 This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community matters here. Welcome to the Asian Review. I'm your host, Bill Sharp. Our show today, Do Taiwan Political Party Serve Citizens' Needs? And our guest is a very special guest joining us from the United Kingdom, where it is 4 AM in the morning. And I really appreciate him getting up so early. Dr. David Fell, he is the director of the Center for Taiwan Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He is Britain's number one Taiwan expert. So we're very, very happy to have him on the show with us today. And again, really appreciate him getting up so very, very early in the morning. Welcome to Asian Review. Thanks. It's a pleasure to be on the show. It's great to have you. Well, let's get right into it, because unfortunately, we only have 30 minutes, and the time really flies by. Would you classify Taiwan as a stable two-party system at this point? Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting question. I mean, if we think comparatively, I think Taiwan has probably been one of the most stable party systems of any East Asian democracy. And it's seen quite a bit of variation in terms of what exactly is the party system. At the moment, we're going through a period of transition. The country suffered its worst ever defeats. So we really don't know. It really depends on what kind of indices we're using. At the moment, we have basically one large and one medium size party, along with maybe two smaller parties. So it's quite a system, essentially, in flux. I'm glad that you said that. Did you phrase it that way? We have one major party and this other party that at one time was major. But it has suffered a lot of setbacks. In my mind, I'm wondering if we should classify it as a one and a half party system. I think it's a tricky one, because technically, in terms of parliamentarians, I think that works. But if we look at the local level, for example, then we'd probably say it's still a two party system. In terms of finance, that's still the case. So I'm quite reluctant to take that kind of line. I know in the past, following single election results, we talked about Taiwan returning to a one party dominant system. And then that all changed in the next round of elections. So I'd be cautious about that 1.5, at least until the next round of elections. And of course, we do have another round of elections at the local level coming up just in a year and a half. I see your point on that issue. Well, let me ask you this. Has the DPP proven that it can govern at their national level? I think most people would say that it proved itself as capable of governing at the local level. Many mayors of Taiwan cities were DPP members, Chengdu, I guess, was the most prominent one, and all given very high marks for their governance. But has the DPP proven that it can govern at the national level? I think that's always been the doubt that the KMT has raised about the DPP, particularly given the experience of the DPP's first time in office between 2000 and 2008, which is often seen as being a failed administration. Actually, when we look back at that period, there were actually a lot of pretty significant achievements, particularly in Chengdu's first term. We're talking about Chengdu's first term. We're talking about the first DPP term. And that's one of the reasons why the question mark has been raised for its current administration back in power. It's only been in power for, what is it, just over a year. So I think, again, making a judgment is tricky. Clearly, there's very high expectations about what the DPP is going to do post-2016. And whenever a new administration comes in, it raises expectations to unachievable levels. So far, I would say that the results seem quite mixed. My sense talking to a lot of, for example, civil society actors is that there's quite a bit of impatience with the current DPP administration. Isn't that characteristic of the Taiwan electorate, though, impatience? They seem to be so impatient and have such high expectations for politicians that it's hard to escape failure, it seems. I think that's right. And I think, I guess, it's partly due to the way electoral politics works, that to get elected, you need to raise expectations. And that's why what often happens, and I think it's happened with Chen, Ma, and also Tai, is that their presidential satisfaction rates did decline quite quickly after they came into office. It does seem to me, in my book at any rate, it seems that Sai should be given credit for taking on the really hard problems, about pension reform, labor standards reform, things that issues that the KMT sort of knew about but kicked down the road. And she hasn't been shy from taking these problems on. I think you're right. I think the pension's issue, I think, is really critical. If you think that Mainjo had pretty substantial majorities, particularly in his first and even in his second term, but he wasn't really able to deal with pensions. So I think Sai has a lot of courage there. And we've been seeing pretty passionate protests against these reforms. But overall, it looks like she actually has a degree of popularity, at least on this issue. And in many ways, I think it's one of the great achievements of Taiwan's democracy that it has been able to develop quite significant social welfare reforms. And I think here we're talking about a 20-plus-year cycle here. We've got very successful national health insurance and a gradual improvement in creating universal pensions, which for a new democracy, I think, is quite special. No, I agree with you. And the fact that she's taken on these thorny problems about pension reform, it seems to me there's some lessons here for the US Congress who knows that social security, what you might call national pension plan, is in jeopardy. And they simply don't do anything about it. And either both parties are sort of stray away from the problem. Maybe they should take a few lessons from Sai. I think, I mean, I would say they should take lessons from Taiwan, because I can remember, OK, it's a little bit historical. Back in the 1990s, some election advertisements that were talking about national health insurance in Taiwan. And the point that was made was that Taiwan could do this. But Bill Clinton wasn't able to get these kind of reforms through. And I think that, I mean, you've stayed in Taiwan. You know how well the health service works in Taiwan. Even as a European, I think we're quite impressed with the efficiency of the system. And I mean, I used to get my dental treatment in Taiwan whenever I went back. Even my son is still. I've taken advantage of that as well. We don't have waiting lists in Taiwan at hospitals, which is a constant theme of conversation in the UK. Well, do you see, I so clearly remember when Chunchui Bin, you know, in his first term, he first tried to be friends with China. And then people in his party thought that he wasn't pursuing, of course, science and not particularly trying to be friends with China. But she's not really pursuing a line of independence. And when Chunchui Bin was in office, this sort of got him in trouble in the sense that lots of people, a reasonable number of people, bolted the party. They formed the TSU. Do you see any possibility that some of the darker green members of the DPV might bolt the party and join up with the TSU or form their own party? Do you see any possibility of that happening? I mean, it's an interesting question. We'll, I mean, if we look at Taiwan's party history, we have seen a number of significant party splits. Often this ends up with these politicians actually merging back. So ideology is one factor in pushing these splits. But also party strength. I would say at the moment, I can't really envision, envisage, DP politicians switching off. And if they did, the TSU doesn't look like a viable location. I would have thought that the new power party looks to be the stronger of the two pan green smaller parties. No, that's an interesting one. And it kind of is a convenient segue into a question I wanted to ask is, I've heard some people say they don't think the new power party is gonna be around very long. Well, I think that's an interesting point. History would tell us that that is a good prediction because generally the smaller parties have, they've had their moment and then gone into decline. Now the big test for the new power party is gonna be these upcoming local elections in 2018. Can they actually survive at the local level when smaller parties have tended to do quite poorly in these local level elections? And of course, these will be multi-member district elections which offers a quite different challenge. And of course, the new power party is probably distancing itself a little bit from the TVP. My prediction is it should do pretty well because it's got a base from the earlier national elections. It has stars. And to a large extent, it seems to have won the battle of alternative parties through the 2016 results. So I was quite surprised when you mentioned one of your speakers had suggested that the new power party was gonna disappear. I'm relatively optimistic in terms of how it's going to perform. In contrast, I would be more concerned of a member of one of the other traditional splinter parties like the TSU, PFP, who have really kind of struggled to find a role in Taiwanese politics post 2016. Well, how about the KMT? What's its future? It seems to be, some people would say, and maybe this is a bit of an unfair characterization, but it's the party of old people. What's the KMT's future? And we sort of said it's a half party in the beginning anyway. I think that's a great question. And if, again, as someone who's been looking at Taiwanese politics for 20 plus years, it's quite hard to imagine that the KMT would get into such a mess again. Of course, it did mess up in 2000, but it was quite successful. But actually, learning lessons of defeat. This time, it was, I mean, we had a very interesting reaction to 2016 where the KMT elected a chairperson who was unelectable as a presidential candidate. And I think this definitely did the party a lot of damage. So having Honshou Jue as their chairperson for the next, well, almost a year and a half, taking a very hard line position on relations with China. And I think if we come back to your term, polarization, this definitely was a polarizing move from the party. Now, of course, the party's reacted to that in electing a new chairperson, Wudong Yi. So clearly has quite a different vision of the party from Honshou. You know, I'm glad that you mentioned that. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. Now go ahead. No, you know, I saw something very interesting the other day, and I have yet to verify it. Okay, Wudong Yi made a statement. I guess he was elected and just assumed the chair position of the KMT. And he said that he embraced the 92 consensus. The way he said it sounded unlike the way Ma talked about the 92 consensus. He, Ma always talked about the 92 consensus with respective interpretations. Yi Zhonggobiao. Yeah. And I didn't read that into Wudong Yi's statement. He just said he embraced the 92 consensus, which seems to be the way that the mainland is pushing the 92 consensus now. The mainland doesn't seem to want to put up or tolerate any of this, you know, respective interpretation business. It wants to really push on 92 consensus. One China policy, forget anything else. Do you have any view on that? I haven't actually looked at this in detail. My sense is often it depends on who's the audience or who is the target audience for a statement. So it's possible that he was saying something to reassure the Chinese side, because I think he has said things that have upset the Chinese side. I think these reporters do have said something quite critical of about unification and unification supporters. So I think clearly he's trying to be more moderate than whole. And I think I would say that he's moving back to the kind of mind your first term kind of position. That's a very interesting point because I've always perceived him to be one who was not especially enthusiastic about unification. He sort of put up with a rhetoric about it, but he was not one, you know, there was really, you know, ready to push this ahead full steam. He was somewhat wary about it. I think you're right that for mind you, eventual unification is part of his core ideology. Well, I think with a lot of KMT politicians, if they are gonna use the word unification, they're really just giving it lip service. And I would say to a certain extent, we'll fit into that category. He's someone who's got real grassroots local election experience. He has a better understanding of voters. He's been a cultural mayor. He's been mayor of Nanto. He's been a Nanto legislator. I think he's even been a city councillor in Taipei. So he's got a better idea, at least how older generation voters think. And I think that's why he's been able to get elected in quite an interesting chairman's race. But does this actually make the KMT an electable party? I think I don't get a sense that there's a huge amount of optimism. The party won't collapse, but I think it's not gonna be in a position for challenging seriously in 2020. Okay, I'm getting told here, we really have to take a break. So well, that's what we'll do here. We'll come back and we'll continue this conversation. You're watching Asia in Review. I'm your host, Bill Sharp. My guest today is Dr. David Fell, joining us from the United Kingdom, where it is 4 a.m., actually around 4.20 a.m. Tuesday morning, we really appreciate him getting up so very, very early in the morning. We'll be right back. Don't go away. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. We have this crazy thing going on today. I was just walking by and all these DJs and producers are set up all around the city. Back to Asia in Review, I'm your host, Bill Sharp. Our show today, Do Taiwan Political Party Serve Citizens' Demands? And our guest is noted British-Taiwan expert, Dr. David Fell. Dr. Fell is the director of the Center for Taiwan Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, which is part of the University of London. Oh, where should we go from here? Okay, let me ask you this question. I'm really curious to hear your point of view on this and then we really should move on and talk about a few other things. To what degree, percentage-wise, let's try to be as scientific about this as possible, to what degree is Taiwan democratic? To what degree is Taiwan still authoritarian? Okay, I mean, I would say over all Taiwan ranks is a pretty democratic place. If we think about what kind of indices we use when we measure democracy, I think freedom of press, free and fair elections, strong party system, strong and critical civil society, I think on all these key indices, then Taiwan performs extremely well. And I think if we think about things like the Sunflower Movement, we can see that civil society plays a really important role. Of course, Taiwan is still to a certain extent in the shadow of its authoritarian history as any other former authoritarian country would be. And I think a lot of this came out with the anniversary, the 30th anniversary of the lifting of martial law and the degree that we still do see some continuity. But I think comparatively, I think Taiwan performs, Taiwan's democracy performs extremely well. So will we say 90% democratic, 10% authoritarian, 95% democratic, 5% authoritarian? Yeah, I think 90-10 sounds about right. I mean, I tend to, there's been a big debate about the health of Taiwan's democracy. And I've tended to be on the more kind of positive side of that debate. That's great. Well, let's take a minute or so here to talk about the School of Oriental and African Studies, which is a great, great, great place to study about Asia and specifically your program, the Master's Level Program in Taiwan Studies. Could you tell our audience a bit about it? Yeah, we were established in 1999. We started off with a single course on contemporary Taiwan. And then gradually over time, we've expanded the teaching and academic events programs. So currently we have eight regular courses on Taiwan that cover things like Taiwan's politics and cross-strait relations, Taiwan's international relations, Taiwan's legal issues, Taiwan film, Taiwanese language, culture and society in Taiwan. Most of the courses are postgraduate courses, but we have a couple of undergrad courses as well. And in addition to the teaching program, we have probably the most active Taiwan events program. So we have something like 50 to 60 Taiwan Studies academic events or public events per year. So it's a very active program. That's great. So it started off very small and expanded particularly over the last 10, 15 years. Okay. We're sort of running, time is running on. So we wanna talk about a book that you very recently edited called Taiwan's Social Movements Under Ma Ying Zhou. We have about four minutes left here. Could you give us kind of an overview of the book? Well, basically the book tries to tell the story of Taiwan's civil society in the Ma Ying Zhou era. So 2008 to 2016. And the way we do that is through a range of social movement case studies that look at issues such as sunflower movement while strawberry labor movement, movement indigenous rights movement. And we look at why these movements emerge, how they've developed, how we measure their impact and how we explain their impact. So it's a really kind of, it was a really exciting project for me because my main work is on political parties. So it was something a little bit new for me to kind of get into. But for me it was a real learning experience and it was a great time to be looking at Taiwanese social movements when they were transforming the country. Interesting. We should probably also mention that you are the book editor for Taiwan-related books for Rutledge Publishing Company. So we're getting down to our last two minutes. And I think we should also mention that you are, should we call it a mover and shaker in the European Association for Taiwan Studies if I have that correct. Yeah, well that was one of my big achievements, establishing the European Association of Taiwan Studies which runs a big conference every year, a different European location. So I was involved in that project for the first eight or nine years and then I've passed that on to other more efficient colleagues. But perhaps one thing I would add is that one of our new projects is a International Journal of Taiwan Studies. And that should be coming out in 2018. Again, I'm on that committee but I'm not the real driver of that. But I think it says something about the health of the field of Taiwan Studies. I think overall in Europe I think we're pretty pleased about the way Taiwan Studies has developed. Oh, that's really interesting. Now the European Association for Taiwan Studies as I understand it is supported financially by the Zhang Jing Guo Foundation. Is that correct? Yeah, they're one of the main financial donors together. But I think it's also become quite self-sufficient over the last few years through membership fees and conference fees. So initially Zhang Jing Guo Foundation basically was the sole financial source but it's become much more balanced now. Well, unfortunately the clock has caught up with us again as this happens, seems to happen every week about this time and I really would like to thank you so very, very much for getting up so very early in the morning to join us via Skype for this interview. I think the audience and myself have benefited quite a bit from your comments. You're obviously a very dedicated scholar of Taiwan and it's great to have you on the show. It's been a pleasure and thanks for the important contribution you're making through the show for Taiwan Studies. Oh, well thank you so much. Thank you and thank you for watching. Those of you in our audience, I put in a note here, I'll be leaving Asia in review to go, well at least for four months. I've been given a grant at the Center for Taiwan Studies at Fudan University and so I'll be headed off for Shanghai on August 31st. Of course I'll be visiting Taiwan several times and then in fact I'll be stopping in Taiwan on my way to Shanghai to conduct a number of interviews. So we'll see you in the future sometime. Taking my place will be Miss Lily Ong. She is very internationally minded and I'm sure that you will be in good hands. So as I say in Hawaii, a hui hou until we see again.