 Think Tech Hawaii. Civil engagement lives here. Welcome to the Asian Review. I'm your host Bill Sharp. Today I'm going to talk to you about the turquoise-ation of Taiwan society. Turquoise-ation. What's that? Well, Taiwan society typically is thought to be divided between the blue and the green. The blue represents the forces of the Nationalist Party and the green represents the forces of the Democratic Progressive Party, the DPP. And because of that, Taiwan has experienced an undue amount of polarization in recent years. So I have a number of slides that I'm going to use throughout today. And let's go on. Here's my title, my fancy academic title, Division in Polarization and Reconciliation Towards the Turquoise-ation of Taiwan. Next slide please. Well, this topic is important to me because I think that Taiwan is a highly successful society, although it's often overshadowed by China. It's successful in that it was authoritarian, but now it's robustly democratic. It was poor, but now the economy is strong. Next. Next please. So first of all, I'd like to talk about division versus polarization. And I don't want to spend too much time on this division part because our time constraints. Next please. The historic divisions on Taiwan's side, they're sort of hard to erase because they're so deeply seated. Next. As we look at Taiwan geographically, we see there's huge divisions between each geographic region. That is the north, the south, the central part of Taiwan, and also the offshore islands. Next. And right down the middle of Taiwan, you see the Central Mountain Range, which divides Taiwan into east and west. And both sides of Taiwan have distinctly different character. Next. Taiwan's history is a history of colonization and immigration here. I've outlined for you the different ways of colonization that started off with the Dutch in 1624. And it runs right through to the Nationalist Party that came to Taiwan in 1945. Many people in Taiwan, native Taiwanese, see that as just another colonial government. Next. And then there's the ethnic division between the Taiwanese of the Hoken, the Hakka, the mainlanders. And I would have to say it's unfortunate, but over the years there's been a lot of discrimination by mainlanders towards Taiwanese. And then there's the aboriginal component of society divided into different tribes. And then again, somewhat geographically divided between the mountain aborigines and the plains people. Next. So what's the solution to all of this historic division? I'm afraid there's no real good when time and new policies. Now let's move on to polarization. Next, please. This is a more contemporary phenomena in Taiwan. And what do we mean by polarization? Governments' inability to address relevant problems confronting society. The manifestation of a low level of public trust, institutional lack of reform, lack of transparency. But then again, it's important to remember that like South Korea, Taiwan is a young democracy. Young democracies, and even ones as mature as the United States, change doesn't come easily. And moreover, as we said, there is this contention between the blue and the green forces of Taiwan society. And further beyond that is this tussle, conflict between Taiwanese identity versus China policy. That means those people who increasingly see those themselves as being people of Taiwan and not wanting very much to do with China versus other people, especially represented by the nationalist party, who want very close relationship with China. I think we can have the next slide at this point. Polarization also goes on to maybe clearly illustrated in this quote I have from a well-known nationalist party politician. We eat Chinese food, we speak Chinese, we are Taiwanese. I think that shows that there's this growing sense of Taiwaneseness in Taiwan that contributes to the polarization, especially for those people who hold that a deep Chinese sense of identity. The more the China pushes on Taiwan, the deeper this sense of Taiwanese identity becomes. Well, this manifests itself politically in what's called the 92 Consensus. The 90 Consensus was somewhat of an agreement saying that there's only one China. And that's this agreement between mainland and Taiwan. But just defining exactly who that China is or what that China is is the difficulty. Actually, Taiwanese identity has a fairly long history. It goes back to the days of Japanese rule, Japan rule Taiwan as a colony from 1895 to 1945. And I said, at this time, did you really begin to see Taiwan's sense of identity begin to firm up? When the nationals came to Taiwan in 1945, they tried to suppress that Taiwanese identity. And they weren't very successful, because, as you can see, in 1979 there was the Meili-Dau incident, or sometimes there was the Kaohsiung incident, which really brought this Taiwanese identity issue and sensitivity to the surface again. Next, please. Well, the start of the really acute polarization started with the rule of Chan Shui-bian, who was the president of Taiwan from 2000 to 2008, especially after his re-election. Actually, it should be 2004. This became particularly acute. During her recent electoral campaign, Tsai Ing-wen, the current president of Taiwan, listed in her campaign brochures the resolution or the getting rid of the elimination of polarization. But it's quite not very clear just what her method is for doing that. She talks a lot about a Taiwan consensus, and this is a concept I'll come back to later, as a possible solution, but it lacks definition. All in all, while some people say that Taiwan is a highly polarized society, I think the polarization is mainly amongst the political elites, that is, people who hold political positions, people who are very concerned about politics, people who regularly participate in demonstrations, those kinds of folks. In all, I would say the polarization in Taiwan is not acute, it's mildly polarized. Next, please. But there are other factors driving polarization, so let's talk about some of those. Next, globalization. Globalization has really contributed to, should we say, an economic division in Taiwan. You might say between the haves and have-nots. As the international economic competition becomes more and more competitive, Taiwan has yet to come up with a new model of economic development. It's overly reliant on contract manufacturing, as is best exemplified by the Honhai or Foxconn Corporation. This model of contract manufacturing depends on cheap labor. Taiwan has never been able to wean itself off of cheap labor, and when labor in Taiwan became too expensive, it simply moved those industries to areas like China where labor was cheap. In fact, this resulted in a hollowing out of Taiwan's economy with US dollars being invested in the mainland. So this transition from manufacturing to service industry is very, very slow. Because it's so slow, it has failed to create needed jobs, and it has failed to create jobs that pay well. Next, please. This has resulted in what's called the M-society, which is a clear illustration of the inequality of wealth. The rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, and the sagging middle class right in the middle, the V of the M, becoming poorer and poorer. This is also precipitated by soaring house prices and the fact, as I just mentioned, that wages have not really increased since 2001. And for the poor folks in Taiwan, the poorest 30%, the wages are lower than they were in 1999. What's the solution? Some would say redistributive policies, tax credits for lower income people, programs to make housing more affordable, and to hold on to a capital gains tax. That is, Taiwan has a capital gains tax, but it's very haphazardly administered. And I see a typo there, housing more avoidable should be affordable. Next, please. And then there's the demographic challenge. This is the young, it divides the young and pits them against the old. That is, the young are being asked to bear so much of the responsibility for social cost, et cetera, to provide for the elderly. But the truth of the matter is, unless they're good jobs that are high-paying, it's very difficult for them to do. A lot of young people feel the stress of this situation. Next. And because of that, many of them joined in 2014 the sunflower movement, which was a huge, very well-organized protest, protesting the economic situation in Taiwan and also its over-reliance on China. Next. Interestingly enough, though, the government has responded by lowering the voting age. And just a few weeks ago, the voting age was lowered to 18 from 21. This creates, however, there is a deficiency here in that Taiwan still lacks a credible absentee voting system. And for this, I blame both of the major parties. Both of the major parties are fearful of enacting an absentee voting system, such as the Japanese have, such as the Koreans have, just as the Filipinos have, such as many European countries have, for fear they would help their opponents. Next. And then there's the dimensions of Taiwan's political culture. Basically, again, it's important to remember that Taiwan is a very young democracy. It's kind of feeling its way along. It's unfortunate that the political culture there has lend itself to a zero-sum decision-making environment. There is no—there's very little sense of win-win solutions. And in addition, Taiwan is a society that's very given the mass mobilization. And one might also say, in some ways, I think, that Taiwan electorate is a little bit spoiled. They elect someone to office and expect instantaneous results. Results to very complex, complicated problems that have been festering for quite a long period of time and expect all these problems to be solved in a few months. One can see this in polling information, polling data. Somebody gets elected to the president of Taiwan, just as is the case in South Korea and Japan. I think there's a Pan-Asian phenomenon here. And they have a very high approval rating. Two months later, three months later, their poll ratings have dipped quite a bit. Next. And then there's the referendum law. This is a really controversial issue in Taiwan. Taiwan, because it is a democracy, does have referendum. But the referendum standards were really quite high. And it was very difficult, if not impossible, to really launch a successful referendum. So just recently, the Taiwan government lowered the standard needed for referendum. In other words, the number of people that needed to go to the polls to support it. And I can tell you, after having been in China for the last four months and spent a lot of time talking to China's Taiwan experts, they're very worried about how this referendum might manifest itself. Will Taiwan, or certain politicians in Taiwan, use it to try to affect some sort of a de jure Taiwan? A Taiwan that is legitimately and completely independent, as opposed to Taiwan's current status, which is a de facto independence. And this might very well be the case, because here you see two pictures of two leading proponents of Taiwan independence. On the left is former President Chun Shui-bian. And on the right is former President Lee Dong-hui, who has very strong advocates of Taiwan independence and the vow to use this new liberalized referendum law to push forward Taiwan independence. Issues like this concern both China and Washington. Next. The need for constitutional reform. Another hot burning issue in Taiwan. I knew in some mainland scholars that I talked to believe that Taiwan needs constitutional reform. In that Taiwan's constitution was created in 1946 in China as an instrument to govern China. Not an instrument to govern Taiwan. And yes, there have been some amendments, but still it's very wobbly and it's not efficient, and there is a certain lack of accountability in both the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the government. And also a needed, another way of saying that is an added need for transparency. Next. Taiwan's legislature is, from an American point of view, lacking. It's too small. It gives too much, I should say, weight to majoritarian decisions. There's little room for a minority point of view. Something more proportional needs to be created. There's issues about the way the districts are drawn, favoring one party rather than another. A friend of mine, Nathan Bato, who's a researcher at the Institute of Political Science at Academia Seneca, a huge think tank, the number one think tank in Taiwan, believes there needs to be midterm elections to increase accountability and to make all entities more responsive to the public will. Moreover, the legislature has, in my view, some deficiencies in that its investigative powers are lacking, and it needs its own budget. Next. Well, the Taiwan legislature is known to be a den of free-for-all, and oftentimes fist-to-cuffs break out on the floor of the legislature. The leaf are you in. And here you can see a picture of such action. Lots of mainland specialists, Taiwan specialists, think this is laughable. But then again, next slide. If I look at the National People's Congress, which just met in Beijing, this is, to me, this is the joke. This is where you have 3,000 representatives who all raise their hand at the same time, approving whatever motion has been introduced. Clearly, I know many Chinese will tell you this, it's a rubber snap. Peace, yang, tu, jiao. Next, please. Another matter of great controversy and also of a polarizing fact that contributes to a polarization is the structure of the Taiwan government. Should it be semi-presidential as it is now, or should it be changed to a parliamentary system? The problem with the semi-presidential system that people say is you can have a legislature controlled by an opposition party and the presidency controlled by a member of the opposite party. And this leads to confrontation, this leads to polarization. One could see this very clearly when Chuan Shui-bian was president. He, of course, was of the DPP, yet the legislature, the Li-Fa Union, was controlled by the KMT. While other people say that to eliminate the possibility of this happening in the future, Taiwan should change itself to a parliamentary system. And a parliamentary system would be somewhat like Britain or Japan, where if your party controls the majority of seats in the legislature, then your party gets to pick the prime minister. And this would, in some people's views, especially in their Jews view, this would be ideally suited to a young democracy, which is a developed country that has lots of development goals that's still striving to achieve. On the other hand, Premier Lai, a former mayor of Tainan, is a strong proponent of the semi-presidential system, saying that this system offers a system of checks and balances to ensure that no one part of the government becomes too powerful. Next. And then there's the issue of judicial reform. Sometimes I think that the judiciary in Taiwan is not as bad as some people say it is. There is the characterization that it's staffed by those that are old dragons, old dragons of the KMT, the judges and others that have been put into positions of influence during the heyday of the Nationalist Party. Yet again, I think about major legal decisions involving the KMT that have gone against the wishes of the KMT. So I'm not so sure that the judiciary in Taiwan is stacked with old dragons, as some would say. Nevertheless, there is a huge concern about the efficiency of the system. Again, a lack of transparency. There's also some proposals to introduce a Western-style jury system. I've talked to some figures in the judicial yen, the part of the Chinese government that attends to just judicial issues. And the folks I talked to were very much involved in working on judicial reform. One of the key concerns was bringing up to date the criminal code. And it's unfortunate, but a lot of the criminal code still holds laws that were copied from Nazi Germany in the 30s and early 40s and incorporated into then China criminal law, and later this body of laws was transferred to Taiwan. So there is a need to get rid of those, no doubt. Next, please. Pension reform. This is one of the huge, huge polarizing issues of Taiwan as we speak today. I give the Tsai Ing-wen credit for attacking pension reform because it's something that's suddenly needed to be done. And if it were not done, then the pension system would go broke in a very short period of time. So she really took the bull by the horns, and I think maybe there's a good lesson here for the U.S. Congress as it sort of kicks the can of social security reform down the road. And she took it on, and it's been very unpopular. Those who had pensions already are losing a certain portion of them. People who will qualify for pensions in the future will not get as much as they thought. This really, in some people's view, hits at the basis of Taiwan's political stability, which traditionally has been based on the military, government officials, and teachers. But, again, if she didn't do anything about it, this fund, the pension reform, would go broke in a very short period of time, and that certainly would be destabilizing. Next, please. And then again, there's the labor standards reform. The Democratic Progressive Party, the President Tsai Ing-wen's party, is a party that's supposed to represent the interests of the working people. And often, the complaint has been that people in Taiwan work too hard and they suffer from fatigue. So she sought to standardize labor rules and labor laws. And while this sounds all-willing good, it's really hard to come up with a solution that satisfies everybody, employers, employees, employers. Yes, some employees want standardized laws governing how many hours they can work and how much they should be paid for overtime and how much overtime they should be paid, et cetera. Yet others want to work as much as they can and get paid as much overtime as they can. And then again, employers are not too enthusiastic about paying overtime. And would prefer, I suppose, to have employees work additional time but at a standard rate, if that. Next, transitional justice. Another huge, huge, contentious issue. Taiwan went through the period of the white terror. This is also might be thought of as the period of martial law. Martial law was instituted in—I believe it was 1947 and ended in 1988. During that period of time, there were a lot of injustices carried out. There were a lot of symbols, authoritarian symbols, exalting Zhang Kai-shek built throughout the island. There was a lot of judicial wrongdoings. There was still lots of political archives that deal with this period of time that have yet to be dealt with. And then there's the Aboriginal land issue, very similar to the land issues that the Hawaiian community and Hawaii faces. Next, please. And here you can see what I think is a great example for the U.S. This is a—I shall call it a dumping ground for statues of Zhang Kai-shek that have been removed from wherever they were in whatever city of Taiwan and put into one place. I think we should follow this example for some of those statues of Confederate generals and leaders of the Confederacy as those statues come down throughout the south. Next. And then another issue. The issues confronting Taiwan are many. They deal with the KMT Nationalist Party assets. These are assets that the KMT scooped up after it reclaimed Taiwan from the Japanese in 1945 and should have gone into the national treasury but went into the party treasury. Next. And, well, the backlash to democracy. Democracy is not a cure-all. And some people have been disappointed in Taiwan. As I mentioned earlier, Taiwan's a young democracy and its expectations of democracy are sometimes a little too high and they don't realize that democracy can't cure everything. Next. And I'll just face it to say here, the media has also contributed to this backlash to democracy through its exaggeration, its overreach, and its lack of professionalism. Next. So what's the conclusion then? Turquoise-ation. I introduced the concept somewhat earlier. This is the bringing together the blue and the green, excuse me. People in the Saiyuan administration, yes, this is a green administration, but there's also folks in this administration have deep blue roots. Saiyuan really needs to more clearly define and push forward her Taiwan consensus. To me, it's to create a new direction and a newly crafted common point of view in both cross-strait relations and Taiwan affairs. Once she does that, she will have fulfilled her campaign promise to bring polarization under control. Thank you very much for joining me today. And please join me again next week at Same Time, Same Place when my guest will be retired Taiwan Admiral Lawrence Dunn, who served as defense attaché in Washington. See you then.