This is a translation from the original 台灣民粹政治崛起 專家：恐使明年大選失焦 by William Yang. Originally published by Deutsche Welle Chinese. Translation by Chieh-Ting Yeh.
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As the 2020 presidential election in Taiwan heats up, discussion over possible takeover by China and a sense of “the end of Taiwan as we know it” has permeated the air. On Tuesday, a viral video of a Chinese tourist arguing with a shaved iced shop owner ignited some intense war of texts over the future of Taiwan’s sovereignty on social media.
On Tuesday (4/23) a popular Facebook fan page called “Gossip Incorporated” posted a video of a Chinese woman in Taiwan as a tourist fighting with a shaved ice shop owner. The six-minute video attracted more than a thousand comments right away. In the video, the Chinese woman, for reasons unknown, barged behind the counter at a shaved ice shop. When the owner asked her to leave, she yelled “You Republic of China is just a colony, a crappy place, how many of you can actually feed yourself? All of you are living off of benefits the Mainland gives you!”
The owner couldn’t say anything other than “I won’t have you as a customer, please just leave” and said that the woman “embarrassed herself abroad.” The whole incident ended when police officers arrived on scene. Under the video post many Taiwanese people shared similar experiences they have seen, and a well-known online celebrity “Gym Boss” Chen Chih-han used this video to talk about Taiwan’s sovereignty issue, and said “if Taiwan were to be unified by China, the Taiwanese will be treated as slaves begging for mercy.”
As Taiwan’s 2020 election heats up, these incidents are becoming more common. The word wangguogan, roughly meaning “The End of Taiwan As We Know It,” is now trending among online discussions. Lu Chiu-yuan, an attorney who often comments on public affairs, talked about wangguogan in a post discussing his anxiety over the 2020 elections. He said, after witnessing China’s iron fist treatment of its own people, he is afraid important values in Taiwan’s societies are fast disappearing. According to Lu, “Taiwan’s most important values are freedom, respect, human rights, and democracy. Will our children only learn of these things in another country’s textbooks?”
End of Taiwan? Threat from China?
A KMT-leaning political staffer who asked to remain anonymous said that the reason there is a sense of doom right now is that Taiwan has long used fear as a political tool. “The DPP exploits the “fear of unification with China,” and the KMT exploits the “fear of isolation and war from independence,” he said. “But both scenarios are still some distance away from reality.” He believes that unification between Taiwan and China requires working out how two constitutional systems would interface with each other, which is very difficult.
On the other hand, US-based Taiwanese politics expert Chen Fang-yu said that “The End of Taiwan” has always been a KMT trope, and many academic research points that it began as an anxiety of the post-1949 mainlander group over the possible end of the Republic of China regime it brought over to Taiwan when they fled China. But while he agrees that China is certainly ramping up its grip over Taiwan, he does not think the DPP is actively “exploiting” fear about Taiwan’s impending doom. “Many think tanks and research groups have shown that Taiwan is on the frontline of China’s united front, and China has certainly invested heavily in this regard,” he said.
According to Chen, the mainstream Taiwanese society still knows very little about the extent of China’s aggressions, but if this discussion about “The End of Taiwan” leads to more people learning about what China is doing, that may actually be a silver lining for Taiwan.
Moreover, Taipei University assistant professor Shen Bo-yang believes that the threat from China has always been there, but the recent rise in the sense of doom reflects an increased understand of China’s actions and intent. But Shen said, “if Taiwan’s government legislate a protection mechanism, Taiwan still has a chance to fend off China’s aggressions.”
A twisted election season
The KMT staffer said, the biggest challenge to Taiwan right now is the confluence of conservatism and populism. He is concerned if Taiwan’s political discourse continues to be stuck between the fears on either side, the campaigns will not be able to focus on how to boost Taiwan’s own strengths. “No matter what, the best way to protect Taiwan’s current way of life is to improve our core strengths—defense, economy, and our social institutions.”
But the most high-profile populist in Taiwan has to be the KMT’s own Han Kuo-yu, who became mayor of Kaohsiung in a surprise upset last November. According to Chen Fang-yu, the “Han Wave” is fueled by the electorate’s discontent over “business as usual,” as in prolonged economic stagnation, which then is spread by social media campaigns. He said that populist politicians are often very incapable of solving these underlying problems when they come into power, and the real solutions will have to be found within the existing political system. “Populist politicians will be a crisis for Taiwan, because they create more problems than they can solve,” Chen said.
Shen commented, populist politics often arise when conservatives are lashing back at fast progressing human rights for minorities, and this is exactly what Taiwan is going through right now. He predicts that Taiwan’s populist moment will continue for some time. “The only way for the populist fervor to go away is if wealth inequality lessens and everyone is more well off,” Shen said.
As for how to fight off this current wave of populism, Chen believes that most voters still want a leader to give them a sense of hope. Therefore, candidates in the 2020 election would be wise in not playing up fear as their main focus. He said, “if they want to win, they should still focus on a positive vision of the future and why they’re best person to deliver that vision.”
(Feature photo of Terry Gou on Wikicommons, CC BY-SA 2.0; photo of Han Kuo-yu on Wikicommons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
