 Welcome to Asian Review. I'm your host Bill Sharp. Our show today is the decline of Taiwan's nationalist party, the Kuomintang, the party of Zhang Kaixue. And our guest is Mr. Michael A. Turton. He is a highly respected blog. The Taiwan view is not shy to tell it like it is, or to probe deeply for the facts, the real facts. So just what is the future of the nationalist party? Since it was catastrophically routed in both the 2014, 9-in-1 elections, and the January 2016 presidential and legislative elections, it seems to have no platform or definite plan of revival. Welcome to Asian Review. It's good to see you, Michael. I think we lost audio. Hello. Oh, there we are. Okay, good, good, good. Hi. Welcome to Asian Review. I thought we lost the audio there for a second. Wow. Is the Kuomintang really going down for the count? What do you think? I mean, you're a long-time observer, a stewed observer of Taiwan politics. Is it down for the count? I think so. I think its power base is shrunk. It's largely popular only among older people in mountain areas, which are very undeveloped and don't have large tax bases, and have populations that depend on tourism and so on. It has no rock star politicians. Ma was the last one who was really a brand name. We'll have some news about him later today. Well, let's get right into that, because there is some really, really big news about Ma Yingzhou today. Ma Yingzhou, the former president of Taiwan, a two-term president, served eight years in that position, had several other very prominent positions in Taiwan politics, the mayor of Taipei, secretary to Zheng Kai-shek, I believe it was, and minister of justice. What's the news? I'll let you deliver it. Well, the big news is prosecutors announced this morning that former president Ma Yingzhou is going to be indicted for leaking state secrets in the Wang affair. You may remember that Wang Jingping allegedly lobbied on behalf of PPP with Kregi and me, in a way that was inappropriate, some might say illegal. Ma heard that news from SID chief Wang and then made that news public and attacked Wang publicly. The result was not good for Ma Yingzhou. Ma certainly tried to do in Wang Jingping, no doubt about it. It seems to me that there's always this thing that the courts are in the pocket of the Guomendang, all the judges are Guomendang appointed, the Guomendang dinosaurs, and they ruled against Ma. They ruled in Wang Jingping's favor and he still pursued that. I know lots of people just told him to stop and he wanted to persist, so he sort of cooked his own goose, didn't he? Not only did he cook his own goose, he split his party and tanked its reputation as a pulse. He even tanked the empty dollar when he attacked Wang Jingping. So, you know, he never recovered from that, the last hundred years. Well, now that he's been indicted, I suppose he won't be able to leave Taiwan. His passport will be confiscated? I have no idea. Things seem very flexible in cases involving high officials. And he just came back from the United States. He was on a twelve-day visit to the U.S. He gave a big talk at Harvard Law School, his alma mater. Brookings Institute in Washington featured him in a special program with Richard Bush and Douglas Paul. And it goes back to Taiwan into the welcoming arms of the law. Well, it's a long process and he beat it once already, so I don't expect much. It's as good as he did. Well, you know, I swore to not reveal his identity, but I had an interview with a very, very prominent member of the Kuomintang shortly before leaving Taiwan on December 21. And we talked about the Kuomintang's image, and my comment to him was, you guys don't seem to have a road forward. The only thing you talk about is cross-strait relations, cross-strait relations, cross-strait relations. He got asked some other policies and he said, yeah, yeah, you know, we do have a terrible perception problem. A lot of people think that of us, that we only have a concern about cross-strait relations. And without enumerating them, he said, well, we do have other plans, but he seemed to be at a loss to explain exactly what they were. That's how the public perceived them. And once EC5 was shown to be a failure, I mean, trade has basically stagnated and gone down, and of course our trade surplus with China got wrecked by EC5. And the service this pact was rejected. What has the KMT had? So their reputation as economic wizards was destroyed by the Mind-Joe administration. They don't have any young people. There's no rising young politicians. There's no place in development to develop them. The KMT is in deep trouble. And the traditional basis of their support was military folks, bureaucrats, and the teachers. And it seems at the last election that fell apart because lots of the parts of that coalition, you know, they voted in other directions, not necessarily for the DPP, but not for the KMT. So that's all crumbling. Well, Ma had done pension reform, and also he had done some reform of the bureaucracy, which is much needed, but which angered a lot of people in the bureaucracy. That's a tough job for who has ever been in power. That's a really tough job. And a lot of the patronage networks down south and in central Taiwan had been, felt they had been cheated by the KMT, which they have supported for a long time. That's one of the reasons who's the town lost, and I don't. A lot of the local factions switched sides because they feel they didn't get enough from here. So this has been happening. Not only have those groups, teachers, bureaucrats, soldiers reconsidered the KMT, but also there's a lot of other... They've lost their local factional support. Look at the east coast. There's now two DPP legislators there. That's unheard of. That's unheard of, right? Yeah, and they've lost, they're losing their support in aboriginal areas. So the KMT doesn't look like it has a very bright future, and I don't see much creative policy making, as you said, coming up. You know, it seems to me one strength that the KMT traditionally had was it was very good at grassroots organization. In American politics they call that getting out the vote, right? Right, yes. Especially with aboriginals, aborigines. Do they still have that ability to master support at grassroots level, and with the aborigines? Not, it's been impaired over the last several elections because the local precinct chiefs and neighborhood chiefs are slowly becoming DPP, whereas they were always KMT. A lot of those networks were...the local factions have become less important over the last two or three election cycles. Namely, Bado has a good analysis of that, a frozen garden somewhere. And the demographics are changing. Areas that have long been strongly KMT, especially the Taipei housing bubble, have been pushing young people out into the blue areas that were once strong KMT, but those young people are all DPP people. That's what the sunflower movement's all about, right? Is young people hoping for a better future, a house, a respectable job with good pay? Well, there's that, and also they don't want China to control the economy. And they don't want China, they don't want to be part of China. Yeah, exactly. So all these changes are really hurting the KMT, the parties... And the mainlanders at the top, because the KMT's internal vote is controlled by the old soldiers, and they identify with the mainlanders who came over in 1949, and that core still controls the party. And as long as the old soldiers control the vote, then that core will continue to control the party, and they won't be responsive to Taiwan, the way they should. Who are some of those key figures in the Kuomintang, just for the benefit of our viewers? Who are some of those key figures in the Kuomintang, the Nationalist Party, who still exercise such great control, the older folks, if you will, that you just... The older generation is people like Lian Zhen, who used to be the premier and then ran for president in 2004. So, how about someone that's probably not so much anymore. Some of the people like Haolong Bing, who's probably the son, is now running for the chairman. A lot of those people are quietly powerful, and they're all mainlanders. They either came over in 1949 or are descendants of them. And they will keep the party as a mainlander operation, and they can't do that and be a Taiwanese party. And that contradiction is killing them. You know, it seems to me the Kuomintang has a big... there's a leadership vacuum. I mean, Hongxiu Zhu is obviously not a very popular chair. I've talked to people on the central committee of the Kuomintang. I shouldn't say their names, but they're very... How should I say it? They had less than complimentary comments about her leadership to put it mildly. Also, there's some pretty tourist comments about Ma, too, which shocked me in some cases. Haolong Bing. Some people say he is the favorite to become the next chair of the Kuomintang. What's your take? Well, he's leading in the polls, but the kind of polling they're doing doesn't tell you who they're polling. If the old soldiers support Hongxiu Zhu, she'll win. So they've put forward a couple of candidates to split that vote. Haolong's got a good chance. He's moderate. He speaks well, but he's kind of also porridge. He's not very exciting or interesting. And one thing about Hong, he's always interesting. He says amazing things. So it's going to be difficult for Haolong to win. He was lackluster as mayor of that thing. What about Wu Dany? What's your take on him? He's another candidate. Obviously, lots of political experience. Yes. Within the KMT, he's been pretty savvy. He's one of the strongest supporters. And he comes from Nantou, so his local power base is Kaini. He's Taiwanese, which for the old soldiers will be a problem, because they don't want to see another Taiwanese as head of the KMT. And if whoever becomes KMT head is likely to be the 2020 presidential candidate. So Wu Dany is not going to be very popular as a presidential candidate. I had a meeting with him once when he was Secretary General of the Guamidang. He impressed me as a pretty smart guy. He's really savvy. And he's very political. He was also, as you know, the mayor of Gaosheng. Right. Premier, vice president. I mean, the guy has experience. No one can take that away from him. But he doesn't have that appeal. There's no one with island-wide appeal right now. No one. I remember talking to him. He had accompanied Wu Fosong several times to the mainland. And, you know, he told me that he had met Hu Jintao. And I said, well, Hu Jintao, he's living in the house that Malden did, right? He said, yeah. I said, well, that must be a really beautiful house. And he said, it depends on what your definition of beautiful is. I don't think he was too impressed by it. I think he was less than impressed. Okay, we're going to take a break here. It's going to be about a one-minute break, and we'll be right back. So don't go away. Aloha, I'm Carl Campanio, host of Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers, and Reformers. I hope you join us over the next several weeks as we take a deep dive into biofuels in Hawaii and explore the alternative fuels supply chain necessary for the local and global transition towards transportation fuel sustainability. Join us as we have good conversations with our farmers, our producers, our conversion technologies, our investors, and our legislators as we try to achieve our transportation sustainability goals. See you soon. Aloha, Kako. I'm Marcia Joyner inviting you to navigate the journey with us. We are here every Wednesday morning at 11 a.m. and we really want you to be with us where we look at the options and choices of end of life care. Aloha. Good afternoon. Howard Wiig, codegreenthinktechhawaii.com. I appear on Mondays at three o'clock, and my gig is energy efficiency doing more with less. It's the most cost-effective way that we in Hawaii are going to achieve 100% clean energy by the year 2045. I look forward to being with you. Aloha. Welcome back to Asian Review. I'm your host, Bill Sharp. My guest today is Mr. Michael A. Turton. He's joining us from Taiwan via Skype. He is the creator and editor of a really interesting blog called The View from Taiwan. And a very provocative blog, extremely well written, extremely well researched. Anybody who wants to know more about Taiwan should read it. Before the break, we were talking about some of the candidates in the upcoming Nationalist Party of Kuomintang Chairman Race. As we went to break, we were talking about how long been, and I don't know, is there anything more we need to say about the candidates? It does seem that the current chair is probably going into retirement. I don't know. I wouldn't bet against her. She is pretty wily, isn't she? It's got powerful support among the people who actually vote. I want to move on here, but let me ask you this. She's often advocated this peace treaty between Taiwan and the mainland. Do you have any idea what might be in a peace treaty that she conceived? Well, obviously it would be that Taiwan is part of China, which would make it unacceptable for the public. No other conditions need to be discussed. Stop buying arms from the United States? Yeah, you know, all that stuff. She's talked about this before. It goes back to James Song in the year 2000. You know, the Kuomintang, not only does it lack leadership, not only does it lack platform, not only is it its popularity limited to the older folks who came with Zhang Kai-shek in 1949 or other offsprings, but it's divided from within, isn't it? I mean, there's the local faction. There's the Ma faction. There's the Ninjian faction. These guys don't always get along so well. Of course, there's the light blue and the dark blue. I mean, you know, they always say traditionally, they say, oh, the DPP is so divided, and it does have its divisions, but it seems these days the Kuomintang is more divided than the DPP. What's your take on that? Well, I think it's always been pretty divided. People complain about DPP factualism, but the KMT has spun off two political parties already. Three, really, if you want to count the MKP as a party. The PFP and the new party, right? Right. The KMT's problem is that it's not only a political party, it's also the Church of the mainlander identity, right? So, and these two are often incompetent because... What was that expression, the Church of the mainland identity? Was that it? That's all I think of it, yeah. Can we quote you on that? Do you have that copyrighted? I wish. Okay, that's a very colorful expression. I really like that. That's why Hong is so popular among the old... She's like a pope who says, let's roll back Vatican II. You know, everyone's going to wear hair shirts and we're going to be staying in the Rosary 20 hours a day. That's where she is. And the old guys really like that. You know, Ma, one of my concerns about my ancient presidency was that I think that during the time he was in office, the military really lost a lot. He was not a very pro-military person. The military began to see morale problems in the military, the up-shoot of espionage cases, high-level Taiwan officers being recruited by mainland intelligence agencies. He really, you know, he didn't really do much for the military. One thing I personally respect about Tsai Ing-wen is I think she is trying to build up the morale of the military, build up the image of the military. Ma certainly, in my estimate, heard it quite a bit. Well, and of course, his ecfa was not popular in the long term. It was popular with some people, but one of the reasons that the Kuomintang fell out of favor or so, tell us about factionalism, because you've written some blogs, a really, really good explanation of how factualism works in Taiwan at the very local level. Wow. I know that's a big question that's thrown you on a show that's limited by time, but give us some hint. Give us some feel, some direction. The camp he has maintained its hold over Taiwan by basically sending money, construction money down to the local factions, which will then dole it out to their people, right? As long as the KMT has its hands on the leverage, on the leverage of power, it can keep sending that money down again. So what we have here is the same thing they have in Japan, basically the construction industrial state, where there's no part of the island that you can't use even more concrete than it has now. So the result of that has been the plundering of our rivers, the destruction of our mountains, and public debts. All of the counties are in debt. That's another way that the KMT keeps hold over the factions, because the counties don't have the kind of money they need unless the central government sends it down, and it won't send it down unless the county factions cooperate. It's a very good system. The deal that the factions made was that they would never create cross-regional or national alliances that could challenge the KMT. So it kept the factions happy by sending them money and power. And in return, it prevented them from being arises. You know, that's an important point that some of our listeners might not quite understand unless they follow Taiwan closely, is the money is generally, for the most part, controlled at the level of the central government. And Taiwan's highly centralized. And so mayors and magistrates, they have to sort of go big for money from the national legislature, from the national legislature. They have some money from, like, land, land taxes from selling off, like mining rights and rivers and things like that. So whenever they run out of money, they do that. Right. And it's interesting that you say that most of the, if I understood you correctly, that most of the counties and the cities are in debt. Is that correct? Debt is widespread at the local level, yeah. And it's debt to the central government? And it's not only money that, they've been allocated tax monies that the central government has redistributed to them, but they also borrowed money from the central government. Is that, is that, do I have it right? That's right. Okay. For example, if a pensioner leaves Taipei and retires the Pingdong, the money is at pension. I think half of it comes from the treasury and the other half from the local government. So the local government has to get that money from somewhere in the treasury. So, yeah. That's how the system runs. So if you want to be a highly successful magistrate in Taiwan or mayor, you've got to really know how to sing the tune to the legislature. Alternatively, you have to be the head of a municipality, which is why so many cities have upgraded municipalities in the last decade, right? Taijong, Taoyue, and Tainan. Because then they get a bigger chunk of the local budget. If I can remember, 57% goes to, then goes to the counties and 43% to the city. Wow. One of the cities you get a huge chunk. That's incredible. The biggest. Well, the clock is beating on here. So let's talk about identity. Because I know that that's something you're really interested in and that there's this obviously growing sense of Taiwanese identity. Something that China doesn't seem to understand, or at least it understands, but it doesn't want to admit that it understands. Right. It still wants to maintain it. Those are our brethren in Taiwan. We all want to be one big happy family, return to the embrace of the motherland. And when I go, I was invited to Xiangmen University, Taiwan Research Institute, doing my fellowship in Taiwan. And I was asked to address some graduate students, master's degree level students. They just told them my view of Taiwan. I don't know if they appreciated it. But they said, you know, people in Taiwan, they're not exactly on pins and needles about joining the mainland, uniting with the mainland, not reuniting, uniting. And they've found that very hard to believe, and I remember this one, she says, but we're all descendants of the Yellow Emperor. And I said, well, I'm not sure how far that's going to fly with younger people in Taiwan. It's really, it's almost irrelevant that they have some, whatever you want to call it, ethnic, biological, whatever. The key thing is the historical experience of the Taiwanese. And it's a settler state. Actually, it's a lot like the United States. And so the people there have a different experience. They've been under colonialism while also being colonialism. And in recent years, what's actually happened is the Taiwan identity was always there. People always thought of themselves as Taiwanese. But that was suppressed. That came to be suppressed. And then in the 90s, you saw a massive coming out. People's identities suddenly shifted according to polls. Wow, everyone suddenly shifted in the space of like six years. But of course, people don't lose their social identities in half a decade. People have started telling the truth to themselves and to others who they were. And now that's the older generation. That generation's Taiwanese identity was strongly anti-Campi. In fact, the whole generation of activists who are over 15, 16, really hate the Campi. But the young people today who have a Taiwan identity just see the Campi as more irrelevant to what their needs and link to China. And they don't hate it as much as the older generation. They're way more focused on democracy, which is an important part of their identity. And they're the first generation of Taiwan history to undergo two important things. One is to grow up in a democracy. And the other is to grow up in a period of stagnating economy. That's actually happened. I just was told we're down to 90 seconds. The time really flies by here. So in that time we have left here, which is probably about 70 seconds now, to pump in this question, which is something I probably should have asked before. Taiwan more recently has become known as a country with a two-party system. Is it going to remain that way? Or are we going to have one and a half-party system? No, it's going to be two-party because the legislature is a first pass and post. The majority takes the seat, so there's no room for a small party, so I think we'll always have a two-party system. So who are the two parties going to be? Is it going to be the DPP? Well, if you ask me in the long term, what will happen if the came people slowly fade and the DPP will split into a right-wing economic and a left-wing economic me. Okay, good. Well, I'm sorry to have to stop there, but the devilish clock has turned too fast on us again, and I really want to thank you for joining us. It was a really great discussion, and I hope to see you in Taiwan real soon.