Taiwan’s Election Is About Taiwan

Before and after Taiwan’s 7th direct presidential election, one popular narrative emerged in the international coverage. This narrative is centered on Chineseness, the (real or perceived) historical continuities in terms of ethnicity, language, or culture. A news report in The Telegraph says that Taiwan’s elections “remind the world … that Chinese culture and democracy can co-exist”, a sentiment that is echoed by commentators such as New Yorker’s Jiayang Fan and The Economist’s Gady Epstein.

Not only does this narrative rest on a mistaken essentialism that conflates ethnicity, language, and culture, it also fundamentally misunderstand Taiwan. Taiwan’s election is about Taiwan.

That is, the right story to be told about Taiwan’s election is that of a post-colonial, post-authoritarian society coming to embrace liberal democratic ideals. (In the same spirit, historian James Lin has offered a sharp analysis of Chineseness from a post-colonial perspective.) Emerging from successive colonizations eras — European, Japanese, and Chinese — Taiwanese people of all political affiliations now see liberal democracy as a non-negotiable feature of our civic society. Indeed, most living Taiwanese people, myself included, have experienced the transition to liberal democracy in their own lifetime.

Procedures, rituals 

I am a philosophy professor who teaches students Du Bois on the value of democracy. I regularly have opinions about political matters, and am not at all shy to share them. But I have a secret: I am almost 36 years old and I have never voted, until this election.

I left Taiwan when I was 12 years old, and I am one of the millions of Taiwanese voters who traveled home to exercise their political right in this election. Despite being a cynic by professional training, the atmosphere in Taiwan the days before and after the election has made me a true believer.

There is no absentee voting in Taiwan. In addition to those who traveled home from abroad, many other people have to travel within the nation to vote in the district of their household registration. People are willing to take these long, arduous, and sometimes expensive journeys home because of their faith in the liberal democracy ideal, even when their vote seems unlikely to make a difference.

And the travel home is only one amongst many rituals that are special to Taiwan’s liberal democracy. As political scientist Kharis Templeman extensively documented, the election procedural rituals are also of interest. For example, the paper votes are counted in public, where anyone can go watch and record the process.

However, my favorite Taiwanese election ritual is the post election appreciation street-sweeping (掃街謝票). Both the winners and losers go to the streets to thank everyone who voted—not just their own supporters, but the supporters of the other candidates as well. The same is true of both victory and concession speeches: political candidates do not simply acknowledge their own, but systematically thank their opponents and (in true self-abasing Taiwanese fashion) vow to work harder to win over those who have voted for their opponents this time around.

These rituals, which are not ubiquitously shared across the world, reflect the liberal democracy that Taiwan has developed for itself. The success of another free and fair election is an affirmation of Taiwan’s historical struggles out of authoritarianism and of the democratic institutions that Taiwan has iteratively built to guard its ideals. These struggles, institutions, and the ideals underlying them have nothing to do with Chinese language or Confucian values, but everything to do with the path that Taiwanese people have charted for themselves in the last few decades.

Not just about China

Another popular narrative that has emerged in the international coverage before and after the election is centered on China, and the current geopolitics of the region. An op-ed entitled “Taiwan’s Election is a Vote About China” appeared in The New York Times, and news coverage The Guardian, Reuters, and NPR all framed the election of Tsai Ing-wen as a “rebuke to China”.

Of course, like all previous presidential elections, this one is partly about China. However, it is not just about the military threats that the Chinese Communist Party makes. Instead, it is just as much about the authoritarian threat to Taiwanese society that the Chinese Communist Party represents, especially insofar as it reminds us of our own recent authoritarian past. When one considers the testimony of those people who traveled a long way home to vote, relatively few explicitly mention China, but nearly all mention the value of democracy.

Contrary to this popular narrative, then, the election results do not represent a rebuke to China. Instead, they represent a reaffirmation of the liberal democracy that has been built in Taiwan.

Indeed, in my view, the excessive focus on the results in the standard horserace coverage misses the real significance of yet another free and fair election in Taiwan. As political scientist Nathan Batto commented, “Democracy is more about the process than about the outcome, and today the process was flawless.” That is why I think there should be more focus on the rituals and processes that reflect Taiwan’s emerging political culture.

At a time when the ideals and institutions of liberal democracy are eroding in many Western nations, the United States included, the success of another free election in Taiwan should remind us of how the transition to liberal democracy can be so costly, and yet so worthwhile to the daily lives of its citizens. I am proud to have finally had a chance to be a voter in this one. And it’s time that supporters of liberal democracy everywhere come to embrace Taiwan—not as a stand-in for Chinese culture or as an opposition to the Chinese Communist Party, but simply as Taiwan.

(Feature photo from President Tsai Ing-wen’s Twitter)