It’s been a constant over the years that as presidential elections approach, the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) tone has tended to become more “Taiwan-centric” and, if only to secure the necessary votes, more attuned to the views held by the majority of Taiwanese. While we still don’t know who the KMT candidate for 2016 will be, there is every reason to believe that the party will once again use that strategy in the lead-up to January 16. Strangely, this time around there’s an outlier, someone who has been doing the exact opposite — President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
Why the president, who normally emphasizes his “no unification, no independence” stance on cross-strait relations, has decided to do this now remains a mystery. It could very well be that as he is unable to run for a third consecutive term, and since he is no longer KMT chairman, Ma no longer feels constrained by the electoral forces that compel politicians to adopt a centrist line in public.
On May 14, Ma told a delegation of Overseas Chinese from San Francisco that the relationship between Taiwan and China was akin to the situation during the Three Kingdoms: “after a long period of division, tends to unite; after a long period of union, to divide.”
Needless to say, such remarks sparked outrage among many Taiwanese.
Now, Ma is entitled to his views, but this is problematic for a few reasons. Chief among them is the fact that this contradicts his policies over the past seven years and plays into the notion of inevitability that serves as the foundation of Chinese political warfare against Taiwan. It also implies that Taiwan is, or was, and again will be, part of China, something that flies in the face of historical evidence, not to mention the desires of the people who put him in power.
Again, all of this might be the result of Ma feeling that he can now speak freely. It could also stem from the realization that the clock is ticking and that his legacy is on the line; after all, he’s been pretty much neutralized in his second term (thanks in part to the Sunflower Movement) and unable to deliver anything of substance in terms of progress in cross-strait relations, something that I had already forecast in early 2013. Without engaging in psychoanalysis, another possibility is that Ma has been embittered by the party turning its back on him and Beijing no longer entertaining the notion that it can get anything from him. Whether he likes it or not (and I suspect that he does not), Mr. Ma is a lame duck, and has been so for a while. Creating a bit of controversy could give the illusion that he still matters. (We should also note that Ma is also under a lot of pressure and faces investigation over the role he may have played in questionable construction deals, chief among them the Taipei Dome, when he was Taipei mayor.)
Whatever the reason, Ma is acting a bit out of character. Ironically, the likeliest casualty of this frank speaking is the KMT itself — or rather, the candidate who will seek to step into his shoes in 2016. As several polls have shown over the years, support for unification with China is very low and dwindling; the majority of people in Taiwan either support the “status quo” or independence. Among KMT voters, the ambiguity of the “status quo” may be the preferred choice, but in reality this translates into support for independence, albeit using a “safer” designation (that the “status quo” is dynamic and must be fought over is a different question altogether). Very few are those in the KMT who support union with China, especially if this entails the risk that their way of life would be compromised. That is why I no longer agree with the designation of the KMT as a “pro-unification” party. Just like their counterparts in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), pan-blue voters enjoy the freedoms and liberties that exist under Taiwan’s liberal democratic system, and most of them understand the need for and value of democratic accountability, and the costs associated with failing to play by those rules.
For reasons that are probably known only to him, Ma has begun saying things openly that will be detrimental to the future KMT candidate and the party’s legitimacy in the eyes of the Taiwanese. This might yet be evidence of a nascent second round of fragmentation of the party following the ideological split that occurred in the 1990s under president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), forcing members to choose sides between the more Taiwanese camp and the conservatives who associate more closely with China.
Maybe Ma thinks that by adopting a firmer stance on the “Taiwan question” he can bring members to his side. Should that be his motivation, he could soon find himself a very lonely man. If there’s one thing about the KMT that hasn’t changed over the years it is its ruthless abandonment of fallen stars.
Ma using a sentence which is both historically correct and includes the possibility of dividing China is “problematic” how, exactly? I know Ma-bashing is a national sport in Taiwan these days but let’s not get carried away.
Brian: historically correct only in the hypothetical context of dynastic kingdoms : the KMT wished/imagined kingdom in China, and the PRC kingdom in China, both of which Taiwan has little to do with. Ma is essentially guided by the inscription on his father’s tomb, calling for unification. His ROC was never founded anywhere else but in China, and certainly not in Taiwan. His Constitution is that of China, not matter how many interpretations you give to it, and no matter what flimsy ideological Consensus you attach to it. He and his rapidly vanishing likes in Taiwan consider themselves as Chinese, full stop, culturally, politically and geographically (e.g. his position on China’s SEA claims) . And he stills believes that the One China is constitutionally the ROC. In his view, Taiwan is an accident in the history of the KMT that must be remediated, and certainly a part of China. Taiwanization is also in his view an accident, to also be remediated, from the abject torture of the one fellow who beat the KMT, not only once, but twice, all the way to school books!
Go back to Ma’s 2001 published in English evaluation of the CSB governance, just a year in its formation, and you will find with all clarity the ideological underpinnings of Ma’s thinking. He has not changed one iota since then, and never will.
One question is: How long can the CCP, short of war, count on the pervasive KMT oligarchy that spreads from academia, the media, business conglomerates, farmers associations, all the way to the army to bring about a Taiwan as a vassal state of China, KMT-governed (which is the Ma-Lien-Soong thinking supported by the CCP United Front mechanisms)? According to most Taiwanese, and that is not Ma bashing, not too long as such views as Ma holds are mere constructions underpinned by the power of vanishing a party-state, views that very few Taiwanese share following the full-scale democratization of their country and society.
Ma has done everything he could possibly do to weaken Taiwan’s freedom and independence during (and before) his tenures, and he will continue to do just that after he steps down. No mystery here, Michael.
Ma neither supports nor accepts the voice of the majority of the Taiwanese people. And the Sunflowers were/are for him bad weeds to be treated by judicial pesticides as he can no longer disappear/jail them like in the good old days of the White Terror. In diplomatic correspondence with Dutch politicians calling for the lifting of Martial Law when he was CCK’s English secretary in the 80s, he repeatedly called those Taiwanese protesting for democracy and being jailed hooligans, drunks, and what have you justify the KMT-state terror and to oppose pressures from various countries for the lifting of martial Law. What he said of the Sunflowers was akin to that, minus the vitriol. For him, civil society is simply uninformed about his good China-linked deeds.
The reality of the vast majority of the Taiwanese is rather different than the reality Ma inhabits.
Just like “Beijing-appointed leader of Hong Kong, Leung Chun-ying, said that it was unacceptable to allow his successors to be chosen in open elections, in part because doing so would risk giving poorer residents a dominant voice in politics.” NYT
The KMT do not believe in democracy. Taiwan’s democracy is far from fair.
Apparently as Justice Minister Ma Ying-jeou was even against lifting martial law.
So look for the KMT to “draft” one of their own, somehow very wealthy civil servant, bosom buddies to run for pres,, to protect their “interests” and keep the rest of us at arm’s length.