Overcoming the Flawed Binary of Taiwanese Politics
Overcoming the Flawed Binary of Taiwanese Politics
The neat "pro-independence" and "pro-Beijing" binary of describing Taiwan's two main political parties doesn't explain their positions accurately
We all love a neat binary in politics. Reducing politics in this way – even in multi-party systems – is believed to provide a mental framework that can be clearly understood. But these binaries often fail to engage with the actual complexity of political ideas, and tend to obscure more than they illuminate. When it comes to Taiwanese politics – and this forthcoming weekend’s elections – there is an impulse in the Western media to reduce the two largest political parties to the “pro-independence” Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the “pro-Beijing” Kuomintang (KMT).
Yet these designations are not quite accurate. For starters, these are parties that govern a populace of 24 million people and therefore have platforms more extensive than just Taiwan's relationship to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). However, for those concerned with foreign affairs this is obviously the most pressing issue, and so it is worth exploring why this binary is misleading.
Describing the DPP as “pro-independence” is to subscribe to the official fiction that Taiwan isn’t already an independent country. Having never controlled Taiwan, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cannot issue so much as a parking fine in Taipei, and the Taiwanese state has all the functions of other states from issuing currency and passports, to its own police forces and military. It relies on Beijing for nothing.
Where Beijing’s power lies is in its ability to cower other countries and international institutions into maintaining this official fiction by preventing conventional diplomatic relations. However, most countries maintain de facto embassies in Taipei that serve the exact same purpose as a diplomatic mission, and Taiwan’s international relations are arguably more active and sophisticated than many other states.
The DPP is a party that simply recognises the truth of Taiwan’s existence. Of course, like most of us, it has decided to tip-toe around the CCP’s feelings and not “declare” this reality, but the party operates in a manner that takes this independence as a given. The party also insists that the Taiwanese people have a distinct identity and culture that makes it a nation, as well as a state. And that central to this identity has become its vibrant democracy, as well as civic ideas that expand inclusion to those not from the Han majority.
The KMT has a far more complex relationship to Taiwan’s status. Having governed China from the territory now controlled by the CCP from 1912-1949 as the Republic of China (Taiwan’s official name), it has greater emotional ties to this territory and to the idea of pan-Chinese nationalism. Yet having fought a civil war against the CCP, the implication that the party wishes to submit Taiwan to the CCP’s authority is an odd one. The party clearly states its opposition to communism in its charter, and rejects the “one country two systems” framework that has been disastrous for Hong Kong.
Yet as the CCP has increasingly promoted ethnic nationalism as a tool of legitimacy the common ground with the KMT has converged. These romantic ideas remain incredibly powerful emotional forces, but they prevent the KMT from a clear-headed understanding of the nature of the CCP – which operates by its own reductionist binary of weakness and strength. The KMT holds a naïve belief that Taiwan’s security is tied to not upsetting Beijing, rather than seeking to deter it. An approach that the CCP will only ever sense as an opportunity.
Constitutionally the Republic of China still claims the “mainland” as part of its own territory, although in 1991 it changed the status of the CCP from a “rebellious group” to “mainland authorities”. The KMT may still harbour hopes that these claims will one day materialise with the collapse of the CCP. Ironically, the CCP opposes Taiwan renouncing these claims as it would mean an official recognition of “two Chinas”.
Two Chinas – or one China and one Taiwan – may also be difficult for the KMT to stomach, but their own distinct idea of what China should be doesn’t correlate with the CCP’s governance. Shedding their own authoritarian past and becoming democratic, the KMT’s transformation is a laudable demonstration of a party actively relinquishing its obsessive control of a state and its people. An example the CCP would find threatening.
Which is also the threat of Taiwan’s democracy more broadly – a political system that offers a clear indication of what could be possible for China itself without the CCP. Although the DPP and KMT remain the largest parties, there are 16 parties contesting the legislative elections (and three candidates for president), with each of these holding a complex array of political ideas – both between and within them – about Taiwan’s future. More than just overcoming neat binaries when discussing Taiwanese politics, the hope should be that one day Taiwan’s elections could be discussed without reference to China at all.