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Taiwan ready to join the world’s democratic powers

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In Brief

Consolidated democracies in Asia are rare. India and Japan democratised after World War II, and Taiwan and South Korea did so from the late 1980s. Countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines and Mongolia have made important first steps but democracy remains fragile.

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 Taiwan has just undergone its third change of government since 2000. Unfortunately for the Taiwanese people, the administrations of presidents Chen Shui-bian (2000–2008) and Ma Ying-jiu (2008–2016) promised much but delivered little.

In the 16 January elections, Tsai Ing-wen, the presidential nominee of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), won 56 per cent of the vote in a race with three tickets. Tsai led the DPP to win an absolute majority in the legislature, gaining 68 of 113 seats. This is the first time that the DPP has controlled the legislature and promises that Tsai will lead a unified government.

Tsai was also the DPP candidate for president in 2012, but she was a mediocre campaigner and lost the election. Tsai has improved and become a much better candidate and president-elect. She significantly broadened her scope of advisers and now listens to what they have to say. She has also made some excellent appointments, as seen in her widely praised vice-presidential running mate and nominations for the legislature.

Tsai’s landslide victory can be attributed to widespread dissatisfaction among voters with current economic policies. Growth has been limited and incomes have remained low. The government hasn’t taken care of Taiwan’s poor and needy.

Voters were also unhappy with the government’s emphasis on China. Most Taiwanese feel Taiwan is overly dependent economically on China, yet the government tied its future to the mainland.

Most foreign reports on the elections have focused on how the outcome might affect relations with China. This misses the point. Most people in Taiwan want the country to have friendly relations with China, but they also want to maintain their independence. The major tensions in cross-Strait relations stem from China’s flawed claims that Taiwan belongs to it. The future of relations between China and Taiwan depends on the attitudes of China’s leaders, not Taiwan’s.

Taiwan has been under the rule of a Han Chinese regime based in China for only four years in its history, during 1945–1949. These were the worst years in Taiwan’s history, as the Chinese colonial regime of Chiang Kai-shek repressed Taiwan and killed more than 20,000 Taiwanese during the 1947 democracy movement.

As Taiwan has democratised, it has also decolonialised. Fewer people identify as being ‘Chinese’ while more and more see themselves as being ‘Taiwanese’ — which explicitly excludes any identification with China.

With democracy, the great majority of Taiwanese people have made their views clear in this latest election, bringing in a new Taiwan-centric government. This means that any new government — and opposition too — will be Taiwan-centric. The question then for the Kuomintang, which ruled Taiwan as a dictatorship from 1945 to 1988 and then from 2008 to 2016, is can it reform sufficiently to attract Taiwanese voters? If not, it will be thrown into the dustbin of history and a new Taiwan-centric opposition will emerge.

Such an opposition might derive from a split in the DPP based on socially progressive versus socially conservative programs. The small New Power Party, which gained five legislative seats on the basis of its strong Taiwan orientation and youth appeal, might join such a new opposition.

Taiwan is an important middle power with a population equal to that of Australia’s and a territory larger than two-fifths of the world’s nations. It has an advanced economy and a substantial military.

As China has become more assertive in regional territorial disputes, the democratic powers of the world have established even closer links. The leaders of the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia and India have been meeting frequently with one another. Taiwan, an important world middle power, should seek to join these democratic powers and the democratic powers should welcome the addition of Taiwan to their group.

For Taiwan, such links would provide political, economic and security advantages. For the nations of the democratic world, the addition of Taiwan would add only add to their strengths.

J Bruce Jacobs is Emeritus Professor of Asian Languages and Studies at Monash University.

This article was first published here in The Age and also here in the Asian Studies Association of Australia.

5 responses to “Taiwan ready to join the world’s democratic powers”

  1. Taiwanese are increasingly frustrated by their low quality leadership and social divisions. A famous Taiwanese author who used to criticize Singapore one-party government, a few months ago wrote an article in praise of Singapore over Taiwan , and that article was recommended by Singapore PM via his social media account.
    Without mainland China that allowed Taiwan to enjoy US$746b of trade surplus in the last 10 years, Taiwan GDP would have been in a negative territory over the years: http://www.chinabiz.org.tw/Epaper/Show?id=925 .
    The election does not automatically translate into democracy where government (will) look after the people. Particularly, western style democracy is basically a system that designed for the 1 per cent to influence government policies via political donations, advertisements and lobbying. Be more objective about forms of political systems before a political reform is possible in the West. Western public are increasingly frustrated by their so-called “democracy” as well with rising cost of living, stagnated wages, unemployment, welfare cuts..etc. Try not to promote indoctrinated message about the superiority of western democracy, as this system is about to bought down the entire western civilisation. No body is going to feel proud about a political system that been proven unable to fix problems beside resorting more privatisation, cuts, and tax.

    • The problems is that too many people in the USA for a long time were brainwashed that an unregulated capitalist system will produce a more democratic system. When you look at American history, such thinking was disapproved when the 1929 Great Depression hit the USA and the business people turn to the federal government to solve the economic mess that they had created.

      In addition, for a long time before the 1929 Great Depression, the wealthy people and corporations had control over the city, county, state and federal governments in determine which people will become mayors, county supervisors, governors, state and federal senators and assembly people to represent their interests at the expense of the rest of the population. All that change after the Second World War; however, in the last 36 years all that changed when Ronald Reagan deregulate the economy and allowed corporate power to run uncheck and now the wealthy people and corporations are determine to take America back to the pre-Depression era.

  2. Interesting, to say the least, that this author proposed that Taiwan join with other democracies to discuss and determine economic and security issues. How will ‘the elephant in the room,’ the PRC, react to Taiwan doing that….especially if the policies announced fly in the face of the PRC’s various agendas? Are the other Pacific Asian democracies (eg, Australia, Japan, the ROK, and the USA) prepared to help/protect Taiwan if/when things get tense?!?

  3. This is a recycled-theme from the author’s 10 Sept 2104 piece entitled “Taiwan-Australia Relations: Good Links between Two Democratic Asia-Pacific Middle Powers.”

    To obliquely promote an independent, democratic Taiwan again, so soon after China and Australia signed the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement, which entered into force on 20 December 2015, risks toppling the apple cart for Australia’s already fragile economy, (as a result of the collapse of commodity prices), because according to DFAT “China is Australia’s largest trading partner. In 2014-15, China bought $90 billion of Australian exports, more than a quarter of Australia’s total exports to the world”.

    It also risks inciting a war of attrition between two whales (China and the US) over Taiwan, when push turns to shove. In such an unthinkable war, Taiwan, the shrimp, will be squashed, no thanks to any Western promoter of democracy.

    China wants a peaceful rise and a return to the‘1992 consensus’ of ‘One China’ with Taiwan. Why opt for war when China is, by far, the biggest beneficiary of 70 years of Peace in East Asia?

    Deng Xiaoping said in 1978 that “It is not the color of the cat that counts (anymore) but whether it can catch mice.”

    When that maxim was unequivocally enunciated, the Marxist ideology was tossed out of the window and China adopted ‘Meritocracy’, with a Socialist bent.

    Today, after only 38 years, China has the world’s second largest economy and is the world’s largest trading nation. In PPP terms, the IMF has stated that China’s economy is already the largest in the world.

    China’s economic goal is to further double her GDP from the year 2011 to 2020 to about 93 trillion yuan, using the rule of 72. By then, China will have the world’s largest economy in nominal terms.

    After the Qing dynasty fell in 1912, China tried all sorts of political systems, including democracy and they all failed. Today, China prefers Meritocracy, with a Socialist bent.

    But if Australia values democracy so much why block the Declaration of the Continuance of the State of Murrawarri Nation, an Aboriginal nation that lived in the Culgoa River region of the state of New South Wales tens of thousands of years before the arrival of British settlers?

    Will Australia be sanguine if China agitates for an independent nation for the Australian Aborigines vis-à-vis the West’s agitation for independence of Taiwan’s alleged Aborigines?

    And if democracy is so great why is that Greece, its birthplace, is now a bankrupt nation? Why is the Philippines one of the poorest countries in Asia?

    It’s time to stop interfering in the internal affairs of China.

    • People think that capitalism is so great and if that is true then why do the Western European countries and the Nordic countries have the highest standard of living because of their socialist programs compare to the unregulated capitalist systems of the USA.

      China became an economic power because the USA government was controlled by American corporations who use the government to get rid of laws that allow American corporations to send the jobs overseas and technology transfer plus reduce American tariff barriers so their goods could be easily imported into the country.

      China has a communist bend not a socialist bend.

      And if democracy is so great why is that Greece, its birthplace, is now a bankrupt nation? Why is the Philippines one of the poorest countries in Asia?

      Greece is bankrupt thanks to American bankers and the IMF bribing their politicians. Regarding the Philippines, the United States did a poor job of giving that country a firm democratic foundation plus backup up right wing dictatorships in that country. Timer to stop letting corporations and wealthy people interfering in the internal affairs of all nations.

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