Even Su Tseng-chang and English Tsai have recently said Taiwan is already independent as the ROC. There is even talk about suspending the independence clause in the DPP charter. I think this shows that even the DPP recognizes that Taiwanese Independence is not part of the general electorate’s lexicon. It seems to be most important to the TSU and the waiguoren who live/have lived on Taiwan. Most Taiwanese want the status quo.
Most Taiwanese think they want the status quo, but nobody really knows what that means. It just sounds nice and, more importantly, is a way to keep kicking the issue into the tall grass. Keep in mind that Taiwan was under the “status quo” during CSB’s eight years and has been under the “status quo” during Ma’s 6+ years, but these status quo (stati quo?) look remarkably different.
I however am of the opinion that none of that is really all that important when wages haven’t grown in nearly two decades, employers treat their employees like slave, industrial and political pollution are rampant, the poor are getting poorer while the rich get richer, and corporate bosses can’t manage their way out of a paper bag. “It’s the economy, stupid;” any discussion of unification or independence can wait until after our 小確幸s become 大確幸s.
Don’t change the subject, dude, we’re talking about Taiwan, not America.
j/k
I agree. I think the DPP needs to stop blocking the trade pact with China and let it get signed so the government can move forward on other FTA’s. Plenty of other countries have expressed interest in signing FTA-like pacts with Taiwan, but it won’t happen until the trade pact with China happens. That’s reality, that’s Taiwan’s world. It’s time to get practical.
I voted for Taiwan to reconquer the Mainland. While life under the CCP is far from perfect, to the extent there is economic freedom and modern development, it more closely resembles the vision of Chiang Kai-shek than that of Mao Tse-tung.
FTAs have nothing to do with the wellbeing of Taiwan’s economy. FTAs are slogans for ignorant and uneducated news consumers to consume. You serve up FTAs in order to appear more open-minded and “liberal” than you really are.
For example, an 18% duty (at the final stage of an import/export) is just one of the many dials on a machine. Even if this dial is set to zero, there are still many other dials that can easily be manipulated, such as currency exchange rate, wages, availability to capital(interest), tax rates(incentives) and raw material cost (which is usually monopolized by vested interest)
Most Taiwanese think they want the status quo, but nobody really knows what that means. It just sounds nice and, more importantly, is a way to keep kicking the issue into the tall grass. Keep in mind that Taiwan was under the “status quo” during CSB’s eight years and has been under the “status quo” during Ma’s 6+ years, but these status quo (stati quo?) look remarkably different.
I however am of the opinion that none of that is really all that important when wages haven’t grown in nearly two decades, employers treat their employees like slave, industrial and political pollution are rampant, the poor are getting poorer while the rich get richer, and corporate bosses can’t manage their way out of a paper bag. “It’s the economy, stupid;” any discussion of unification or independence can wait until after our 小確幸s become 大確幸s.[/quote]
For a lot of people, status quo means peace. Independence means war, (re)unification means riots in the streets. Status quo avoids that, regardless of what form it takes.
Those people need a more nuanced understanding of their own country’s future.
I get the sense that the younger generation want the status quo less and less. Granted my sample size is not very large and is definitely not very diverse, but among my 22-35 year old, graduate school educated FB friends, I see lots of posts openly expressing a desire for Taiwan Independence since the Sunflower movement started. Whereas, prior to March they had never expressed any political leanings (so it was kind of surprising to me at first). It is interesting that while they expressed indignation and anger over the status quo, they didn’t say how we should overcome it or if they were willing to sacrifice blood and treasure for the cause.
On the MRT on my visit, I met a young lady in her early 20s. Her parents worked in finance. Her attitude was reunification was a financial win for the island. Talk about historical amnesia…
And it only got that way over there because Mao died and Deng favoured regime survival over ideological integrity.
I’ve observed that people who work in finance tend to be very out of touch with reality. They think those numbers on the screen are the physical world, even when the numbers don’t add up.
solidaritytw.tumblr.com/post/141 … ure-survey
I’m surprised at the depth of Taiwanese self identification in the recent UDN poll. Taiwanese alone beats all other combined categories by more than 3x. And support for the status quo has fallen below 50% although still the largest plurality.
The DPP may have won the executive, legislative and municipal elections but it feels like the Blues won the ideological battle for the most part regarding Taiwan’s status. Aside from not accepting the 92C, it doesn’t seem that TIW has made any significant changes to Taiwan’s position. She refers to herself as ROC President, and the nation as “ROC (Taiwan)”, there are no changes to the name of national entities (except maybe OCAC), and she is defending ROC territorial claims in the S China Sea. There are no diplomatic fights, no changes to the Constitution, no new national language, no new flag, and no new national anthem. ROC heroes still are memorialized in national monuments and currency. While the Southbound Policy and Party Assets bill were Green priorities, they don’t change the ROC itself.
While the KMT may still feel sullen from their electoral losses, they should take some comfort that the vast majority of their ideological agenda remains largely untouched. As a PRC pro-unificationist, I’m not necessarily overjoyed at the continuing vitality of ROC-ness, but I accept the democratic results in Taiwan. I guess the DPP ideological victory is really in the realm of “The ROC is Taiwan and Taiwan is the ROC.” (which may be distasteful to Deep Greens, Deep Blues and Reds, but seems consistent with the Light Green/Light Blue majority).
Edit: OCAC’s latest name change occurred in 2012 when the KMT held the legislature and executive office, so TIW seems to have changed even less than I thought.
[quote=“Zhengzhou2010”]The DPP may have won the executive, legislative and municipal elections but it feels like the Blues won the ideological battle for the most part regarding Taiwan’s status. Aside from not accepting the 92C, it doesn’t seem that TIW has made any significant changes to Taiwan’s position. She refers to herself as ROC President, and the nation as “ROC (Taiwan)”, there are no changes to the name of national entities (except maybe OCAC), and she is defending ROC territorial claims in the S China Sea. There are no diplomatic fights, no changes to the Constitution, no new national language, no new flag, and no new national anthem. ROC heroes still are memorialized in national monuments and currency. While the Southbound Policy and Party Assets bill were Green priorities, they don’t change the ROC itself.
While the KMT may still feel sullen from their electoral losses, they should take some comfort that the vast majority of their ideological agenda remains largely untouched. As a PRC pro-unificationist, I’m not necessarily overjoyed at the continuing vitality of ROC-ness, but I accept the democratic results in Taiwan. I guess the DPP ideological victory is really in the realm of “The ROC is Taiwan and Taiwan is the ROC.” (which may be distasteful to Deep Greens, Deep Blues and Reds, but seems consistent with the Light Green/Light Blue majority).
Edit: OCAC’s latest name change occurred in 2012 when the KMT held the legislature and executive office, so TIW seems to have changed even less than I thought.[/quote]
CSB also changed very little, but I think people were annoyed with CSB’s administration changing names of the small things instead of getting things done. So TIW is going another route.
With the majority in the legislature, TIW will first require all illegal party assets be returned to the state and the people, and prevent illegal party assets in the future with the new legislation they are trying to pass. Without the massing amount of illegally acquired land and money, KMT won’t be able to just sway voters and politicians with money.
TIW is also trying to get the Transitional Justice Bill to pass. That will require KMT to be accountable for its pass actions. CSB tried to accomplish that without a legislation, he had to because KMT had the legislature, and he failed. Hopefully TIW will get it done this time.
TIW’s second piece to the transitional justice bill is the Aboriginal Transitional Justice Bill, which would hold early, late and new immigrants and all past colonial governments accountable for their wrong doing. Hopefully the bill will return traditional lands to the current aboriginals, recognize Pingpu descendants as aboriginals, and pave a path towards autonomous aboriginal zones, complete with governance to land and budget.
Let’s see how that bill will hold up under scrutiny of the supreme court. Reversing the burden of proof and backdating legislation is not necessarily in line with the constitution (and not just the constitution of the ROC).
Just how will you spin any future electoral KMT victory then? In the past it was always due to vote buying :roflmao:
If the KMT wins without having to buy votes, then that’s a pretty good deal for the KMT and the Taiwanese people as a whole.
[quote=“Zhengzhou2010”]The DPP may have won the executive, legislative and municipal elections but it feels like the Blues won the ideological battle for the most part regarding Taiwan’s status. Aside from not accepting the 92C, it doesn’t seem that TIW has made any significant changes to Taiwan’s position. She refers to herself as ROC President, and the nation as “ROC (Taiwan)”, there are no changes to the name of national entities (except maybe OCAC), and she is defending ROC territorial claims in the S China Sea. There are no diplomatic fights, no changes to the Constitution, no new national language, no new flag, and no new national anthem. ROC heroes still are memorialized in national monuments and currency. While the Southbound Policy and Party Assets bill were Green priorities, they don’t change the ROC itself.
While the KMT may still feel sullen from their electoral losses, they should take some comfort that the vast majority of their ideological agenda remains largely untouched. As a PRC pro-unificationist, I’m not necessarily overjoyed at the continuing vitality of ROC-ness, but I accept the democratic results in Taiwan. I guess the DPP ideological victory is really in the realm of “The ROC is Taiwan and Taiwan is the ROC.” (which may be distasteful to Deep Greens, Deep Blues and Reds, but seems consistent with the Light Green/Light Blue majority).
Edit: OCAC’s latest name change occurred in 2012 when the KMT held the legislature and executive office, so TIW seems to have changed even less than I thought.[/quote]
Many DPP moderates have always seen Taiwan = ROC. While KMT folk see the ROC as ruling Taiwan Province. Chen Shui-bian was an extremist, political panderer; a nativist, isolationist and protectionist. Not much different than what we see in Donald Trump and his comments about Mexicans, Muslims, etc. Trump is all about white nationalism while people like Chen Shui-bian was about Hoklo nationalism. It is, IMO, unhealthy politics.
Dirt-
I’ve heard many accuse CSB and the DPP more broadly of Hoklo nationalism/chauvinism but am unclear of the specifics. Did he try to make Hoklo the Guoyu rather than Mandarin or implement rules punishing kids for speaking non-Hoklo languages? Did he try to make all persons identify as Hoklo and pledge allegiance to the Hoklo Republic? Did he pass laws ensuring that non-Hoklo would be drastically underrepresented in the legislature and leaving other Taiwanese with only a pittance of seats that drastically underrepresented their population percentages?
I can agree that nationalism and chauvinism are dangerous. But what then makes Chinese Nationalism and the KMT’s WSR Chauvinism any better? My sense, honestly, is that most charges of Hoklo nationalism are really expressions of dismay over the perceived replacement of WSR Chauvinism. This is doubly ironic when one considers that although Hoklo are 70% of Taiwan’s population, there has been a Hoklo president for only 8 of 67 years since 1949 (8 of 121 since 1895) and Hoklo language is fast diminishing, it is hard to not conclude that Hoklo nationalism has been pretty ineffective.
When we use labels and -isms on this topic, it’s very easy to loose sight of the context. The context is extremely straight forward and I’m sure everybody understands this. It’s only about geography and demography:
In a geographically defined and fairly isolate land (or island), a minority made up of fairly recent immigrants who happen to have a common identity feels threatened by the local population, which happens to be the majority who has its own identity.
In situations like this, usual things have happened such as:
The minority immigrants feel socially empowered if they can secure the support of their home country. Such minority immigrants would otherwise be assimilated or even voluntarily be assimilated into the majority local.
TIW’s refusal to be goaded into focusing on symbolic name changes over substantive policy choices in her first three months in office is a sign that the KMT has won the ideological battle? Did you honestly expect a new national language, anthem, flag, and name change? These changes would burn up all of her political capital for nothing; most of these symbols have been co-opted into the larger sphere of Taiwanese identity.
The fact that Hung has taken the KMT on a sharp deep-blue turn which has seen its support continue to crater rather than pick up as is typical for opposition parties is a pretty clear sign that blue ideology is dead in this country.
