By He Qinglian on January 18, 2012
(Translated by kRiZcPEc)
(Translated by kRiZcPEc)
Ma Ying-jeou won in 2012 Taiwan general
election, a result that the Blue camp and the business sector of the
Island cheered for, and China and the United States felt relieved
with.
This time, Ma Ying-jeou got 6,872,524
votes, making up 51.6% of the ballots; Tsai Ing-wen got 6,083,443
votes, or 45.7%; the two sides differed by about six percentage
points. This surely wasn't a result of Tsai not having enough
charisma. To be fair, no other person from the Green camp could have
done a better job than she did. After Chen Shui-bian imprisoned for
corruption, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), with its
reputation severely tarnished, didn't quite have the strength to
restart. At such a time, Tsai Ing-wen was the only opponent who, with
her clean image, would make the Blue camp and Beijing pull out every
stop to secure victory in the election. The real issue reflected by
the election result is: Taiwan is too far away from the United States
and too close to China. This conclusion is backed by the evaluation
result from the International Committee for Fair Elections in Taiwan,
which comprised twenty-one observers from eight countries. The
Committee said that in this round of presidential and legislative
elections, the public of Taiwan has by and large exhibited the free
will in casting their votes. But during the election campaign there
was still unfairness, in particular these two issues: influence of
past authoritarian rule and foreign intervention.
One of the influence of past authoritarian rule referred to campaign funds. There has been a huge gap between what different political parties have in their assets and resources; little attention has been paid to the issue of election spending control, which gave rise to frequent non-observation and repeated breaking of election rules, resulting in election fairness being undermined.
The so-called “foreign intervention”
referred to the 2012 election that was carried out with the Taiwanese
voters under immense pressure, against the backdrop of the ever
strengthening infiltration in Taiwan's politics and economy from
China. In the election, Ma played two cards, one was economy—Taiwan
tops the world in economic dependence on mainland China—and the
other being relations with mainland China. Nearly half of the
Island's population was influenced by these, and then there are over
half a million Taiwanese businesspeople and nearly 100,000 mainland
brides on whom the mainland authorities could exert direct influence.
Before the election, an opinion poll showed that between the support
ratio of Ma and Tsai there was a gap of only three-percentage point,
which usually are within the error. But after I looked closely at the
scope of the poll, I realized the thing was not so simple. In this
poll two sizable groups of people were left out: the 500,000-plus
Taiwanese businesspeople with investment in mainland China and the
nearly 100,000 mainland brides. For these two groups of people,
mainland China is what they rely on for protection of their status.
Reportedly this time 140,000 persons made up a difference of one
percentage point, these people, and the families under their
influence, numbered more than two million, large enough to produce a
significant impact on Taiwan election outcome. Several years back, an
intellectual with a deep understanding of Taiwan's politics and
society once said to me, Taiwan is a small place, sometimes a trivial
factor could overturn the entire situation.
In this election, mainland China
exerted its influence with means that were softer than before, or
with a better strategy. Because in the past Beijing intervened too
directly in Taiwan's election—apart from methods there were used in
this election, it also resorted to verbal and military threats. For
example, when Chen Shui-bian ran for re-election, Beijing vowed it
would do so and so if Chen won, that resulted in stirring up
resentment in the Taiwanese people and reversed the election outcome.
This time the Beijing government was more subtle in its approach and
ceased using military threat; instead, it made use of the human
nature of seeking gains and avoiding losses and offered subtle
assistance to Ma's campaign, giving extra points to his cards of
economy and “cross-strait relations”. And as some mainland
Chinese might have noticed, the Chinese authorities provided Taiwan
businesspeople with air ticket concession or free ship tickets for
them to go back to Taiwan to vote, these were just some unimportant
things really. Rather than saying the Taiwanese businesspeople were
moved by these gestures, it would be more accurate to say that they
could gauge the intention of Beijing behind all this: go home, vote,
and help Ma Ying-jeou get re-elected. With such a strong signal, how
would those Taiwanese businesspeople dare not comply?
There is no surprise that the United
States and China felt satisfied with the election result. Former
director of the American Institute in Taiwan, Douglas H. Paal, told
Taiwan media on the eve of the polling day that both the United
States and China prefer to see Ma re-elected. Let's not discuss
whether that statement was appropriate, or if that had any impact on
the election outcome, that saying should probably have reflected the
real attitude of China and the United States. Beijing was pleased
with the result because reunification with Taiwan has become the
crucial basis of its ruling legitimacy. More importantly, the closer
ties across the Taiwan Straits are the result of hard efforts CPC has
made for years. The United States felt happy with the result because,
as the China-US relations became increasingly strained and the South
China Sea disputes escalated, it would rather not see another
variable. In their interaction under the scope of “international
relations”, both sides need to play their cards with caution. The
United States seems to be high-profile since the APEC summit in
November 2011, but look closely and you would notice that Taiwan was
not one of the US allies as the country returned to the Pacific. That
was a twofold consideration. One being economic reasons: for
instance, it did not include Taiwan as a TPP member as there were
worries that goods made in China would be labeled as “made in
Taiwan”. In so doing, China, a non-member of the TPP agreement,
could sell its products to other TPP member states with the help of
Taiwan. China had played a similar trick before, when its textile
export quota was limited. And the other was military: right now in
South China Sea, Japan and South Korea are shaping their military
layout. For example, Japan's stepping up the defense of its west was
an action with the premise that Taiwan was no longer its ally.
To what extent has mainland China
infiltrated in Taiwan? Regarding media, I wrote an article before,
“The Penetration of Red Capitals and 'side-choosing' of Taiwan's
media”, describing in detail the situation. And there have been
close interactions in academic and cultural sectors of both sides;
retired officers of Taiwan military have, in particular, become
important targets of Beijing's “united front”. After Hau
Pei-tsun, former Minister of National Defense ROC, visited his
ancestral village ten-odd years ago, mainland China had sent out
visit invitations heartily to many retired generals of Taiwan. This
interaction on all front, from political, economic, to cultural and
military sectors, does indeed have the effect of “boiling frogs”,
numbing the Taiwanese vigilance against the powerful force of erosion
that the authoritarian politics of mainland China has. Regarding the
impacts “Red Penetration” might have on Taiwan's democratic
politics, Yuan Hongbing had made detailed analysis in his book Taiwan
Disaster. In May last year I went to Taiwan, met with people from
the Blue Camp, the Green Camp, Military and intellectuals, and
listened to various viewpoints. In sum, when it comes to mainland
China, the Taiwanese people are with mixed feelings: they could not
reject the fetter of interests at present, and yet they are worried
that over time Taiwan would lose its hard-won democracy. Regarding
cross-strait relations, they wishfully hope that the status quo could
be maintained in the long run—to work closely with mainland China
on economy, and keep a distance in politics. This thinking is no
difference from the mindset of “Relying on the Chinese dragon for
economy, and counting on the American eagle for security” of
Southeast Asian countries a few years back.
When in conversation with these
Taiwanese, I always had this opinion: I sympathize with Hong Kong in
its becoming more like mainland China, because the people there have
nothing to rely on in resisting red penetration from the mainland;
but if Taiwan ends up that way, then you could only blame yourselves
for willingly become “boiling frogs”; you have a democratic
system to rely on in resisting “mainlandization”. In recent years,
some of those pursuing democracy in mainland China have been paying
special attention to Taiwan, one of the key reasons for this was:
with the establishment of democratic politics in the Island, the
assumption that the quality of Chinese people are unfit for democracy
was broken. They hoped that with the model of Taiwan, people in
mainland China could get on the path of fighting against autocracy
and establishing democratic politics.
In the 2012 election there is another
thing worth mentioning: the change of attitude the Chinese people
have toward the DPP. Contrary to how things were a few years back,
the Chinese people have stopped lashing out whenever they hear the
Green camp, quite a few wished that Tsai could win the election.
Through observation and chatting on Weibo, I found that this change
was not due to their understanding of Taiwan's politics or of
Kuomintang under Ma. This change of attitude was in fact a result of
the following antagonistic mentality: the Communist Party opposes a
candidate must be because that person is not conducive to its
authoritarian rule, then that person has our support.
