The KMT’s Answer: “It’s Their Fault, And We’re the Party of Love”

The recent Deutsche Welle interview with Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was short, but is a very accurate original source of the KMT’s current thinking on Taiwan. His interview is relevant to the two major parties’ international narratives, the Western world’s shift in China policy, and the history of public media and democratic assistance.

DW’s Conflict Zone was designed specifically to challenge the guest to a debate with the interviewer. The tagline “Confronting the Power” says it all. Tim Sebastian was not attacking Mr. Chou specifically; that’s just how they deal with everyone on the program. 

Through the fast pacing and sharp questioning, the interviewer almost prods the guest, to get to his or her most unfiltered thoughts. Mr. Chou, as a KMT vice chairman, former Taipei County Commissioner, and the son of a former chief of military police, has the pedigree of a true KMT elite. Therefore, we could treat his responses to Mr. Sebastian as indicative of what the KMT truly believes. 

“It’s all the DPP’s fault” 

When I worked at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy from 2004 to 2006, I was responsible for foreign media inquiries. My office was often the first stop for foreign visitors or journalists for fact-finding trips or media coverage. 

They would first come to me to get a handle on Taiwan’s overall political landscape, even before they visit the president, the premier, the parliament or the ruling or opposition parties. My team not only briefed foreign journalists ourselves, we also set up meetings for the journalists to talk to leaders and academics from both parties. In addition, I also worked as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)’s spokesperson, was a staff to the president and consulted for the premier, all of which required me to interface with foreign media.  

All this is to say, I had first hand experience in how each political camp tells their side of the story to the rest of the world. 

On the DPP side, the only story they told was “Taiwan’s democratization.” They start from Taiwan’s 400 years of history, to the 228 Massacre of 1947, to the Formosa Incident of 1979, to the lifting of martial law in 1986 and the founding of the party, to the democratization of the 1990s and finally the transfer of power in a peaceful, direct presidential election of 2000. This is the DPP’s “Taiwan story.”  

In the 1990s I worked in the DPP’s public media and policy departments, so I am very familiar with this narrative. In Taiwan, this narrative had been very powerful for campaigning and mobilizing our supporters. But towards foreign journalists, I feel like it was missing something. It completely avoids the KMT’s importance to Taiwan, especially its impact on industrialization, security, and diplomacy. 

Our narrative of Taiwan towards foreign media shouldn’t be partisan. We’d be doing a disservice to those journalists. And foreign journalists do their homework; if we avoid talking about the KMT, our perspective would not be very credible. 

Therefore, I believe we should strive for even more objective ways to describe Taiwan’s history, especially from the perspective of the indigenous peoples, or from the angle of women’s rights, for example. We need to see Taiwan from the outside and avoid telling only the DPP’s narrative. 

But what is the KMT’s narrative? From my own years of observation, the KMT almost always end up attacking the DPP as their main focus, when talking to foreign journalists. While pro-DPP people were bragging about Taiwan’s democracy, pro-KMT people were criticizing Taiwan’s democracy and accusing the DPP of bullying the KMT. 

I realized these KMT folks were filled with pain and anger—at the fact their ruling class got their privileges taken away. That motivated them to blame the DPP and even blame the Taiwanese public, as if foreign journalists would finally hear them out. But most foreign journalists don’t have any sympathy for the KMT (even as they have their doubts and criticisms for the DPP too). 

This is the first time I’ve seen Mr. Chou talk to foreign media, but his talking points and his attitudes were in line with what I know of the KMT. The point wasn’t about unification or independence, but rather about the anxiety and anger with losing the right to rule. 

They often squander precious opportunities to talk to foreign media by attacking the DPP and Taiwan’s democracy, instead of talking about their strengths. 

Taiwan’s democracy is widely celebrated around the world. As a long time ruling party of Taiwan, why doesn’t the KMT take advantage of the international community’s good will towards Taiwan to boost its own image, but instead keep badmouthing Taiwan’s democracy?  

“Changing China with love” 

Mr. Chou’s interview in many ways reflect the KMT’s fundamental beliefs over the past 20 years. The KMT has abandoned Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People a long time ago, and replaced them with Three Consensuses: the Washington Consensus, the Beijing Consensus, and the 1992 Consensus. 

When former ROC President Chiang Ching-kuo said in 1981 that Taiwan will “unify China under the Three Priniciples of the People,” he was in a way admitting that military unification was impossible. Therefore, if unification by military means was out of the question, maybe unification by political means could still work. Of course, this was mostly an excuse told to the people of Taiwan internally, but it was also sort of a concession to Beijing. 

Chiang Ching-kuo’s wish to unify China under the KMT’s Three People’s Principle ended just ten years later, when the government declared the end of the Period of Communist Suppression in 1991, essentially stopped treating the Chinese Communist Party as a renegade regime. The KMT-led government instead put in place the Guidelines for National Unification, which takes a  step-wise negotiated approach to solving the cross-straits impasse. This was clearly more pragmatic than unilaterally trying to “unify” China with political slogans. 

In other words, when the KMT said “we will unify China” during their authoritarian rule in Taiwan, it was less policy and more propaganda. Even the KMT itself abandoned that line of thinking in the 1990s. No wonder when Mr. Chou told Mr. Sebastian that Taiwan will unify China today, it is hard to take him seriously. 

Then there’s the matter of “changing China” through “love and dialogue.” This approach is essentially the American policy of “engagement” with China from the 1990s. It was a revision from the policy of “containment” after the end of the Cold War. Policymakers hoped that through trade, investment, and cultural exchanges, especially incorporating China into US-led international organizations, will turn China into a “responsible stakeholder.” 

The proponents of this policy came to be known as “Red Team” in Washington, or sometimes labeled “pro-China.” The more the US and the West engaged China, the Red Team believed, the more they can positively influence China to be open and free. They criticized the 1980s Reagan Administration approach of containment, represented by the “Blue Team,” and opposed treating China as an enemy. 

The reason why proponents of containment were called the “Blue Team” was because of the blue color representing the KMT. Ironically, the KMT itself switched from Blue Team to Red Team, and even to Red China. That’s another story.  

In the 1990s, beginning with Bush senior, to Bill Clinton’s era, the Red Team came to dominate US’s China policy. This was a very crucial shift in the history of US foreign policy. Despite a small slowdown during the George W. Bush era, the overall trend in the last 30 years had been an expansion of US investment and trade with China. However, this trend has now been stopped, as more people are skeptical whether the engagement policy has really achieved its goals; this has led to the Trump Administration’s hardline policy with China today. 

Did engagement work? Perhaps partially, but if we look at whether China has become freer and more open, the US and Europe mostly agrees engagement has been a failure. 

So is the KMT just doing what the West was doing, engaging China with love and dialogue? That would be a huge misunderstanding. Certainly, under the policy of engagement the US wanted Taiwan’s cooperation, or at least not be a “troublemaker.” But the US and Europe never wanted Taiwan to fall over to China. And now with the shift in the West’s China policy, if the KMT still cries and whines to the West saying “you told us to engage them first,” it will just make the KMT seem weak and incompetent. 

In any case, the West never planned to trade their central values and beliefs with China, but the KMT would be willing to offer Taiwan’s democracy to China. This is why Mr. Sebastian was so bewildered by Mr. Chou’s answers. 

Mr. Chou says the KMT’s China approach works, because “China hasn’t cracked down on Hong Kong yet.” Is this true? Or just a sick joke? We’ll find out soon.