The Enemy Within - Taiwan splintering over China policy

TAIWAN’s Sunflower Student Movement has thrown into sharp relief the divisions in Taiwanese society over relations with China, reflecting fears that the ruling KMT has been moving too rapidly in its rapprochement with Beijing. A Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement already signed off by China remains stalled in the Legislative Yuan, with further Cross-Strait negotiations apparently in limbo as a Presidential election, likely on current trends to be won by the Opposition DPP, looms in 2016. Meanwhile, China is finalising a free trade deal with South Korea, Taiwan’s head-to-head competitor in the China market on 77 per cent of all Taiwanese export products, putting new pressure on the economy . . .

INSIDE Taiwan, says academic and economist Yun-Peng Chu, there is a huge debate over China policy.
“You see (Taiwan) as one country, we see it as composed of two countries of people who want different outcomes for this island.
“These two different camps have different collective memories of history. To some, anything Chinese from (the PRC) is an insult, a threat,” he says.
The reality, he adds, is that the language of the (Taiwanese) community is Chinese, the food is Chinese, the medicines taken by their parents were Chinese, and that the Chinese culture is taught in (Taiwanese) textbooks  — although it is much more profound than that now taught in the PRC.
“When we see (PRC) sightseers at our temples, our people can read the ancient characters, the PRC people cannot — they do not recognise the traditional writing. We do,” he says.
“One camp thinks it is a privilege to be descended from the Chinese, a privilege that most people in Taiwan came from China with the Chinese culture inherent — an important legacy to be treasured, to be proud of.
“The radical camp regards anything Chinese as ‘foreign’ and believes the (PRC) will try to change everything.
“So these two camps of people are leading two different forms of nationalism in a Taiwan that is two different countries. That is a problem, a political problem.”
Chu is Convenor of the technology and economics department of the Government think-tank, the National Policy Foundation, a key advisor to the Government in a number of other roles, and a former Member of Taiwan’s Parliament, the Executive Yuan.
It is instructive that his comment on the inability of PRC tourists to read ancient texts reflects the current deep misgivings about China in Hong Kong – where ordinary people point to an unwinding of the Cantonese culture by the Mainland Government, along with an reported move to replace (in Guangzhou and Hong Kong) the teaching of traditional Chinese written language with a simplified version now widely used in China.
Chu is clearly angered by the so-called Sunflower Student Movement, which in March 2014 invaded Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan to protest passage of a Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement the Government had negotiated with China. The students have also demanded that a Transparency Act be formulated to force extensive public review of any new agreements proposed with the PRC.
The service trade pact, already agreed to by China, has been stopped in its tracks while negotiations continue in the Legislative Yuan to put together an acceptable Transparency Act which will also seek to protect Taiwan’s economic and national security interests in any dealings with the PRC. Progress on future bilateral discussions between Taiwan and the PRC is expected to be slow.
“There are many people who have not grown up,” says Chu, referring to the students and, by inference, the Opposition Democratic  Progressive Party.  “They do not realise what they are doing – but they are trying to determine where we will go.”
The problem now facing Taiwan, he says, is that reports are appearing that bilateral negotiations between China and Taiwan have been postponed or stopped, and this will make it more difficult for Taiwan to participate as a member of the proposed TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) and RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) trade initiatives.
“It is very doubtful that China will support Taiwan in joining RCEP,” says Chu. “And many members of TPP are trading with China, so that is difficult for Taiwan – and will also be difficult internally for Taiwan.
“I have to admit that the general environment of the clash between political and economic forces (in Taiwan) is unlikely to be solved easily. The mindsets of the two camps – the resolution of these problems of internal division —must be done here in Taiwan. There is no other way.”
Chu also points to political gridlock delaying a Government initiative to establish what are referred to as Pilot Free Trade Zones (PFTZs), which, he says, were designed to demonstrate to the people of Taiwan that free trade – deregulation – will bring benefits.
“We opened export processing zones in the 1960s,” he says. “But the (DPP) Opposition seems afraid that by establishing the PFTZs we are trying to influence more Chinese capital —that it is like opening a small door for the PRC to venture into Taiwan economically.”
(Student protestors in the Sunflower Movement, supported by the DPP, claim that Chinese investors utilising the PFTZs will eat into Taiwan’s small business micro-sectors, such as beauty salons, taking away jobs from Taiwanese people.)
Says Chu: “The KMT has the majority of seats in the Legislature, yet all of our Acts are stopped by this same mindset of nationalist sentiment. By doing this, the DPP is winning more support from its people – that is the hard part of politics and the reality of politics in Taiwan. It is a democratic system.
“But when democracy flounders, democracy becomes nothing and everything else becomes nothing. That’s the problem.
“If the DPP wins Government (in 2016), they will have to invent new ways to stop our businessmen investing overseas, and find new ways to let the economy grow in Taiwan.
“If it cannot manage Taiwan’s economy successfully, and invent new policies at the same time, it will hurt the economy and investment and then people will have the last say. That’s how it is in Taiwan.
“Today, we don’t have bipartisanship in Taiwan – the younger generation is more nationalist than the last, and they don’t understand what they are doing. They don’t care for what they propose, they don’t take responsibility for whatever they do.
“Popularism is a global problem. The media for its own survival will report anything, even if it is sensational and not based on truth.
Because of that, it is very rare that any policies that need a profound discussion can be debated fairly in public. So it is becoming very difficult to govern. The media in Taiwan has become part of policy-making.”
As Chu sees it, the people of Taiwan are going to have to make a choice between the two political camps.
“In reality,” he says, “Taiwan is already an independent nation, already a sovereignty independent of Beijing.
“That is the status quo — independence as an existing State and respecting and treasuring that existence along with its heritage.
“The other camp wants to scrap that. It wants a new country and a new culture — regardless of the price. That is the choice the Taiwanese people have to make.