhetoric. It is the product of Beijing’s relentless “gray zone” operations — cyberattacks, economic coercion and military harassment that now includes near-daily incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone. This is not theoretical brinkmanship. It is real-world intimidation, and it deserves to be called what it is.

Honestly, I couldn't put it better than this. Lai is not a provocateur. He's not wrong about China -- they are an enemy. They are undermining Taiwan. They are a danger. They are threatening war and annexation. He's simply not wrong, and China is the bad guy here. All they have to do is stop. Taiwan has done nothing wrong; there is nothing for Taiwan to change. Or is it wrong to call out Chinese warmongering for what it is?

Lai isn't wrong, either, to take a harder line on Chinese influence in Taiwanese civic discourse, military spies and political influence. It's no secret that China has wormed its way into all of these spaces, and many military and political leaders are, in fact, spies and traitors. Is it somehow wrong for Lai to try and stop this? Is it wrong to do something about collaborators with a hostile force?

As Wang and Kuo point out: 

Lai’s characterization of China as a “foreign hostile force” was not a provocation; it was a diagnosis rooted in empirical behavior. To ignore Beijing’s actions while castigating Taipei’s rhetoric is to invert cause and effect.

As with praising Ma, so with criticizing Lai: all of this has been China's attempt to force Taiwan into annexation by any means necessary. It's no more a fault of Lai's than it is a strength of Ma's that China is horrible to the DPP, and friendly to the KMT (and the TPP -- don't lie to yourself about that). 

Chivvis, Wertheim and Lung all call for Taiwan to bend the knee. From Lung: 

With China growing in strength and the United States turning its back on the world, Taiwan is right to build up its military as a deterrence against attack. But the only way for Taiwan to peacefully secure its freedom is to somehow reconcile with China. Recent history suggests that is achievable.

Reconcile how? With a country that wants to annex and subjugate, end Taiwan's democratic system, and take away its promise of human rights, no less. 

Taiwan would very obviously have to give these things up in such a "reconciliation".  There are no "concessions" (in Chivvis and Wertheim's words) that Taiwan can offer which don't sell out its sovereignty. What can Taiwan possibly offer China that would end these tensions except a path to annexation -- the one thing Taiwan can't give? 

Wang and Kuo have it right again:

As for Lung’s conclusion — that without peace there can be no democracy — we suggest the inverse is equally, if not more, true: without democracy, there can be no peace worth having.

Peace that comes at the cost of agency, freedom and sovereign identity is not peace; it is submission.

I've said this before, but the problem isn't Taiwan's rhetoric, or the US, or anything other than the plain, ugly truth: the one thing China wants -- Taiwan's subjugation -- is the one thing Taiwan can never offer. There simply is no middle ground. Every "concession" from Taiwan will be treated as one more step in the march to Taiwan, Province of China. There's no agreement in which Taiwan can truly keep the one thing it values most -- its democracy, and by extension its promises of freedom and human rights -- if it surrenders to China.

Once that happens, all bets are off. Taiwan would not be able to exit such a future. If it allowed itself to be sucked into that black hole, it wouldn't be able to pull out, any more than Hong Kong was. That's what happens when you become a part of China. You don't get out. 

Suggesting it is basically telling Taiwanese people that what they want is not important, that their democracy is not important, their self-determination is not important, their human rights are not important. Either that, or the person saying it is stupid enough to believe that Taiwan could retain these things in any way, or back out of a surrender. 

Just as abysmal are Chivvis and Wertheim's suggestion that the US force Taiwan into "concessions" and agree to "some kind of One China". The whole point here is that Taiwan doesn't want China forcing it to give up its sovereignty, but somehow the US doing China's dirty work would be acceptable? 

Some critics in Taiwan love to point out that the US also represents a form of empire, and they're not wrong. Some also say that the US is the true provocateur of China's aggression against Taiwan, but in this they are wrong. Taiwan doesn't want a war the US sparked, they say. I agree, or I would, if the US were the villain here. Isn't it the same thing from a different angle -- US as world police, telling Taiwan what to do -- if the US pushes Taiwan to do something it clearly doesn't want to? If Taiwan did want to "make concessions" with China, ultimately selling out their own country, it would do so. If the Taiwanese people wanted it, they would vote accordingly. 

It also implies that Taiwan is unwilling to engage in dialogue. As above, that's not true: the problem is that China only wants dialogue to the end of annexing Taiwan, it doesn't want an open discussion. Yeh points this out too: 

Taiwan wants an open dialogue with China to talk about how Taiwan and China can coexist, whether as separate countries, the same country, or some type of special arrangement. Lai, as well as every Taiwanese president before him, has stated that Taiwan is open and eager to engage in dialogue with Beijing without any preconditions.

However, that is not the dialogue Beijing is interested in having. Beijing’s “dialogue” requires Taiwan to agree it is part of China, therefore agreeing with China’s conclusion, as an admission ticket to the negotiating table. China is only interested in talking about how Taipei is to execute Beijing’s foregone conclusion.

Lung implies that Taiwanese are disillusioned and don't want to fight for Taiwan. The data say otherwise, and her evidence, as Wang and Kuo point out, are a string of anecdotes and one unscientific online poll. This is willful ignorance from a Ma stooge. Even Chivvis and Wertheim understand that this is not something Taiwan wants, which Yeh notes voters have rejected in three straight elections. 

Do they care for Taiwan's democracy as much as China or the KMT do -- that is to say, not much at all?

I don't know if this frequent reframing of China's aggression is some sort of intentional disinformation. I don't think people like Chivvis, Wertheim, Oung and Lung have, say, meetings to discuss how to uplift Ma's legacy and shift the blame for China's threats on anyone but China, whether that be Lai or the US. 

I do think this narrative that Taiwan is the problem and the Ma years were a "golden age" of China-Taiwan relations was created by some entity (perhaps the United Front, but who knows), and I do think some misguided people believe it, because they don't fully understand the mechanics of what those relations entailed. That is to say, these commentators have bought a story that was manufactured for them. Perhaps Lung herself is one of the manufacturers, given her history with the Ma administration.

They don't know or care about the pressure from business groups, or unilateral CCP decisions presented as the outcome of negotiations with the KMT, or that the KMT sought to undermine the ruling DPP at every turn. They think the idea of a shared cultural heritage is some sort of natural thing, when it was an idea planted by the CCP and their collaborators. 

They block from their minds, if they ever really understood, that China was only friendly to Ma because Ma and Siew actively sought to deliver them the annexation they so desired -- all support was predicated on that Faustian bargain. 

And certainly, they bring the US into it in whatever way suits their argument. The US is by no means altruistic or a force for good, but in the China-Taiwan conflict, the villain is and has always been China and their collaborators in Taiwan.

KMT holds massive rally, insists the DPP stifles dissent

Borrowed (ok, taken) from Focus Taiwan

The KMT held a successful rally on Saturday in front of the Presidential Office, to protest the DPP being a "dictatorship" and "eliminating dissent" to a crowd that some estimate reached 200,000. 

Unlike the evil DPP, which did not retaliate during or after the rally, the KMT has never stifled dissent or freedom of speech in Taiwan. That is, except for the period between 1947 and the 1990s, when it controlled the media, arrested and assassinated dissidents, and disseminated propaganda into news outlets, popular culture and the education system. 

In order to better spread the message to as many people as possible that their freedom to criticize the government was under attack, the KMT had to organize a space that would hold a large number of estimated attendees, publicize the event, create rally materials including flags and pamphlets, invite speakers and arrange equipment including sound systems, screens, port-a-potties, chairs and a stage.

Although it is no longer required to notify the government before a protest, most political rallies do involve some sort of notification process, which is rarely if ever denied. Indeed, the "oppressive" DPP, whom the KMT accused of enacting a "Cultural Revolution" in Taiwan, fully allowed the KMT to hold the protest outside the seat of executive power to which they were elected. 

Although most dictatorships that stifle dissent make it difficult to organize mass resistance, the KMT was miraculously able to arrange all of this fully transparently and with no secrecy.

They faced no legal consequences for advocating for the recall of President Lai Ching-te, despite historical evidence showing that most dictators enact swift retribution when their rivals call for their overthrow. For instance, dictators such as Recep Erdogan, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have done everything from removing opponents from office regardless of whether they're part of a resistance movement or in their own party, to outright disappearing and murdering them. 

Most of the speakers at this KMT rally were opposition lawmakers, and yet none of them have been poisoned, disappeared, arrested or removed from office by the DPP. Celebrity influencers such as Holger Chen also spoke to hundreds of thousands at the rally, criticizing the DPP for not allowing them to criticize the DPP. As of press time, all of them are still political figures and celebrities who maintain zero bullet holes, cups of poisoned tea, arrest warrants or defenestrations. 

In an unusual turn for a fascist, communist regime, all of the speakers will likely keep their jobs unless the public tires of them, and no attendees faced any security concerns. And yet, despite this lack of adversity, the KMT bravely persevered to hold this rally to fight dictatorship under such safe conditions.

When asked about DPP commentary noting that the KMT retains full freedom of speech and assembly and that Taiwan is ranked one of the freest democracies in Asia and the world, the KMT reportedly said, "stop taking away our right to portray ourselves as victims!"

After the rally, any writer, podcaster, Youtuber or media outlet that would like to describe the KMT rally and its large number of participants in a positive light will be able to do so, facing no governmental or legal backlash, in another sly DPP move that is unlike any typical dictatorship. 

The KMT and KMT-adjacent TPP (Taiwan People's Party) are facing recall campaigns backed by surprisingly wide public support, however. Although the DPP likely supports these campaigns, the signatures needed to push such recalls are given freely by voters.

In unrelated news, KMT efforts at recalling DPP legislators have been beset by corruption charges. It is amazing how the KMT stays strong under such oppression by falsifying petition signatures and accusing the DPP of being like the Chinese Communist Party, an odd choice considering the KMT's own rapprochement with Beijing and the DPP's continued criticism of it.

Although the KMT called the DPP "communists",  Taiwan still has a free market economy, and the social programs that do exist, such as National Health Insurance, remain popular with both parties as well as the general public.

It is unfortunate, however, that the KMT and its supporters may face social consequences. These include people thinking they are stupid, friends not wanting to hang out with them anymore, or acquaintances finding them annoying. Lawmakers may also suffer political consequences such as voters not liking them or voting for them. Their extremist rhetoric has given them a short-term boost and greater visibility, but may ultimately backfire. Along with the KMT's pro-China policies, this may cause longer-term failure in future elections. This will, of course, be the DPP's fault. 

In a further sign of DPP authoritarianism, Lu Shiow-yen, one of the key speakers at the rally, is widely believed to be the KMT's top contender for the 2028 presidential race. Despite her own party's histoy of brutal dictatorship and martial law and the KMT itself hoping to position Taiwan for Chinese annexation, she will be able to run for the country's top office without fear for her personal safety or freedom. In another surprising move for the DPP autocrats who have seized absolute power, Lu might actually win, causing President Lai to step down peacefully. Chicanery!

According to the Taipei Times's Donovan Smith, Lu was more measured in her rhetoric, whereas former Sunflower leader Huang Kuo-chang, widely viewed as a turncoat and hypocrite by his former supporters, went further into extremism, accusing the DPP of eradicating freedom in Taiwan to throngs of listeners. He has been struggling to build and maintain popularity, further proving the DPP's cunning devilry. Surely it could not be his own rhetoric which has caused this! 

Huang and the TPP have consistently called for the release of former leader Ko Wen-je, currently on trial for corruption. Despite the DPP's autocratic rule of Taiwan, they will not be arrested or face any legal backlash for doing so.

Other speakers at the KMT rally called for referendums against martial law, an interesting choice considering that the only party to enact martial law was the KMT. They railed against the DPP assault on democracy despite the KMT winning a plurality in the last legislative elections.

Truly, this DPP assault on freedom of speech must end. If it doesn't, how will the KMT hold another large rally in front of the Presidential Office to tell 200,000 supporters and everyone listening to or reading reports about it that their freedom of speech is being stifled and they are not allowed to criticize the DPP?

You Get What You Need

Bay of Kotor, Montenegro

As we rounded the boot of Italy, I cleared my plate of mostly Mediterranean-style grilled vegetables — eggplant, bell pepper, zucchini, tomato, all with visible sear marks but barely seasoned — and went back for another. I wasn’t sure if I was still hungry, but I heaped this fresh plate, still warm from the dishwasher, with more vegetables, cheeses, focaccia, cured meats. They made a real effort to offer some food representative of the region we were sailing through.

And to be honest, I could have eaten more.

They weren’t empty calories. Most of the food on our cruise was acceptable, if you ignored the “soft tortillas” that had been sitting under a heat lamp for so long they’d baked into a hard mass, the sugar-free iced tea that tasted like dirt or the watered-down coffee with nowhere near enough caffeine. You can get real coffee on a cruise ship, but you have to pay for it.

And yet, even with attempts at healthy choices, I just kept feeling hungry. I ate and ate, and wanted to eat some more. I could have just about anything I wanted, but none of it quite filled me up.

Talking about a Mediterranean cruise might seem like an odd choice for a Taiwan-focused blog, but I do think it’s relevant. Lao Ren Cha is intentionally named to represent a very slow brewing process, a take-your-time opening of the tea leaves: I’ve lived in this country for almost two decades, I am mostly self-taught in Mandarin (not perfectly, but well enough), I’ve visited every inhabited outlying island and spent time in every county on the Taiwan mainland, but I can’t say I fully and deeply understand Taiwan. There’s always more to learn.

My husband and I travel this way as well, or try to. My dream vacation is to find a tiny slice of a place and explore it as deeply as time will allow. I want at least two full days in any given city, even the “boring” ones. In fact, that’s usually not enough. Two weeks just for eastern Java? About the same for Georgia? Two months in Turkey? All wholly insufficient.

So why take a cruise stopping in five countries over ten days — Italy, Malta, Greece, Montenegro and Croatia? Would that not be far too little time in any one place?

We did it because it was the best way to organize a family trip with my in-laws, who prefer cruises, and my brother and sister-in-law, who don’t mind them. The in-laws have traveled our way (over land, spending more time in each place) more than once to spend time with us. It’s our turn to try their way. I was happy to do it. I still am. It might also be our last trip before WWIII or the resource wars break out. 

The port calls were indeed too quick, though. In and out, Sicily in a day. Pompeii in half a day. Crowds pouring in, making destinations more unpleasant than they needed to be. I got the feeling most of the places we visited were a lot more pleasant after we left. Yes, we -- I'm not better than the other visitors.

I can’t say the tea leaves opened for any one destination.

I haven’t disliked taking a cruise, though. It’s easy to hop on a high soapbox or higher horse and say cruises are always terrible, or aren’t really traveling, or look like miserable trips for miserable people. It’s easy to be a travel bougie and think that makes you better than the average tourist, but it doesn’t.

Dubrovnik, Croatia

It took a lot of convincing to get me to go, though. I worried about all sorts of things: where does the poop go? How could the food possibly be good? Isn’t a cruise ship basically a massive environmental disaster? Do they treat the crew well? 

The answers to these questions are complicated (except for the poop -- it's treated and dumped as 'gray water' in the open sea, away from conservation areas).

Environmentally, the fuel needed is questionable at best. It's a lot, but having seen the resources poured into and polliution pouring out of land-based tourist facilities, especially big resorts, cruise ships seem like they actually might be more efficient. No one who travels is entirely innocent, as airplanes are one of the worst polluters as well. If you travel, you pollute. But, there is a case to be made that cruises pollute more than other forms of travel.

Very little food is wasted: we see a lot of the same ingredients in different dishes. There are almost no single-use plastics. If passengers could be convinced to give up bottled water (also a problem in general, and not just with tourists), there would be none. Everything else is paper, wood or recyclable aluminum. 

And the waste? It's not good.

Labor conditions for everyone but officers would generally be considered unacceptable in the West -- more about that later.

Knowing this, we still decided to do the trip. Spending time with family does matter, and with two older travelers who have done things our way on previous trips, it was a trade-off we were willing to make.

What about other people, though?

Chania, Crete

One friend who has money to burn says she prefers them because you’re almost completely disconnected from the world if you don’t buy the overpriced wi-fi package. If she’s on a regular trip, she can’t quite shed her workaholic nature. “But if people are trying to reach me but I’m somewhere between Barbados and Curaçao with no service, there’s not much they can do, and I won’t feel compelled to get any work done,” she once told me.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. We chose not to buy the wi-fi either, thinking a digital detox would do us good. It has: we’re sleeping better, reading more and feeling more relaxed. I don’t even miss being on social media regularly.

It’s also easy to see exactly who cruises are for when, to put it bluntly, you look at who takes them. Our cruise was mostly older people, some families, and many disabled travelers. That is, people who’d spent their fittest years working and saved travel for retirement: anyone can arrange a trip on their own if they really want to, but it gets harder to lug backpacks or suitcases around as one gets older. For disabled travelers, it’s a lot easier to book a trip where you understand the accessibility in advance and won’t be surprised with a set of stairs you can’t climb, a long walk you can’t endure, or a set of meal options you can’t eat.

For others, it’s a way to keep kids happy and entertained — say whatever you want about how you’d parent differently, you don’t actually know what personality or needs your kid is going to have, or how difficult some kids can be until you try to travel with them. Another friend of mine did the full Mediterranean rigmarole because he and his wife wanted to see everything, they had plenty of money but not a lot of time, and their pre-teen son wasn’t interested in much of it. Cruise ships have options for situations like that.



Yet another friend who occasionally does cruises geared at families where one member has autism. It’s one way to travel while ensuring a predictable environment that may minimize, say, the chance of a meltdown.

Then there are the travelers who want a floating hotel room with excellent service that moves around, so they can visit lots of places. That, to be honest, is one of the most appealing draws of a cruise. You can unpack and stay unpacked. Also, to be blunt: the cocktails are very good and they don’t skimp. 

Mt. Aetna, Sicily

And yes, there are the ones who have no special circumstances but want to say they’ve traveled but also desire it to be as safe and sanitized as possible: food they know they’ll eat, entirely predictable bus trips, services they know they’ll have access to. I know many ‘intrepid traveler’ types (the ones who call themselves “travelers, not tourists” without an ounce of self-reflection) who would dismiss this final group as unworthy of the beauty of travel, but honestly, that’s unkind. You really never know who a person is inside, or why they’ve chosen the safe option, or what experience might open them up to some new possibility. A lot of these ‘I am the very best kind of traveler’ folks might try to practice the non-judgmentalism they preach.

Still, I felt a bit out of place on what is essentially a massive floating Disney World where every staff member is helpful and friendly, and constantly asks if you’re having a good time. I always felt like I had to say it was great — magical, amazing, wonderful — even when it wasn’t. 

Pompeii was a hot mess: herded through a “cameo factory” that was more of a glorified souvenir shop with a bathroom you could use, then racing through the ruins, seeing this and that, half a fresco maybe, the infamous phallus on the sidewalk pointing to a brothel. With thirty or so people in your group surrounding you, a little radio in your ear so you could hear the guide, sunglasses and a sun hat, every one of my senses was being assaulted and I didn’t really see anything. 

In 2018, I took a train from Rome with my sister. We wandered around Pompeii at our own pace and used Google to figure out what things were. We found entire rooms with the paint intact, and talked about what we were seeing or just interesting things in life. When we felt we’d feasted enough on what Pompeii had to offer, we caught the train back to Napoli for pizza, and then on to Rome.

That 2018 Pompeii visit was better, and it's not close. 

Others on our our said Sorrento was “wonderful” — were streets of souvenir shops all they wanted? Should I judge them for that? I felt I could have really liked the town if I’d gotten an Airbnb outside the “historical” (tourist) district and spent a week, not 90 minutes. 

The tour guide for this trip was a nice guy named Sal who clearly had a nasty cold and wanted nothing more than to be at home drinking restorative hot beverages while watching crappy TV and waiting for the meds to kick in.

“But I have to work, you know,” he said as I handed him a BronkAid.

I’m not sure how I feel about propping up that kind of economy.



                    

Valletta, Malta

Things improved on Mt. Aetna: it’s harder to get to, so a tour made sense, and the crater was truly impressive. What the excursions call “time on your own”, however, usually turned out to be 1-2 hours in a town, not enough to both eat and walk around (lunch is not usually provided, so you really must eat, and often the only eateries you have time to walk to are tourist traps with awful food). In Sorrento we gulped down an overpriced meal and then tried to walk around, only to find street after street of souvenir shops.

In Catania we decided to forgo the whole tourist trap nonsense. We had an hour, and there was no reasonable way to have fun in any city with that little time. I had data on land, so I hopped online and found a highly-rated restaurant where we lunched in a sun-drenched courtyard filled with just the right amount of Sicilian chaos. We had salty olives and horse steaks (yes, horse). I had home-made rigatoni so massive it flopped over, covered in a savory pistachio cream sauce and guanciale. Six euros for a half liter of white wine, and the most delicious little chocolate thing I’ve ever shoved in my face hole.

The salty olives mattered: nothing on the ship is sufficiently salted. I felt like the sultan in that old Arab fable about three daughters, where the third showed her love by bringing her father salt. He thought it was a worthless gift until he tried living without it — he was so miserable, his food so tasteless, that he proclaimed he’d give his kingdom for a few flakes of it.

My kingdom, for some salty fucking olives in the Mediterranean, of all places.

We left stuffed, but had to run back to meet our tour group. That one meal was the only thing we had time for in urban Sicily, and we had to leave before doppio espresso or grappa had even been a possibility. The Sicilian family running the place seemed confused about why we cut out so quickly; they didn’t seem to get a lot of cruise ship daytrippers.

I didn’t get a lot of Sicily, but that meal will stay with me, on my hips and in my mind. On the ship I can get anything I want, but actually spending time on land in a place, I may get what I need.

Once we stopped doing lots of excursions, my experience became dramatically more interesting. Malta and Crete were outstanding, because we were just a family walking around and having fun. That togetherness, not endless group tours, is what I wanted and needed from this trip. The Montenegro bus trip was only somewhat chaotic, and I ended up loving Kotor itself.

One of my favorite things to do in Europe is find a pretty cafe in a quiet lane and watch the world go by over a Campari spritz (an Aperol spritz is fine, but Campari is better). Nobody needs this exactly, but it’s my favorite kind of travel. I can have as many spritzes of any liqueur that I’d like on the ship. I don’t dislike being on the ship. But a Campari spritz at one of the bars isn’t quite the same as sipping it in a travertine-bricked, vine-covered cafe in some corner of Rome. It’s the same drink, but somehow less filling.

The other thing the ship has is a massive staff. They’re from around the world, but mostly the “Global South”, if you like that term. I don’t, but can’t put my finger on why. It reads as condescending. The large proportion seem to be from the Philippines. They all work very hard to keep every guest happy — if you even hint that you want something, the nearest worker will drop everything to help.

This creates a very comfortable experience which makes me a little uncomfortable. These are probably considered very good jobs, and people need jobs. The idealist in me cries out that nobody should have to work as support staff — servants, basically — to keep a gaggle of white, mostly American, travelers happy and sated. The realist in me wonders what exactly would happen if those jobs didn’t exist. It’s easy to say “socialism would fix it!!” but that’s insanely non-specific and none of the praxis for it has worked so far. 

Because a cruise ship is pure distilled capitalism, upsells and “events” mostly designed to entice you to spend money are common. It’s just as infuriating as the low-caffeine coffee.

As for my fellow ship-mates, they are mostly quite friendly. But as we’re being herded out to excursions, I feel like we’re all doughy cattle (yes, myself included) mooing and grunting off to truncated experiences. Some of them talk loudly about how “President Trump is stopping those illegal immigrants from coming over and getting free health care!” I want these people to see more of the world, but they seem happy with just one day. Not even a day: an hour here, an hour there. I doubt they’re learning much.

After Sicily, I soaked in one of the indoor hot tubs for awhile. A woman joined me; I learned quickly that she was Peruvian and spoke only Spanish. I marginally speak something that passes for half-remembered high school Spanish, which I picked up because my French teacher saw potential in my autodidactic language learning. We still chatted for about half an hour, don’t ask me how. This was her first cruise, and she was loving it — she explained that she was a bit shy to try to communicate across language barriers (I am not), but tours were usually available in Spanish, and it allowed her to visit lots of non-Spanish speaking countries.

Doing insane charades (don’t ask how I explain problems like a yeast infection) to negotiate meaning with people with whom I share not even a word doesn’t scare me, but who am I to judge those for whom that’s a real barrier to travel?

On our voyage I also kept running into a small group of well-tailored Filipina lesbians. The maitre’d at the dining room always greeted them with a compliment. After this, I noticed that my shipmates included not just older and disabled travelers, for whom the accessibility options on a cruise are a godsend, but a fairly large cohort of LGBT+ passengers from around the world. I imagine it must soothe some to know that they always have welcoming accommodation as they see the world.

We saw my husband's parents in their most relaxed state, which for them doesn’t include carting luggage to a series of hotels rooms, and it was wonderful. For various reasons, this may be our last family trip for awhile, and I valued it.

I'm also getting a bit of what I want: I started this trip by working remotely from my sister's apartment in London. I got to drink Campari spritzes in various Rome neighborhoods, and again in many other ports. We bookended the cruise with a few days in Rome and a few in Ljubljana, giving us time to see more of both cities. 

My intention is not to lay down a polemic about cruises. It’s not my preferred mode of travel, but I may take one again. There are true upsides: you do see a lot of different places. If you truly want to explore any one of them in-depth, it might plant a seed to encourage you to come back on your own. They go to places I doubt I’d ever make it to on my own, from the Shetland and Orkney islands to the tip of South America. That trip gives you just one day in Ushuaia, but that’s one more day than I’d be likely to get otherwise.

After Sicily, the port calls improved. We wandered around Valletta, Malta, eating rabbit stew for lunch and sending the in-laws back to the ship when they were ready to take a rest. I had my Campari spritz in an outdoor European cafe and followed them. We did much the same in Crete. The scenic drive in Montenegro was a bit of a mess, but everyone enjoyed the prosciutto, cheese and wine. As we approach Croatia, I’m a little sad that it’s coming to an end.

People often ask why I’ve stayed in Taiwan so long. What am I even doing there? I don’t know. All I can say is that it doesn’t always give me what I want, but that slow process of understanding and partially (never entirely) integrating into the local language and culture, and contributing to the best of my ability so that I’m a net positive as a presence there, is the sort of slow-brewed tea that gives me some ineffable thing I need.

On the second to last day of our trip, I was having trouble falling asleep and wanted some hot tea and fresh air. I threw on a sweatshirt and headed up to the buffet, where there was no food at such a late hour, but tea and coffee were always available. I took my mug of herbal tea, perhaps a brewed a little quickly but still satisfying and walked around the exterior upper decks of the ship. People were still hanging out in the closed bars, or watching Jurassic World on the Lido Deck. Different music played in each, some areas lit up, others darkened. A basketball game going on somewhere I couldn’t see. It was a little surreal.

Somewhere in my ramblings, I came across a dark side deck full of stargazers. A crew member had distributed headphones with an audio guide about the constellations. I arrived late and didn’t take one, but standing in a throng of silent shipmates, heads turned to the sky like churchgoers in a late-night Adriatic fever dream, I saw that there is indeed more to do on a cruise ship than eat mediocre food and get herded onto tour buses. I could also sit in the middle of a wine-dark sea and look at the heavens.

I sensed a new dimension of what it means not to judge. This doesn’t extend to the guy who wouldn’t stop lying about “illegals” getting free healthcare, but to everyone else, I get it. And I hope that one guy finds a better emotional support villain to blame for his unhappiness. 

I don’t care about Jurassic World, but you do. That’s great. I think we don’t spend nearly enough time in each destination, but you think the excursions are too long. You want a bus to take you everywhere, or maybe you need that for accessibility reasons. It’s not my first choice, but okay! It doesn’t quite fill me up — I’ve left each destination feeling like I could have spent a week or more there — but it’s also more than empty calories.

It’s easy to extend ‘to each their own’ to people whose choices we can on some level understand. It’s a lot harder when nothing about your preferences align with theirs, or you’ve forgotten that people have constellations of reasons why they don’t want to or simply can’t travel the way people like me might prefer. It's extremely easy when you don't hold yourself accountable for the ways you pollute and tolerate poor working conditions, or worse, think you've solved the problem of ethical consumption in your own life. I promise, you haven't. 

I didn’t always get what I wanted on the Majestic Princess, but even though it’s the exact opposite of slow-growing roots in a new country over decades, I got something I needed there too.