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US-CHINA: QUEST FOR
PEACE
Part 5: History of the Taiwan time
bomb
By Henry C K Liu
Part 1:
Two nations, worlds apart
Part 2: Cold War links Korea, Taiwan
Part 3: Korea: Wrong war, wrong place, wrong
enemy
Part 4: 38th Parallel leads straight to
Taiwan
In 1949, having suffered
across-the-board reverses in the civil war against the
Chinese communists as a result of dwindling popular
support despite massive military and economic aid from
the Unites States, the government of the Republic of
China (ROC) under the control of the Nationalist Party,
or Guomindang (GMD, known as the Kuomintang, or KMT, on
Taiwan), abandoned the Chinese mainland and fled with
its core loyalists to Taiwan, a Chinese territorial
island 90 miles off the shore of Fujian province.
From its exiled position, the ROC then entered
into a defense treaty with the US, as a collateral
development of the Korean War.
An "economic
miracle" on Taiwan was subsequently nurtured by
insatiable demands from US logistics needs in the Korean
and Vietnam wars. Authoritarianism, a traditional
cultural fixture of Chinese civilization - enhanced with
the imposition of an Emergency Decree in 1949 - placed
restrictions and limitations on civil rights, including
freedom of political speech, freedom of the press and
publication, right to peaceful assembly, and freedom of
association. Although civil rights were guaranteed by
the ROC constitution, they never were implemented by the
government even before its arrival on Taiwan, and this
freezing of basic liberties allowed GMD one-party rule
to promote economic development in its new home in a
"stable" political environment.
The Emergency
Decree, a martial law in all but name, was not lifted
until October 15, 1986 - 37 years after its imposition.
The ROC held its first popular election on Taiwan for
president and vice president of China in March 1996, 47
years after it left the mainland. It was an election of
questionable legitimacy, producing a "president" of
China through a local election by 21 million people in a
country of 1.4 billion, making democracy a pathetic
joke. The local election in reality produced a governor
of a province of China who took on the delusional
pretension of being the president of China.
Freedom and democracy, which have never existed
on Taiwan in its entire history, including the 47-year
period between 1949 and 1996 under the GMD, had not been
the reason for US support of Taiwan during that time,
nor could any credit be given to freedom and democracy
for the Taiwan "economic miracle" of that period. In
fact, evidence suggests that freedom and democracy were
the result rather than the cause of rising economic
prosperity on Taiwan, which had been the product of
international geopolitical conditions and
near-dictatorial home rule.
Brutal battles
between the forces of the ROC and the People's
Liberation Army (PLA) of the People's Republic of China
(PRC) continued in the Battle of Quemoy at Kuningtou in
1949 and the Battle of Tachen Islands in 1954-55. In
1955, the PLA captured Yijiangshan Island, wiping out
ROC forces stationed there. The two sides continued
fighting on Kinmen, Matsu, and along the mainland
Chinese coast, even extending to some mainland coastal
ports. This was the first "Taiwan Strait crisis".
To facilitate progress in the Korean armistice
negotiations, the 125-ship US 7th Fleet had been
withdrawn on February 2, 1953, five months before the
signing of the armistice. This was ordered by president
Dwight D Eisenhower, who said that "the 7th Fleet
[would] no longer be employed to shield Communist China"
from possible attack by Nationalist Chinese forces. He
added: "We certainly have no obligation to protect a
nation fighting us in Korea."
During the Battle
of the Taiwan Strait of August 23, 1958, the 7th Fleet
re-entered the Taiwan Strait to support GMD forces
against the PLA, because five years after the Korea
armistice had been signed, GMD forces were again losing
the initiative. An honorary badge of meritorious service
was awarded by the government of the ROC on Taiwan to US
military personnel for operations off Quemoy and Matsu
and in the Taiwan Strait between August 1958 and June
1963. After the Battle of the Taiwan Strait, although
sporadic skirmishes and minor sea battles continued,
tensions between the two sides of the unfinished civil
war gradually eased and the frequency of direct military
clashes subsided after 1965.
US placed Taiwan
on diplomatic life-support
Underpinned by
diplomatic life-support from the US, the ROC on Taiwan
continued to maintain official relations with most
Western-bloc governments for two decades, except with
Britain under a Labour government, which quickly
recognized the PRC in 1949. At the United Nations, the
ROC continued to be recognized, albeit as a fantasy, as
the sole legitimate government of China until 1971. With
its expulsion from the UN that year as a result of
US-China rapprochement, the international status of the
exiled ROC finally caught up with reality, and the
number of countries that maintained diplomatic relations
with Taipei declined sharply. Once more than a hundred,
they were reduced to a handful of small, diplomatically
insignificant nations whose recognition was bought with
cash.
Official ROC historiography justifies the
role of authoritarianism in promoting economic
development, a strategy it notes as common and natural
in developing countries. By definition, an authoritarian
government does not tolerate any challenge to its power
or policies. Still, an authoritarian system must operate
within rational limits in the service of societal goals.
ROC leaders pointed out that the authoritarian political
system and industrial policy that operated in the early
stages of Japan's modernization proved to be extremely
efficient in getting Japan on the path toward successful
economic development. Similarly, the ROC applied an
authoritarian system in Taiwan to promote
"modernization". The growth of Taiwan's economy in this
period stood as one of the world's development
successes, with per capita annual income rising from
less than US$100 in 1949 to $186 in 1952 and to $1,193
by 1977 - a more than tenfold increase in less than 30
years.
Freedom, democracy and free markets had
very little to do with Taiwan's economic success. ROK
historians claim that the Emergency Decree had only a
minor negative impact on everyday life or personal
freedoms unrelated to politics. They argued that it
produced visible benefits with respect to safeguarding
the security of the ROC on Taiwan and promoting its
economic growth. History is replete with examples of
democracy before prosperity turning into dictatorships.
Restrictions were placed on the formation of new
political parties on Taiwan to prevent multiparty
politicking that would divide a nation's strength and
political will. These restrictions not only prevented
inter-party clashes and intra-party factional power
struggles, but also allowed the government to maintain
unity and harmony. The Emergency Decree prohibited
strikes by workers, students, and shopkeepers, and
forbade mass demonstrations and protests, allowing the
government to maintain what GMD loyalists described as
"an ordered society and stable political environment".
Indeed, GMD loyalists assert to this day that there are
still many on Taiwan who long for the stability under
the Emergency Decree.
With the Emergency Decree
restricting the formation of opposition political
parties, the GMD ruled under a one-party system. The
only legal non-opposition parties were the Young China
Party and the China Democratic Socialist Party, both
weak and non-influential. There were also independent
candidates - commonly referred to as tangwai, or
party outsiders - who sometimes challenged low-level GMD
candidates in local elections and occasionally emerged
victorious.
This one-party system had a positive
impact on Taiwan's security and economic development.
The GMD became a powerful institution capable of
gradually binding together diverse socio-economic
forces. The party's firm control of key political,
economic, and social resources made it possible to
assimilate, in an orderly manner, new groups into the
political system, and its long reign in power allowed
stability to be maintained in party mechanisms and
personnel. The consistency and continuity of policies
allowed long-term and future-oriented plans to be
formulated and executed. The GMD recruited new talented
party members from different cultural groups and various
social strata, integrating mainlanders, native
Taiwanese, Hakka and aborigines, all of them as Chinese
nationals, and it internalized democracy within party
politics. In that sense, the GMD on Taiwan at that time
exhibited characteristics similar to those found in the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) today.
Economic
development led naturally to increased political
participation by those seeking to resolve tension and
conflicts between newly emerged socio-economic groups.
Prosperity enriched political and social resources, and
drew into politics many who competed for the fruits of
economic success. Rapid economic growth also led to
greater population mobility in Taiwan, with students and
young workers flocking to metropolitan areas. This
migration phenomenon undermined traditional social
institutions and altered feudal bonds. The resultant
urban population became self-centered and vocally
disgruntled with authoritarian feudal politics.
Taiwan's nouveaux riches demanded
political power
A nouveau riche class
created by rapid economic development started
participating in politics in order to secure its
financial gains and its rise in social status by
demanding more political power. Universal education in
Taiwan, fueled by the GMD-controlled government's
implementation of a compulsory nine-year education
policy, raised political consciousness along with
marketable skills.
When the government proved
incapable of fulfilling rising political demands, these
new social forces exploited every opportunity to
increase their influence on public opinion, putting
pressure on an inert government. Many developing
countries face similar problems of rapid economic
development sharpening public expectations of
government, which in turn creates political instability
as the government finds it increasingly difficult to
respond to and meet rising public demands. This
phenomenon of rising expectations dominated the domestic
political climate in Taiwan during this period of rising
prosperity.
Until 1986, Taiwan politics was in
effect controlled by one party, the GMD, the leader of
which also was the ROC president. Many senior government
officials were party members. The party claimed more
than 2 million active members, and its net assets were
reputed to total more than NT$61.2 billion (US$2.5
billion at the 1986 exchange rate), making it the
richest political party in the world. On October 15,
1986, five years after US recognition of the PRC as the
sole government of China, the GMD Central Standing
Committee on Taiwan sought a new tactic beyond
anti-communism to preserve US support - it made top
priority the lifting the Emergency Decree and the ban on
new political parties.
Ten months earlier, on
February 25, 1986, Philippine president Ferdinand
Marcos, after decades of rule by martial law, was forced
by popular uprising abruptly to flee the presidential
palace in Manila with his wife Imelda, and their
60-member entourage, for exile in Hawaii. His ouster had
a sobering effect on Taiwan president Jiang Jing-guo. If
the US would sacrifice a longtime anti-communist ally
like Marcos in the Philippines, where US proprietary
interests had been firmly entrenched for more than a
century, what chance would Jiang have on Taiwan without
political reform and the US blessing?
The series
of Taiwan political reforms that quickly followed
included lifting restrictions on newspaper licensing and
publishing, passing the Law on (permitting) Assembly and
Parades, allowing people to visit relatives on the
mainland, re-electing all members of the Legislative
Yuan and the National Assembly, ending the Period of
National Mobilization for Suppression of the Communist
Rebellion, and revising the constitution to allow local
direct and popular election of the president, vice
president, the governor of Taiwan province, and the
mayors of Taipei and the industrial city of Kaohsiung.
However, the election for national office
without the participation of an all-China suffrage
remained constitutionally problematic. Up to that time,
ROC national office holders had been frozen in place
with indefinite terms in order to protect their residual
legitimacy dating from the time when the GMD ruled the
mainland. With the revision of the ROC constitution to
permit local election of new holders of national
offices, the ROC engaged in a suicidal exercise of
abolishing its de jure legitimacy, on top of the loss of
its de facto legitimacy when the GMD abandoned the
mainland 37 years earlier.
The late president
Jiang Jie-shi (Chiang Kai-shek, head of state and of the
GMD) allowed token local elections on Taiwan during his
authoritarian tenure to appease US liberal distaste for
dictatorship. But US support for Jiang was never in
danger on account of Jiang's anti-communist role in the
Cold War. Jiang Jie-shi was the United States' own
dictator "bastard". His son and successor, the late
president Jiang Jing-guo (Chiang Ching-kuo), promoted
political reforms and gradually opened up the local
political system to counteract the adverse impact of
US-China geopolitical rapprochement on ties between the
US and ROC on Taiwan. He was responding to the new US
strategy of abandoning sheltered dictatorial allies in
favor of comprador democracies controlled by pro-US
local financial elites.
Jiang Jing-guo in his
later years lifted the Emergency Decree, scrapping the
ban on the formation of new political parties and
beginning a localization program within the ranks of the
GMD party and the ROC government - following the
dictates of US advisers. He did so under pressure from
the US recognition of the PRC as the sole legitimate
government of China almost seven years earlier. Jiang
also following the advice from supporters in the US that
a "democratic" Taiwan would make it easier for US
domestic politics to continue to support Taiwan - this
in spite of its declining geopolitical value to the US
as the Cold War wound down and US hegemony through
neo-liberal globalization took shape.
Taiwan
plays the democracy card for US
support
Moralistic imperative was identified as
an effective counterbalance to geopolitical imperative.
If Israel could lock in US support by claiming to be the
only democracy in the Middle East, Taiwan could also
play the democracy card. Lee Teng-hui, a native
Taiwanese who had never lived on the mainland, and who
had been quite happy growing up under Japanese military
occupation of Taiwan with a Japanese name (Iwasato
Masao), was hand-picked by US advisers as a born-again
democrat, the vice-presidential nominee on Jiang
Jing-guo's GMD ticket.
Jiang Jing-guo was
presented with an offer he could not refuse: enact
political reforms or lose vital US support. Continuing
US support for Taiwan after the Cold War, framed in a US
domestic law in the form of the Taiwan Relations Act,
was conditioned on democratization and localization.
Still, Jiang Jing-guo's aim was to retain de
facto US support of Taiwan with the introduction of
democracy on Taiwan, but not to tolerate any move toward
Taiwan independence. The GMD under the younger Jiang
would have reached a political settlement with the
Chinese Communist Party, many of whose leaders had been
Jiang's former close comrades in their youth. But this
positive accommodation was made impossible by the firm
opposition of the US, which aimed at preventing China
from ever regaining control of Taiwan from where it
could challenge US interests in East Asia and Southeast
Asia.
This geo-military strategy on Taiwan had
been outlined clearly during the Korean War by General
Douglas MacArthur. It is a policy that the US officially
denied and still denies, but which it followed
operationally under the guise of containing communism
during the Cold War and promoting democracy on Taiwan
afterward. Taiwan democracy is seen by the US as the way
to keep Taiwan in friendly hands perpetually. The price
the US sets for China to regain Taiwan would be for
China to be ruled by a pro-US comprador class in the
name of market-based capitalistic democracy. The irony
is that such a ruling regime would inevitably fail in
the Chinese political landscape, as the history of the
GMD has proved.
China is not tiny Taiwan; it
cannot be manipulated by US power, super or not. To the
US, the formidable ROC military can also serve as a
proxy fighting unit in case of war in Asia in order to
reduce US casualties, the superpower's Achilles' heel.
This strategy, first tested in Burma during World War
II, was elevated to the level of military doctrine by
MacArthur during the Korean War and became deeply
imbedded in the mentality of the Pentagon leadership.
Jiang Jing-guo died in office in 1988 and Lee
Teng-hui inherited the presidency. Lee, who openly
expressed his nostalgic longing for the undemocratic
colonial days of Japanese occupation, began to turn
Taiwan domestic politics toward Taiwan independence in
the name of democracy. The first direct local election
for the national office of president of the ROC on
Taiwan was held on March 23, 1996. The previous eight
ROC presidential and vice-presidential elections were by
the octogenarian deputies with indefinite terms in the
National Assembly. Incumbent Lee Teng-hui of the ruling
GMD won a major victory of 60 percent of the vote
against the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate
and independent candidates. What the GMD won in the
illegal election was a fifth column in the top offices
of the GMD party and the ROC government.
DPP
membership is made up largely of Taiwanese natives. The
DPP maintains that Taiwan is an entity separate from the
mainland. It supports an independent "Republic of
Taiwan" as part of its party platform. Recent moderated
postures on Taiwan independence by the DPP led to the
splinter of hardline advocates to form the Taiwan
Independence Party in December 1996. Economics plays a
significant role in the independence issue. Japanese
colonial occupation policy emphasized agricultural
development for Taiwan, with industrial development
focused on Korea and Manchuria. The GMD has developed
manufacturing on Taiwan with an effective industrial
policy.
Taiwanese wary of integrating economy
with mainland
To this day, the manufacturing and
financial sectors are controlled by mainlanders, with
land ownership remaining in the hands of Taiwanese
natives who have profited handsomely through the
astronomical rise in land value from urbanization and
industrial uses. These landowners fear a drop in land
value on Taiwan if Taiwan industry is allowed to benefit
from wage arbitrage across the Taiwan Strait, robbing
the landowners of their new prosperity as well as
political power. Factories and banks can be moved to the
mainland profitably for their owners, but land cannot.
Wage arbitrage produces unemployment in the higher wage
location, which on Taiwan falls mainly on Taiwanese
natives due to demographics. Falling land value and
rising unemployment are the chief economic fears behind
the lack of enthusiasm on the part of Taiwanese natives
to integrate the Taiwan economy with that of the
mainland.
Chinese policymakers in Beijing seem
to be aware of this problem, and they try to show,
through Beijing's support of real property value in Hong
Kong, that Taiwanese landowners could depend on Beijing
to protect their economic interests. But so far there is
no meaningful full-employment program in Hong Kong to
show Taiwan that unemployment will not rise on Taiwan as
Taiwanese companies take advantage of low-wage labor on
the mainland.
To win over Taiwanese natives,
China needs to show that political accommodation between
the GMD and the CCP does not translate into economic
loss for the Taiwanese natives who dominate the
land-owning sector and who make up the bulk of wage
earners. A full-employment guarantee by Beijing, for
both Hong Kong and Taiwan, would go a long way to defuse
this fear harbored by Taiwanese natives. Unfortunately,
the "one country, two systems" policy, by allowing
market fundamentalism to rule the economies of Hong Kong
and Taiwan, precludes the introduction of any
full-employment program. Even on the mainland, a
full-employment program has not been adopted with full
vigor, but it is vital in a world in which full
employment has come to be recognized as a political
imperative, regardless of economic ideology.
Some on Taiwan mistakenly argue for the right of
self-determination for the Taiwanese. Taiwanese natives
are all Chinese natives. The only indigenous Taiwanese
are aborigines. Self-determination consists of the
political and legal processes and structures through
which a people gains and maintain control over its
culture, society and economy. With the creation of the
UN, the self-determination of peoples became an
established principle of international law. The
principle is embodied in the UN Charter and in both the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and
the International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights. Common Article 1 of these covenants
provides that: "All peoples have the right of
self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely
determine their political status and freely pursue their
economic, social and cultural development."
The
UN General Assembly invoked this principle in its 1960
Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial
Countries and Peoples, in which it stated that
subjection of peoples to alien domination constitutes a
denial of fundamental human rights and violates the
peoples' right to freely determine their political
status and pursue their economic, social and cultural
development. This declaration also reaffirmed the
principle of the territorial integrity of existing
states against separation and secession and gave rise to
the so-called "saltwater test" (which limits the rights
of self-determination to colonized lands that exist
across the oceans from the colonizing country). In
accordance with the principle of self-determination and
the saltwater test, the UN supported the independence of
European and US overseas colonies in Africa, Asia and
elsewhere, which were not taken from existing states.
Today, many indigenous communities throughout
the world are claiming the right to self-determination.
These are peoples, such as native Americans and
Australian aborigines, who constitute a "first people",
with a prior history of territorial occupation and an
ancestral attachment to their land before it was
conquered and occupied by others, such as Europeans.
Both the UN's Draft Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples and the Inter-American Draft
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People provide
for the right of self-government or autonomy for
indigenous peoples within their states of residence.
But this right of self-determination does not
apply to Taiwan.
Next: Provincial autonomy - never independence
Henry C K Liu is chairman of New
York-based Liu Investment Group.
(Copyright
2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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