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China Perspectives
56 | november - december 2004 Varia
Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/429 DOI: 10.4000/chinaperspectives.429 ISSN: 1996-4617
Publisher Centre d'étude français sur la Chine contemporaine
Printed version Date of publication: 1 December 2004 ISSN: 2070-3449
Electronic reference China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 [Online], Online since 29 November 2006, connection on 23 September 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/429 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/chinaperspectives.429
This text was automatically generated on 23 September 2020.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Taiwan : New governments, old themes, or the persistence of continuity
Inter-Party Competition in Taiwan since the 1990s Despite the change in ruling party in 2000, most of the salient issues of the 1990s remain on the political agenda Dafydd Fell
Beheading the Hydra: Combating Political Corruption and Organised Crime Christian Göbel
Same Content, Different Wrapping: Cross-Strait Policy Under DPP Rule Mikael Mattlin
From Taiwanisation to De-sinification Culture Construction in Taiwan since the 1990s Bi-yu Chang
Media reform since 1987 Taiwan’s media are still at an early stage of democratisation but it cannot be denied that progress has been made Gary D. Rawnsley and Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley
Language Policy in the KMT and DPP eras Henning Klöter
Book Reviews
Jean-Philippe Béja, A la recherche d’une ombre chinoise. Le mouvement pour la démocratie en Chine (1919-2004), Paris, Le Seuil, 2004, 266 p. Lucien Bianco
Antoine Kernen, La Chine vers l’économie de marché. Les privatisations à Shenyang Paris, Karthala, 2004, 274 p. Gilles Guiheux
Barbara Krug (ed.), China’s Rational Entrepreneurs. The Development of the New Private Business Sector London, New York, RoutledgeCurzon, 2004, 208 p. Gilles Guiheux
Isabelle Attané (ed.), La Chine au seuil du XXle siècle. Questions de population, questions de société Paris, INED, 2002, XXXVl + 602 p. Thierry Sanjuan
China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 2
Taiwan : New governments, old themes, or the persistence of continuity
China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 3
Inter-Party Competition in Taiwan since the 1990s Despite the change in ruling party in 2000, most of the salient issues of the 1990s remain on the political agenda
Dafydd Fell
1 In stark contrast to many other former authoritarian parties, such as in Eastern Europe, Taiwan’s Kuomintang (KMT) initially adapted remarkably well to democratic competition. Following the KMT’s resounding victory in Taiwan’s first full multi-party elections in 1991, it was able to win majorities in a series of elections throughout the 1990s. After ruling Taiwan for over five decades, the KMT finally lost power following its defeat by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Chen Shui-bian in the 2000 presidential election. Therefore this date marks the end of the KMT era and the start of the DPP era.
2 Was the turnover in ruling parties in 2000 a critical turning point for Taiwan’s inter party competition? Or have party trends present in the 1990s continued into the new millennium? To answer these questions I first analyse how the balance of power between the major parties has shifted since 2000. Secondly, evidence from propaganda content analysis is examined to see if the policy content of party competition has changed. In other words the parties’ issue emphasis in the final decade of the KMT era (1991-2000) is compared with the first two elections (2001 and 2004) of the subsequent DPP era.
3 2000 was a watershed year for the inter-party balance of power. Not only has the KMT’s electoral hegemony come to an end, but also inter party competition has become far more complex, as the number of significant political parties has increased. There have been signs of both continuity and change in the policy content of party competition over the last four years. Most of the salient issues of the 1990s remain on the political agenda in the DPP era, in particular Taiwan independence, Taiwan nationalism, democracy and political corruption. However a number of issues have faded from the agenda, such as social welfare, while other issues have risen in salience, especially regarding the economy, government competence, and Taiwan nationalism. Although
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there has been talk of polarisation in Taiwanese politics since 20001, the trend of convergence that began in the 1990s has continued into the DPP era. While parties appeared relatively distinct on many of the core electoral issues in the 1990s, party lines have become blurred on a number of issues. The end of KMT hegemony 4 Since 2000 there have been three major island-wide national and local level elections. These were the 2001 legislative and municipal executive elections, and the 2004 presidential contest. The results for these elections are displayed below in Table 1. When these election results are compared to those of the 1990s it is clear that inter- party competition has intensified. In addition to the two main parties, there are now two parties on the right of Taiwan’s political spectrum, the New Party (NP) and People First Party (PFP), while the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) represents the first significant new party on the left2.
5 Since 2000 the KMT’s dominance of elections has come to an end. In terms of vote share the KMT lost to the DPP in all three elections. Also for the first time the KMT lost its majority in the Legislative Yuan, as the DPP became the largest party in that body. When the KMT and PFP came together to create a joint presidential ticket in 2004 of Lien Chan and Soong Chu-yu, they were still defeated by the DPP’s Chen Shui-bian. Although the assassination attempt on Chen Shui-bian on the eve of the 2004 presidential election may have brought the DPP some sympathy votes, the shift in voter behaviour patterns in favour of the DPP has been considerable. In almost every county in Taiwan the DPP’s vote share increased by over 10%, and this was the first time the DPP had garnered more than 50% of the vote in an island-wide election3.
6 Equally worrying for the KMT has been the challenge of the two latest KMT splinter parties, on the right the PFP, and on the left the TSU. With the charismatic Soong Chu- yu at the helm, the PFP’s vote share and number of seats have been far higher than the NP at its peak in the mid 1990s. This has meant that competition for pan blue votes is especially intense in multi-member elections4. Although most TSU politicians were previously KMT members, the party has allied itself to the ruling DPP. With the former president Lee Teng-hui serving as the TSU’s spiritual father, it has been able to attract KMT voters and politicians dissatisfied with the current KMT leadership. In contrast, despite the appearance of the TSU on the left of Taiwanese politics, the DPP’s vote share and seats have continued to rise since 2000.
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1. Election results since 2000
7 There has been a similar trend away from KMT dominance in the area of party identification since the late 1990s. Table 2 shows the party support levels since 1998. This reveals the shifting political balance of voters’ allegiances in Taiwan. Since 1998 the KMT’s support level has plummeted. In all four surveys since 2000 the DPP has been the party with the highest support level. Moreover, apart from the 2003 survey, the combined support level of the pan green parties has exceeded that of the pan blue parties. In short, trends in party support levels also increasingly favour the ruling DPP.
2. Party identification trends
8 How can we explain the pan blue parties declining popularity and electoral fortunes? These are all the more bewildering when we consider that Taiwan experienced its worst ever economic slump in 2001 and President Chen Shui-bian has had consistently
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low approval ratings. A May 2004 survey found 58% of respondents dissatisfied with the DPP administration’s performance over the last four years5.
9 A critical factor has been the parties’ contrasting electioneering skills. Although the KMT remains by far the richest political party and has more extensive media resources, the DPP has produced higher quality election communication and had more success at media manipulation. In 2001 and 2004 the KMT attempted to focus the campaigns on the DPP’s lack of government ability, the failing economy, and attacking Chen Shui- bian. However, in both years the DPP was able to set the electoral agenda on more favourable issues, such as anti corruption, the referendum, and Taiwanese identity.
10 The pan blue parties have suffered from leadership problems. The KMT’s Lien Chan lacks the charisma of his predecessor Lee Teng-hui, and often appears wooden and uncomfortable in election activities. However, it must be noted that he has shown great survival ability, as despite repeated election disasters in 2000, 2001 and 2004, he has retained his post as KMT chairman. The leader of the PFP Soong Chu-yu is a more electorally savvy politician. He was a highly popular provincial governor in the 1990s and almost won the 2000 presidential election as an independent candidate. Nevertheless he has struggled to find a political role since leaving the provincial government and has fallen in popularity. His declining fortunes were shown when he agreed to serve as the pan blues vice presidential candidate in 2004, and in a recent poll Soong had the lowest approval rate among Taiwan’s top ten politicians6. The KMT has been unable to make full use of one of its most valuable assets. Surveys show that Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-cheou is Taiwan’s most popular politician7. If Ma had fronted the KMT ticket in 2004 he would probably have come out victorious and reversed the KMT’s long-term decline. Nevertheless his rise to power has been blocked by the reluctance of Lien and Soong to leave the centre stage.
11 A critical challenge for the three pan blue parties will be the proposal to merge into a single party. This plan was raised by KMT chairman Lien Chan and is strongly backed by most pan blue voters. Although the proposal would place the NP in a much stronger position in future legislative and presidential contests, it is being blocked by high- ranking politicians in both the PFP and KMT, who fear that a merger may damage their own political careers. Comparing issue emphasis trends in the KMT and DPP eras 12 In order to examine the changing policy content of party competition in the two eras mentioned I have carried out a content analysis of parties’ newspaper campaign advertisements. The dataset covers all official party newspaper election advertisements for 11 nationwide elections from 1991 to 20048. Advertisements were collected for the 31 days prior to voting day from the three newspapers with the highest readership: the Zhongguo shibao (WWWW, China Times), Lianhe bao (WWW, United Daily News), and Ziyou shibao (WWWW, Liberty Times). This includes 583 official party ads in the KMT era (1991-2000) and 224 official ads in the DPP era (2001-2004)9. Campaign ads were collected for Taiwan’s major parties: the KMT, NP and the DPP during the KMT era, and for the KMT, DPP, NP, TSU and PFP in the DPP era. In the analysis all the text was coded except campaign rally announcement and biographical details. This research project follows a revised version of the Manifesto Research Group coding scheme10.
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3. Top twelve issues in the KMT (1991-2000) and DPP (2001-2004) eras
Have the main electoral issues changed? 13 Table 3 shows the 12 most stressed issues in official party newspaper campaign ads in the KMT and DPP eras. From the KMT era column it is apparent that if the party and candidate categories are excluded, then the most salient issues during the 1990s were political corruption, Taiwan independence, government competence, democracy, women and peace. A glance at the DPP era column shows that there has been a great deal of continuity in the electoral agenda, as the majority of KMT era issues remain in the DPP era top 12. Taiwan independence, government ability, political corruption, democracy and political stability all remain highly salient. However, there are also some significant changes. Firstly, Taiwan nationalism and economic growth and prosperity have appeared on the DPP era agenda, both coming in the top four. This reflects an increasing consensus on stressing love for Taiwan among political groups, but also the increased attention economic issues have received following Taiwan’s declining economic performance since 2000. Secondly, the most salient issue in the KMT era, political corruption, has fallen to ninth in the DPP era. Thirdly, while there were more negative references to Taiwan independence during the KMT era, since 2000 this has been reversed, with more positive references to Taiwan independence than negative references in election propaganda. Have the individual parties top issues changed? 14 The next question examined is how have the major individual parties changed their issue emphasis priorities since the change in ruling parties. To answer this question Tables 4-6 show the top ten issues in the KMT and DPP eras for the KMT, DPP and NP respectively. From Table 4 we can see that government competence, and economic growth and prosperity have been core issues for the KMT in both eras. However, there is also considerable change. Firstly, since 2000 the party has given greater attention to
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economic issues. Secondly, the KMT has shifted its national identity position, as while Taiwan independence has been dropped, the party has been at pains to stress its love for Taiwan. Therefore, we see the appearance of Taiwan nationalism in the KMT’s top ten since 2000. Also significant has been the KMT’s increasing appeals to professional groups such as civil servants, teachers and the police. These groups were traditionally the KMT’s “iron voters”, but with the strong competition for pan blue votes, the KMT has had to emphasise itself as being best able to protect their interests. The final new trend has been the appearance of multi-culturalism in the KMT’s post 2000 top ten, reflecting its increasing appeals for ethnic reconciliation and accusations that the DPP has incited ethnic antagonism. For instance, in 2004 the KMT proposed passing an “Anti Ethnic Hatred Law”11.
4. Top ten issues for the KMT
15 Table 5 compares the top issues stressed by the DPP in the KMT and DPP eras. In both eras the DPP has paid heavy attention to national identity issues, political corruption and democracy. However, in the area of national identity, the party has clearly moderated, by dropping the more radical pure Taiwan independence, giving less emphasis to diluted Taiwan independence, and raising the salience of the more electorally acceptable Taiwanese identity12. Another interesting change is that now the DPP is in power it has attempted to steal the KMT’s old issue of political stability, with the issue coming eighth in the DPP’s top ten since 2000.
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5. Top ten issues for the DPP
6. Top ten issues for the NP
16 From Table 6 we can see that the NP has the highest degree of continuity. In the DPP era, the NP is even more focused on opposing Taiwan independence, and promoting
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Chinese nationalism and improved relations with the PRC. During the 1990s the NP’s main non-national identity appeal was clean government, however, since 2000 the political corruption issue has become relegated to only ninth in its top ten. Do the parties still own the core electoral issues?
7. Issue overlap on official newspaper advertisement issue top ten in the KMT era (1991-2000)
17 My previous research found that during the 1990s the three main parties in Taiwan were talking past each other. In other words they followed a pattern of stressing different issues, concentrating on favoured issues and ignoring damaging issues13. This is apparent in Table 7, which shows issue overlap on official party newspaper advertisement issue top tens for the main parties in the KMT era. Other than party: positive and negative, the only issue category in all three parties’ top tens is political corruption. However, the KMT’s level of emphasis on this issue was consistently lower than both the DPP and NP in this era, and surveys show the public associates the KMT with corruption, and the DPP and NP with clean governance14. In terms of issues, the DPP and KMT have little in common; even the KMT and NP only share opposition to Taiwan independence. In contrast, the lists of exclusively owned issues are far longer. The DPP dominated the national identity issues of Taiwan independence: positive Taiwan nationalism, along with freedom and human rights, and democracy. This is understandable as for many DPP politicians the key objectives of democratisation were ethnic justice and Taiwanese self-determination. Women’s issues and welfare state expansion received greater DPP emphasis from the mid-1990s as the party sought new issues to win elections. The KMT, on the other hand, controlled the main economic issues, political stability, law and order, and government competence. This KMT ownership of government competence, the economy, and stability is not surprising considering that the KMT was the ruling party in Taiwan from 1945-2000. Moreover, the KMT like conservative parties worldwide stressed law and order, placing
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considerable emphasis on criminal cases involving DPP members and DPP violence15. Like the DPP, the NP has also been a national identity-orientated party, and has therefore dominated calls for better relations with mainland China, for more attention to Chinese nationalism, and of warnings of the dangers of war with China.
8. Issue overlap on official newspaper advertisement issue top ten in the DPP era (2001-2004)
18 The overlap on official newspaper advertisement issue top tens in the DPP era is shown in Table 8. The NP appears little changed, retaining its opposition to Taiwan independence, calls for better relations with the mainland and promotion of Chinese nationalism, while the DPP continues to stress diluted Taiwan independence and women’s issues. However, there are also numerous signs of change. Firstly, the lists of owned issues are much shorter for both the KMT and the DPP since 2000. While the KMT owned six issues and the DPP five in the 1990s, since 2000 this has been reduced to only three for both parties. Secondly, some owned issues are now contested. For example, since the change in ruling party, the KMT has joined the DPP in stressing Taiwanese identity. In short, Table 8 shows that since the change in government, the distinction between party lines has become more blurred than during the 1990s. Party change on single-issue spectrums 19 This section examines the policy content of party competition in greater detail by tracking emphasis on the seven core political issue spectrums that featured prominently in Taiwan’s elections before and after the change in ruling parties. I am interested to see whether the parties have shown significant changes on single issues since 2000, and if they are converging or becoming more polarised. Social welfare
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9. Social welfare issue emphasis
20 Social welfare is without doubt the least salient of the individual issues examined here. Nevertheless, this article will track party movement on this issue because a previous content analysis of legislator policy proposals found welfare state expansion the issue for candidates of all parties that was most stressed between 1989 and 199816.
21 Figure 9 shows that the welfare issue was dominated by the DPP in most elections during the 1990s. The KMT and NP tended to be far more conservative on welfare issues. While the NP condemned “free-spending social welfare”17, KMT candidates often called for welfare restraint, cautioning against welfare “free lunches”18. The most controversial welfare issue during this period was the DPP’s call for universal pensions; this was a central DPP demand in the 1993, 1994 and 2000 campaigns19. This policy was strongly opposed by most KMT and NP party leaders, who claimed this would bankrupt the treasury and mocked the DPP for its failure to deliver its pensions pledges after winning local elections20. The gap between the parties over this issue can be seen from KMT legislator Apollo Chen’s comment in 2001, “Looking back over the last ten years, if there is one issue that the DPP controlled, then it is the pensions issue”21.
22 The post changeover period shows much change on the welfare issue, for while in the KMT era the parties were polarised on the pensions issue, in the post-changeover DPP era consensus has been reached. From Figure 9 we can see that in the elections of 2001 and 2004 all the major parties have de-emphasised the welfare issue22. In May 2002 cross-party support enabled legislation to be finally passed to fulfil the DPP’s promise of universal pensions of NT$3,000 a month23. During the 1990s the KMT’s Lien Chan and Soong Chu-yu had a record of strong opposition to universal pensions, however, it appears that the KMT party headquarters has finally accepted this policy. As in the 2004 presidential campaign the KMT actually tried to outbid the DPP on pensions, with a pledge of NT$8,900 per month pensions24. Though the parties had quite distinct positions and emphasis on social welfare during the 1990s KMT era, there has been a de-emphasis and convergence on the DPP’s positions on issues such as pensions since the change of ruling party. Political corruption
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10. Issue emphasis of political corruption
23 My content analysis of newspaper election ads in the 1990s has shown that political corruption was the political issue most stressed during the KMT era25, challenging the common claim that the most salient issue in Taiwanese politics is national identity26.
24 Figure 10 plots the major parties’ stress on the corruption question between 1991 and 200427. This shows that political corruption was dominated by the DPP and to a lesser extent the NP in almost every election in the KMT era. In contrast, the KMT appears to have tried to avoid the issue. During the KMT era the KMT’s corrupt image stuck firmly in the public consciousness28. As a former KMT Propaganda Chief admitted, “It’s the KMT’s greatest burden, and it can’t get rid of it”29. In contrast, opinion polls showed both the NP and DPP had a reputation for promoting clean government30. During the 1990s the parties held quite distinct positions on political corruption. The DPP and NP regularly called for radical anti-corruption reforms, to counter, e.g. vote-buying, KMT party assets and contract corruption. In contrast, the KMT had narrower definitions on what constitutes corruption. Moreover, since it was reliant on vote-buying and the profits from its party businesses in election campaigns, it was highly reluctant to tackle the issue.
25 This trend of DPP issue ownership even continued in the first post-turnover election in 2001. The KMT only leapfrogged the DPP on political corruption in 2004, as it accused the DPP presidential candidate Chen Shui-bian of a number of donation scandals and his wife of stock market insider trading. For example, a full-page KMT ad showed the photographs of a number of financial scandal figures with Chen Shui-bian and the slogan, “Enough (stock market) speculation? Taiwanese are not idiots, Taiwanese can also get angry!!”31 However, it is unclear whether the KMT will be able to steal this issue, as in 2004 the DPP still made KMT black gold a slogan issue in a number of its ads, for instance, the slogan, “Resolutely Oppose a Black Gold Restoration!”32 Moreover, the KMT originally planned to make political corruption the theme of its largest pre- election nationwide rally on March 13th 2004, but after concern that such a theme would backfire the party changed the rally theme to, “Change the President, Save Taiwan”33. In terms of actual positions, there are clear limits on convergence. Although the KMT has promised on a number of occasions to dismantle its business empire34, little progress has been made, as it is uncertain if the party can survive electorally without its assets.
26 To sum up, the parties showed quite distinct patterns of emphasis on the corruption issue until 2004, with anti-corruption dominated by the DPP. Although the KMT’s 2004
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campaign may have blurred party lines on corruption, the DPP still feels this is one of their favourable issues. Taiwan independence versus Chinese unification
11. Issue emphasis of Taiwan independence versus Chinese unification
27 The Taiwan independence versus Chinese unification question is widely regarded as the most divisive issue in Taiwanese politics and as one upon which Taiwan’s parties take the most polarised positions35. The independence versus unification spectrum is often referred to in Taiwan as the “TongDu” (WW) question, at the centre of which is maintaining the status quo in cross-Strait relations. Public opinion has become more moderate on this issue, as while only 28% preferred the status quo in 1990, this had risen to 50.5% in 2002. Public opinion has been very cautious about embracing the more radical solutions to the cross-Strait question, with a significant reduction in support for unification from 51% in 1990 to only 15.1% in 2002, and only a limited rise in support for Taiwan independence from 4% in 1990 to 19.7% in 200236.
28 The Taiwan independence scores shown in Figure 11 are reached by subtracting the proportion of issue mentions for Taiwan independence: negative; for Taiwan independence: positive. Therefore, a positive score represents support for Taiwan independence, while a negative score represents an anti-Taiwan independence stance. Figure 3 shows Taiwan independence is completely dominated by the DPP, while the NP and KMT share anti-Taiwan independence. Throughout the 1990s, there is not a single case of the DPP and KMT leapfrogging each other on Taiwan independence. The only time in the 1990s that the KMT had a positive score on this spectrum was in 1996 (4.4), which was related to former president Lee Teng-hui’s strong stand towards China’s military threats.
29 Have the parties converged on the national identity question? It appears that the DPP has definitely moderated its stance, as though it stressed pure Taiwan independence in 1991 and to a lesser extent in 1992, since the early 1990s the DPP has not openly called for the declaration of a “Republic of Taiwan.” Even in the DPP candidate Peng Ming- min’s 1996 presidential campaign, diluted Taiwan independence scored far higher than pure Taiwan independence. The DPP has also downplayed the issue, while the KMT has seen the issue as a vote winner, even in local-level executive contests. The KMT’s constant message was the terror equation “voting DPP = Taiwan independence = PRC invasion = destruction”37. As would be expected, there is some overlap between the NP
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and the KMT and in the 2000 campaign the NP’s high score of -75 implies an increased emphasis on opposing Taiwan independence. In fact, the KMT has also made some movement towards the centre of the national identity spectrum particularly during Lee Teng-hui’s 1996 presidential bid and it appears that the PRC’s accusations of Lee’s Taiwan independence intentions were not entirely without basis. Nevertheless, on core ideological issues movement is constrained, the KMT could only move so far in the Taiwan independence direction. For instance, the KMT’s 2000 presidential campaign could not have been more different than four years earlier, with “Taiwan independence negative” heavily stressed. In fact that year the KMT TV ad that had the most TV play was the “Off to War Ad”. This showed a group of youngsters singing, “I’m off to war, I’m off to war, because of A-bian’s one sentence advocating Taiwan independence, I’m off to war”38. In fact following their parties’ defeat a number of KMT politicians blamed this ad for its loss of voters to both the DPP and Soong Chu-yu39.
30 Since the DPP came to power in 2000 the KMT’s predictions of cross-Strait war have not yet materialised, therefore, the KMT is no longer able to use its terror equation. Figure 3 also shows a number of significant trends on the Taiwan independence issue since the change in ruling parties. The arrival of the two new parties in the 2001 Legislative Yuan elections has further complicated political competition on this debate. While the TSU has staked a pro-independence position to the left of the DPP, Soong Chu-yu’s PFP has kept a relatively ambiguous stance. Both the NP in 2001 and the DPP in 2004 have reaffirmed anti-independence and Taiwanese self-determination stances respectively. In fact in 2001 the NP actually took its most extreme position to date when it proposed a variation of the People’s Republic of China’s “One Country Two Systems”40. The KMT’s position since Lien Chan became party Chair has shown some signs of taking a more pro-unification stance. For instance, Lien has proposed unification under a Confederation System41 and has called on the DPP administration to accept the “One China Principle”. However, the Confederation System has faced stiff opposition within his own party, and the proposal has not become official KMT policy. As KMT legislator Chen Hung-chi stated, “I opposed it. It will make people think we’re more pro- unification”42. The KMT has had to adjust its policies in the light of moderate Taiwanese public opinion. As the KMT’s Chang Jung-kung commented in 2001, “We know that Taiwan’s public is afraid of unification”43. Therefore it is not surprising that Figure 11 shows in 2004 that the KMT ran its least anti-Taiwan independence campaign since 1996 and that the party stopped mentioning the “One China Principle” in the campaign.
31 In short, compared to the highly polarised state of parties on the “TongDu” issue in the early 1990s, the parties moved towards a moderate centre in the mid- to late 1990s, and this convergent process has continued in the DPP era. However, the identity components of parties’ ideology and issue preferences of their supporters have ensured the parties remain moderately differentiated. Taiwanese nationalism
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12. Issue emphasis of Taiwan nationalism
32 The debates over Chinese or Taiwanese identity, Taiwanese or Chinese nationalism have been a regular feature of Taiwanese electoral campaigns since the late 1980s. This is a field where Taiwanese public opinion has changed even more drastically than on the “TongDu” spectrum. As late as 1989 52% of respondents identified themselves as Chinese, 16% saw themselves as Taiwanese and 26% identified as both Chinese and Taiwanese. However, by 2001 only 7.9% identified themselves as Chinese, 37.9% identified as Taiwanese, and 50.7% saw themselves as both44.
33 Figure 12 shows the main parties’ stress on Taiwanese or Chinese nationalism between 1991 and 2004. The Taiwan nationalism independence scores shown in Figure 12 were reached by subtracting the proportion of issue mentions for Taiwan nationalism from Chinese nationalism. Therefore, a positive score represents support for Taiwan nationalism, while a negative score represents a Chinese nationalist stance. In the 1990s the DPP tended to use Taiwanese identity most in its propaganda, at times even accusing the KMT of planning to betray Taiwan to the PRC45, while the NP was the most likely to stress Chinese nationalist symbols such as Sun Yat-sen46. In contrast, the KMT tried to take a middle route of dual identity that would not upset its diverse support base. An example of this message was in the 1994 newspaper ad slogan, “We’re all Taiwanese, even more we’re Chinese”47. However, in the late 1990s the KMT began to make more Taiwanese identity appeals, for instance a 2000 KMT ad carried the Taiwanese language slogan, “Who loves Taiwan more than I?”48.
34 Since the change in ruling parties there have been claims that under Lien Chan the KMT has returned to a more sinocentric image49. The KMT employed Chinese nationalist symbols such as Chiang Ching-kuo in its television advertisements in the run-up to the 2001 legislative elections. The KMT appeared to have given up its Taiwan identity appeals, as according to former KMT legislator Lin Yu-hsiang, “It’s impossible for us to attract those strong localised votes”50. However, Figure 4 shows some important trends regarding Taiwan nationalism in the DPP era. Firstly, the issue has risen in salience since the 2000 presidential election, with the DPP and KMT, and both new parties heavily stressing Taiwan identity in the DPP era elections. It appears that there is now consensus among all major parties on stressing Taiwanese identity and love for Taiwan. For instance, during the 2004 campaign the KMT and PFP made much of their candidates’ kissing of the ground to express their true love of Taiwan51. In fact, since the KMT’s defeat in 2004 there have even been proposals to change the official title from the Chinese KMT to the Taiwan KMT52. Finally, Figure 12 shows that since
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coming to power both the DPP and its ally the TSU have actually increased their emphasis of Taiwanese identity. This is an issue that the DPP sees as its greatest vote- winner in the DPP era and thus it has attempted to keep it at the top of the electoral agenda. The DPP’s February 28th 2004 Hand-in-Hand Rally was a key example of their project of equating the DPP with love for Taiwan53.
35 Although since the mid-1990s there has been a degree of convergence on identity issues, with parties following public opinion by making Taiwan identity appeals, the strength of Chinese and Taiwanese nationalism in the pan blue and green camps have kept the parties apart on this issue. Even though the KMT is at pains to stress its love for Taiwan, this is still viewed as a DPP-owned issue. In fact the DPP’s success at keeping Taiwanese identity at the centre of the 2004 electoral agenda was a critical factor in its narrow victory. Government ability 36 Government competence is without doubt the clearest case of issue ownership in this study. Figure 13 shows that in election propaganda the issue has been completely dominated by the KMT in both the KMT and DPP eras, with no cases of leapfrogging. Since the KMT fell from power it has reminded voters of its own excellent government record, but also condemned the DPP administration as totally incompetent and lacking in government achievements. For instance, a KMT 2004 ad asked, “Why did the DPP legislator Chang Chun-hung openly criticise the Chen Shui-bian government as having no achievements to show after four years in office?”54. In contrast, after four years in power, neither the DPP nor its ally the TSU have made much attempt to challenge these KMT attacks, preferring instead to move the agenda on to more favourable identity issues. Political stability 37 Like government ability, Figure 14 shows that the KMT dominated the political stability issue throughout the KMT era. A common KMT theme was that the DPP was a source of instability, and stability could only be preserved by continued KMT administration. For instance, a 1991 KMT newspaper ad described the election as a choice between stability or disorder55. On the whole the DPP and NP tended to steer clear of the issue. However, the post changeover trends shown in Figure 14 are quite different. The KMT has abandoned the issue since losing power, with the DPP and its ally the TSU giving the issue much attention in the 2001 Legislative Yuan elections. In fact, in the DPP era, the parties’ roles have been completely reversed, as now it is the DPP accusing the KMT of creating instability. This image was reinforced by cases of electoral violence by KMT supporters following defeat in 2000 and 2004 and the political tensions resulting from the KMT campaign to impeach the DPP president in late 2000. Economic issues 38 It is often assumed that economic issues have little impact on the voting behaviour of Taiwanese, as Taiwanese have long been accustomed to high growth rates, low inflation and almost no unemployment. However, the importance of economic issues is likely to have risen since the economy began to slow in the mid-1990s56.
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13. Issue emphasis of government ability
14. Issue emphasis of political stability
15. Emphasis of economic issues
39 Figure 15 shows that the KMT dominated economic issues in the 1990s, as it attempted to take credit for high economic growth rates and warned that a DPP victory would lead to a stock market crash and economic recession57. In contrast, neither the DPP nor the NP showed much interest in economic matters during the 1990s. As a result, other than in 2000 there were no cases of any parties leapfrogging the KMT on the economy in either the KMT or DPP eras.
China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 19
40 As in 2001 Taiwan went into recession experiencing negative growth of -2.2%58 and record unemployment of 5.17%59. In both 2001 and 2004 the KMT made the DPP’s failures of economic management core themes in its election campaigns. For instance, in 2001 the KMT issued a number of article style ads, which compared the DPP’s disastrous economic management with the KMT’s successful economic record60 and also held nationwide pre-election rallies focusing on unemployment61. Similarly, in 2004 the KMT made promises of economic solutions, such as a 5% economic growth rate, unemployment below 4%, and a balanced budget within six years62.
41 In 2001 when the economy was at its lowest point, the KMT gave record attention to economic issues, however the ploy did not pay off, with the DPP becoming the largest political party in the Legislative Yuan and the KMT suffering one of its worst ever defeats. In another sign that the KMT was less confident over the impact of economic issues, we can see in Figure 7 that compared with 2001, the party reduced its stress on the economy in 2004. The DPP on the other hand appears little changed from its opposition days, as it clearly prefers to shift the electoral agenda onto identity issues. In fact in my 2001 interviews DPP politicians often pointed out that their economic policies were little different from the KMT’s. The lack of economic policy differences is apparent from the cross-party Economic Development Advisory Conference held in August 2001, in which the parties were able to reach a consensus on almost all economic questions under discussion63.
42 The KMT’s defeat in the 2000 presidential election has heralded a new era in Taiwan’s party politics, as its electoral hegemony has clearly come to an end. Unlike in elections in many other new democracies, Taiwanese elections have involved intense debate over policy matters. The parties have offered voters quite distinct policy packages and issue identities, enabling voters to choose parties that match their issue preferences. Although there have been some changes in the policy content of party competition in Taiwan, there are more signs of continuity over the last four years. The core electoral issues of the 1990s remain firmly on the political agenda in the DPP era. The post- election violence in the spring of 2004 has given the impression of party polarisation. Nevertheless, this study has argued that the trend towards policy moderation and convergence that began in the mid-1990s has continued into the DPP era. However, there are limits to convergence as differences in party image and ideology have prevented the parties merging into indistinguishable catch-all parties.
NOTES
1. For example see Edward Friedman, “Paranoia, Polarization, and Suicide: Interpreting Taiwan’s 2004 Presidential Election, SOAS Taiwan Studies Working Papers Series, available at www.soas.ac.uk/taiwanstudies 2. In Taiwanese politics the left refers to support for Taiwanese independence and identity, while the right means support for unification with China and Chinese nationalism.
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3. The exact figures were 50.11% for the DPP’s Chen Shui-bian and 49.89% for the KMT’s Lien Chan. See Zhongguo shibao (China Times), March 21st 2004, A1. 4. The “pan blue camp” refers to the KMT and its splinter parties the NP and PFP, while the pan green is the DPP and TSU. 5. See TVBS Poll Centre Survey, available at http://www.tvbs.com.tw/FILE_DB/files/ osaka/200405/osaka-20040510181636.pdf , accessed on August 4th 2004. 6. See TVBS Poll Centre Survey. 7. See TVBS Poll Centre Survey. 8. The election years covered are 1991 National Assembly, 1992 Legislative, 1993 Municipal Executive, 1994 Provincial Governor & Municipal Executive, 1995 Legislative, 1996 Presidential & National Assembly, 1997 Municipal Executive, 1998 Legislative & Municipal Executive, 2000 Presidential, 2001 Legislative & Municipal Executive, 2004 Presidential. 9. Official ads refers to ads produced or financed by the party head office and in presidential elections the official candidates’ campaign headquarters. This study excludes ads placed by individual candidates, support groups or anonymous sources. The statistics in this study can be compared with those in a previous study that combined official, candidate, support group and anonymous ads into total scores. See Dafydd Fell , “Party Change in Taiwan’s 1990s Elections,” Issues and Studies 38, No. 2 2002, pp. 81-94. 10. See Ian Budge, Hans Dieter Klingemann, Andrea Volkens, Judith Bara and Eric Tanenbaum, Mapping Policy Preferences: Estimates for Parties, Electors, and Governments 1945-1998, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001. 11. See KMT manifesto newspaper ad, China Times, March 11th A11. 12. Pure Taiwan independence includes sub-issues such as calls for Taiwan independence, a Republic of Taiwan, a new Taiwan Constitution and the Taiwan Independence Clause, while diluted Taiwan independence includes opposition to unification and promotion of Taiwanese self-determination. 13. Dafydd Fell, “Party Change in Taiwan’s 1990s Elections”, Issues and Studies 38, No. 2, 2002, pp. 81-94. 14. “11th National Public Opinion Survey: Party Image”, unpublished paper by the DPP Survey Research Department, 1999, 4. 15. For example see the KMT advertisement in the Lianhe bao (United Daily News), November 21st 1994, p. 25. This shows a picture of a DPP campaign truck in a riot and attacks the DPP for its record of inciting violence. While many KMT ads in the 1990s reminded voters of the case of the DPP Pingtung politician sentenced to death for selling drugs. See Ziyou shibao (Liberty Times), November 11th 1997, p. 7. 16. Liu Tsung-wei’s study also used a revised MRG coding scheme to carry out content analysis of the candidate policy proposal section of Legislative Yuan election gazettes, that are issued to every voter. See Liu Tsung-wei, “Ideology, Strategy, and Party Change in Taiwan from 1989 to 1998.” Paper presented at the Seventh Taiwanese Political Science Association Conference, Gaoxiong, December 2000. 17. China Times, November 5th 1993, p. 2. 18. Minzhong ribao (Commons Daily), March 10th 2000, p. 4. 19. See China Times, October 28th 1993, p. 2 20. See China Times, November 25th 1994, pp. 1-2. 21. Apollo Chen, interview by the author, Taipei, September 28th 2001.
China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 21
22. Both the TSU and PFP ignored social welfare in their election propaganda in 2001, therefore their data has not been included in Figure 9. 23. See www.taipeitimes.com/news/2002/05/11/0000135552 24. See China Times, March 1st 2004, A11. 25. See Table 3. 26. John Hsieh and Emerson Niou, Issues in Taiwan’s Electoral Politics”, paper presented at the American Political Science Association Conference, New York, September 1994, p. 2 27. Both the TSU and PFP ignored political corruption in their election propaganda in 2001, therefore their data has not been included in Figure 10. 28. Opinion surveys in the 1990s show that the most common reason for voters disliking the KMT was its reputation for links to corruption. See DPP Survey Research Department, 11th National Opinion Survey: Party Image”, pp. 4-5. 29. Former KMT Party Propaganda Chief, interview by author, Taipei, October 19th 2001. 30. DPP surveys in the late 1990s found that one of the principal reasons voters liked the NP and DPP as they viewed these parties as being “clean.” See DPP Survey Research Department, 11th National Opinion Survey: Party Image”, pp. 4-5. 31. China Times, March 19th 2004, p. A9. 32. See China Times, March 18th 2004, A11. 33. China Times, March 11th 2004, A10 34. In a 2000 KMT TV election ad Lien Chan promised to end KMT involvement in profit-making businesses. 35. John Hsieh and Emerson Niou, “Salient Issues in Taiwan’s Electoral Politics,” Electoral Studies 15, 1996, pp. 219-235. 36. For details see the Mainland Affairs Council website at www.mac.gov.tw 37. See KMT ad in China Times, November 30th 1995, 1. On occasions the KMT advertisements have added the NP to this campaign equation. 38. A-Bian is the DPP politician Chen Shui-bian’s nickname. 39. For example the point was made by a former KMT Propaganda Chief, Huang Hui- chen, interview by author, Taipei, September 26th 2001. 40. The NP’s model was called, “One Country Three Systems”. 41. See Taipei Times, January 5th 2001, p. 1. 42. Chen Hung-chi, interview by author, Taipei, September 7th 2001. 43. Chang Jung-kung, interview by author, Taipei, October 25th 2001. 44. Dafydd Fell, Party Politics in Taiwan, London, Routledge, forthcoming. 45. For example, see the DPP’s Chang Chun-hung’s ad slogan “Denounce the Betray Taiwan Family of Lee Huan” (Lee was the former KMT ROC Premier) Liberty Times, December 9th 1992, p. 6. 46. See China Times, November 10th 1993, p. 1. 47. See United Daily News, December 1st 1994, p. 1. 48. See United Daily News, March 9th 2000, p. 16. 49. Peter Moody, “Recovering the Mainland: The Change in Direction of the KMT Since 2000”, paper presented at the American Political Science Association Conference, Boston, September 2002. 50. Lin Yu-hsiang, interview by author, Taipei, October 4th 2001 51. China Times, March 15th 2004, p. A5.
China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 22
52. Hong Yu-chin creates a storm, suggesting changing to the Taiwan KMT. See China Times, April 8th 2004, from China Times Internet Database 53. This was one of the DPP’s keynote campaign events in 2004. It involved a human chain from the far north to the far south of Taiwan to show solidarity in the face of the mainland’s missile threat. 54. China Times, March 4th 2004, p. A1. 55. China Times, December 20th 1991, p. 1. 56. John Hsieh, Dean Lacy and Emerson Niou, “Economic Voting in the 1994 Taiwan Elections”, American Asian Review, 1996. 57. United Daily News, March 16th 2000, p. 27. 58. http://investintaiwan.nat.gov.tw/moea-web/Climate/EcoIndicators/ GDPgrowth.htm 59. http://investintaiwan.nat.gov.tw/moea-web/Climate/EcoIndicators/ Unemploy.htm 60. China Times, November 23rd 2001, p. 16. 61. www.taipeitimes.com/news/2001/11/09/story/0000111026 62. China Times, March 1st 2004, p. A11. 63. http://www.taipeitimes/News/front/archives/2001/08/27/100298
RÉSUMÉS
This paper compares the state of party competition before and after the change of ruling party in Taiwan in 2000. First the balance of power between Taiwan’s main political parties is discussed— the KMT’s electoral hegemony has come to an end, the DPP has won two presidential elections and become Taiwan’s largest parliamentary party. However, there is much continuity in Taiwan’s party politics, with the same two parties electorally dominant today as at the outset of multi- party elections in the late 1980s. The second part of the article analyses election propaganda to consider how the policy content of party competition has changed and proposes that there have been more signs of continuity than change in party issue emphasis over the last four years.
China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 23
Beheading the Hydra: Combating Political Corruption and Organised Crime
Christian Göbel
1 Taking Robert Dahl’s well-known concept of a liberal democracy as a benchmark, Taiwan can be said to have completed its democratic transition with the direct elections for the National Assembly and the Legislative Yuan in 1991 and 19921. Since then, its democratic consolidation has made remarkable progress, especially in the realm of institution building and the emergence of a vibrant civil society. It is safe to say that authoritarianism is a thing of the past and that all relevant parties, politicians and the general public are committed to Taiwan’s democratic system. However, political scandals, frequent brawls in the Legislative Yuan and the inability to pass important reform bills have made clear that although Taiwan’s democracy is resilient, there is still much room for improvement or “democratic deepening”. A consistent feature throughout Taiwan’s political transformation has been the worrying influence of local-level clientelist networks, moneyed interests and even organised crime on Taiwan’s politics.
2 The roots of these ills stem from the kind of democratisation Taiwan has experienced and the character of its former autocratic political system. From 1911 to 1992, the Republic of China was an authoritarian regime ruled by one party, which dominated the state and penetrated deep into economy and society. Compared to other authoritarian regimes, Taiwan’s autocracy proved to be remarkably stable. This was not due to excessive coercion, but resulted from an intricate arrangement of incentives and dependencies which bound major societal forces to the leading Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, KMT).
3 As Chen Tung-sheng2, Chen Ming-tong 3 and others have shown, the KMT (or at least its politically domineering factions4) held on to these structures, so democratisation did not obliterate, it merely altered them. With the KMT bereft of autocratic means to control its agents, powerful (collective) actors like local clientelistic networks and large enterprises grew in significance, and the relationship between them and the KMT
China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 24
turned the former patron-agent relationship into one of mutual dependence. This led to the emergence of “black gold” (heijin), the collusion between politicians on the one side and organised crime and big business on the other. Both helped the KMT to stay in power, but not without demanding something in return.
4 As factions within the KMT had realised very early, these exchanges were bound to drain the reservoir of legitimacy the party had built up by steering Taiwan’s “economic miracle”. Since its foundation in 1986 and with increased intensity before the 1992 Legislative Yuan elections, the oppositional Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) had made the fight against political corruption and organised crime a major campaign issue and had thereby pushed the KMT further into a dilemma: it had to fight corruption, organised crime and rid itself of its reliance on localist networks, while at the same time depending on these very groups for its survival.
5 The DPP’s situation, of course, was quite different. The DPP had a vital interest in fundamentally changing the political rules of the game, which were tailor-made for the KMT and first barred the DPP from taking power and later from fully implementing its political agenda. Put simply, the KMT’s anti-“black gold“ policies were aimed at increasing its legitimacy without changing the informal rules of the political game, while the DPP strove to create a different political environment which was more conducive to its survival.
6 In line with these observations, this article combines two perspectives to highlight continuity and change between each administration’s fight against corruption, organised crime and vote buying. The first looks at policy, examining the formulation, implementation and impact of the most relevant measures taken by each administration. The other, an institutionalist perspective, explains how institutional constraints limited the relevant actors’ scope of action, resulting in outcomes often not matching the original intentions.
7 This article consists of three parts. The first briefly sketches the institutional foundations of the KMT’s one-party rule and the impact of democratisation on it. The second elucidates the dilemma the KMT has faced when forced to fight the very groups it depended on for political survival. It describes the KMT’s anti-“black gold” policies and offers explanations for their superficiality, selectivity and lack of impact. The third part depicts the various anti-“black gold” measures envisioned by the Chen Shui-bian administration and examines their implementation. One-party rule and the emergence of “black gold” 8 A close look at the institutional foundations of the KMT’s five-decade-long one-party rule tells us much about the difficulties the opposition has faced in altering these structures. As they were all-encompassing, linking the state apparatus, society, big business and most relevant political actors to the KMT, but not to each other, the Taiwanese political scientist Hu Fu has aptly invoked the metaphor of an “umbrella-” structure of authoritarianism5. As was the case in most of the stable South-East Asian authoritarian regimes, the legitimacy of the KMT one-party state hinged on its ability to deliver monetary rents to various constituencies, to play important actors off against each other without alienating them from the regime, and to prevent splits in its leadership6.
9 In retrospect, the KMT was able to accomplish two difficult feats: to rule by distributing financial favours without driving itself into bankruptcy, and to keep a potentially hostile 80%-majority of the population loyal to the “alien” regime. As for the first feat,
China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 25
the KMT led the economic bureaucracy in implementing a model of state-led modernisation while at the same time keeping tight control over the financial sector, landed property and Taiwan’s major industrial conglomerates. Its monopoly on vital resources and its power over Taiwan’s economy allowed it to channel money without squandering it. The KMT made sure that the enterprises that benefited from its patronage stayed competitive by selectively lowering trade barriers, thereby exposing them to the world market. Also, the government passed and enforced strict laws that prohibited government officials from collusion with the financial sector7.
10 In addition to this “political” control of the business sector, the KMT exerted “economic” control by being a powerful economic actor itself. As there was no effective separation between party and state and especially between party property and state coffers, the KMT had a tremendous financial leverage it could use to attain its economic goals. It used its monopoly on vital inputs such as steel, petrochemicals and heavy machinery to build up “an array of satellite suppliers and subservient down-stream firms”8 that competed for contracts with public enterprises. Because they were exchangeable, they were discouraged from forming alliances that might have challenged KMT supremacy. In addition, a hierarchical system of industrial associations with compulsory membership gave the KMT further control over important business leaders. Naturally, some of the small-and-medium sized enterprises in the countryside escaped this kind of control, but their access to land and capital was severely restricted. This made sure that they did not expand unduly.
11 How did the KMT produce regime legitimacy despite widespread hostility by the native people? Again, the skilful handling of monetary resources coupled with balancing mechanisms, most notably local elections, provides much of the answer.
12 In the organisation of Taiwan’s local policy, local factions (difang paixi) are local-level clientelistic networks. Most of Taiwan's counties (xian) and municipalities have two, some three local factions, which compete for local economic and power resources. Factions usually are held together by ties of blood, kinship and marriage, but also by interpersonal relationships9. The KMT made use of local factions basically by trading money for support via local-level elections. Getting elected at the local level was not very attractive in terms of political power, because local government was in the firm grip of the party state. Political office, however, granted access to local monopoly and oligopoly rights and "money machines" like the credit departments of the fishermen’s associations (yuhui), the water conservancy associations (shuilihui), and the farmer's associations (nonghui)10. In addition, political protection of semi-legal or illegal projects such as brothels, gambling dens and karaoke bars guaranteed the local power-holders further resources.
13 The organisational capacity of the KMT, a tailor-made electoral system and its clientelistic relationship to the local factions made influence on electoral outcomes highly effective during authoritarianism. All that was required was the subdivision of an electoral district into as many parts as there were candidates, and ensure that each candidate received just the right number of votes 11. This was achieved with the help of vote-brokers (zhuangjiao)12. In order to be successful in these elections, one usually had to be nominated by the KMT, who had the organisational means to coordinate votes and candidates, the financial means to co-finance the costly electoral campaigns, and the coercive means to deter non-authorised candidates from running. As a consequence, candidates of the various local factions competed for nomination by the
China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 26
KMT, and local alliances against the KMT were highly unlikely unless the KMT disregarded the factions by filing its own candidates. This was backed up by the rigorous enforcement of a policy that forbade factions to conclude alliances beyond the county level13.
14 To summarise, the native population was mobilised by local politico-economic groups, which in turn received resources by the KMT. They were balanced against each other by means of local elections, in which they had to run as KMT-candidates. At the same time, these elections produced legitimacy for the regime, because they were reasonably competitive, and the KMT always won. Democratisation and the increasing importance of “black gold” 15 In the course of Taiwan's democratic transition, the KMT's relationship to both major economic actors and local factions underwent massive changes. Economic and political liberalisation strengthened the hand of both the local factions and the business community, as they could now expand and form alliances. This turned the clientelistic relationship between them and the KMT (most of all its Lee Teng-hui- dominated “mainstream faction”, zhuliupai) into an interdependent one. Taiwan’s “umbrella of authoritarianism” thus turned into a web of mutual dependencies.
16 In order to secure the business community’s compliance, the KMT introduced new land-based economic rents such as construction projects and real-estate development, which became quickly linked to the blossoming financial sector. Meanwhile, a host of private enterprises that were held in an economic stranglehold during the authoritarian regime began to prosper. The lack of formal rules governing business behaviour on the one hand and political candidates’ need for funding on the other made for strategic relationships between actors of the business community and politicians at all levels. With increased importance of the representative organs after democratisation, the number of candidates rose, as did campaign costs. This created incentives for business groups to sponsor candidates and in return receive political influence. Often businessmen sought political office themselves.
17 Local factions also became diversified both in their structure and in their sources of income. They could now form alliances. Land and real estate development became the main sources of rent-seeking. Many local factions started to become allied with the new financial groups, which had begun to mushroom since the 1980s, leading to a new typology of interest-based associations ranging from the “traditional” local faction to the nationwide financial group14. With elections for the central-level representative organs conducted, the door to central government was opened, and the Legislative Yuan became a major playing field for these associations. Their percentage among representatives increased as steadily as did corrupt practices in the representative organs15. Furthermore, political alliances with local factions were no longer limited to the KMT. The DPP’s successful electoral performance in the 1997 county-level election had brought it into contact with local factions as well. This further strengthened them, because now they could play the parties and even factions within a party off against each other. However, as the DPP party centre did not have the financial means to sustain the factions in the way the KMT could, its contact with them took a different shape. DPP heavyweights supported local politicians by the promise of public construction projects or by visiting them in their home districts, thus boosting their image16.
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18 Of course, DPP politicians were not free of the trappings of money and power. Some of them became involved in shady deals as well, and a number of the DPP’s elected local deputies have been believed to be connected to the underworld17. “Some of the DPP’s strongest vote-getters belonged to local factions; being affiliated with the opposition did not stop candidates from corralling tiao-a-ka (vote brokers), distributing patronage and buying votes”18. Equally, vote-buying in the DPP’s primary elections has become an embarrassment for the party19. However, corruption and vote-buying in the DPP are by no means as systematic as in the KMT, and it is safe to say that they are not condoned by the party central.
1. Legal Revision proposed as part of the Ministry of Justice’s “Action Programme to Sweep Out Black Gold"
Sources: Republic of China, Ministry of Justice, Fawubu saochu heijin xingdong fang’an zhi jinxing qingxing ji xuxiao baogaobiao (Report Table of State of Implementation and Effects of the Ministry of JusticeÕs Action Programme to Sweep Out Black Gold),
19 This environment also paved the way for organised crime into the Legislative Yuan and local politics. First, the increase of crackdowns on vote-buying introduced crime groups as mediators because the high sentences for vote-buying deterred many traditional vote-brokers20. Such elements also acted as bodyguards or thugs who intimidated or blackmailed opposition candidates for payment and political protection21. Evidently, once a local faction employed gangsters to combat political opponents by illegal means, the opposition faction was forced to follow suit. Second, gangsters who had made a fortune by dabbling in construction projects or illegal ventures became particularly vulnerable to extortion from their protectors in the political realm and to crackdowns against organised crime. In order to protect themselves, many gangsters ran for political office to gain immunity. In this way, gang leaders became conveners of the Police Administration Group (jingzheng xiaozu) in the local legislatures where they supervised the local police departments22. In the Legislative Yuan, legislators implicated in legal suits often sought a seat in the Judiciary Committee. Lo Fu-chu, the alleged leader of the Tiandaomeng (Heaven and Earth Society), one of the biggest crime syndicates in Taiwan, even served as one of the committee's three conveners23. The Shangye zhoubao (Business Weekly) in 1999 reported that legislators with an organised
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crime background exerted considerable influence in the Legislative Yuan by means of threats and terror against individual lawmakers, some of them even accompanied by gunmen disguised as assistants24. The clean-up efforts during the KMT era 20 Although the KMT’s alliance on equal terms with local factions and moneyed interests enabled it to stay in power, the party had to pay a steep price for its coalitions. The quality of the political process worsened, and the general public’s increasing dissatisfaction with money politics and organised crime influence on politics was accompanied with feelings of political inefficacy25. Much blame for this was laid on the KMT26.
21 Put differently, the costs for regime maintenance the KMT had to bear in the currency of legitimacy rose sharply. This probably had been foreseen in the party headquarters. Since the late 1960s, there had been efforts to prevent the KMT from too much dependence on societal forces that might later prove hard to hold in check. The failure of these policies can be explained neatly in institutionalist terms.
22 Reformers in the KMT soon found out that the costs of changing the rules of the political game were likely to surpass the costs of regime maintenance, which had the consequence that the KMT shifted from cause- to symptom-oriented policies in its fight against “black gold”. More concretely, the Party mainstream might have realised that a full-fledged democratisation of the political system might result in either the subversion of the process by the still powerful conservative forces, or in bringing the DPP to power. At any rate, a far-reaching political system change was difficult given the harm that sweeping constitutional reforms, not to mention the passage of a new Constitution, might have done to the relations with mainland China.
23 The KMT chose regime maintenance. This, however, meant facing a dilemma: needing to limit the drain of legitimacy that resulted from its alliance with local factions and moneyed interests, while at the same time continuing to rely on this alliance. In a process of gradual learning, the KMT’s policies thus shifted from attempts to free itself from local factions and moneyed interests to a mix of accommodation and selective persecution. However, the further the democratic transition progressed, the stronger the latter became as they could now expand and form alliances. Conversely, the organisational capacity of the KMT was severely weakened after the passing of its supreme leader Chiang Ching-kuo. The party was eventually torn apart by national- level factions fighting for predominance and local factions fighting for autonomy. Ultimately, no party faction could stay in power without the help of the groups the party initially sought to fight. The KMT was thus losing the fight against “black gold”.
24 As early as 1968, the KMT started to phase out its relationship to local factions by gradually nominating party cadres instead of factional candidates for local elections. According to Chen Ming-tong, this strategy was quite successful until it backfired in 1977: “That year, the KMT lost four mayoral seats, 21 provincial assembly seats, and suffered the ‘Chung Li incident’. This was an unprecedented setback for the KMT, which started the democratisation process in Taiwan”27. As Chen Ming-tong has shown, this setback prompted the party to re-increase its reliance on local factions to deliver the vote, albeit with a different mechanism: from the early 1980s on, primary elections were held before local elections, forcing would-be candidates of local factions to seek KMT membership and compete with non-factional candidates for nomination. Again, the KMT overplayed its hand when it steeply increased the number of non-factional
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candidates for the 1989 primary elections: in the mayoral, provincial assembly and Legislative Yuan elections that year it faced “unprecedented setbacks”28. These setbacks marked the end of the KMT’s efforts to reign in the local factions. The split that ensued in the party after Chiang Ching-kuo’s death pitted Lee Teng-hui and his followers in the KMT (the so-called “mainstream faction”) against various hard-line factions. This struggle strengthened the hand of local factions and Taiwanese entrepreneurs when they became Lee’s partners in his quest for political dominance, providing them access to the apex of power. The “mainstream faction” became “in many respects, a collection of local factions”29. This did not change during Lee’s presidency.
25 As the KMT could not reduce what after democratisation had become an outright dependence on local factions, it aimed at shoring up its legitimacy among the general public without having to break with them. A measure that would allow it to combat not the factions themselves but the most delegitimating practice associated with them was to crack down on vote-buying. During the 1994 elections for county commissioner, the KMT government launched the biggest crackdown on vote-buying in its history. 257 were convicted, including about 30% of all county legislators and nearly every commissioner30. This greatly alienated the local factions, and Chen Ming-tong indicates that there is a direct relationship between this crackdown and the KMT’s electoral disaster in the subsequent legislative elections. He also intimates that provincial governor and Lee’s rival James Soong used this alienation to shore up his own power base by strengthening his relationship to township- and village-based local factions. Using a loophole in the budgetary law, Soong toured the island for his re-election bid for provincial governor and showered more than 300 towns and villages with promises of local construction projects worth about NT$80 billion31. Soong won the election with 56.22% of the votes. These experiences and the fact that it was virtually impossible to bring the indicted to justice32 might very well have decided the Lee government to refrain from further crackdowns.
26 Another measure the KMT took was crackdowns on organised crime. Again, party central found itself in a Catch-22 situation: some local-level KMT candidates (most of them from local factions) depended on organised crime elements during their electoral campaigns and often even after they took office. On the other hand, the general public grew increasingly concerned with the worsening public security situation caused by organised crime. As Tien Hung-mao put it: “The KMT is now in a no-win situation. Failure to prosecute the guilty parties would further the KMT’s image as a corrupt political machine. Successful prosecution, however, which may involve most city and county councils, could severely shake the KMT’s local foundations. Without the support of local factions and their controversial vote-catching practices, the party in power may face a stunning reduction in its reliable voter base”33.
27 According to Chin Ko-lin, this dilemma forced the KMT administration to adopt the double-pronged strategy of selective persecution. These half-heartened attempts to combat organised crime did not solve the mafia problem, rather it worsened it.
28 The first major crackdown on organised crime was “Operation Cleansweep”. In the course of this operation, more than four thousand alleged underworld figures were arrested and many of them were sent to reform camps, only to be released four years later34. As both Chao Yung-mao and Chin Ko-lin have pointed out, this crackdown had adverse consequences. Some gang leaders formed alliances when they served time
China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 30
together, thus broadening the scope of individual crime groups. Further, after leaving prison, they had to wrest power back from their successors who had taken over following their arrest. This led to gang wars and the decline of the code of conduct that existed between these groups, increasing the violence within organised crime35. In addition, in order to protect themselves, organised crime figures no longer relied solely on the protection of politicians, but sought political office themselves36. The success of this and other, more small-scale sweeps is questionable, as one agent of the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau acknowledges: “The crackdown of Yi-ching [Cleansweep] was a failure. We had to have more operations thereafter to round criminals up. If it was a success, why was it necessary to create more massive, anticrime operations? The more sweeps, the more heidao [mafia] figures. There has to be a rethink of our policy”37. Accordingly, when Liao Cheng-hao, the major hand behind the post-Operation Cleansweep crackdowns suddenly resigned in 1998, the efforts to rein in organised crime subsided38.
29 The description of the KMT’s anti-“black gold“ policies would be incomplete without mentioning the passage of several important laws. In 1993, the “Public Functionary Assets Disclosure Law” (gongzhi renyuan caichan shenbaofa) was passed against the will of the KMT party centre, and was seen as a major step towards public accountability of government officials. The Disclosure Law stipulates that public functionaries must report their financial assets to the Control Yuan annually39, which publishes these data40.
30 However, the law has proved to be without teeth for three major reasons. First, the sanctions for transgression are a mere slap on the wrist. Refusal to be investigated is punished by NT$20,000 to NT$100,00041, and misreporting results in a fine of NT$60,000 to NT$300,00042. Next, since the Control Yuan lacks the resources to randomly review even one tenth of the reports filed, cheating on the reports involves little risk. Thus no disciplinary action is taken even in high profile cases involving billions of dollars and political heavyweights. They are merely given a fine. And seldom did the Control Yuan follow cases up to check for misreporting serving to cover up the breach of another law. Hence a further lack of efficiency and effectiveness of this particular law43.
31 The Organised Crime Prevention Law was passed in 1996 to supplement the controversial Anti-Hoodlum Law, which was implemented in 1955, revised in 1981 and in parts declared unconstitutional in 199544. The law carries drastic fines for being involved in an organised crime group, and based on this law, 675 people were arrested in Operation Chih-ping, which followed Operation Cleansweep from August 1996 to June 1998. Of these 675, 162—of which 35 were local-level representatives—were sent to the Green Island correction facilities45. Despite this achievement however, sloppy implementation meant its impact on mafia involvement in politics was negligible. Of these 35 representatives, eight were from the district/ city level. According to former Minister of Justice Liao Cheng-hao, the number of representatives at this level involved in organised crime stood at 260, about one-third of the total46.
32 In January 2000, the Legislative Yuan passed the Witness Protection Law (zhengren baohufa), which had been drafted and introduced into the legislative process several times by the Ministry of Justice between 1996 and 1998. As the KMT lost the presidential elections only two months later, the law did not see implementation under this administration, but served as a basis for the new administration’s anti-“black gold“ policies.
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The DPP programme to combat “black gold” 33 The DPP was the opposition that the aforementioned “umbrella structure of authoritarianism” sought to keep out of politics. Thus, making Taiwan’s politics fairer and more democratic had been on its campaign agenda since its foundation in 1986. Money politics and reliance on local factions did not only reduce the polity’s democratic quality, but gave the DPP a major political disadvantage because it had neither the organisational power nor the financial means to sustain such a network. I argue that for this reason it strove to change the rules of the political game by means of an ambitious programme. While the DPP did not lack the determination to realise this programme, its efforts were seriously hampered both by residues of authoritarianism in the bureaucracy inherited from the KMT era and its minority of seats in the Legislative Yuan. The latter was especially challenging, because institutional restructuring can hardly be achieved without making adjustments in the legal system.
34 In July 2000, two months after taking office, the DPP administration started to implement its “Programme for Sweeping away Organised Crime and Corruption” (saochu heijin xingdong fangan). Its sphere of action was to be three major fields: the fight against organised crime (saohei), counter-corruption measures ( yantan) and investigations into election-related bribery (chabai). The programme combined efforts to enact new laws, revise existing ones, build anti-corruption organisations and was flanked by personnel reshuffles and the restructuring of government organisations47.
35 The last point, no doubt the precondition on which the successful implementation of the whole programme rested, proved the hardest to realise. In his efforts to establish a highly centralised “anti-corruption administration”, the new Minister of Justice, Chen Ding-nan announced that he would merge the anti-corruption department of the Ministry’s Investigation Bureau (MJIB) with the Government Ethics Department into an “anti-corruption task force”48. The MJIB, during the authoritarian era the backbone of the regime’s internal security apparatus, still wielded enough political clout to successfully resist this plan, testifying to the ongoing entrenchment of authoritarian institutions in Taiwan’s young democracy. The standoff between Chen Ding-nan and the MJIB only ended one year later when the Executive Yuan suddenly decided to replace the MJIB director49. Although this improved co-operation, legislation on the envisioned “anti-corruption agency” with powers of search, seizure and arrest did not pass the Legislative Yuan.
36 The institutional overlap that complicates the fight against “black gold” is thus considerable. Responsibilities now fall on the MJIB, the Ministry of Justice Government Ethics Department and the Judicial Yuan, under whose auspices a “Black Gold Investigation Centre” (BGIC) was established. The BGIC, located in the High Court Prosecutor’s office, supervises four “special investigation sections” in Taipei, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung. Combining prosecutors and investigators, and being authorised to issue orders to local district prosecutors, agents from the MJIB, military police officers and police officers, they are the cornerstone of anti-“black gold” investigation work.
37 Organisation-building was merely one pillar of the anti-“black gold” programme. Institution-building was another. That Taiwan had been an authoritarian state where party directives and informal arrangements were more important than legal stipulations meant that there was only a weak legal basis on which to build democratic institutions. This resulted in the problem that although Taiwan had formally become a
China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 32
democracy, the underlying legal framework did not address practices incommensurate with democratic principles. Therefore, large-scale “loans” and “donations” to legislators, influence-peddling and abusing insider-information was clearly considered undemocratic, but they were not illegal50. Building democratic institutions was further complicated by the problem that the Legislative Yuan was still dominated by interests representing the “old order”. Majorities for institutional reforms countering these interests were thus hard to come by. Nevertheless, the MOJ laid out an ambitious plan for legal reform.
38 Two prongs of this effort can be identified: first, the revision of existing laws such as the Public Functionaries Election and Recall Law, the Civil Servant Services Act, the Public Functionary Assets Disclosure Law, the Money Laundering Control Act and the Anti-Corruption Penal Statute (see Table 1).
39 The second prong is the drafting of new and important laws, such as the Political Party Law, the Statute Regarding the Disposition of Assets Improperly Obtained by Political Parties, the Lobby Law, the Political Contributions Law and the Conflict of Interest Prevention Law (Table 2).
2. Legal Revision proposed as part of the Ministry of Justice’s “Action Programme to Sweep Out Black Gold"
Sources: Ibid table 1
40 The third pillar in the fight against “black gold” were the actual investigations conducted by the Black Gold Investigation Centre and other agencies, cracking down on vote-buying, bribery (especially in public construction projects), judicial fraud and organised crime. It was this “third pillar” that became especially prominent in the fight against “black gold” and was widely held responsible for producing the cleanest elections ever held in Taiwan. The Legislative Yuan elections in December 2001 were accompanied by massive campaigns aimed to dissuade the Taiwanese populace to accept money for their votes and by even more massive crackdowns on vote captains and the legislators who had hired them. The MOJ saw the number of people indicted to be the main indicator of their success. For example, the number of public representatives on all levels indicted for corruption and vote-buying rose from 152 in March 2001 to 317 in August 2001 and to 1,272 in March 2004. The total number of
China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 33
people indicted was 11,097 at that time (out of 27,986 prosecuted). Of those put on trial, 1,641 were found “guilty”, and 1,534 “not guilty”51. It should be emphasised that those convicted were by no means all connected to KMT, PFP or independent legislators or bureaucratic personnel leaning towards these parties. In line with the above observation that the “black gold” problem also began to affect the DPP, some of the ruling party’s city- and county-level legislators were also among the convicted. The DPP centre’s actions were by no means one-sided and, considering the close scrutiny by the public and the opposition, probably could not have been. Impact of the anti-“black gold” programme 41 Despite the fact that the frequent “sweeps” against vote-buying and organised crime were probably successful in bringing many of Taiwan’s most notorious gangsters to justice and serve as a deterrent against vote-buying, these figures raise the question if these successes were traded against the protection of human rights. Indeed, individual cases show that prosecutors were over-zealous in their fight against “black gold”, tapping phones without judicial supervision and conducting searches without warrants52. Also, the administration’s draft amendment to the Public Functionaries Election and Recall Law, which would bar organised crime suspects from running in elections, sparked considerable controversy. One reason is that a suspect would become a “political convict,” another is that this clause only applies to suspects of an “organised” criminal background. This raises definitional problems and discriminates against the former group.
42 Another indicator that could be used for determining the success of Chen Shui-bian’s crusade against corruption and vote-buying is the financial situation of the grassroots financial organisations which were identified as a major resource for corrupt local politicians. In July 2001, Chen Shui-bian vowed to close down, merge or have taken over by public banks the 35 most defunct of these organisations, among them 27 credit departments of farmers’ associations. In addition, the government earmarked NT$140 billion as a “cleanup fund” to rid these organisations of their bad loans (which actually exceeded NT$210 billion)53. Again, the results were mixed. The overall percentage of these organisation’s overdue loans decreased significantly from an all-time high of 18.19% in June 2002 to 13.39% in January 2004. Most successful was the bailing out of the 48 local credit co-operatives, the overdue loans of which were halved from 13.08% to 6.94% during this period. However, not much ground was gained in the case of the credit departments of the 314 farmers’ and fishermen’s associations, the most important “money machines” for local politicians. Their overdue loans decreased a mere 3.73%, from 21.44% in June 2002 to 17.71% in January 2004. As for closures, mergers or takeovers, 13 credit co-operatives, 34 credit departments of farmers’ associations and two credit departments of fishermen’s associations were thus disposed of54.
43 Again, success was mixed. This can hardly be blamed on the DPP administration, as all the drafts outlined above were introduced and frequently reintroduced for consideration in the Legislative Yuan. Most of them, however, were voted down by an alliance of KMT, PFP and independent legislators, who would face severe losses if the new regulations had been passed. Despite this, the Public Officials Conflict of Interest Prevention Law was passed on July 1st 2000, and the Political Contributions Law on March 18th 2004, only two days before the presidential election. Scandals, public
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pressure and the KMT’s struggle to portray itself as a clean party probably were major factors facilitating the passage of the Political Contributions Law.
44 Although the passage of these laws can be regarded as milestones in Taiwan’s process of democratic consolidation, Taiwan still has a long way to go. Notably, the Political Party Law and the Lobby Law still await passage. But passage alone is not enough. Another problem has been the enforcement of these laws. Some laws only carry minor fines (such as the Assets Disclosure Law), some overlap (such as the five laws regulating the legislative process with the Conflict of Interest Prevention Law and, if passed, the Lobby Law), and some are not strictly enforced (as is the case with the Conflict of Interest Law, the Assets Disclosure Law and the Money Laundering Law). Reasons for these shortcomings are organisational overlaps, understaffing of the relevant agencies and small budget allocations55. These problems can again be partly blamed on blockade politics in the legislature. Another part of the explanation rests on the fact that the new administration was not readily accepted by the subordinate bureaucratic staff, which could block important policies. Of course, the inexperience of the first-time administration was another factor leading to policy blunders56.
45 However, as Shangmao Chen and Chengtian Kuo show, the influence of “black gold” on Taiwan’s polity was significantly reduced simply because the new administration could not take the KMT’s former position as a hub in the informal network. The large conglomerates’ influence on politics was weakened as economic liberalisation subjected them to competition. One direct result was that many of these conglomerates, including those owned by the KMT, started to incur severe losses. Furthermore, the new administration replaced key personnel in state-owned enterprises and banks as well as in the bureaucracy, further weakening the old structures57. Thus, the simple fact that the opposition had been able to wrest political power away from the KMT and that it was willing to play by the rules it had created has been a major factor helping to further clean politics.
46 Taiwan’s authoritarian past has made the deepening of Taiwan’s democracy extremely difficult. I have shown that informal arrangements incommensurate with democratic principles have not only persisted after democratisation, but have gone out of control. Although corruption and organised crime had existed before the 1990s, they became rampant when the KMT’s “mainstream faction” utilised alliances with local factions, influential businesspeople and even organised criminals to defend themselves not only against the opposition without, but also that within their own party. This created a political environment where influence had to be bought and which undermined political accountability as well as economic efficiency.
47 The important continuity between the two administrations is that both aimed to fight the adverse consequences of these institutional arrangements. One symbolic illustration of this is that the Chen administration used the same name for its anti-“black gold“ programme as the Lee administration had used for its rather unsystematic approach a few years ago. Despite the differences in content, the title “Programme for Sweeping away Organised Crime and Corruption“ is not an invention of the DPP58. A summary evaluation of this programme published in 1998, the “Sweeping Away Organised Crime and Corruption White Book” (saohei baipishu), was presented to presidential candidate Chen Shui-bian by former Minister of Justice Liao Cheng-hao in 199959. There have always been individuals and groups in the KMT who were sincere about fighting corruption60. Conversely, under the DPP administration,
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some of its local-level functionaries and representatives became involved in money politics as well. This shows that the difference between these two parties’ anti-“black gold” policies probably stems not from differences in morality or their elites’ political culture, but from the institutional setting that determines their spheres of action. The KMT had abandoned its reform efforts when it saw that the transaction costs an institutional overhaul incurred were very likely to supersede the costs of maintaining the current system, at least in the medium-term. Yet the DPP could not have taken over this system even if it had wanted to, so institutional change was the only sensible strategy to pursue.
48 Therefore, the major difference between the two administrations’ anti-“black gold” policies was that the DPP had nothing to lose, but much to win from revamping the administrative, legal and financial apparatus and indiscriminately persecuting vote- buyers, organised criminals and corrupt politicians alike. Indeed, failure to do so might have catapulted it back into opposition. Even so, institutional and organisational change proved difficult to achieve. Accordingly, the DPP too had to rely more on symptom-oriented than on cause-oriented policies to prove its resolve, but here it achieved more than the KMT ever had. Important “big brothers” were arrested, others have fled the country, and vote-buying has decreased significantly. The bureaucracy has become more assertive towards the Legislative Yuan, and the KMT’s big business cronies’ political influence has been weakened.
49 These achievements, however, are not irreversible as long as the formal rules and regulations that structure Taiwan’s politics remain incomplete, contradictory and partly dysfunctional. The DPP has not managed to make much headway here, partly because of its inexperience in administrative matters, but mostly because its hands were bound by a pan-blue dominated legislature. The recent presidential election has given the DPP the mandate to continue its reform policies, but the legislative election in December will decide if it is given the chance to really make a difference.
NOTES
1. According to Dahl, a liberal democracy needs: 1. the freedom to form and join organisations; 2. the freedom of expression; 3. the right to vote; 4. eligibility for public office; 5. the right of political leaders to compete for support and votes; 6. alternative sources of information; 7. free and fair elections; 8. institutions for making government policies to depend on votes and other expressions of preference. See Robert Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1971, p. 3. That Taiwan has been a liberal democracy since the 1992 Legislative Yuan elections is contested. According to Shelley Rigger, Taiwan became a democracy only in the mid-nineties, when alternative sources of information supplemented the island’s three state-linked broadcast stations. See Shelley Rigger, Politics in Taiwan: Voting for Democracy, London, New York, Routledge, 1999, pp. 195-196, fn. 13.
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2. Chen Tung-sheng, Jinquan chengshi: difang paixi, caituan yu Taibei duhui fazhan de shehuixue fenxi (City of Money Power: A Sociological Analysis of Local Factions, Financial Groups, and Taipei Metropolitan Development), Taipei, Juliu, 1995. 3. Chen Ming-tung, Paixi zhengzhi yu Taiwan zhengzhi bianqian (Factional Politics and Taiwan's Political Development), Taipei, Yuedan, 1995. 4. See Chen Ming-tong, Paixi zhengzhi and Joseph Bosco, “Taiwan Factions: Guanxi, Patronage, and the State in Local Politics”, in Murray A. Rubinstein (ed.), The Other Taiwan: 1945 to the Present, Armonk, M.E. Sharpe, 1994, pp. 114-144. In the following discussions, “KMT” refers to what Steven J. Hood has identified as “the Party Mainstream”, a loose group of party cadres with membership in local factions and in support of Lee Teng-hui (see Steven J. Hood, The Kuomintang and the Democratization of Taiwan, Boulder, Westview, 1997, p. 110). The KMT has never been a monolithic party. 5. Lin Chia-lung, "Jieshi Taiwan de Minzhuhua" (Explaining Taiwan's Democratisation), in Wang Chen-huan et al. (eds.), Liang'an dangguo tizhi yu minzhu fazhan (Party-State Systems on Both Sides of the Taiwan Strait and Democratic Development), Taipei, Yuedan, 1999, p. 102. 6. William Case, Politics in Southeast Asia: Democracy or Less, London, New York, Routledge, 2003, pp. 245-264. 7. Robert Wade, “State Intervention in ‘Outward- Looking’ Development: Neoclassical Theory and Taiwanese Practice”, in Gordon White (ed.), Developmental States in East Asia, London, St Martin's, 1988, pp. 30-67. 8. Chu Yun-han, Crafting Democracy in Taiwan, Taipei, Institute for National Policy Research, 1992, p. 134. 9. Chen Mingtong, Paixi zhengzhi, op. cit., pp. 16-18. 10. Chen Ming-tung and Chu Yun-han, “Quyuxing lianhe duzhan jingji, difang paixi yu shengyiyuan xuanju: yi xiang shengyiyuan houxuanren beijing ciliao de fenxi, 1950-1986” (Regional Oligopolistic Economy, Local Factions, and Provincial Assembly Elections: An Analysis of the Socio-economic Background of Candidates, 1950-1986), Proceedings of the National Science Council, Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1992, pp. 89-90. 11. For a detailed and first-hand description of this process see Chan Pi-hsia, Maipiao canhuilu (Confession of Vote-Buying), Taipei, Shangzhou, 1999. 12. Shelley Rigger, Machine Politics in the New Taiwan: Institutional Reform and Electoral Strategy in the Republic of China on Taiwan, unpublished PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1994, pp. 94-98 and pp. 167-172. 13. Joseph Bosco, Taiwan Factions, op. cit., p. 122. 14. Chen Tung-sheng, Jinquan chengshi, op. cit., pp.36-38. 15. Xin xinwen (The Journalist), No. 319, p. 53. 16. Joseph Bosco, Taiwan Factions ,op. cit., p. 138. 17. Chin Ko-lin, Heijin: Organized Crime, Business, and Politics in Taiwan, Armonk, M.E. Sharpe, 2003, p. 154. 18. Shelley Rigger, Politics in Taiwan, op. cit., p. 148. 19. For a recent example, see the Taipei Times (Internet Edition), May 25th 2004. 20. Liao Chung-hsiung, Taiwan difang paixi de xingcheng fazhan yu zhibian (Origins, Development and Qualitative Change of Taiwan's Local Factions), Taipei, Yunchen, 1997, pp. 180-181. 21. Chao Yung-mao, Taiwan difang zhengzhi de bianqian yu tezhi (Change and Characteristics of Taiwan's Local Politics), Taipei, Hanlu, 1997, p. 290.
China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 37
22. Liao Chung-hsiung, Taiwan difang paixi, op. cit., pp. 179-180. 23. Lianhe bao (United Daily News), Internet edition, September 22nd 2000. 24. Shangye zhoubao (Business Weekly), Internet edition, No. 605, 2000. 25. See for example Huang Kuang-kuo, “Tanwu wenti“ (The Problem of Corruption), in Yang Kuo-chü and Yeh Chi-cheng (eds.), Taiwan de shehui wenti (Taiwan’s Social Problems), Taipei, Juliu, 1991, pp. 485-486; Ershiyi shiji jijinhui (21st Century Foundation), Taiwanren kan zhengzhi (How the Taiwanese See Politics), Taipei, Zhonghua weixinsuo, 1998, p. 54 and p. 145; Zhongyang yanjiuyuan minzuxue yanjiusuo (Academica Sinica, Department of Ethnology), “Taiwan shehui bianqian jiben diaocha jihua: di san qi di yi ci diaocha jihua zhixing baogao” (Taiwan’s Social Changes Basic Survey Program: First Executive Report in the Third Period), 1995, http://140.109.196.210/sc1/download/ 84q.pdf, accessed May 2002, 112-113; Chang Yu-tzung, Wenhua bianqian yu minzhu gonggu: Taiwan minzhuhua jingyan de bijiaoguan (Culture Shift and Democratic Consolidation: Taiwanese Democratisation in Comparative Perspective), Unpublished Dissertation, National Chengchi University, 2000, p. 60 and p. 69. 26. Zhongyang yanjiuyuan minzuxue yanjiusuo, “Taiwan shehui bianqian jiben diaocha jihua”, p. 112. 27. Chen Ming-tong, “Local Factions and Elections in Taiwan’s Democratization”, in Tien Hung-mao (ed.), Taiwan’s Electoral Politics and Democratic Transition: Riding the Third Wave, Armonk, London, M.E. Sharpe, 1996, p. 180. 28. Ibid., pp. 181-182. 29. Steven J. Hood, The Kuomintang and the Democratization of Taiwan, op. cit., p. 110. 30. Chen Ming-tong, Paixi zhengzhi, op. cit., pp. 250-253. 31. Ibid., pp. 254-55. 32. The indicted politicians of course enjoyed immunity from persecution. As even a convicted criminal can run for political office, it is possible to extend immunity infinitely. A prominent example is former Taichung county council speaker Yen Ching- piao who was sentenced to 12 years in prison because of organised crime activities. While in prison, he became a candidate for the 2001 legislative elections and eventually won a seat. 33. Quoted in Chin Ko-lin, Heijin, op. cit., pp. 191-192. 34. Ibid., pp. 168-170. 35. Chao Yung-mao, Taiwan difang zhengzhi, op. cit., p. 281; Chin Ko-lin, Heijin, op. cit., pp. 169-170. 36. Liao Chung-hsiung, Taiwan difang paixi, op. cit., pp. 179-180. 37. Quoted in Chin Ko-lin, Heijin, op. cit., p. 170. 38. Ibid., p. 178. 39. Gongzhi renyuan caichan shenbaofa, Art. 3. 40. Gongzhi renyuan caichan shenbaofa, Art. 6. 41. Gongzhi renyuan caichan shenbaofa, Art. 10. 42. Gongzhi renyuan caichan shenbaofa, Art. 11. 43. Taipei Times, Internet edition, July 12th 2001. 44. Chin Ko-lin, Heijin, op. cit., p. 263. 45. Zhongguo Shibao (China Times), Internet edition, November 18th 1998. 46. Zhongguo Shibao, Internet edition, May 25th 1997. 47. Republic of China, Ministry of Justice, Fawubu saochu heijin xingdong fang’an zhi jinxing qingxing ji xuxiao baogaobiao (Report Table of State of Implementation and Effects of the Ministry of Justice’s Action Programme to Sweep Out Black Gold), China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 38 www.moj.gov.tw/chinese/d3_5_detail.aspx? jobtype=14&jobid=1300000002>, 2000, accessed March 2004; Republic of China, Ministry of Justice, Saochu heijin xingdong fang’an houxu tuidong fangan (Follow-up Programme to the Action Programme to Sweep Out Black Gold), China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 39 ABSTRACTS This article analyses the policies of the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration’s policies to fight corruption, organised crime and vote-buying from two different perspectives. The first looks at policy, examining formulation, implementation and the impact of the most relevant measures taken. The other is an institutionalist perspective, explaining how constraints have limited the relevant actors’ scope of action, resulting in outcomes often not matching those intended. China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 40 Same Content, Different Wrapping: Cross-Strait Policy Under DPP Rule Mikael Mattlin 1 In the popular and especially Peking’s view, there is a substantial difference between the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Kuomintang (KMT) with regard to their position on cross-Strait political relations. But how great is this difference in reality? These past four years of the DPP’s first term in power provide us with the evidence of the DPP’s cross-Strait policy in action, evidence that enables this comparison to be made. The first two years of Chen Shui-bian’s first term as president saw a more conciliatory policy, which became a tougher approach starting in the late summer of 2002. On the whole the DPP’s cross-Strait political relations diverged surprisingly little from a trajectory set already in the last years of KMT rule: of maintaining the ROC state in the face of increasing international isolation; the insistence on the position that Taiwan is an independent state; and frequent signalling of openness to talks with Peking as long as these did not include a “one China” policy as a precondition. 2 The article first briefly analyses the circumstances surrounding the election victory of Chen Shui-bian in 2000, compares KMT and DPP policies towards mainland China, and assesses the ups and downs of cross-Strait relations under the Chen presidency. It further identifies some structural constraints shaping the relationship and that foster a continuity of policy across regimes: Lee Teng-hui’s “legacy people” in Chen Shui-bian’s cross-Strait policy apparatus, the domestic political stalemate in Taiwan, and structural differences in policy-making in Taipei and Peking that make it difficult for the two parties to achieve agreement on anything substantial and tend to cause the positions to revert to one of no significant change. The article ends with a discussion of the changes that took place in cross-Strait politics with the change of administration. The 2000 surprise change 3 Chen’s victory in 2000 was in many ways premature. Many within the DPP had set their sights on the 2004 elections. Only a year before the elections it looked like Chen Shui- bian, who had lost the Taipei mayoral elections in December 1998, would not stand a chance. But the soured relations between Lee Teng-hui and Soong Chu-yu came to a head, resulting in Soong leaving the KMT and running as an independent against party- China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 41 nominated Lien Chan, and as it turned out, sealing Chen’s victory. The day after his victory at the DPP campaign headquarters, a campaign organiser—asked how they were going to handle the Peking relationship—said the campaign team had spent the whole night thinking about this particular issue as, not expecting to win, they had not really prepared for it in advance 1. 4 The DPP came to power with an inexperienced team. Nowhere was this clearer than in cross-Strait policy-making. The new administration was forced to sift through academia and old KMT hands in its search for suitable talent that it could use. Even so, it was criticised for using many inexperienced young people. Much of the beginning of the term was therefore a mix of governing enthusiasm, naïve optimism and policy flip- flops, as election promises met with realities of government. 5 Chen adopted a conciliatory tone towards Peking in his inaugural speech on May 20th 2000, saying that as long as Peking had no intention to use military force against Taiwan, he pledged that during his term of office he would not declare independence, not change the Taiwan’s national title, not push ahead with the inclusion of the so- called “state-to-state” description in the constitution, and not promote a referendum to change the status quo with regard to the question of independence or unification. In addition, Chen pledged that the abolition of neither the National Reunification Council, nor the National Reunification Guidelines would become an issue2. On the other hand, the speech also contained some provocative rhetoric, such as the speech theme “Taiwan stands up”; an obvious play on Mao Zedong’s famous words in 19493. 6 The new administration’s naïve optimism was abundantly clear with respect to its mainland policy, where it seems that many in the new administration genuinely believed that small goodwill gestures, such as opening up the so-called three small links, limited opening of travel for mainland businessmen, professionals and tourists to Taiwan, and significant toning down of independence rhetoric would induce Peking to return to the negotiation table4. The administration did not get the response it sought. 7 The shock at Chen’s victory was evident in Peking. Few mainland scholars even considered Chen as being in the race for the presidency (at least publicly)5. Apparently only the Chinese National Security Bureau had the guts to predict that Chen might win6. Nevertheless, in the public sphere Peking sensibly refrained from rash judgement, instead adopting a cautious policy towards the Chen administration. On the day of the election the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council announced that no matter who the new leader of Taiwan would be they would “listen to his words and watch his actions” (jiang ting qi yan, guan qi xing) to see in which direction he would take cross- Strait relations7. KMT and DPP formal cross-Strait policy 8 The KMT position on cross-Strait relations underwent considerable modification during the 1990s. The decade started with a substantial number of “Old Guard” mainlanders in leading positions within the party and an essentially unchanged mainland policy since the time of Chiang Kai-shek. In 1991 the KMT government dropped its claim to rule over all of China in the first of a series of six constitutional amendments. But the party still adhered to the idea of one China, although disagreeing with Peking over the interpretation of the concept, as evident in the supposed consensus revolving around “one China, with different interpretations” (yi ge Zhongguo gezi biaoshu) achieved in Hong Kong in 1992 as a preparation for the Singapore talks in China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 42 1993. This consensus has, however, since been disputed in Taiwan by both the KMT government and the DPP8. 9 The Old Guard within the KMT grew increasingly uncomfortable with Lee Teng-hui’s more obvious localisation policies in the early 1990s and finally left the party in 1993 to form the New Party. Mainland/Taiwan relations began to deteriorate after Lee Teng- hui’s visit to the United States and the missile rehearsals in 1995-96, and hit a low point in July 1999 when Lee Teng-hui talked about “special state-to-state” relations (teshu de guo yu guo guanxi) in a Deutsche Welle interview. The 1999 statement followed earlier similar but less provocative formulations. In 1997 the ROC government had already sharpened its stance by saying that one should talk about one divided China 9, while through 1997-98 Lee Teng-hui several times mentioned that the ROC is an independent sovereign nation. The KMT’s position on Taiwan’s status seems to have moved with Lee Teng-hui’s position during the 1990s towards more clearly emphasising Taiwan as a separate entity. 10 The DPP, on its part, has moderated its official stance on cross-Strait relations since the party charter of 1991, which contained a clause on working towards independence. On October 20th 2001, the DPP Party Congress decided to elevate a resolution (Taiwan qiantu jueyiwen) from May 8th 1999, to guiding line in its mainland policy10. The key point in the 1999 document is that the DPP already regards Taiwan as an independent, sovereign nation and therefore sees no need to declare independence. This could be construed as a moderation of the DPP’s earlier position. The document also insisted that any change to this status quo would require the consent of the people through a referendum11. The new interpretation had been flouted publicly a year earlier in a seven-point statement by the DPP Central Standing Committee, apparently as a response to Clinton’s visit to China and his so-called three no’s statement12. 11 In August 2002 Chen Shui-bian used the characterisation “one country on each side” (yi bian yi guo) to describe cross-Strait relations. Chen’s new concept and an earlier DPP document entitled Cross-century China Policy White Paper both echo Lee’s state-to-state relations13. Thus, the two main political parties, having started the 1990s with radically different cross-Strait policies, ended the decade with substantially converged positions. 12 Peking, for its part, spelled out its Taiwan position perhaps most clearly in a White Paper14 published just before the 2000 election. It explains how Peking sees the dispute over Taiwan; why it regards Taiwan as belonging to itself; elaborates on the importance of the one China principle; and gives indications of what its bottom-line in the conflict might be. 13 The one China principle continues to be the cornerstone of Peking’s stance on the Taiwan issue. However, Peking seems to have realised in recent years that it needs to show some flexibility on this. Consequently, it has tried to widen its definition of one China, most notably perhaps in a new formulation first mentioned by the former Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen that “There is only one China in the world. Both the mainland and Taiwan belong to the same one China, and China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are inseparable”15. The cross-Strait rollercoaster 14 The first two years of Chen’s administration were a chequered story perhaps best characterised by such phrases as “haphazard”, “fits and starts” and “damage control”. Domestic politics quickly took over the agenda as one crisis followed the other, seemingly non-stop. Cross-Strait relations were of necessity put on a backburner and China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 43 most cross-Strait initiatives during this time were small technical/administrative issues dealt with by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), such as opening the so-called three small links, preparation for the three big links, allowing mainland investments in some economic sectors, and gradual opening up of visits to Taiwan by mainland tourists, professionals and businessmen. Semi-official “soundings” continued through a handful of unofficial and semi-official envoys, such as Chen Chung-hsin a DPP legislator who heads the party’s Mainland Affairs Department, and Hong Chi-chang—two of the few DPP people acceptable to Peking16. But apparently these came to naught as political positions still remained too far apart17. 15 Having finally regained its balance in domestic politics, the presidential office returned to the cross-Strait fray in August 2002. By the summer of 2002, the key actors in Taipei’s cross-Strait policy-making were very disappointed at what they saw as Peking’s failure to respond in a positive way to what they thought of as their own expressions of goodwill; a moderate inauguration speech by Chen in 2000, unilateral opening of the three small links and expressions of a willingness to talk about anything, as long as the one China principle was not a precondition for talks, to name a few18. 16 The Nauru-incident, when allegedly Nauru was bought off by Peking and switched political recognition was the apparent trigger for a rhetorical sharpening of Taipei’s mainland policy. When even staunch unificationist Elmer Feng appeared content with Chen Shui-bian’s cross-Strait policies, DPP insiders realised that it was time to take two steps back in order not to lose all political bargaining chips19. In quick succession Chen Shui-bian made several statements talking about “one country on each side” and about a possible defensive referendum, for the first time as a realistic option. This set the tone for cross-Strait relations for the latter two years of Chen’s first term. Tensions between Taipei and Peking, simmering since July 1999, rose a few more notches following the inclusion of the word “Taiwan” on ROC passports, Chen’s visit to the United States, and not least after Taiwan announced a “defensive referendum” in conjunction with the 2004 presidential election. 17 Peking was extremely unhappy about the referendum, which it saw as a ploy to take Taiwan one step further towards outright independence by introducing a procedure through which for example constitutional changes could be sanctioned20. The Communist leadership’s trust in Chen Shui-bian, which had been low to begin with, fell to a nadir. But Peking refrained from repeating the mistake it had done during previous elections of coming with a direct and harsh warning to Taiwan voters just before the election, unless warnings to Hong Kong before Taiwan’s presidential election are regarded as a veiled threat to Taiwan. 18 Taipei had, through the referendum, taken one step further away politically from Peking, but had fallen short of crossing the proverbial “red line”, which is starting to look like a moving target. Peking, to its relief, found a face-saving exit in arguing that the fact that the referendum voter turnout did not exceed 50% showed that the Taiwanese people rejected Chen’s policies21, and was not forced to act. “Watching his deeds, listening to his words” seems to have been taken rather literally in Peking. 19 Peking stuck to its cautiousness regarding public action after the election. The Taiwan Affairs Office issued a seven-point statement before the inauguration speech. The statement contained the usual vague and unspecific rhetorical threats and a diatribe about Chen having broken all the promises he made in 2000 and being untrustworthy. However, it also notably did not mention the “one country, two systems” policy, while China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 44 it did adopt the new and slightly more flexible “one China” formulation in lieu of the “one China” principle22. 20 On the whole, the PRC government adopted a passive role towards Taiwan in Chen’s first term. Whether this is a reflection of Peking being at a loss for options23, or having decided to let economic integration take care of the Taiwan problem, or just silence before the storm, is hard to tell. But whichever the case, the long-term trend towards Taiwan’s clearer political separation from the mainland, which had started during Lee Teng-hui’s years as president continued in a similar piecemeal pattern during Chen’s first term. Continuity in cross-Strait relations—structural determinants 21 There are a number of reasons for continuity in cross-Strait policy, many of them structural in nature24. One obvious source of policy continuity in Taipei is the simple fact that the DPP, short on talent in the cross-Strait policy-making area, made use of several people left over from the Lee Teng-hui administration25. Key cross-Strait policy- making insiders, who followed on to the next administration were for example Tsai Ing-wen, the MAC Chairperson in Chen’s first administration, Chang Jung-feng, Deputy Secretary General of the National Security Council until the summer of 2003, Lin Chong-pin, who continued as vice-chairman of MAC and NSC member, and later became Deputy Minister of Defence, Wu Rong-yi, president of the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER), and Tien Hung-mao, one of Lee Teng-hui’s policy advisors, who became the first Foreign Minister in the Chen government. The first two are commonly believed to be the “brains” behind Lee’s 1999 state-to-state comments26. Chen also inherited Lee’s military and security apparatuses almost intact. Not until some 15 months after taking office did Chen carry out a reshuffle of leading positions within the military/security apparatus, replacing several Lee Teng-hui loyalists with his own people27. 22 The marching order in Taiwan’s cross-Strait policy-making was described by a high- ranking government official in an interview as the President―the National Security Council―the Executive Yuan—the MAC28. Since Chen’s re-election, DPP stalwarts have taken over many key positions. Chiou I-jen returned to the post of Secretary-General of the National Security Council (NSC), while Parris Chang became Deputy Head of the National Security Council and DPP Legislator Chen Chung-hsin was appointed senior advisor to the NSC. Joseph Wu was appointed the new MAC Chairman, while former Taipei County Commissioner Su Tseng-chang now heads the Presidential Office29. The new Foreign Minister Chen Tang-sun is known for his strong support for Taiwan’s separate identity. Meanwhile, the current cabinet continues to be headed by Yu Shyi- kun, Chen’s 2000 election campaign director and former DPP Secretary-General. The first cabinet was initially headed by Tang Fei, a former KMT Minister of Defence. 23 A second structural source of non-change in cross-Strait policy was the domestic political stalemate in Taiwan30. Although Chen might have wanted to move faster on several fronts, as anecdotal evidence suggests31, he was recurrently blocked by a Legislative Yuan he did not control. The legislative majority was in the hands of the “pan-blues” (WW, fan lan), who narrowly managed to retain the majority in the December 2001 Legislative Yuan elections. Even parts of Chen’s own administration and party were unruly and obstructionist. The first two years often left the impression that Chen Shui-bian was charging ahead on his own, oblivious to his administration, party or the opposition. When this obviously did not work, Chen convened the so-called China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 45 Economic Development Advisory Conference (EDAC) in the late summer of 2001 apparently in order to calm the turbulent political situation through this inclusive forum. Chen also introduced regular co-ordinating procedures between the presidential office, the DPP party headquarters and key DPP legislators in the summer of 2002 to at least bring his own “team” better on board32. 24 But the fundamental predicament remained: the Legislative Yuan was still in the hands of the pan-blues and major changes were therefore unlikely, unless they were in areas which the pan-blues would find hard to oppose due to popular support, like the Referendum Act that finally passed almost as a pan-blue drafted version in late 200333, or the decision to halve the legislature34. Chen then found himself juggling with contradictory requirements from Peking, the opposition and not the least those of the DPP’s “core” supporters who wanted to move more aggressively towards clearer independence. Chen’s weak domestic position was naturally well known also on the mainland side35, and Peking was therefore reluctant to enter into any kind of political talks with Chen, instead hoping that Chen’s administration would be only a temporary aberration. 25 Taipei’s cross-Strait policy cannot be considered without paying attention to Peking’s stance. A famous adage by Tip O’Neill says that all politics is local. There is no reason to doubt that this is the case also in mainland China and Taiwan. A Taiwanese expert on the PRC has argued that Taiwan’s internal dynamics normally rank below China’s domestic situation and the international environment (in particular relations to Washington) in determining Peking’s Taiwan policy36. Similarly, much of Taiwan politics, including Taipei’s cross-Strait policy, is affected by the island’s recurrent elections. Taken together, these domestic constraints make cross-Strait “openings” difficult and likely to come to nothing, as the counterpart is usually unable to respond in the desired way, due to pressures from domestic audiences. 26 The PRC’s Taiwan policy-making is structurally conservative. Scholars have argued that even though individual minds within the policy-making elite would be open to new ideas, several structural and procedural factors constrain creativity in decision-making and biases towards maintaining the existing policy line. Changing the basic position in any direction, but in particular as regards the one-China principle, becomes exceedingly difficult. For example, Jiang Zemin seemed unable to drop the idea of “one country, two systems”, which tended to keep the formula afloat although it is obviously a stillborn idea in Taiwan37. Until recently, Jiang still retained a central role in Taiwan policy-making38. It remains to be seen whether Jiang’s stepping down from chairing the Military Affairs Commission will bring more flexibility to Taiwan policy-making. 27 One scholar sees the lack of institutionalisation of PRC domestic politics and the vulnerability of the regime’s legitimacy base as major sources of its inflexibility39. Whatever the reasons, the current cross-Strait policy-making apparatus in Peking could probably be described as cautious, deliberative and conservative, reflecting an over-arching need to maintain social and political stability. Major changes in policy are rare and thoroughly planned. 28 In comparison, Taipei’s cross-Strait policy-making under Chen has been activist, impatient and somewhat haphazard, driven partly by a need to introduce new themes and tout policy “achievements” before every major election. Whereas we may hypothesise that Chiang Ching-kuo’s administration probably worked more similarly to Peking’s today and Lee Teng-hui’s administration still retained elements of it due to the China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 46 one-party legacy, Chen Shui-bian’s administration so far has had a different style of working, starting from the president surrounding himself with thirty-something rising stars instead of a venerable gerontocracy, and being driven very much by opinion polls, media and election considerations, perhaps a bit like Clinton’s administration. 29 To what extent Taipei’s impatience is a reflection of Chen’s personality is an open question. Close observers tend to describe Chen as a kind of impatient whirlwind who wants to get things done fast40. But one could also argue that it is a function of Taiwan’s fast-paced political scene. Frequently, by the time Peking has come around to an official reaction to some event in Taipei, Taiwanese attention has already moved on to the next political show. For example, it took the Chinese state media until January 8th 2004 to offer an indirect reaction to the pan-blue camp’s “surprise” endorsement of the Referendum Act in November 200341, while it took almost two months for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council and its counterpart within the Communist Party to come back with an official reaction to Chen’s re-election42. In this sense, the mental gap between Peking and Taipei has grown in the past years. Of course, things are changing in Peking as well as younger leaders prefer less ritual and pomp and more tangible action. But there is still a gap and Peking genuinely seems to have a hard time understanding Chen Shui-bian. 30 These two machineries can perhaps be characterised as two trains moving at different speeds: Taipei’s bullet train is charging ahead impatiently craving for tangible results, but by the time Peking’s slower workhorse reaches the station, Taipei has already become frustrated and moved on to the next stop. The gap never closes and the frustration is mutual. To make matters worse, in cross-Strait policy it seems that Peking’s preference is for clarity, whereas Taipei finds it has more room for manoeuvre the greater the obscurity. Chen Shui-bian talked vaguely about “integration” (tonghe) as a basis for cross-Strait relations early in his first term43, while recently he made an ambiguous reference to the Hong Kong 1992 meeting as a basis for discussions44. Peking has been far more consistent in insisting acceptance of “one China” is the only basis for talks and peaceful relations. Only the definition and formulation of “one China” has subtly evolved. 31 Thus, even if Chen Shui-bian initially set out to genuinely achieve a breakthrough in cross-Strait relations, this structural discord makes achieving any significant change inordinately difficult. Not surprisingly, Chen reverted to an earlier more confrontational position with regard to Peking and handling of cross-Strait relations. The structural constellation tends to push policy back to a gridlock, where both sides insist on the other side accepting preconditions for talks. At the beginning of his second term, Chen once more seems to be trying a more conciliatory approach. He will probably be frustrated again. Changes: the subtle and not-so-subtle 32 We need however to point out that there are also a few notable areas of subtle and not- so-subtle change in cross-Strait relations between the late Lee Teng-hui years and Chen Shui-bian’s reign. One of the major areas of change concerns the state of trilateral communications and trust between Taipei, Peking and Washington. Another possible change concerns the clearer role Taipei has taken in setting the cross-Strait political agenda and therefore “driving” cross-Strait relations, if only by default. 33 A major problem in the current state of cross-Strait relations is a serious break in communication channels. Even semi-official communication channels between Taipei China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 47 and Peking have been down since Lee Teng-hui’s 1999 “state-to-state” comments. Before those statements, semi-official channels were open and relations cordial to the extent that envoys Koo Chen-fu and Wang Daohan were able to meet in Shanghai less than a year before. As noted above, during Chen’s presidency, Taipei-Peking communication appears confined to the occasional messenger, a few private secret meetings, rhetorical shadow-boxing and occasional trial balloons. 34 At the same time, Taipei-Washington communication channels have also been troubled, to say the least, after Chen’s coming to power. Chen’s 2000 presidential election victory had been largely unexpected in Washington. As a consequence, there were few people in the United States who had good contacts with the DPP leaders or a good understanding of the party. Chen’s perceived unpredictability has also generally lowered trust in him in Washington, even among traditional Taiwan supporters45. There is empirical evidence to suggest that Washington has not been well informed in advance of several of Chen’s more controversial initiatives, such as the “one country on each side” statements and the referendum plan. 35 A pattern has already emerged: Chen makes a sudden controversial statement; Washington is astounded after which key officials in the Chen administration rush to Washington to explain Chen’s intentions. Now, there is of course the possibility that this is only a show and that in reality Washington has been briefed in advance. But from Taipei having to back down and moderate the formulation of the referendum questions due to strong pressure from Washington to the seemingly genuine surprise and dismay of seasoned American Taiwan-watchers at some of Chen’s actions, this appears unlikely. Needless to say, in the current state of heightened cross-Strait tensions, bad communication is a potentially dangerous added source of misunderstanding and miscalculation. 36 It has been common to regard cross-Strait relations as being decided on the axis between Peking and Washington. Certainly, Peking believes it can handle the problem directly with Washington without needing to talk to Taipei46. But this view fails to take into account that neither Washington nor Peking currently have either a clear consensus on how to handle Taiwan, or an interest in actively changing the situation. And neither does Taiwan, in an absolute sense. However, relatively speaking, one could argue that Taiwan currently actually has a stronger consensus on cross-Strait relations than either mainland China or the United States47; one revolving around maintaining the status quo. On the other hand, there is also a realisation in Taiwan that the status quo, if left unattended, will inevitably lead to slow absorption by China through unstoppable economic integration and a steadily squeezing international space. This provides a strong impetus for a more activist approach in Taipei among those who dread to see this happen. 37 It seems that Taipei has been pushing hard lately for the international community to confront the problem of Taiwan’s international status, well aware that most other countries are now ready to turn their eyes away if Taiwan is absorbed by the PRC, due to China’s greater economic importance. Chen has apparently purposely “pushed the envelope” repeatedly by making provocative statements or creating events that draw international attention to Taiwan. One such signal was the referendum organised in conjunction with the 2004 presidential election and the 2-28 mass rally accompanying it48, which was seen as highly provocative both by Peking and by many in Taiwan. Another was the campaign for WHA observer status. Whether these actions have China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 48 worked in the desired way or not is debatable. What they do seem to have done is snatch the cross-Strait steering wheel at least for the time being to Taipei. Talk of a new or revised Constitution by 2006 and earlier hints of a possible referendum on it49 is now setting the timetable for cross-Strait relations. A sense of urgency among the independence-minded in Taipei is creating an equal sense of urgency in Peking50. So, if only by default, the agenda for cross-Strait relations is now largely set in Taipei. A crisis is already scheduled for some time between 2006 and 2008. 38 Of course, it is open to debate whether Taipei’s increased activism in cross-Strait matters started with Chen Shui-bian. One could make a good case that a more activist role was taken already by Lee Teng-hui in his last years in office by an active “dollar diplomacy”, frequent visits by the president abroad, several constitutional amendments and attempts to define a clearer separate status for Taiwan in speeches and writings. However, it is probably too simple to see Chen just as a disciple of Lee. Well-positioned observers tend to take the view that Chen’s relations with Lee are respectful, but not particularly close51. Chen has continued on a road earlier travelled by Lee, but not necessarily because of Lee. 39 It is perhaps more appropriate then to see the major change in Taipei’s cross-Strait policy as not one between two political parties’ or two governments’ policies/positions, but rather as a long-term gradual transformation spanning two decades and affecting the whole society. The gradual nature of this transformation should not obscure its magnitude. More changes to come? 40 This brings us to a final caution on a conclusion. Although I have in this paper argued that in substantive terms there was not very much change in DPP and KMT cross-Strait policy between the first Chen and the last Lee terms in office, this does not mean that we can as yet draw such a conclusion for the entire Chen period. Chen Shui-bian was significantly hampered in his first term by his being a minority president without a majority in parliament and with an administration not entirely under his control. In the second term, he will be in a much better position to enact substantive changes. With 50% of voter support and a last term in office, Chen is domestically in a much better position to push through new policy initiatives. And although most observers seem to agree that he is primarily a tactician and not an ideologue, it does not mean that he does not want to leave without a legacy for his eight years in office. 41 In this context it is perhaps relevant to note that, while Chen’s second inauguration speech on May 20th 2004 was generally greeted as conciliatory in tone, he notably did not mention the “five no’s” directly. The “five no’s” had been a key concession from the Taipei point of view towards Peking, and Peking had been relatively content with them52. In their stead, Chen offered the sentence: “Today I would like to reaffirm the promises and principles set forth in my inaugural speech in 2000. Those commitments have been honoured—they have not changed over the past four years, nor will they change in the next four years”53. This is a suitably obscure sentence that can be interpreted either way. 42 Chen also slightly softened his call for a referendum on the new constitution by including the following lines in his inauguration speech regarding passage of the new Constitution: “Procedurally, we shall follow the rules set out in the existing Constitution and its amendments. Accordingly, after passage by the national legislature, members of the first and also the last Ad Hoc National Assembly will be China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 49 elected and charged with the task of adopting the constitutional reform proposal as passed by the legislature, abolishing the National Assembly, and incorporating into the Constitution the people's right to referendum on constitutional revision. By so doing, we hope to lay a solid foundation for the long-term development of our constitutional democracy, and the people’s right to referendum on legislative proposals for constitutional revision’54. 43 Again, the familiar pattern resurfaces: at snail’s pace Taiwan edges towards clearer political separation from the mainland by taking full advantage of the grey and the obscure in politics. 44 Chen has already shown that he can play hardball with Peking. It appears that he is gearing up to formally cement the achievements of the localisation trend in Taiwan through a new Constitution. The circle closes. Chen Shui-bian appears to be following in Lee Teng-hui’s footsteps also in the sense of revealing himself to be a bold political schemer. NOTES 1. Interview with Lee Chun Yi, Taipei, March 19th 2000. 2. Chen Shui-bian inauguration speech, May 20th 2000, Taipei. Available at: http:// www.president.gov.tw/1_president/e_subject-043.html, accessed June 11th 2004. 3. Scholars have interpreted Mao’s words as referring not to all Chinese people, but rather to those who were on the side of the revolution. Raisa Asikainen, “Nationalismin rakentaminen ja Kiinan ulkosuhteiden retoriikka”, Kosmopolis, No. 1, 2003, pp. 61-62. The same interpretation could be made of Chen’s speech. 4. “Taiwan official says he expects breakthrough in cross-Strait ties”, Taipei Times, January 31st 2001, p. 1. 5. Half a year before the presidential election, an expert on Taiwan’s domestic politics at the Taiwan Research Centre (Tai yan suo) hardly even mentioned Chen Shui-bian when talking about the upcoming presidential election. Talk in Peking, September 1999. 6. Interview with a former policy advisor to the Chinese leadership, Hong Kong, April 2001. 7. Yang Lixian, “Chen Shuibian dangxuan yilai de Taiwan zhengju guancha”, Taiwan yanjiu, Peking, No. 1, 2001, p. 19. 8. “Looking beneath the surface of the ‘One China’ question”, Government Information Office, Executive Yuan, Republic of China, 1997. Available at: http://www.taipei.org/ whatsnew/onechina.htm, accessed June 11th 2004, and Lianhe bao (United Daily News), June 21st 2000. 9. Ibid. 10. Editorial, “DPP finally adjusts to new role”, Taipei Times, Internet edition, October 22nd 2001, p. 8. China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 50 11. Document available at: http://www.future-china.org.tw/links/plcy/dpp/ dpp19990509.htm, accessed July 19th 2004. 12. Yu Keli, Xie Yu and Dang Chaosheng, “Minjindang liang’an guanxi zhengce fazhan yanbian chutan”, Taiwan yanjiu, Peking, No. 2, 2001, p. 19. 13. Kua shiji Zhongguo zhengce baipishu, document available at: http://www.future- china.org.tw/links/plcy/dpp/dpp19991115.htm, accessed July 19th 2004. See also Yan Anlin and Lu Xiaoyan, “Minjindang zhizheng yu haixia liang’an guanxi”, Taiwan yanjiu, Peking, No. 3, 2001, p. 38. 14. “The One-China Principle and the Taiwan Issue”, White Paper released by the Taiwan Affairs Office and the Information Office of the State Council, February 21st 2000. Available at: http://taiwansecurity.org/IS/White-Paper-022100.htm, accessed June 10th 2004. 15. “Bush Push for Modified ‘One China,’ ‘Integration’”, The China Post, Internet edition, January 16th 2001. 16. “DPP said to be in secret China talks”, Taipei Times, July 25th 2001, p. 1. 17. Interviews with two well-positioned legislative assistants in Taipei, August 2002, and two Lianhe bao journalists, Taipei, March 2004. 18. Interviews with a high-ranking official in the DPP government and a Gongshang shibao journalist, August 5th-9th, 2002. 19. Interviews with a senior DPP legislator, a Lianhe bao journalist and a Gongshang shibao journalist, August 5th-9th, 2002. 20. China Daily, Internet edition, November 29th 2003, p. 1. China Daily, Internet edition, January 8th 2004, p. 5. 21. “Taiwan ‘referendum’ vetoed by the people”, China Daily, Internet edition, March 21st 2004. 22. “Zhongtaiban, Guotaiban shouquan jiu dangqian liang an guanxi fabiao shengming”, Taiwan Affairs Office, May 17th 2004. Available at: China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 51 30. Wu Yu-shan, “Taiwan in 2001: Stalemated on All Fronts”, Asian Survey, Vol. 42, No. 1, Jan-Feb 2002, pp. 29-38. 31. “Chen’s young ‘scouts’ learning quickly”, Taipei Times, Internet edition, February 3rd 2004, p. 3. 32. Interviews in Taipei, August 5th-9th 2002. 33. “Legislature passes referendum law”, Taipei Times, Internet edition, November 28th 2003, p. 1. 34. “Lawmakers take first step to cut legislature members to 113 seats”, The China Post, August 24th 2004. 35. See e.g. Zhu Weidong and Xie Yu, “2000 nian Taiwan zhengju fazhan shuping”, Taiwan yanjiu, Peking, No. 1, 2001, pp. 24-29. 36. Lin Chong-pin, “Beijing’s Agile Tactics on Taiwan”. Paper presented at the conference “The Political and Economic Reforms of Mainland China in a Changing Global Society”. College of Social Sciences, National Taiwan University, Taipei, June 2002. 37. Mainland Affairs Council, “Public Opinion on Cross-Strait Relations in the Republic of China”, available at: http://www.mac.gov.tw, accessed May 18th 2004. 38. Chu Yun-han, “Power transition and the making of Peking's policy towards Taiwan”, The China Quarterly, Vol. 176, December 2003, pp. 960-980. 39. Hsu Szu-chien, “The Impact of the PRC’s Domestic Politics on Cross-Strait Relations”, Issues & Studies, Vol. 38, No. 1, March 2002, pp. 130-164. 40. Interviews in Taipei with government official and a Lianhe bao senior political journalist, August 6th and 9th 2002. 41. “Pan-blue camp in Taiwan makes dangerous U-turn”, The People’s Daily, Internet edition, January 8th 2004. 42. See reference 21. 43. “Chen urges China: Help, not hurt us”, Taipei Times, January 1st 2001, p. 1. 44. “Chen seeks Cross-Strait code of conduct”, The China Post, Internet edition, October 11th 2004. 45. Conversations with Shelley Rigger in Taipei, August 2002 and March 2004. 46. E.g. “US, China Co-operate to Fight Taiwan Referendum Plan,” The People’s Daily, Internet edition, September 29th 2003. 47. This view is echoed by some Taiwan watchers. Author’s conversation with Jean- Pierre Cabestan in Hong Kong, April 2001. 48. The referendum and 2-28 mass rally also had other functions. Their main function appears to have been election strategic. 49. “Taiwan to hold referendum on new constitution”, Financial Times, Internet edition, November 11th 2003. 50. Interview with Wu Yu-shan in Taipei, April 2nd 2004. 51. Conversations with Timothy Wong in Hong Kong, April 2001, and an American official observing Taiwan politics, Taipei, August 2002. 52. See reference 21 and “Chen plays tricks in seeking independence”, China Daily, Internet edition, May 26th 2004. 53. “President Chen's Inaugural Address ‘Paving the Way for a Sustainable Taiwan’,” May 20th 2004. Available at: China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 52 ABSTRACTS Surprisingly, cross-Strait political relations under Chen Shui-bian’s first term as President (2000-2004) on the whole diverged little from the trajectory set in the last years of Kuomintang rule. This article analyses the reasons for this continuity. China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 53 From Taiwanisation to De- sinification Culture Construction in Taiwan since the 1990s Bi-yu Chang 1 On February 2nd 2004, less than fifty days before the 2004 presidential election, a reader’s letter in the Lianhe bao ( United Daily News) complained about the lack of cultural vision among the presidential candidates. The author examined the electoral campaigns of the two major parties: the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), and could find no party position on cultural policy. “Where is the future for Taiwan’s culture?”, he wrote, “Even rice wine and plastic bags have had a policy, where is our cultural policy?”1 2 As a matter of fact, cultural policy has always played an important role in Taiwanese politics. For example, the anti-communist principle and censorship were imposed in the 1950s as a means to control cultural expression; the Cultural Renaissance Movement (Zhonghua wenhua fuxing yundong) was launched in 1967 as a counterattack response to the Cultural Revolution developing in mainland China; in 1977, Chiang Ching-kuo included culture in the Twelve National Construction Projects to respond to social change; in 1995, Lee Teng-hui supported the Community Construction Movement (shequ zongti yingzao), to further his political idea of the “community of shared fate” (shengming gongtong ti)2. Quite often, money was poured into projects, and measures were implemented, yet dissatisfaction with the direction that culture-building has taken continues3. But what is at the source of this criticism? Most usually the confusion arising from the question of how “culture” is to be defined, and expectations of what “cultural policy” should be. A web of significance spun by the state 3 Many have taken “cultural policy” as something straightforward that everybody understands. Generally speaking, the term is used to denote “arts policy”, or is described as referring to “a policy dealing with cultural affairs”.4 Taking the anthropological point of view, “culture” encompasses almost everything. Whatever is distinctive about the way of life of a group of people, a community, a society, or a China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 54 nation is culture. Therefore, to define cultural policy simply as arts policy seems overly narrow. 4 As the anthropologist Geertz has written, “man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning."5 To follow Geertz, cultural policy can be seen as the webs that the state tries to spin in order to create such meaning. In other words, any official statement, policy and deliberate action/inaction with the intent to produce such types of meaning and formulate identity can be seen as a form of “cultural policy”, the official indicator of the state's cultural blueprint. Hence, a broadly-defined “cultural policy” is not limited to cultural events, arts funding, arts education or cultural schemes, but also includes language policy, education policy, cultural movements and social policy that can create, as outcomes of such policy, cultural meaning6. 5 I am not suggesting that top-down policies have a direct influence on the way in which our sense of identity is constructed, or on the way we formulate our worldview. The political dimensions of cultural policy are usually hidden and therefore unseen. Framed within the Gramscian idea of “hegemony”7, cultural policy can be seen to be useful in disseminating and popularising a hegemonic discourse, useful in its turn in maintaining state power. Through regulating, funding, and encouraging selected art forms and artists, for example, cultural policy can help the state to create a favoured ideology, reinforce ruling-class-selected values, maintain control, increase cultural capital value, and thus ensure the success of this (cultural and political) “hegemony”. Examination of such so-called cultural policies will reveal the kind of culture the state intents to build, and also help us understand how certain social and cultural changes came about. 6 The year 2000 marked the beginning of a new political era in Taiwan. However, did the course of national culture-building change accordingly? This article looks at how the political parties have constructed Taiwanese culture and identity since the 1990s. The beginning of Taiwanisation 7 For fifty years the KMT kept a tight grip on cultural expression in Taiwan. The “anti- communist literature and arts” (fangong wenyi) principle dominated the early post-war years, followed by a forceful sinification policy―the “Cultural Renaissance Movement”8 in the 1960s. This hit local culture very hard. The use of local dialects was forbidden in schools and public places9, Taiwanese traditional xiqu and folk arts were seen as crude and backward, and Taiwanese history was almost entirely absent from textbooks10. In other words, all things Chinese were associated with sophistication, beauty and grandeur, while all things Taiwanese were regarded as vulgar, stupid and coarse. 8 However, this sinification principle was severely shaken in the 1970s. There were many reasons for this change: the impact of international isolation, domestic demand for political reform, the end of the Cultural Revolution, and most of all, a cultural awakening in Taiwan. The KMT was forced to adopt a more localised and open approach. In 1977, Chiang Ching-kuo decided to include culture as one of the “national constructions”, and in 1981, set up the Council for Cultural Affairs (CCA, wenhua jianshi weiyuanhui) in charge of Taiwan’s cultural development. For the first time, indigenous culture and heritage were promoted alongside Chinese culture, even though a China- centric mentality still dominated the political scene. This changing course of cultural China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 55 policy was not merely a political gesture, but a significant move shifting the cultural emphasis gradually from traditional China to contemporary Taiwan11. 9 In 1987, the lifting of martial law formally set off the process of indigenisation and democratisation. The emphasis in cultural policy shifted from traditional Chinese to contemporary Taiwanese. However, it was the rise of Lee Teng-hui that had the greatest influence in reconstructing Taiwan's political culture. Since the early 1990s, Lee started to openly promote Taiwanisation. For example, he reorganised the CCRC into a new cultural apparatus—the National Cultural Association (NCA, Wenhua zonghui) in 199112, and advocated a “community of shared fate” to encourage the development of Taiwanese consciousness. He urged people in Taiwan, “For our future prosperity, we rely on one another. We are both Chinese and Taiwanese. There is no ethnic difference... We should be able to have an equal footing and equal opportunities.”13 The starting point was “community”14. 10 In response, when the Ministry of Interior revised the Census Registration Law, the zuji15 (WW, ancestral origin) entry was abolished, and replaced with a record of one's “birthplace”. Since then, the records of “second-generation mainlanders” have been officially removed. The ancestral differences between Taiwan-born baby-boomers became blurred. This change not only aimed to reduce shengji16 conflicts, but also demonstrated an official line defining the term “Taiwanese” to cut out unnecessary division. 11 When the KMT mainstream (zhuliupai), led by Lee Teng-hui, won the factional struggle in February 1993, the indigenisation trend finally gathered force and accelerated. Lee announced another slogan “Running Big Taiwan, Establishing the New Zhongyuan” (Jingying da Taiwan, jianli xin zhongyuan), in 1995, shifting Taiwan to the “central” position. He emphasised that his future state policy would "reinforce the superior status of Taiwan as the centre of new Zhongyuan"17. 12 In 1995, with Lee’s involvement and support, the CCA launched the Community Construction Movement. It was designed by anthropologist Chen Chi-nan18, to be a mechanism to build Taiwanese consciousness and a new identity. Its ultimate goal was to encourage local people to care for their own environment, to make their own decisions, and to create community consciousness and a sense of belonging and pride.19 This policy has extended beyond the domain of arts policy, to create a “cultural vision”—construction of a “new homeland” (xin guxian)20. 13 All of a sudden, an originally political claim of “being one’s own master and managing one’s own affairs” (dangjia zuozhu) became a major concern in people’s daily lives. Even with its shortcomings and the difficulties it encountered since its launch, the Community Construction Movement changed the infrastructure of Taiwanese society, cementing into it a sense of community, boosting Taiwanese awareness and constructing Taiwan as the “Homeland”. Symbolically, this movement was the beginning of the official gesture to sever connections with the Chinese-centric identity that the KMT had promoted previously. 14 This increased local empowerment enhanced interest in Taiwanese culture and involvement in community affairs. In addition, the long-awaited education reform began around the same time. Education in Taiwan has always been conservative and slow to respond to social change, because it played a role as the final stronghold where the ruling power could construct ideologies and reproduce its values21. The KMT started both the standardised textbook system and nine-year compulsory education in China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 56 1968, in the attempt to control ideological construction. By imposing both systems at the same time, Taiwan’s education after 1968 provided only one version of “the truth”, and created a generation of Taiwanese who saw no other serious possible alternative to the economic and cultural assemblage then in place22. 15 The call for liberalisation in education began in the early 1980s, but change came late. It was not until 1996 that the standard textbook system was finally abolished in the elementary schools, and 1999 in junior and senior high schools23. Since then, Taiwanese teachers have finally been given the freedom to choose textbooks and have a say in how their teaching is conducted. 16 Even though the Ministry of Education (MOE) recognised the necessity to increase indigenous content in textbooks, it was slow to act. For example, the MOE had rejected several proposals to set up Taiwanese literature departments in universities. Soon after Lee Teng-hui won the first Presidential election in 1996, the tide turned. 17 In 1997, a new subject was added to the new junior high school curriculum: “Getting to Know Taiwan” (renshi Taiwan). However, it was attacked for being full of errors and over-politicised. Some criticised the content as selective and partial, some condemned the deliberate omission of Japanese colonial suppression, some identified an editorial prejudice against aborigines and women, and some suspected an attempt at de- sinification (qu Zhongguo hua)24. In spite of the controversy, the new subject was implemented. In the same year, the first Department of Taiwanese Literature was also approved at the Aletheia University (then Tanshui Management College). Since then, the MOE has not only approved the establishment of many Departments of Taiwanese Literature25, but has also aggressively encouraged their development in order to cope with the pressing need to supply teachers to teach Local Studies (xiangtu jiaoxue), a new compulsory subject26. 18 After being forced to take on an indigenised stand in the 1980s, the KMT carried out Taiwanisation more aggressively and openly under Lee Teng-hui’s lead. “Taiwanisation” was used by the KMT to gain support, renew its outdated image, and maintain cultural hegemony. Cultural policy in the 1990s, such as the Community Construction Movement, took up the role of promoting Taiwanese culture, fostering a sense of Taiwanese awareness, and promoting a new set of values. 19 The process of “Taiwanisation”, which began in the 1980s and accelerated in the 1990s, altered the previously dominant China-centric identity, and created a new national- popular consensus. As a result, rebuilding a long-ignored indigenous culture became a common concern. The discourse of Taiwanese subjectivity was forming, and a new Taiwanese identity was emerging. Within only a few years, people’s own perception of their identity changed dramatically27. By the late 1990s, the trend of Taiwanisation was accepted as politically correct. In accordance with Gramsci’s idea of hegemony, the political regime change was achieved by a change of cultural hegemony. In 2000, the DPP won the Presidential election, because of what it represented—a Taiwanese awareness and subjectivity that had become increasingly popular. In contrast, this change of culture, being partially promoted by the KMT, ironically led to the KMT’s downfall. DPP culture construction 20 Since the DPP candidate Chen Shui-bian won the Presidential election in 2000, indigenisation has taken centre stage and become the DPP’s top priority. An era of Taiwanisation finally got into full swing. However, facing the competition and impact China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 57 of China hosting the 2008 International Olympic Games, the DPP launched the Challenge 2008—National Development Plan to increase Taiwan’s international competitiveness28. 21 According to the Government Information Office (GIO)29, the “Challenge 2008” project is built around ten programmes, aiming to achieve significant political, financial and fiscal reforms. Substantial investments will be made in areas to improve manpower, R&D and innovation, logistics networks, and the living environment. 22 According to the Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD)30, the aim of the scheme was to turn Taiwan into a “Green Silicon Island” (lüse xidao)31, aspiring to create a clean, high-tech and innovative island-state. 23 However, the scheme was severely hit soon after its launch, firstly by the impact made by September 11th incident on the world economy, and the uncertainty brought on by the war in Iraq, and secondly by the heavy blow dealt by the SARS epidemic in 2003. In order to boost the economy and renew the focus of Challenge 2008, less than two years later, the Executive Yuan announced Ten New Major Construction Projects in November 2003, expecting to invest NT$500 billion in five years32. It is fair to say that Ten New Major Construction Projects are the cream of the Challenge 2008 project. This is an attempt designed to speed up the process of Challenge 2008 and ensure its completion33. 24 According to the GIO, the vision and aims of the projects are to: “strengthen Taiwan’s international competitiveness and ensure that Taiwan keeps its number one position in Asia, and boost the drive to enter the global top three” (qianghua Taiwan guoji jingzhengli, quebao Yazhou di yi, jinjun shijie san qiang)34. It is obvious that the DPP government is aiming high. Stripping away the policy cliché and nationalist sentiment and ambition, the aim of the DPP was to make Taiwan ascend in the international arena as a world-class economic powerhouse, and a high-tech hub. 25 In keeping with the goal of turning Taiwan into a Green Silicon Island, the cultural emphases in these two national plans are placed on creativity, multicultural expression and domestic tourism. The ten new major construction plans clearly set up the task of building a Homeland in Taiwan, to construct a land of innovation and to preserve its natural beauty. However, the hidden agenda here is not just about becoming one of the global top three, but is in fact aimed at transforming Taiwan into a competitive, advanced, high-tech and culturally unique land, different in every way to China. Three tendencies of the DPP culture construction 26 In comparing the cultural policy of the KMT and the DPP in the last two decades, it is clear that the former is more conservative and constantly struggling with its old nationalist baggage, while the latter celebrates Taiwanese-ness wholeheartedly and tries to create a new spiritual homeland. On the whole, the emphases on community construction and indigenisation remain unchanged between the two regimes. That said, the DPP cultural policy has three unique tendencies: an emphasis on the economic value of culture industries, the theorisation of Taiwanese subjectivity, and branding Taiwan as a cultural product. China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 58 The Yinge pottery museum, Taipei county, opened in 2000 © Gilles Guiheux Emphasis on economic values 27 Since the DPP came to power, it has forcefully advocated the economic value of the cultural and creative industries. Instead of concentrating on high culture as the KMT used to do, the DPP has shifted its focus to creative industries (including: design, tourism, popular music, film, fashion and digital industries), and stresses the added values they can bring. A new discourse has been created. By quoting the results of UNESCO research and taking European countries (especially the UK) as examples, the DPP proclaims that “culture is good business”, emphasising the potential for employment and describing cultural industries as “sunrise/future-oriented industries” 35. 28 As a matter of fact, this approach is not new in Taiwan. In 1996, the theme of the Community Construction Movement was “industrialising culture, and culturalising industry” (wenhua chanye hua, chanye wenhua hua), encouraging the marriage between local culture and industry (including agriculture, tourism, arts and crafts)36. However, the focus then was mainly on consolidating local communities and creating a sense of pride. Since 2000, this has shifted to boosting domestic tourism and stressing the economic benefits of culture. Consequently, instead of funding traditional categories in the arts, holding events, or promoting community construction, the DPP’s cultural focus was more drawn towards how to increase its economic value. 29 Then CCA Chairwoman Tchen Yu-chiou37 (2000-2004) warned that the Community Construction Movement could not help Taiwan’s traditional agricultural society cope with the impact of Taiwan entered the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Hence, a shift from “community building” to “local industry development” was necessary38. China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 59 30 As a result, tourism becomes the major solution for combining local culture, natural resources, and commercial activities. Cultural tourism appears to provide all the answers: updating the social fabric of an agricultural society and transforming traditional farming practices into service-oriented industries. Furthermore, it provides the Taiwanese with opportunities to explore the unknown beauty of Taiwan, to consume cultural products and local delicacies, and to allow expression of affection towards one’s homeland. For the DPP government, cultural tourism is a win-win policy —the Taiwanese learn to appreciate the long-ignored beauty of their homeland, and at the same time, their consumption also benefits local economies and regenerates depressed areas39. 31 According to Tchen Yu-chiou40, local culture should be the vehicle to improve tourism and increase employment opportunities. Such development would be, she believed, mutually beneficial for both urban and rural lives, and helpful for the revival of the local economy. Such remarks seem to suggest that the value of “culture” exists solely on its capability to “earn money” and “make contributions to the economy”. 32 To help local industries modernise and transform into some form of cultural product, the CCA launched a “Local Culture House (difang wenhua guan) Programme” in 2002. This programme encouraged private investment in setting up local cultural houses for performances and exhibitions. Bringing together the artists, local historians, the tourism industry, agricultural industry, and town planning staff, the programme had a holistic approach. Before the 1970s little recognition was given to local arts and culture © Imaginechina 33 In the ten new major construction plans, most cultural investment was made in building art houses and culture centres41, and developing cultural tourism. However, China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 60 the major emphasis of DPP cultural investment was placed on constructing buildings, not culture; and on creative industries, not creativity. 34 Furthermore, the DPP has repeatedly emphasised two issues: “culture” and “environment” in its national construction plans, setting the target of Green Silicon Island. The DPP government seems to be more concerned about environmental issues and cultural development, and hence, a more sophisticated and visionary government compared to the KMT with its constant emphasis on economic growth. 35 The ideal of building a “green island” seems, according to the national construction plans, to be the natural outcome of the industrial transformation of upgrading Taiwanese industries to a non-chimney industrial environment. Inevitably, tension grows between the wish to “preserve culture and natural resources” and the need to “develop the economy”. 36 For example, the Water Resources Agency is considering building four artificial lakes island-wide to control flooding and ensure water supplies. Environmental groups are now protesting about the lack of environmental impact assessments. However, when the Legislative Yuan passed the Special Statute for Increasing Investment in Public Construction on June 11th 2004, this plan was expected to be the first to be carried out42 despite environmentalists’ objections. It seems that when the economy is at stake, the ideal of building a green island can be easily sacrificed. In other words, the environmental issue is, for the DPP, second to economic growth. Theorising Taiwan 37 Following Lee Teng-hui’s openly promoted Taiwanisation, the KMT government began setting up research centres and museums43 to preserve Taiwanese culture and history, yet without relinquishing its China-centric position44. KMT culture construction seemed to be schizophrenic, being torn between public demands, the pressure from the opposition and the reactionary strains within the party. It pursued indigenisation on the one hand, while emphasising a China-centric ideology and Taiwan’s cultural links with China on the other. 38 When the DPP came to power in 2000, a discourse of “Taiwanese subjectivity” had already grown. Through cultural policy, the DPP government became directly involved in the construction of “what Taiwanese culture was”, introducing a Taiwan-centric worldview, restructuring the framework for the transmission of knowledge and redefining the meaning of “Taiwanese-ness”. 39 In addition to constructing a homeland in Taiwan through tourism, the promotion of Taiwanese literature and the academic discipline of “Taiwan Studies” were crucial for the building of a “spiritual homeland”. As Tchen Yu-chiou said, Taiwanese literature symbolised “a spiritual national territory”, and the promotion of Taiwanese literature indicated a return of power to Taiwanese people to have their say about their own identity and “national narrative”45. 40 Furthermore, an effort to digitise Taiwan’s historical archives has laid the foundations of “Taiwan Studies”, and also ensured ready accessibility. The scale of these digitisation projects is astonishing. More than sixty digital archives projects have been initiated and are under construction46, and several virtual research centres also created47. Digital archives and databases not only provided valuable online resources for academic research, but also offered convenient teaching materials for “Local Studies” in schools. China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 61 41 In order to encourage the development of Taiwan Studies as an acknowledged academic discipline, the funding given to academic research on Taiwan-related topics has risen dramatically. Furthermore, a large portion of foreign aid would also be diverted to scholarships for foreign students to study in Taiwan48. As DPP Premier Yu Shyi-kun suggested, such scholarships would provide many benefits, especially diplomatic ones. Yu predicted, Taiwan would be “forging an important link in the chain of Taiwan’s long-term relations with foreign countries and serving to expand Taiwan’s national power”49. 42 Domestically, the construction of a brand new spiritual national territory through education was also under way. Education could be very effective in constructing “a regime of truth” and a new identity. In 2001, a brand new education system, the Nine Grade Curriculum Alignment for Elementary and Junior High Education50, was launched, integrating the curriculum of elementary and junior-high schools. 43 “Getting to Know Taiwan” was removed from the new curriculum. Instead, the content covering Taiwan has been distributed across a range of subjects51. In other words, “Taiwan” has become the dominant theme of the new curriculum. Furthermore, the subject “Native Languages” (xiangtu yuyan)52 has been made compulsory in elementary schools from the third year upwards for one to two hours per week. It will only become optional when students reach junior high school level. 44 To link up with the Nine Grade Curriculum Alignment system, a new high school curriculum was also announced. The MOE claimed that this new curriculum endeavoured to remove politicised content and avoid ideological baggage. However, the new history curriculum was severely criticised specifically for being over- politicised. 45 The disputes focused mainly on how the curriculum was structured, how history was taught, and what was taught. The new high school history curriculum proposed to draw a historical line in 150053. The first year concentrates on domestic history, including Taiwanese history (prehistory to contemporary Taiwan) in the first term, and Ancient Chinese history (prehistory to the early Ming dynasty) in the second term. The theme of the second year is modern world history. Chinese history since 1500 including the latter part of the Ming dynasty, the entire Qing dynasty and the early history of the Republic of China (until 1949), was classified as part of contemporary world history. 46 The editorial guidelines for high school history textbooks—the “concentric circle” (tongxintuan) theory, proposed by historiographer Tu Cheng-sheng—were the same principles used for compiling “Getting to Know Taiwan”. Tu interpreted this concept as “having its base on Taiwan, concerning China, and having a foot in the international arena” (lizu Taiwan, guanhuai Zhongguo, jinru shijie). This principle emphasised Taiwanese subjectivity, positioning Taiwan at the centre in order to understand its surrounding world and to interpret history. Tu claimed that the starting point of this view is “prioritising Taiwan”54. 47 Structuring history in such a way, the new curriculum was criticised for disseminating the idea of Taiwanese independence, and creating an ideological basis for a political goal: “one side one state” (yi bian yi guo)55. Dividing history at 1500 was condemned as a scheming way of cutting off the cultural umbilical cord with China, and constructing an independent historical subjectivity—“post-Ming Taiwan”56. Tu rejected speculation that his theory acted as a vehicle for de-sinification57. However, the debate continues and China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 62 the new history curriculum is still in the process of consultation and modification. When Tu Cheng-sheng was appointed Minister of Education in May 2004, he announced that the new curriculum would be implemented as planned from the 2006 academic year58. 48 By building up a “spiritual national territory”, encouraging Taiwan Studies and disseminating a Taiwan-central worldview, the DPP is reclaiming Taiwan’s national territory. Alongside constitutional reform in the political sphere, the concept of “national territory” is also under reconstruction. The DPP’s approach is “remapping Taiwan”. Two series of maps of Taiwan were launched in 2003, and successfully challenged the conventional way of seeing Taiwan. The two series were: “Viewing Taiwan from Different Angles: Maps of Taiwanese Perspectives”, and “Taiwan in Foreign Eyes: Maps of International Perspective”. 49 The first series consisted of seven new maps, presenting unconventional approaches to mapping Taiwan’s ethnic, oceanic, linguistic and cultural dimensions, and entitled: Our Eastern Asian Neighbours, Coming From Batan, From Tangshan to Taiwan, Taiwan’s Assertion, My Austronesian Friends, Global Neighbours, Looking at Taiwan from the Seabed. 50 The second series consisted of 32 old maps selected from historical archives. They were chosen to demonstrate how Taiwan was viewed through foreign eyes over the past four hundred years, and to show Taiwan’s maritime connections with the Dutch, the Spanish, the British and the Japanese. 51 As the CCA asserts, “Map... reflects the drawers’ viewpoint and interpretation of a place, and hence, is a symbol of power... Through these [new] maps, Taiwanese subjectivity... is clearly shown, providing opportunities for Taiwanese to understand their homeland and plan for the future”59. These two series demonstrated Taiwan’s international position, showing links with its Asian neighbours and connections with the world since the sixteenth century. The significance of these maps showed that Taiwan’s relationship with China is only a small part of Taiwan’s past. 52 Thus it appears that the DPP government has tried to release Taiwan from the previous discourse of “Taiwan being part of China”. Mapping Taiwan is another way of asserting Taiwanese subjectivity and articulating a national narrative. In other words, the CCA’s attempt to re-map Taiwan is a redefinition of Taiwan’s “national territory”. 53 Furthermore, the DPP has, since coming to power, taken many measures to express a more Taiwan-centric position with the intention of creating cultural meaning and changing people’s values. For example, wording in the new passport has changed60; the issuing bank and the design of new banknotes were changed61; the discourse about the origin of Taiwanese aborigines has been reconstructed62; a plan to relocate capital from Taipei to Kaohsiung was aired63; national holidays are frequently changed64. All these contributed to reframing a new national narrative, generating an independent identity, creating a different worldview, and fading out the shadow of Chinese influence. Branding Taiwan 54 Believing that culture is economically beneficial, the CCA joined forces with the Industrial Development Bureau (Ministry of Economic Affairs) to encourage the development of creative industries, funding modern designs to present Taiwanese culture. In a speech about future CCA policy, then chairwoman Tchen Yu-chiou openly asserted that “using branding techniques to build and introduce an image of China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 63 contemporary Taiwan to the world, cultural and creative industries will be the most important force.”65 55 The CCA took the initiative to organise competitions and give funding, in order to encourage the growth of creative industries, and establish a unique and innovative brand name for Taiwanese products. For example, the “2003 Taiwanese Fashion Party” encouraged Taiwanese designers to introduce indigenous culture into their fashion designs and to use local textiles. According to the Taiwan Journal, an official journal published by the GIO in English, this scheme aimed to create a Taiwanese “national costume … [that] reflects its cultural essence and acts as a touchstone to its national identity”66. 56 The “Searching for Taiwan Red” (xunzhao Taiwan hong) project was another example of using culture to “brand Taiwan”. The scheme was set up to find a colour that represented Taiwan's cultural image in the international society, giving a “uniformed” corporate look, and increased commercial opportunities for Taiwan's cultural products and industries. As Tchen Yu-chiou explained at the launch of Taiwan Red, “Turkey has its turquoise, Taiwan should also have its own colour”67. A shade of dusty pink was chosen, because of its association with traditional culture, festivals and celebrations. It was said that Taiwan Red was like the red of the red rice cake (hongguike). This colour, according to Tchen, represents “the joy of Taiwan”, showing a country with a positive, modern and joyful image, shaking off the sad and bleak old past68. 57 When the exhibition “The Earth From Above” by French photographer Yann Arthus- Bertrand was shown in Taiwan, the CCA negotiated a deal with his workshop to include Taiwan in his next project Visages et Paysages. Then CCA chairwoman Tchen Yu-chiou has high hopes for this project and hopes this opportunity will “let the world see Taiwan and get to understand us better"69. 58 Indeed, “let the world see Taiwan” is the ultimate goal for “branding Taiwan”. For example, the CCA has aggressively promoted 12 potential sites to be accepted by the UNESCO as a World Heritage site70, with the same purpose—let the world see Taiwan71. Similarly, the plans to hold the Taiwan Exposition in 2008, the Taiwanese Arts Exposition in 2005, and the 2009 World Games share the aim of showing off Taiwan’s economic achievement, creativity and cultural development. 59 The desire to “make ourselves known” has been deeply embedded among the Taiwanese since the 1970s diplomatic defeats. As Taylor72 rightly says, the recognition of the “significant others” is crucial for the formation of identity. To gain recognition, it is crucial to create dialogical relations with others73. Over the years, although formal diplomatic relations were developed through much hard work, Taiwan has tried to participate actively in international organisations and has endeavoured to build informal diplomatic relations. In order to break through the PRC diplomatic blockade and avoid direct conflict, “culture” has always been the “dialogue” that creates and articulates an “ideal identity” to the significant others. 60 A new “brand association” of Taiwan is under construction, using marketing strategy, invented tradition and innovative ideas. It is an interesting tactic taking cultural policy as a marketing tool to brand a country. In other words, despite the seemingly apparent emphasis on indigenisation and building a homeland, deep down, the DPP cultural policy is motivated by a desire to promote Taiwan in international society as a new cultural state. Instead of promoting Taiwanese artists performing “traditional Chinese arts” on the international stage, as the KMT did, the DPP has strived to find new ways China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 64 of “narrating” Taiwan. Among all cultural influences in Taiwan, aboriginal culture was identified as the best asset in creating a non-Chinese image and to “sell” Taiwan74. 61 Since 2000, the DPP has carried out culture construction on a grand scale. As described above, the DPP has worked to build a discourse of Taiwanese subjectivity by reaching out at every possible level, from school to community, from commercial behaviour to academic activities. 62 In the past, the KMT used cultural exchange as a means to expand diplomatic relationships. The DPP has taken this further. Taiwan is presented as a cultural product, placed on the international market by the creation of brand names, logos, positioning, brand associations, and brand personality. Taiwan is marketed by the DPP as a place of rich natural beauty and cultural heritage, it has a distinct colour, a highly developed computer industry, and is filled with theatres of international standard. Branding Taiwan articulates an ideal identity and a new version of a national narrative to significant players internationally. By going global, the DPP aims to renew Taiwan’s international image, and cut cultural ties with China. 63 Since the 1990s, the similarities between the cultural policies of the two parties are striking. Both the DPP and the KMT have promised to develop culture, promote community construction, encourage multi-cultural development, and preserve heritage. They have both advocated the establishment of a Ministry of Culture and Tourism75. However, the DPP has been more creative and forceful. The major differences between the two parties are mainly their priorities. 64 The KMT had used Taiwanisation to hold on to its political power and had managed to maintain its cultural hegemony for almost two decades. Although preserving Chinese culture was not as important as developing Taiwanese culture by the end of the 1990s, the KMT government had never given up the cultural link with China. In contrast, the aim of DPP Taiwanisation was de-sinification. It emphasised the unique mixture of Taiwan’s hybrid culture, and embraced the discourse of Taiwanese subjectivity76. 65 In 2004, Chen Shui-bian won the presidential election, and the ideological dominance of the DPP has been confirmed and secured. Taiwanisation has formally become a national-popular consensus. After Chen’s victory, there have been several interesting cabinet appointments. Anthropologist Chen Chi-nan, the architect of the Community Construction Movement, was appointed as CCA chairman in charge of culture construction. His appointment shows the DPP’s continued emphasis on building a new homeland. Historiographer Tu Cheng-sheng was appointed Education Minister. His appointment indicates a further de-sinification of knowledge transmission; Tchen Yu- chiou, former CCA chairwoman and a DPP veteran, was appointed as a National Policy Consultant in the Presidential Office and a cultural ambassador. Because of her past performance in marketing Taiwan, her appointment also represents a more aggressive approach to branding Taiwan. 66 The new cabinet arrangements confirm the DPP’s culture construction strategy— building Taiwan’s brand name internationally, constructing a contemporary hybrid culture in Taiwan, and theorising and transmitting a DPP-versioned national narrative. 67 Even if the KMT had won the 2004 election, according to their White Paper for Culture, their emphasis on Taiwanisation would have definitely continued, promoting digital industry, sport and leisure activities. In contrast, the DPP continues its focus on the construction of community culture, and endeavours to sever Chinese influence. As a China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 65 young and emerging state, or at least a de facto political entity, the DPP government has strived to present Taiwan as an island state in its own right, rather than being taken as a Chinese off-shore island, or a reference point to China. The aim is simple: to reduce the Chinese claim on Taiwanese culture and political ownership. NOTES 1. Lu Lu, “Even Rice Wine Has a Policy, Where is Cultural Policy?”, United Daily News, February 2nd 2004. The DPP did not have a clear cultural policy for the 2004 Presidential election campaign, the KMT announced its White Paper on Culture on February 20th. In contrast, both parties issued their White Papers on Culture for the 2000 presidential election. 2. Lee Teng-hui proposed that people in Taiwan should consolidate as “one community”, emphasising the shared fate and common interests of its people. Lee Teng-hui, Jingying da Taiwan (Managing Big Taiwan), new edition, Taipei, Yuanliu, 1995, p.106. 3. For example, Chu Hui-liang, “Wo guo wenhua zhengci zong jiantao” (Examining Taiwan’s Cultural Policy), National Policy Foundation (NPF) research report, Internet Edition, available at http://www.npf.org.tw/PUBLICATION/EC/093/EC-R-093-001.htm, February 10th 2004; Li Yih-yuan, Wenhua de tuxiang (Portraying Culture), Taipei, Yunchen, 2nd ed., 1996; Han Pao-teh, “What Kind of Ministry of Culture We Need?”,. Independent Evening News, November 5th 1989. 4. Dimaggio P., “Cultural Policy Studies: What They Are and Why We Need Them”, The Journal of Arts Management and Law, Vol. 13, No. 1, Spring 1983, pp. 241-248; Lewis J. , “Designing a Cultural Policy”, The Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society, Vol. 24, No. 1, Spring 1994, pp. 41-56. 5. Geertz Clifford, The Interpretation of Cultures, London, Fontana Press, 1973, p. 5. 6. For example, policies that: change national holidays, street and town names, add the word “Taiwan” to passport covers, change how the census is recorded. 7. Gramsci Antonio, Selections from Prison Notebooks, edited and translated by Quintin Hoare & Geoffrey N. Smith, London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1971. 8. The Cultural Renaissance Movement was the KMT’s attempt to establish its political legitimacy through culture. During ten years of Cultural Revolution in a China closed to the rest of the world, Taiwan successfully provided an alternative, and supplement to traditional China. People in Taiwan were constantly told to believe that the ROC on Taiwan was more Chinese than China. Ku Feng-hsiang, “Twenty Years of Cultural Renaissance Movement”, Zhongyang ribao, Central Daily News, July 28th 1987. 9. In 1966, the provincial government announced the Reinforcement Programme on Mandarin Promotion (Jiaqiang tuixing guoyu jihua). Those found using local dialects in school, even in private conversation, were humiliated and fined. Although local dialects were still used privately or at home, this promotion plan had created a sense of shame and degradation among Taiwanese for using their own languages. Chen Mei-jun, “Taiwan zhanhou yuyan kecheng yu jiaoxue yanbian qushi zhi yanjiu” (Studies on China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 66 Curriculum and Changes of Language Teaching in Post-war Taiwan), Taipei, National Taiwan Normal University, PhD thesis, 1996. 10. Before the 1990s, Taiwan as a subject had always been ignored in Taiwanese textbooks. Taking the “Chinese History” (Benguo shi, 1983 edition) textbooks as an example, the average appearance of Taiwan was less than 5% throughout the six-year period of secondary education. Moreover, the focus of this brief coverage was mostly placed on Taiwan's post-war “development”. Liu Hsiao-fen, “Wo guo Zhongguo lishi jiaokeshu zhong Taiwan shi jiaocun de fenxi” (Analysis of the Textbooks in Taiwan’s History Education [at Secondary Education]), Taipei, National Chengchi University, MA thesis, 1991, p. 107. 11. Chiang Ching-kuo set up the CCA to sideline the Chinese Culture Restoration Committee (CRCC, Zhonghua wenhua fuxing yundong weiyuanhui). It was clear that he intended to replace “cultural renaissance” with “cultural development”. When Chiang Ching-kuo was elected as ROC President in 1978, he declined to follow the precedent set up by his father, and followed by Yen Chia-kan, to hold the CCRC presidency. It indicated the decline of CCRC influence and political support. 12. In 1991, Lee Teng-hui replaced the CCRC with the NCA, and became its president. Before Lee Teng-hui’s political power was stabilised, the NCA constantly played the role as Lee’s mouthpiece to explain and elaborate his political ideas. 13. Lee Teng-hui, “Guojia jianshi yanjiu ban di yi qi shici” (Speech to the First Nation- building Research Group), June 10th 1994, Internet version. 14. Lee Teng-hui, Jingying da Taiwan, op. cit., pp. 106- 107. 15. In the old census registration, a mainlander who came from Quanzhou after 1945 would have his/her zuji recorded as “Quanzhou City, Fujian Province”. However, residents who lived in Taiwan before 1945, even though their ancestors might come from Quanzhou, would have their zuji recorded as “Taiwan”. 16. Shengji literally means “the province of one's birthplace or origin”. According to Wachman, people in Taiwan generally categorised themselves, according to their shengji, as aborigines, Taiwanese (including Minnan and Hakka) or mainlanders. Ethnologically, Taiwan's Austronesian people were the original inhabitants of the island. By December 2003, there were 444,823 Austronesians, making up 1.968% of the total population (22,604,550). The category 'Taiwanese' in this context refers to Han Chinese who (or whose parents) lived in Taiwan prior to the 1940s migration. The category of mainlander refers to Chinese who came to Taiwan after 1945. Therefore, the division of shengji in Taiwan refers not only to origins, but also to the time of arrival on the island. Alan M. Wachman, Taiwan: National Identity and Democratisation, M.E. Sharpe, 1994, p.17; The Department of Household Registration Affairs, the Ministry of Interior, “Zhonghua minguo Tai Min diqu zhongyao renkou zhibiao” (Important Population Indexes in Taiwan and Fujian Regions, ROC), June 8th 2004. 17. The symbolic meaning of Zhongyuan was not limited to a geographical notion, but had more to do with its central cultural position and the significance of political legitimacy. Lee Teng-hui claimed that a new Zhongyuan culture had formed in Taiwan after the Second World War. The slogan not only manifested Lee's intention to build Taiwan as the centre of a new culture, but also demonstrated his wish to build Taiwan as a spiritual homeland, to outgrow and divorce itself from the motherland that had previously been imposed on it. Lee Teng-hui, Jingying da Taiwan, op. cit., p. 11; “Lee Teng-hui xiansheng bashisi nian yanlun ji” (Collective Speeches of Lee Teng-hui in 1995), Taipei, GIO, 1996, pp.11-19. China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 67 18. Chen was recommended to Lee Teng-hui in the early 1990s to advise on cultural issues. He was appointed the Deputy Chairman of the CCA to launch the Community Construction Movement (1994-96). In May 2004, he was appointed CCA chairman. 19. Wenhua baipi (White Paper on Cultural Affairs), Taipei, CCA. 1998, p. 85. 20. Chen Chi-nan, “Xin guxiang yundong, chong xian taohua yuan” (New Homeland Movement Re-Establishes the Land of Peach Blossom), United Daily News, February 18th 1996. 21. Apple Michael, Ideology and Curriculum, London, Boston and Henley, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979, pp. 26 -30. 22. Ibid, p.6. 23. In 1989, the system started to loosen, and allowed publishers to compile some textbooks. However, textbooks for traditional academic subjects (such as Chinese, Mathematics, History, and Geography) and subjects concerning ideology-building (such as Social Studies, Citizenship) were still collectively provided by the National Institute for Compilation and Translation. 24. Wang Chung-fu, Wei lishi liuxia jianzheng: “renshi Taiwan” jiaoke shu cankao wenjian xinbian (Witness History: Collective Documents About “Getting to Know Taiwan” Textbooks), Taipei, Strait Academic Publisher, 2001. 25. There were: the National Cheng Kung University, National Ching Hua University, Providence University, and many normal universities. 26. The Ministry of Education (MOE) started to set up the optional module “Local Studies” in 1993. However, it was made compulsory only in 2001. Weng Tsui-ping, “State-Run Universities will Set Up Taiwanese Literature Department in 2002”, Central News Agency, January 17th 2001. 27. In 1992, the majority of people in Taiwan still considered themselves “Chinese” (44%) or “both Taiwanese and Chinese” (36.5%). Only 16.7% claimed that they were purely “Taiwanese”. This situation started to reverse between 1994 and 1996. The figures of those who identified themselves as “Chinese” kept on falling (21.7% in 1994, 23.8% in 1995, 20.5% in 1996, 23.1% in 1997, 18.7% in 1998, 13.1% in 1999, and 13.6% in 2000) and those identifying themselves as “Taiwanese” continued to grow (28.4% in 1994, 27.9% in 1995, 24.9% in 1996, 36.9% in 1997, 37.8% in 1998, 44.8% in 1999, 42.5% in 2000). The group that saw themselves as “both Taiwanese and Chinese” became the majority. Taipei: Mainland Affairs Council, How People in Taiwan Identify Themselves, 2000 January, (Internet Version), Available at http://www.mac.gov.tw/big5/mlpolicy/pos/ 9001/table12.htm 28. CEPD, Challenge 2008 -- National Development Plan, Internet edition, May 31st 2002. 29. GIO, Ten New Major Construction Projects, Internet edition, 2003. 30. CEPD, Challenge 2008, 2002. 31. Tchen Yu-chiou, “Taiwan wenhua xin siwei” (New Thoughts on Taiwanese Culture), Internet edition, speech in the Industrial Technology Research, February 27th 2004. 32. CEPD, Ten New Major Construction Projects, Internet edition, February 10th 2004. 33. Personal communication with the CEPD (at [email protected]), 30th March 2004. 34. GIO, Ten New Major Construction Projects, 2003. 35. CCA, “Origin of the Project”, The Development Plan for Cultural and Creative Industries, (Internet Edition), 2003. 36. Chen Chi-nan, Shequ zongti yingzao yu shengcheng xuexi (The Community Construction and Life-Long Learning), Taipei, CCA, 1996. China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 68 37. Tchen Yu-chiou, “Difang wenhua guan de zhengce yu shijian” (The Policy and Practice of Local Culture), Difang wenhua guan tongxun jikan (Local Culture House Quarterly), December 2002, Vol. 1, p. 1. 38. CCA, “Origin of the Project”, 2003. 39. CCA, Difang wenhua guan jihua (Local Culture House Programme), September 10th 2002. 40. Tchen Yu-chiou, “The Policy and Practice of Local Culture House”, 2002. 41. The DPP was keen to build cultural facilities and boasted of their “international” standard. Construction plans include: a new Taipei Metropolitan Opera House (Panchiao); the southern branch of the National Palace Museum; the transformation of military-owned barracks into Weiwuying Arts Centre (Kaohsiung); and a new Austronesian Cultural Park (Taitung). Even the negotiations are in deadlock, the plan to build the Guggenheim Museum in Taichung is still listed as one of the major construction plans. 42. “Artificial Lakes Get Attention of Ecology Groups”, Taipei Times, (Internet Edition), June 21st 2004. 43. There are plenty such examples that were set up in the late 1990s but opened after 2000, including the preparatory offices of the National Centre for Traditional Arts (set up in 1996), the Traditional Music Research Institute (1999), the National Museum of Taiwanese Literature (1997) and the National Cultural Heritage Preservation and Research Centre (1997). 44. Lee’s decision to rescue Taiwan’s Peking opera was a good example. The Ministry of National Defence (MND) had been the authority responsible for the preservation and performance of Peking opera since 1949. Under pressure from the opposition, the MND decided to dissolve all three Peking opera groups in November 1994. It was a sensitive pre-election period, and the objections within the KMT alarmed Lee Teng-hui. Advised by then Secretary-General to President Chiang Yen-shih, Lee overturned the dissolution proposal. Instead, he instructed Chiang to rescue the plan by entrusting the MOE with the task of setting up a national Peking opera group. 45. “National Museum of Taiwanese Literature is Formally Opened”, Tainan City Government newsletter, October 17th 2003. 46. Involved institutions include: the Academia Sinica, the CCA, the Academia Historica, National Museum of Nature and Science, National Palace Museum, National Taiwan University, Taiwan Literature Museum, and National Central Library. 47. For example, the Japanese Government-General in Taiwan archive, the “Taiwan History and Culture in Time and Space” and the “Database of Native Geographical Names in Taiwan Region”. 48. A total of NT$80 million (US$2.4 million) will be provided to choose at least 200 foreign students each year. The programme is expected to run for tenars and will gradually grow to fund 400 foreign students receiving more than NT$140 million each year. “Government Tries to Lure Foreign Students with Cash”, Taipei Times, Internet edition, June 7th 2004. 49. GIO, “Yu Calls for Scholarships for Foreigners to Study in Taiwan”. GIO newsletter, December 2nd 2003. 50. Chang Shu-fang, “Tan guomin jiaoyu jiu nian yiguan kecheng fazhan » (The Development of the Nine Grade Curriculum Alignment for Elementary and Junior High Education), Zhongshi tushuguan guanxun (Taichung Teachers College Quarterly), Vol. 28, China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 69 Internet edition, December 1999. Available at http://lib.ntctc.edu.tw/info/info28/ info28-1.htm 51. “Explanation of the Abolishment of ‘Getting to Know Taiwan’ Subject”, MOE newsletter, October 15th 2001. 52. It includes Minnan yu, Hakka dialect, and aborigine languages. 53. According to the Editorial Committee for History Curriculum, the reason for choosing 1500 was because: “it was the beginning of frequent communication between countries... no nation or culture could be isolated from the world”. Also, they believed, that the major events that happened in China the after sixteenth century were mostly the result of the interaction with other countries or foreign forces. “Do not Judge the High School History Curriculum With Fixed Ideologies”, MOE newsletter, September 23rd 2003. 54. “Tu Cheng-sheng’s Concentric Circle Theory Emphasises Indigenous Culture and Prioritising Taiwan”, Central News Agency, May 19th 2004. 55. Wu Chan-liang, “Xia yi dai xuyao shenme yangde shiguan?” (What Kind of Historical View Does the Younger Generation Need?), China Times, Internet edition, September 19th 2003. 56. Sung Kuo-cheng, “Zhe jiu shi women yao de bentuhua ma?” (Is This Indigenisation What We Want?), Xin xinwen (New Journalism), Vol. 865, Internet version, October 7th, 2003, p.56. 57. “Legislators Clash over High School History Textbooks”, Taipei Times, Internet version, October 16th 2003. 58. Huang I-ching, “High School New Curricula will be Implemented in 2006 as Planned”, Liberty Times, (Internet Version), May 19th 2004. 59. “Taiwan guandian ditu xilie, huan ge jiaodu kan Taiwan” (Maps of Taiwanese Perspective: Viewing Taiwan from Different Angles), CCA website, 2004. 60. The English word “TAIWAN” has been added to the cover of all Taiwanese passports since September 2003 to differentiate the Taiwanese from the mainland Chinese. 61. National currency is generally regarded as a symbol of national identity and autonomy. Since 2000, a set of newly designed banknotes has been issued in Taiwan. Although the decision to change the design was made in 1999, the most significant difference was the change of the “issuing bank”, from the Bank of Taiwan to the Central Bank of China (Zhongyang yinhang, the bank’s own translation). Over the years, several revisions of Article 13 of the ‘Central Bank of China Act’ were made. The Central Bank had legally been appointed the issuing bank for national currency since 1961, and the New Taiwanese Dollars were regarded “equivalent to national currency” since 1967. However, in order to maintain the image of the ROC representing China, the Central Bank did not issue New Taiwanese Dollars directly, but had entrusted the Bank of Taiwan to issue the currency. When Chen Shui-bian came to power in 2000, the DPP government soon acted to implement Article 13. New Taiwanese Dollars are now issued by the Central Bank of China, and consequently, are the national currency. 62. In recent years, a discourse―Taiwanese aborigines being part of the Austronesian community―has been widely disseminated. Through academic research and official support, this discourse has developed fast. Consequently, the ties between aboriginal peoples of Taiwan, Philippines, Malay, and New Zealand are growing strong. 63. On a visit to Kaohsiung in June 2004, Vice President Annette Lu claimed that the DPP government was considering a relocation of ROC capital to Kaohsiung after 2009. She explained that the South represented the local voice, and the relocation was part of China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 70 the DPP’s action to achieve the South Revolution (Nanfang geming). However, Lu’s proposal was soon denied by the DPP government. The term “South Revolution” appeared after the 1998 elections, when DPP candidate Chen Shui-bian lost his Mayoral seat in Taipei and KMT candidate Wu Tun-I lost his Mayoral seat in Kaohsiung. Some believed that it was the beginning of a north-south divide. In general, the term “South Revolution” refers to the DPP’s goal of diverting power from the Central Government in the North to the South. 64. Since the late 1990s, the dates of national holidays have changed drastically. Since the late 1990s, the KMT government had gradually cancelled several national holidays which were considered politically incorrect or outdated, such as the Youth Day (or Martyrs Day, March 29th), Taiwan Recovery Day (October 25th), and Chiang Kai-shek’s birthday (October 31st). After Chen Shui-bian came to power in 2000, the DPP cancelled another two national holidays: Sun Yat-sen’s Birthday (November 12th), and Constitution Day (December 25th). 65. Tchen Yu-chiou, “New Thoughts on Taiwanese Culture”, 2004. 66. Rita Fang, “Fashion Designers Enlisted to Create National Costume”, Taiwan Journal, November 15th -21st 2003. 67. Chen Hui-min, “Red Will be our Cultural Colour”, Financial Daily News, January 20th 2004. 68. Young Shao-hua, “Taiwan hong, kaifa wuxian wenchuang chanzhi” (Taiwan Red, Developing the Unlimited Industrial Added Value of the Creative Industries), Qian zazhi (Money Magazine), Internet edition, January 2004. 69. Wu Mercy, “CCA Launches Project to Highlight Taiwan”, E-Taiwan News, Internet edition, February 19th 2004. 70. By May 14th 2004, the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO has appointed 754 properties worldwide to the World Heritage List (582 cultural, 149 natural and 23 mixed properties in 178 states). See: UNESCO, World Heritage website. The People’s Republic of China has had 30 sites listed, while Taiwan has none. Since 2002, through the recommendation of the local governments and scholars, twelve sites (such as the old mountain railway on the Ali Mountain, Kinmen, and Fort Santo Domingo) were selected by the CCA to propose to the World Heritage Committee “Denglu shijie kanjian Taiwan” (Listed in the World Heritage, Taiwan will be Seen), Internet edition, 2003. http:// wpc.e-info.org.tw/PAGE/DISCUSS/taiwan_heritage.htm 71. Ibid. 72. Taylor Charles, “The Politics of Recognition”, in Amy Gutmann (ed.), Multiculturalism and 'The Politics of Recognition': An Essay, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1992, p.32. 73. Ibid, p. 34 74. As well as Chinese Minnan and Hakka cultures, the DPP claimed that Taiwanese culture was a mixture of pre-historical, aboriginal, Dutch, Spanish and Japanese cultures. Austronesian culture was identified as the most important dimension of Taiwanese-ness since it would differentiate Taiwan from China. Tourism Bureau, “Ershiyi shiji Taiwan fazhan guanguang xin zhanlüe” (New Strategy for Taiwan Tourism in the 21st Century), available at http://202.39.225.136/auser/b/stratagem/ index.htm 75. Lee Shun-te, “The Ministry of Marine Affairs is Denied, the Councils for Aboriginal and Hakka Affairs are Secured”, United Daily News, September 8th 2004. China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 71 76. Tchen Yu-chiou claimed that Taiwanese culture was a hybrid mixture of 60% Chinese culture and 40% other cultures, including: Austronesian, Japanese, American and western European cultures. Tchen Yu-chiou, talk in Taiwan’s Social and Political Landscape Since 2000, SOAS, September 29th 2004. ABSTRACTS What triggered the change in Taiwanese identity in the 1990s? How has a sense of Taiwanese- ness been constructed since then? How does the state formulate Taiwanese culture and create meaning within that culture? This article looks at how Taiwan’s ruling parties have constructed Taiwanese culture and identity since the lifting of martial law. It compares the continuity and differences in cultural policies between two political regimes—the KMT’s apparent emphasis on indigenisation and the DPP’s push for de-sinification—focusing mainly on the policy of Taiwanisation. China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 72 Media reform since 1987 Taiwan’s media are still at an early stage of democratisation but it cannot be denied that progress has been made Gary D. Rawnsley and Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley 1 In his inauguration speech of May 20th 2004, President Chen Shui-bian discussed his vision for his second administration, and commentators on Taiwan politics have dissected and analysed the meaning and implications of his plans. One sentence, buried within a paragraph on reform, has largely gone unnoticed: “Persist with reform – We shall forge ahead in response to the people’s demand for reform in our political and judicial system, in the educational system, and in our financial and fiscal infrastructures; for improvement in the quality of our media1; and, for comprehensive social reform”. 2 It is only too easy to miss this reference to the media as Chen’s discussion of the constitutional “re-engineering project” dominated his inaugural address. The glass is either half empty or half full: critics may claim that Chen glossed over media reform because his administration believe it is a non-issue; the more optimistic among us might take heart from the fact that media reform was mentioned at all, and the brief reference to it is an indication that much has already been achieved. 3 Both sides of this debate agree that media reform is a valuable indicator of democratisation. It provides a benchmark that reveals an abundance of information about the levels of freedom, tolerance, social justice and pluralism within a political system2. We now accept that the media were central to the development of both democratic culture and procedures in Taiwan3. The media landscape has extended beyond any previously imagined horizon, and audiences can choose from a plethora of outlets—print, broadcast and internet—demonstrating that Taiwan has created a genuinely pluralistic media environment. 4 This article reviews the changes that have taken place since the lifting of martial law (jieyanfa) in 1987 and gives a perspective of how the media are faring at the beginning of Chen Shui-bian’s second term. His administration is routinely criticised for not having paid sufficient attention to irregularities that continue to impede the development of a free and democratic media. Detractors were particularly vocal during China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 73 and after the controversial 2004 presidential election when the predominantly “blue”4 media were able to present a decidedly prejudiced picture of the campaign, raising again the problem of biased coverage of politics5. 5 However, while the record reveals that Taiwan’s media are still at an early stage of democratisation we cannot deny the progress made, and that Taiwan’s media look increasingly similar to those operating in systems at comparatively similar stages of democratic consolidation6. Under the KMT 6 When the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) began the dual processes of social liberalisation and political democratisation in 1987, the state system had already been exercising tight control over print and broadcast media for thirty years. The government had enacted a series of laws—some vague, some more explicit—that detailed the responsibilities of the media and the sanctions they faced if the laws were violated. Directive No. 3148, issued in June 1951, was the most interesting as it suggested the more insidious methods that the government would continue to use to control the media. (The Directive used the need for paper rationing to justify why the press were subject to politically managed restraint7). Many such laws were as vague and arbitrary as possible, thus allowing the state to exercise expediency in their interpretation and application. In contrast, the government felt no need to hide behind paper rationing in the martial law, Article 11 of which defended limits to press freedom on grounds of national security, while the Law on Publications (chubanfa)8 described how the government could close a daily newspaper without recourse to judicial process or authority9. Moreover, while government censors did not inspect newspaper copy before publication, the legal machinery did allow the government to recall and confiscate newspapers after publication if they had printed anything that conflicted with political or military interests. 7 However, the most direct method of influence was also the most simple: ownership of media enterprises. In addition to claiming legal authority, in the early 1980s the KMT owned four national daily newspapers, the government owned two, and the military five, but the implied separation was deceptive because of the overlapping character of party/state/military political authority. A similar structure managed the three oldest national television stations, Taiwan Television Company (TTV), China Television Company (CTV) and Chinese Television System (CTS). Again, these were owned by the government, the party and the military (See Table 1). 8 In addition, the KMT government successfully managed the media through the creation of a complex patron-client network that allowed agencies representing the KMT, the provincial government and the state to manage media appointments. This meant that newspaper editors either were members of the KMT or were supportive of the KMT’s political agenda, thus sympathetic journalists, owners and political appointees were located in prominent and powerful “gate-keeping” positions within the media. For example, the proprietors of the two privately owned newspapers with the highest circulation, Zhongguo shibao (China Times) and Lianhe bao (United Daily News) were members of the KMT Central Standing Committee. These private newspapers may have challenged the government press for readership, but their owners guaranteed that they would be supportive of the government. “To a certain extent, the obligation to be profitable, the need to sell, incited the private papers to distance themselves from China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 74 propaganda, while remaining within limits acceptable to the regime, in order not to end up being closed down”10. 9 Exceptions to this pattern of ownership were rare, but did offer some hope that the voice of the Taiwanese would find a channel of expression in mainstream publications. Zili wanbao (Independent Evening News) and Minzhong ribao (People’s Daily) were owned and controlled by Taiwanese. Taiwan shibao (Taiwan Times), located in Kaohsiung, was also privately owned and independent, publishing what Bruce Jacobs called “strongly worded editorials and comments”11. Even in a media environment subject to myriad political and legal restrictions, the KMT was prepared to accept a level of press independence. 10 Such limited exceptions notwithstanding, the restricted political environment of Taiwan under martial law constrained the media from doing little other than comply with a government demand that they act as agencies of transmission for the official ideology. Attempts to evade the law were met with severe punishment: during the “White Terror” (baise kongbu) between 1950 and 1987, hundreds of reporters, writers and editors were purportedly harassed, interrogated and often jailed12. After martial law 11 The lifting of martial law in 1987, and the social liberalisation and political democratisation that followed, allowed for the dramatic transformation of Taiwan’s media environment. The most noticeable change was the rapid proliferation of legal media. The figures are instructive. By mid-2003, there were: • 602 newspapers (31 between 1951 and 1987; 393 in August 1999) • 174 radio stations (prior to 1993, there were only 33; call-in radio stations were legalised in 1994) • Four national television stations (compared to three when liberalisation began in 1987) • Access to hundreds of cable channels broadcasting local and international programmes (the transmission and reception of cable television broadcasts remained illegal until 1993)13. These channels include a national public television system. 12 The KMT’s role in this process should be acknowledged, and Taiwan passed a milestone in September 1989 when the then Director of the Government Information Office (GIO, xinwenju)14, Shaw Yu-ming, observed that self-regulation by the media was preferable to state supervision. He also recognised that, in a democratic political system, the media have a responsibility to scrutinise the decisions and behaviour of the government and hold it accountable for its actions: “The government,” he said, “is … under the surveillance of the media, and it is not suitable for the government to use administrative means or the law to punish them. That would raise criticisms about freedom of the press being hampered”15. Chu Jiying, Director of the KMT Cultural Affairs Department echoed these sentiments. In a democracy, he said: “the press is the spokesman of the public’s interests. I believe that the role of the party’s spokesman is to provide information, not to control the news. He must manage information, not control it. He must explain the party’s policy to the media and relay public opinion to his superiors. The rigid, domineering political style is out of date”16. 13 From exercising political, economic and legal restraint on the media so that they might serve a distinct ideological and developmental agenda, the KMT had moved to a position where the party recognised that its ambition for a democratic society was impossible without a free and independent media. This was the first tentative step in China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 75 the separation of the media and politics in Taiwan, an aspiration for which President Chen Shui-bian assumed full responsibility after his inauguration in 2000. Under Chen Shui-bian 14 Chen’s election campaign identified political influence in the media as an urgent problem that required resolution. Given that his party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) had suffered from the KMT’s monopoly on information and media17. Chen’s interest in this matter was not surprising. To realise his ambition of separating the media and politics (processes and institutions), Chen understood that he would first have to deal with the issue of media ownership. 15 The outlook was promising. First, Chen’s administration announced that it would relinquish its shares in the media. Then, the government could make a start in limiting partisan and state influence in the media. While the former objective was easy to achieve, the latter aim was less successful for three reasons: first, while noble in vision, it was difficult to accomplish, and the government has never formulated a coherent plan to suggest a solution. Second, the political environment is not particularly conducive to such reforms. Although Chen won the presidency in 2000, a “blue” majority in the Legislative Yuan has routinely hampered the administration’s reforming efforts of a number of serious issues. Third, the political interests in the media were so powerful and so embedded that it would be tricky to untangle the complex corporate patron-client network that structured the media industry. 16 In fact, members of the DPP enjoyed privileged positions within the media industries during the process of liberalisation and were themselves reluctant to concede to change. The most prominent case was that of Cai Tong-rong (Trong Chai), a DPP legislator and member of the party’s Central Standing Committee. While serving as an elected representative, he also worked as chair of Formosa Television (FTV), a DPP- supporting national television station that he helped to establish in 1997 to break the KMT’s broadcasting monopoly18. This was a significant test case; if the DPP was seen to be so serious in separating media from politics that it was prepared to lose such high- level control of the only television station that openly supported the party, the sincerity of the administration could not be questioned. Under pressure from the government and the media, Cai announced his resignation in September 2003. 17 The then Director-General of the GIO, Chung Chin, was tasked with finding a solution. “Our basic aim, she told the Education and Culture Committee of the Legislative Yuan, is to filter out improper influences, both political and commercial, that may stand in the way of the neutrality of news gathering and presenting”19. The proposed means of accomplishing this aim were unimaginative and had little effect. The committee discussed, and then shelved its proposal to prevent government, state or political parties from owning majority shares in media enterprises. The suggested reason for the setback was the members’ reluctance to take potentially controversial steps that might undermine the freedom of speech Taiwan had only just acquired. China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 76 1. Ownership of TTV, CTV, CTS and FTV Sources: Wang Zhen-huan, “Guangbo dianshi meiti de kongzhi quan” (Control of the Broadcasting and TV Media), in Zheng Rui-cheng et al. (eds.), Jiegou guangdian meiti: jianli guangdian xin zhixu (Deconstructing the Broadcasting Media: Establishing a New Order for the Broadcasting Media), Taipei, Cheng Society, 1993, pp. 77-128; Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley, Public Service Television in Taiwan, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Leeds, 1998; Chen Bing-hong, Jiegou meiti (Deconstructing the Media), Taipei, Yeh-yeh Book Gallery, 2003, pp. 289-290 18 However, the Legislative Yuan did finally succumb to executive pressure and passed the reforms. In February 2003, the KMT announced that it would comply with the new law and sell its stockholdings20. Such remedies to a seemingly intractable problem were only possible with the political will of all political parties, and especially the opposition KMT that had most to lose from these reforms. For their part, TTV and CTS face two options for future reform. Either they can become part of a new public television group, or they can follow CTV’s example and become fully privatised organisations. At the time of writing (July 2004) 25% of Taiwan Television Company belongs to banks owned by the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministries of Defence and Education still control the Chinese Television System (see Table 1). The difficulties in overcoming traditional ownership patterns are most telling, and it is unfortunate that partisan and government influence is still pervasive. 19 In the same way that ownership of television stations lends credibility to accusations of political bias, so the press are routinely criticised for being partial to one particular party. The United Daily News and the China Times, the two broadsheets with the highest circulation in Taiwan, have been rounded on as a mouthpiece of the blue alliance, especially during the 2004 presidential election. Critics have discovered an apparent absence of professionalism among journalists and editors working for these China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 77 newspapers, suggesting that they do not follow the news agenda, but choose instead what to cover and how from a blue political perspective21. 20 This is a serious, but unfair accusation, as newspapers throughout the democratic world tend towards bias in favour of one political party or platform. In a commentary in the English language Taipei Times, Lee Ming-tsung alluded to the “emotional and slightly emotional language” that the China Times and United Daily News used to describe protestors following the 2004 presidential election, concluding that “it is probably better to call that material ‘propaganda’ rather than ‘reports’ or ‘commentaries’”22. Yet, no one familiar with the tabloid press in Britain―especially those that position themselves on the right wing of the political spectrum―will be surprised that newspapers in democratic societies can act in this way. In fact, Taipei Times is a sister newspaper of Taiwan’s Chinese-language broadsheet with the third highest circulation, Ziyou shibao (Liberty Times). Both the Liberty Times and the Taipei Times follow their own political agendas in favour of the “green” (i.e. pro-DPP) alliance. In other words, KMT- oriented newspapers may dominate the market, but alternative newspapers promoting alternative political platforms are available. Again, this is not unusual; in Britain, the newspaper market is dominated by titles that are supportive of the political right. Yet, the left-leaning Guardian newspaper is sold alongside the more Conservative Daily Telegraph. The bias is overt, and the choice of opinion available to the average newspaper reader is considered a blessing23. 21 Neither should we overlook the influence of cable television in Taiwan. In addition to the four major national television stations, there are hundreds of cable channels competing for audience attention. Since legalisation in 1993, cable television has become an increasingly powerful source of information, especially during elections. According to the Advertising Yearbook of Taiwan, for the elections of the Legislative Yuan in 2001, the political parties spent about NT$2 billion in advertisement on non-cable television and NT$5.5 billion in cable television24. An advertisement of just ten seconds on TTV, CTV and CTS would cost NT$33,000 and on TVBS NT$30,00025. There are currently six major cable system operators (see Table 2), and while some are inclined towards the blue camp, most are far more concerned with making profits and therefore do not operate according to any specific political agenda,. 22 Another method that Taiwan’s government has tried to facilitate the separation of politics and media is to regulate the tendency for politicians to control their own television or radio stations, or become media celebrities by hosting their own programmes. As of March 2003, 15 elected politicians hosted or produced television or radio talk shows. The most prolific was the independent legislator, Chen Wen-chien (Sisy Chen). Until April 2003, Chen hosted Sisy’s News on Star TV, in addition to a daily radio talk show, UFO Dinner, on UFO Radio. In March 2003, her contract with Star TV was not renewed because, she believes, the station was pressured to drop her by the ruling DPP. Star Group Taiwan Ltd. denied political pressure, claiming that there are already too many political talk shows on air. Star TV also broadcasts former politician Jaw Shaw-kong’s News Hijacker, while legislator May Chin hosts Lighting the Lamp on CTS and Shen Chih-hwei (a legislator with the PFP) is responsible for a daily talk show on Taichung radio. Many politicians have profited—politically and commercially—from the proliferation of cable television and radio channels that are relatively simple to launch and have small set-up costs. These shows are important as they give the politicians a medium through which they can address their own local constituencies China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 78 free from mediation by journalists. Most importantly, however, is that the celebrity politicians listed here are from the blue alliance, adding to the suspicion of widespread media bias. Some may suggest that the DPP has a right to be concerned that it is playing on an uneven field; others would say that the DPP is merely trying to mute those voices that stand in opposition to their own, and thus restrict Taiwan’s much cherished freedom of speech. 23 To circumvent some of the problems associated with this tendency, President Chen issued an ultimatum to Taiwan’s politicians towards the end of his first term in office: all elected politicians and officials should relinquish their media interests by September 5th 2003. This affected 58 persons who were now required to choose between their dual roles in politics and the media. The law does not affect the politician television and radio hosts who do not have commercial interests in particular media enterprises, since its intention is to prohibit civil servants and political party members from owning, funding or acting as founder, director or manager of stations and newspapers. However, this caveat did not satisfy everybody. Some legislators argued that the government should prevent elected politicians from producing or hosting political and/or news programmes on television and radio. For example, the DPP legislator, Julian Kuo, remarked, “Politicians hosting or producing broadcast shows is just like athletes serving as referees in a single game”26. 24 However, critics have accused the DPP of hypocrisy in its ambition to separate completely the media and politics, and have indicted the administration for using government communication resources for its own partisan purposes. When in opposition, the DPP regularly censured the KMT’s media monopoly because it allowed the government to use public channels of communication for party propaganda. This suspicion resurfaced in March 2003, when the GIO announced it planned to integrate various government agencies’ resources to buy airtime and advertisement space in the media to promote government policies. The funding would provide the resources for a NT$200 million promotion between April 1st and June 1st 2003, and NT$900 million more from July 2003 to March 2004. This means that instead of entitling all government departments to purchase airtime and advertising space to promote their individual policies, the GIO combines all departmental promotional budgets to facilitate a single annual bulk purchase of media space. In March 2003, the GIO revealed that it has spent more than NT$30 million in 2002 to buy television airtime to promote government policies. 25 The opposition viewed such initiatives as a way to kick-start Chen Shui-bian’s election campaign at the taxpayer’s expense, despite the GIO being the government (and not the DPP) Information Office. The opposition claimed that such moves are a clear danger to press freedom and contradict the DPP’s apparent determination to end political involvement in the media. However, by merely criticising the plans the blue alliance failed to see the wider picture. The problem is not one of allowing the government to use the GIO in this way (after all, it is the responsibility of the government to publicise policies and thus be accountable to public opinion), but one of ensuring that all political parties compete with each other on a level playing field. The key question is how the political system can ensure that the GIO remains the spokesperson of the government and not whichever party happens to be in power. The blue opposition has clearly failed to differentiate between party and government propaganda, which is not surprising since the distinction was non-existent before 1987. China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 79 26 But ownership patterns and political influence are not the only problems that Taiwan’s media face. As the president suggested in his 2004 inauguration speech, quality of output is also a major concern that requires urgent attention. Issues of quality and competition 27 The Taiwanese government is walking the same tightrope as other democracies: how much media regulation is required in a liberal-democratic free market system? This is becoming an urgent matter given the rapid and disturbing development of more inquisitive media that are quite prepared to engage in less reputable and more sensationalist styles of reporting. So-called “yellow” or tabloid journalism thrives in Taiwan on a scale never before imagined. The most recent entrant to Taiwan’s newspaper market is Pingguo ribao (Apple Daily), run by Hong Kong entrepreneur Jimmy Lai. Apple Daily, a tabloid newspaper with a reputation for celebrity gossip, scandal, and crime scene photographs, was first established in Hong Kong and hit Taiwan’s news- stands on May 2nd 2003 with a claimed circulation of 750,00027. It follows the success of Jimmy Lai’s first Taiwan venture, Yizhoukan (Next Magazine), which is now the island’s biggest selling weekly. For the Taiwanese, free speech is synonymous with democracy, and here we identify a fundamental problem that is a serious barrier to further reforms designed to encourage quality. The president of one prominent NGO, Taiwan Media Watch, outlined the dilemma: When does freedom of speech end and moral responsibility begin?28 The apparent lack of media sensitivity in reporting disasters, crime and personal tragedies suggests that they are incapable of exercising the kind of professional self-discipline and self-regulation called for. “Any government intervention in the operations of the media is unacceptable because freedom of the press is pivotal in a civilised society. But as the tendency towards indecency looms large in our local TV programming, to expect self-discipline on the part of the media is a difficult option. So the only feasible solution is to allow the public to use its voice to tell the media what they consider to be quality TV programmes”29. 28 Under Chen Shui-bian, the GIO has discussed ways of monitoring media output to combat the growth in tabloid-style journalism, but has also tried to design a regulatory framework that would allow journalists to carry out their work free from the fear of government interference and retribution. Again, however, progress has been slow. In June 2002, the GIO reviewed a draft Mass Communications Law designed to “better regulate Taiwan’s media” 30. The mooted Law would “ban invasions of privacy by the media and prevent the media from violating an individual’s ‘autonomy’. It would also more clearly delineate the ratings system for media content and upgrade the level of media regulations from that of executive orders to full legal standing”. In other words, the system that the GIO designed actually reinforces control over the media, rather than protecting the media from government interference. Huang Hui-chen, the Director- General of the GIO after 2003, conceding “Taiwan’s freedom of speech is among one of the most liberal in the world” [sic], did warn that “such freedom should not be abused. The media’s responsibility should be to imbue audiences with positive social values … The GIO has been aggressively imposing fines and rating television programmes, and we take our responsibilities very seriously”31. 29 One of the most controversial decisions taken by the GIO was its award of NT$950,000 to the Foundation for the Prevention of Public Damage by the Media to fund the regular evaluation of the six mainstream Chinese-language newspapers. This would measure “justice, objectivity, appropriateness and accuracy”, with the results released to the China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 80 public every two months. Critics of this proposal not only question the methodology— how can one measure justice and appropriateness?—but also deem the exercise a step backwards that will only damage press freedom. The proposals extend to the broadcast media and the signs are not particularly encouraging: “Concerned that locally produced TV programmes are becoming increasingly sensationalistic or inaccurate, the Radio and Television Affairs Department of the GIO has decided to begin monitoring and evaluating local programmes. (…) Because many TV shows have damaged some people’s privacy and the sensationalism of some programmes has made audiences uncomfortable, we have decided to take action and manage TV shows”, said Hong Chong- jan, the new director of the department32. Such management undermines Chen Shui- bian’s commitment that “the government would not suppress the freedom of the press or people’s freedom of speech under the pretext of national security considerations”, and he urged the media to develop processes of self-regulation. 30 The government has continued to accrue powers in order to provide the conditions for “quality”. In October 2003, the preparatory office of the new National Communications Commission (NCC, guojia chuanbo weiyuanhui) opened. This independent organisation responsible to the Executive Yuan, will oversee and regulate the telecommunications, media and information technology sectors. Its creation reflects the convergence of information technology. Thus mobile telephones, the internet and cable technology have blurred the differentiation between broadcasting and communication. More ominously, the NCC is responsible for censoring online data, television and radio programmes and other information broadcast through channels of mass communications. The members of the commission are political appointees, chosen by the premier for five-year terms, and would replace the GIO. 31 Are these examples of Taiwan taking one-step forwards, two steps back? Can the government really imbue quality within the media and inspire journalists to higher standards of professionalism by legislating for it? The government does have to create the framework for satisfactory self-regulation that will set acceptable standards for quality (for example conceding more powers to media-interested activists and groups within civil society) rather than trying to interfere directly with the producers and their products. 32 One of the most urgent challenges that Taiwan’s media face in a democratic environment is the absence of specific laws that define and regulate classified information. The existing arbitrary definition of what is and is not allowed continues to confer upon the government and the GIO almost the same leverage over the media as its KMT predecessors. For example, Article 21 of the Broadcasting and Television Law forbids television programmes from spreading rumours or presenting material in a way that would disrupt law and order, but fails to provide any specific details or speculate on circumstances when the government might invoke this law. It is worrying that neither the media nor the government are clear where the boundaries are, what is permissible, and who is responsible if things go wrong. The Chen Shui-bian administration has so far failed to demarcate these boundaries, which means that journalists are still vulnerable to abuse and intimidation. They are often under surveillance, their offices may be searched, and sometimes their telephones (and those of family and friends) are bugged. 33 For example, in October 2000 members of the Taipei District Prosecutor’s Office searched the offices and homes of journalists working for the Zhongshi wanbao (China China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 81 Times Express). They were searching for information about corruption within the National Security Bureau that officials had leaked to the media. Journalists complained that they, and their friends and families, were under close surveillance, and their telephone conversations monitored. The prosecutors justified their action with reference to “national security”. They claimed the leaked information could have included “highly sensitive state secrets” that threatened the lives of bureau members. 34 More often, however, the intimidation is non-political and originates with the criminal underworld. Official prosecutors have searched the offices of Jimmy Lai’s Taiwan enterprise, Next Magazine, and hired thugs have vandalised them following the magazine’s exposure of criminal activity. One of the more subtle, but increasingly popular, forms of intimidation is the threat of libel suits. In fact, Antonio Chiang, briefly the publisher of the Taiwan ribao (Taiwan Daily) in 1996, once said that his main job was “to go to court”, especially when his newspaper was sued six times in a three month period. In other words, libel laws remain a serious risk to Taiwan’s media freedom, but they are necessary given the growth of sensational reporting that violates the privacy of people in the public eye. Again, progress rests on finding a balance, and ensuring that the libel laws are so tight that both sides—media and public—know precisely what laws are being broken, the punishments they can expect, and when recourse to the courts is acceptable. 35 Liberal commentators have identified as the solution to problems within the media, especially ownership patterns and obvious bias, market mechanisms that concede greater power to the consumer. Reviewing the government’s plans to reform the media by imposing new regulations, one anonymous member of President Chen’s Cabinet said, “The less government interference, the better. If the public dislikes a certain TV channel or radio station which they think is manipulated by a certain party or individual they detest, they simply refuse to watch it or listen to it. It’s that darn simple.” The short life of the Shoudu zaobao (Capital Morning Post), established in May 1989 and financed by a prominent DPP politician, Kang Ning-hsiang, clearly demonstrates the power of market forces. The newspaper closed down in August 1990 not because it voiced unpalatable or unpopular political opinions, but because it could not capture an adequate share of the market. In 2000, the GIO informed the Taiwan xinwen bao (Taiwan Daily News), a newspaper owned by the Taiwan Provincial Government and based in Kaohsiung, that it might have to close down if it did not make a profit. To turn its fortune around, the publication had to downsize into a local newspaper and make two hundred of its staff redundant. Even state-controlled media are not immune to the hidden hand of the market33. 36 However, the market does not guarantee quality. As competition intensifies, the media are less willing to invest in innovative programming and instead battle to capture the same middle-ground audiences with the same formats. This is particularly serious in television, where the national stations now compete with the cable channels that are gaining popularity34. 37 Moreover, the idea that competition provides opportunities for consumer-power is a little disingenuous. While the government has made important strides in ending political influence in the media, close examination of the cable television industry reveals a concentration of power in the hands of a few very powerful consortiums. The Cable Television Law, passed by the Legislative Yuan in 1993, stipulated that to prevent the creation of a monopoly, two or more operators should serve each geographic area China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 82 of Taiwan. However, fierce competition ensued, whereby cable operators blocked channels belonging to their competitors regardless of their popularity with audiences. In the meantime, it is not unusual for bigger operators to squeeze their smaller competitors out of the market. In contrast to the aims of the Cable Television Law, each area is dominated by one cable operator, with two or more able to exist in only a few areas (Table 2). 2. An overview of the cable market to December 2002 Source: Chen Bing-hong, Jiegou meiti, op. cit., pp. 291-292.= NB : * This figure is based on the calculation that 5.55 million households island-wide subscribed to cable television. ** Some of the operators use different company names to apply for licences. Therefore, it appears that there are two or more competitors. However, in reality, they belong to the same consortium. 38 Since winning control of the presidency in 2000, Chen Shui-bian’s administration has proposed numerous technical amendments to the Cable Television Law to reduce the possibility of broadcasting monopolies by powerful consortiums. However, the impact has been minimal for the same reasons that reform has been difficult in other areas of the media, namely a blue-dominated Legislative Yuan battling with a DPP executive, and the political and commercial interests of legislators in blocking reform. 39 Taiwan’s media have experienced a dramatic and rapid transformation since 1987. From having politically defined responsibilities that were designed to further the KMT government’s agenda, the media are now in a stronger position than ever to interrogate the decisions, actions and behaviour of politicians. The transparency and accountability that are characteristic of Taiwan’s media today are important benchmarks of the level of democracy there. While we must acknowledge the role of the KMT in building the foundations for these circumstances, we must nevertheless recognise the progress under the Chen Shui-bian administration. Problems persist: the China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 83 issue of ownership has yet to be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, while political bias within the predominantly blue media continues to be particularly worrisome, especially during elections. Moreover, the quality of output, and particularly the quality of journalism, is cause for concern. A noticeable decline in deference to authority, prompted by the gaining of freedom of speech, media pluralism and competition, and the rising power of market over state forces, have encouraged the government to think about the problems posed by a completely free and independent media in a liberal-democratic society. Moreover, what is the relationship between the legal process and the media? Here, Taiwan faces a dilemma: can the government legislate for quality, and thus risk being criticised for impeding the freedoms the media fought long and hard to attain? Or can it depend on the power of market competition and the consumer—his right to choose not to buy a particular newspaper or turn the television over to a different channel—to regulate the media? 40 The SARS epidemic of 2003 was a particularly testing time for Taiwan’s news media, and the debate over where to draw the line between the public’s right to know and journalistic sensationalism continued long after the World Health Organisation removed Taiwan from its list of SARS-affected areas. One poll discovered that 65% of 1,093 respondents thought SARS-related news reports were “overly sensational. Another 30% described them as unnecessarily and intolerably repetitive. It seems that accurate information was difficult to come by, and that the competitive 24 hours news environment made speed of reporting more important35. Industry insiders claim that practices associated with professional journalism, such as double-checking the facts and the reliability of sources, were sacrificed. All media are now desperately trying to learn from their experience of the SARS crisis. However, such problems are not culturally specific; British and American media faced similar criticisms of their coverage of the 2003 war against Iraq. Few reporters on the front line have military expertise, while the British government and the BBC are embroiled in a volatile dispute about the reliability of sources. Perhaps Taiwan’s experience during the SARS outbreak demonstrates that, after all, its media are simply responding to the challenges of democratic society. It is a steep learning curve for all concerned. NOTES 1. Emphasis added. 2. Freedom House, for example, uses the media as a quantitative and qualitative indicator in measuring democracy around the world. See “Freedom in the World” at http://216.119.117.183/research/freeworld/2001/table1.htm 3. See Gary D. Rawnsley and Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley, Critical Security, Democratisation and Television in Taiwan, London, Ashgate, 2000. 4. The “blue” alliance refers to the Kuomintang, the People’s First Party (Qinmindang) and the remnants of the New Party (Xindang). 5. See Frank Muyard, “Taiwan, the birth of a nation?”, China Perspectives, No. 53, May– June 2004, pp. 33–48. China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 84 6. On consolidation see G. O’Donnell, P.C. Schmitter, and L. Whitehead (eds.), Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, 4 vols., Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986; Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratisation in the Late Twentieth Century, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1991; L. Diamond, M. F. Plattner, Y. H. Chu, and H. M. Tien (eds), Consolidating the Third Wave Democracies: Regional Challenges, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Taiwan has yet to take Huntington’s “two-turnover test”, whereby consolidation is characterised by the incumbent party (the DPP) suffering electoral defeat. See Huntington, The Third Wave, pp. 266–267. 7. See Xinwen yewu shouce (Manual for the Information Professions), Taichung, Information Department of Taiwan Provincial Government, 1983, p. 17. 8. Passed in April 1952, amended in 1958 and 1973, finally repealed on January 25th 1999. 9. The Law on Publications and other texts imposed restrictions on: (i) the registration of new papers; (ii) the number of pages that newspapers could publish; and (iii) where the newspaper could be printed and distributed. These measures affected a comprehensive press ban policy of 1951, which prevented the further issue of licences and thus froze until 1987 the number of titles permitted to be printed at 31. 10. Patricia Batto, “Democracy’s Impact on Dailies”, China Perspectives, No. 51 January– February 2004, p. 65. 11. Bruce J. Jacobs, “Taiwan's Press: Political Communications Link and Research Resource”, China Quarterly, Vol. 68, No. 4, 1976, pp. 778–788. However, Taiwan Times became more politically conservative after 1982 following its purchase by the Wang family in Kaohsiung. 12. On the importance of the underground illegal media to Taiwan’s political development, see G. D. Rawnsley, “The Media and Popular Protest in Taiwan”, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 20, No. 4, 2000, pp. 565–580. 13. With a cable penetration rate of 82%, Taiwan is the most heavily saturated pay-TV market in the world, surpassing even the United States and Japan. Alkman Granitsas, “Digital to the Rescue”, Far Eastern Economic Review, October 17th 2002, pp. 46–48. Cable operators in Taiwan usually produce at least four sets of figures regarding the number of their subscribers: to the channel operators, they provide a low figure in order to pay the least money possible; to the GIO, they provide a “moderate” figure in order to ensure their market penetration does not exceed the legal limits; to the advertisers, they provide a high figure to raise as much advertising revenue as possible; the figures they tell themselves are secret. This explains why the penetration rate presented here is different from the figure provided in Table 2 (i.e. discrepancies in the sources used). 14. A branch of the Executive Yuan, the Government Information Office (GIO) “is responsible for clarifying national policy, publicizing government ordinances and administrative achievements, releasing important information at home and abroad, effectively employing the mass media, actively developing overseas information and cultural projects, and strengthening cultural communication to mainland China. The office thus offers a wide variety of information services to the media and individuals at home and abroad”. Republic of China Yearbook, 1996, Taipei, GIO, 1996. 15. Quoted in Batto, “Democracy’s Impact on Dailies”, op. cit., p. 71. 16. Ibid. 17. Before the DPP was formed and legalised, the tangwai (i.e. “party outsiders”) had published a number of underground or dissident journals that provided a means of China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 85 organisation, recruitment and mobilisation for the opposition movement. See Rawnsley, “The Media and Popular Protest”, op. cit. 18. See Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley, “Communications of identity in Taiwan: from the February 28th incident to the Formosa Television Corporation”, in Gary D. Rawnsley & Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley (eds.), Political Communications in Greater China, London, RoutledgeCurzon, 2003, pp. 147–166. 19. Taipei Times online, June 2nd 2000. 20. 41.1% in China Television Company (CTV), 97% in the Broadcasting Corporation of China (BCC), and 7 million shares in Taiwan Television Company (TTV). 21. See Lee Ming-tsung, “Media outlets more blue than blue”, Taipei Times, April 6th 2004, p. 8. 22. Ibid. 23. Similar views are also expressed in Taipei Times online, Editorial, “In response to our critics”, January 12th 2004. 24. Zhonghua minguo guanggao nianjian (Advertising Yearbook of Taiwan, the ROC, 2001–2002), p. 97. 25. Ibid, pp. 328–332. 26. Taipei Times online, March 3rd 2003. 27. Newspapers in Taiwan sometimes provide contradicting figures. According to alternative data, Apple Daily claimed a circulation of only 400,000 at the end of 2003. See Batto, “Democracy’s Impact on Dailies”, op. cit., p.76. 28. Taipei Times online, June 5th 2000. 29. Ibid. 30. Emphasis added. 31. “New group takes aim at ‘vulgar’ TV”, Taipei Times online, October 12th 2003. 32. Emphasis added. 33. Taiwan Daily News is not the only state-controlled media threatened by the market. In fact, all former so called “public” media that were owned or subsidised by the state, government or the military have had huge financial difficulties since 1987, for example, the two faithful KMT titles, Zhonghua ribao (China Daily News) and Zhongyang ribao (Central Daily News). 34. Since the reception and transmission of cable television was legalised in 1993, the audience for the national television stations has declined at a dramatic rate. In 1994, 73% of the viewing public preferred to watch national television, TTV, CTV and CTS; in 2001, these stations could capture only 42% of the audience. See Chen Bing-hong, Jiegou meiti (Deconstructing the Media), Taipei, Yeh-yeh Book Gallery, 2003, pp. 78–80. 35. There are currently more than ten domestically-produced 24-hour news channels in Taiwan for a population of 23 million, while there are only two such channels in the US (CNN and Fox News) and three in the UK (BBC News 24, the ITV News Channel and Sky News). China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 86 ABSTRACTS Media reform is a valuable indicator of democratisation. It provides an abundance of information about the levels of freedom, tolerance, social justice and pluralism within a political system. This article reviews the changes in the Taiwanese media that have occurred since the lifting of martial law in 1987 and considers how the media are faring at the beginning of Chen Shui-bian’s second term. Taiwan’s media are still at an early stage of democratisation but it cannot be denied that progress has been made and that Taiwan’s media are looking increasingly like those operating in systems at comparatively similar stages of democratic consolidation. China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 87 Language Policy in the KMT and DPP eras Henning Klöter 1 It is one of the paradoxes of any analysis of Taiwan’s linguistic issues that the most widely spoken language lacks an established name. The name Taiyu, literally “the language(s) of Taiwan, Taiwanese” is often used as a collective term for the group of Southern Min dialects spoken by about 73% of Taiwan’s present-day population. Other terms for the same language include Hoklo (also spelled Holo; the etymology of these terms is uncertain), Taiwanese Min, and Taiwanese Hokkien. Hokkien reflects the Southern Min expression Hok-kien for Fujian. 2 Its frequent use notwithstanding, the term Taiyu/Taiwanese has also been criticised as it suggests that Southern Min is the only local language of Taiwan. This is by no means the case. Other languages spoken in Taiwan are Mandarin Chinese—the official language—, Hakka (spoken by 12% of the population), and 12 Austronesian languages spoken by the indigenous population in central Taiwan and along the east coast. Speakers of Hakka dialects traditionally live in Xinzhu and Miaoli counties in northwestern Taiwan, where they account for about 60% of the population1. In bigger cities, Hakka speakers constitute a minority. 3 Today it is not uncommon for younger speakers in Taiwan to be equally fluent in Taiwanese and Mandarin. The Taiwanese spoken by young persons is often regarded as impure and strongly Mandarinised by older Taiwanese speakers. Most speakers of Hakka dialects also have high fluency in Mandarin and often a good command of Taiwanese. The same applies to speakers of Austronesian languages. The influx of Chinese immigrants over the last four centuries has drastically reduced the proportion of the indigenous population, which is now 1.7% of the entire population. In the past two centuries, about a dozen Austronesian languages have become extinct, and the remaining 12 languages are threatened with extinction2. 4 For stylistic reasons it seems reasonable to prefer the benefits of the term “Taiwanese” to the political correctness of cumbersome alternatives. I will use “Taiyu” instead of “Taiwanese” only when unambiguous reference to Taiwanese as a linguistic variety is China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 88 required, e.g., when Taiwanese literature, meaning literature produced in Taiwan, needs to be distinguished from Taiyu literature, i.e., literature in the Taiwanese language. 5 In 1945, Taiwan ceased to be a Japanese colony and became a province of the Republic of China (ROC). Since then, the official treatment of local languages has shifted from systematic oppression to toleration and, since the 1990s, modest inclusion in the school curriculum. At the beginning of its rule in Taiwan, the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) reiterated its view that linguistic diversity was a factor impeding the country’s unity. In the China Handbook of 1951, linguistic issues receive little attention: “China has only one written language. The spoken language, however, consists of various dialects. In recent years the National Spoken Language Movement has made considerable progress in overcoming the difficulties caused by these dialects”3. 6 More than 50 years later, many things have changed. The KMT is no longer the ruling party, and the name of the official annual overview has been changed from the former China Handbook into the Taiwan Yearbook. In the latest edition of the Yearbook, the passage on languages likewise contrasts sharply from the above quotation: “Taiwan society is a rich mixture of diverse cultures, and more people are becoming aware of the importance of preserving various languages and dialects. This awareness has been the propelling force behind government efforts to promote nativist education (xiangtu jiaoyu). Starting in September 2001, primary school students throughout Taiwan have been required to take at least one local language course. For junior high school students, however, such language courses remain an elective. The government supports such courses with various levels of funding, which is used to compile teaching materials, publish teacher handbooks, hold teacher workshops, produce audio and video cassettes”4. 7 It would be tempting to attribute this about-face in language policy to the regime change in the presidential office of 2000, when for the first time in Taiwan’s post-war history the KMT lost power to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and its candidate Chen Shui-bian. Chen had, after all, during the campaign, wrapped his Taiwan-centred political agenda in a strong pro-Taiwanese rhetoric, both ideologically and linguistically. By frequently addressing his electorate in Taiyu, he had succeeded in presenting himself as a representative of a genuine Taiwanese identity. And there is little doubt that the regime change of 2000 has led to some changes in the government’s language policy. However, as I argue in this paper, it would be oversimplifying to view the turnaround from oppression to promotion of Taiyu in blue (KMT) and green (DPP) terms only. Important changes in the policy towards Taiyu had rather already been introduced during the 1980s. But they were not primarily the result of a paradigm change on the part of the government, rather being brought about by non-governmental language revivalist groups. Neither the KMT nor the DPP governments have thus far fully embraced the agenda of the revivalists. Lacking substantiality, changes achieved so far have above all a symbolic value. Historical overview From oppression to toleration: 1949–1979 8 For several years after 1945, the ROC administration tried to adjust its language policy to Taiwan’s linguistic reality. According to Feifel, “[i]n an attempt to resinify the population, the Nationalist government ran a programme to encourage the use of Minnan hua [i.e., Taiyu] in Taiwan, but this was regarded as a first step toward the acquisition of Mandarin by the local people. A phonetic script for Minnan hua was China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 89 adopted and promoted for this purpose”5. In the late 1940s, the withdrawal of the Nationalist government to Taiwan led to a new wave of immigration from the mainland and to drastic linguistic changes. 9 After the mid-1950s, the KMT government began severely restricting the use of local languages in public settings. The exclusive use of Mandarin was enforced on the grounds that Taiwan was a province of China and that Mandarin represented the national language of China. In Robert Cheng’s words, to survive as the legitimate government of the whole of China, the ROC government had to maintain Mandarin as the national language. Furthermore, as Mandarin speakers were in the minority, the government had to take steps “to maintain the status of Mandarin against the natural tendency of Mandarin speakers to be assimilated into the Taiwanese majority”6. 10 Following these considerations, the government began severely restricting the use of local languages in public settings after the 1950s. According to Feifel, “[t]he more benign attitude which the government had shown towards Minnan hua in the past was replaced by active hostility. From this time on schooling was conducted solely in Mandarin and the use of any other language variety was punished”7. The oppression of local languages followed a series of language laws and decrees issued between 1950 and 1980. For instance, in 1956 the KMT government officially restricted the use of dialects in schools. Schools set up disciplinary patrols (jiuchadui) which controlled that the law was respected8. One year later, an official decree ruled that missionaries were no longer allowed to preach in a dialect. The Broadcast and Television Law of 1976 limited the use of languages other than Mandarin in television and radio broadcasts. 11 This active promotion of Mandarin has produced a generation of multilinguals. Hence, Mandarin evolved as the main language of government, education and the media. It also serves as a lingua franca among mainland immigrants who arrived after 1945, commonly referred to as waisheng ren (literally “people from outside provinces”. These immigrants were in most cases speakers of different Chinese dialects, for instance Cantonese, Hunanese and Shanghainese. Nowadays these dialects are hardly used9. From toleration to cultivation: 1979–2004 12 The about-face from the former oppression of Taiyu and other local Taiwanese languages was made after the late 1970s, when Taiwan’s political landscape changed drastically. Following its gradual international isolation, the island entered a period of political liberalisation and democratisation. In the same period, calls for Taiwan’s political separation from China intensified. A conception of Taiwan’s distinctiveness has meanwhile expanded beyond the political arena and it now dominates literary, linguistic, and historical discourses. 13 It was after the arrest of leading opposition figures in the aftermath of the Kaohsiung Incident in 1979 that cultural debates discovered the Taiwaneseness of Taiwan. In the aftermath of the protest, leading members of the opposition were sentenced to long prison terms. Political decision-making gradually adapted to the new intellectual and social trends. Laws and regulations prohibiting the use of local languages in public settings were gradually lifted. In November 1987, for instance, the three government- controlled television stations started to broadcast news in Taiwanese. In parliament, the use of Mandarin was taken for granted without official regulation until the late 1980s. When the legislator Zhu Gaozheng used Taiyu during a parliamentary debate in March 1987, he provoked a substantial scandal. In the meantime, Taiwanese has China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 90 become a fully-accepted language of the legislature and the dominant language in electoral campaigns. 14 In 1990, Yilan County became the first county to offer elective Taiyu language courses in elementary and junior high schools. In the following years, similar programs were initiated in other counties and also included courses for Hakka and Austronesian languages. In 1993, the Interior Ministry conceded that the repressive language policy of the past had been a mistake10. Since then, the “assimilationist [language] policy has been replaced with strong support for multiculturalism and official respect for, even nurturing of, aboriginal [i.e., Austronesian] languages and other minority languages”11. In late 1999, the then Minister of Education, Yang Chaur-shiang, proclaimed the inclusion of “local culture education” in the elementary and junior high school curriculum. He furthermore announced that, “in the future […] as a part of the new […] curriculum, indigenous languages will be listed as a required subject for third grade students and above. Other indigenous culture teaching activities will be integrated into various domains of learning”12. 15 Taiwan-centred political reforms were intensified after the victory of the DPP in the presidential elections of 2000. In 2001, nativist education was declared a compulsory subject at elementary schools. In principle, the programme includes language courses in one local language, i.e., Taiwanese, Hakka, or an Austronesian language. Due to a lack of teachers and other resources, most schools offer Taiwanese classes only. One year later, a language equality law was drafted. It aims at creating legal foundations for equal treatment of all Taiwanese languages and contains guidelines for the standardisation of Taiyu, Hakka and Austronesian languages as well as their role in education13. The architects of changeGovernmental and non-governmental language planners 16 Changing the status of a language in a society follows political decisions and a complex set of preparatory language planning measures. In the preceding paragraphs, the changing status of Taiwanese has been described as a consequence of political decision- making from above. On an official level, new language laws and decrees have chiefly been formulated by two institutions under the Ministry of Education: the Department of Elementary and Junior High School Education (Guomin jiaoyu si, hereafter: DEJ) and the National Languages Committee (Guoyu tuidong weiyuanhui, hereafter: NLC; significantly, its official English translation has been changed from the former “Mandarin Promotion Council”). The DEJ devises the guidelines for mother tongue education at primary and secondary schools, while the NLC formulates linguistic standards. 17 However, language planning measures can be but are not necessarily taken by government agencies. According to Cooper, “[l]anguage planning may be initiated at any level of a social hierarchy, but it is unlikely to succeed unless it is embraced and promoted by elites and counter-elites. […] Neither elites nor counter-elites are likely to embrace the language planning initiatives of others unless they perceive it in their own interest to do so”14. From this perspective, the post 1979-period can best be described as the governmental embracement of non-governmental language planning. Non-governmental planning: the case of written Taiwanese 18 Arguably the most prominent example for non-governmental language planning is the development of a written norm for Taiyu. In the 1960s and 1970s, debates on written Taiwanese had been impeded by the rigorous promotion of Mandarin. As A-chin Hsiau China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 91 points out, “postwar debates on literature […] barely addressed the linguistic issue, because the use of Mandarin was taken for granted”15. Although this period “did witness the cultural elite’s lively interest in, and enthusiastic inquiry into, local social life and cultural resources,” such trends were “far from a ‘Taiwanese consciousness’ with explicit political implications”16. This changed during the 1980s, when various literary writers, lexicographers, and language revivalists started to engage in developing a Taiyu orthography and promoting written Taiwanese. After the late 1990s, various language revivalist organisations were founded. According to Hsiau, these non- governmental groups “were created for the purpose of reviving native languages, devising Hoklo (Taiyu) vernacular writing systems, and promoting Hoklo literature”17. In 2004, a number of Taiyu revivalist groups set up parent organisation jointly set up the Global Coalition for Taiwanese Mother Languages (Shijie Taiwan muyu lianmeng). The major political goal of this parent organisation is the elevation of the legal status of all Taiwanese languages18. 19 The proposed orthographies make use of a variety of scripts. Typologically, these scripts can be divided into the Chinese character script, alphabetic orthographies, phonetic symbols, and mixed scripts. Whereas all these orthographies have important philological dimensions, answers to questions on the diversity of written Taiwanese lie outside the realm of grapheme-morpheme relations19. Instead, they are to be sought in the changing ideological patterns which have emerged from Taiwan’s tumultuous past. For the sake of brevity, the following paragraphs are restricted to the character-based and alphabetic orthographies. 20 Character-based scripts for Taiwanese are largely to be found in Taiyu fiction and dictionaries. Taiwanese dialect poems (fangyan shi) were an important input for the postwar debate on written Taiwanese. In the 1970s, literary experimentation in the local vernacular was initiated by Lin Zongyuan who in turn inspired the younger poet Xiang Yang20. This new generation of dialect poets was originally not driven by any political motivations. However, the new theoretical debate on genuine Taiwanese literature and the establishment of a Taiwanese orthography soon became closely linked to the socio-political and cultural movement against the “Greater China” policy of the KMT government. 21 Today, the number of authors writing in Taiwanese has increased considerably. Whereas pioneering collections of prose or poetry were initially often published at the author’s own expense, recognised publishing houses now include various genres of dialect literature in their programme. The Taipei-based Qianwei Chubanshe (Vanguard Publishing House) for instance, has regularly published series of Taiyu literature. The recognition of Taiyu literature by commercial publishers, however, has not contributed to orthographic standardisation, as the publishing houses do not have internal standards for the writing of Taiwanese21. 22 Recognised and up-and-coming young writers also publish in literary journals exclusively devoted to the promotion of written Taiwanese. One of the first major journals in and about the Taiwanese language— the Tai-Bun Thong-Sin (Taiwanese Writing Forum)—has been published in the United States since 1991. Among major magazines presently published in Taiwan we find La-cing (Sowing seeds) and Tai-bun bong-po (Casual reports on written Taiwanese). The former was first published in 1995, the latter one year later. The editions contain announcements, short stories, poems, and historical anecdotes. China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 92 23 Taiwanese lexicography has likewise developed quickly in the last two decades. Without exception, Taiyu dictionaries published during the 1990s result from the private efforts of single authors22. Lacking official authorisation and general acceptance, particular spellings of such dictionaries have remained individual suggestions for written Taiwanese rather than a normative codification. The authors generally adhere to individual principles of character selection and do not feel bound to the prevalence of particular characters in Taiwanese literature. As a result, there is generally little orthographic overlap between written Taiwanese in a literary context and written Taiwanese arranged in Taiyu dictionaries. 24 Alphabetic orthographies for Taiwanese and other Southern Min dialects were initially only used by missionaries for church-related publications. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the use of either script was thus restricted to distinct social groups and literary genres. The disassociation of alphabetic writing from the missionary context was first promoted by the political activist Cai Peihuo during the Japanese period (1895–1945). Since the 1990s, the use of alphabetic writing has gone different directions within and outside the missionary context. Whereas the Presbyterian Church has switched to the use of characters, the traditional missionary romanisation system has considerably gained ground among local Taiyu groups not associated with the church. This new trend has been initiated by two organisations based in the southern port of Kaohsiung, viz. the Ko-hiong Tai-gi Lo-ma-ji Gian-sip-hoe (Kaohsiung Seminar for Church Romanisation), and the Tai-oan Lo-ma-ji Hiap-hoe (Association of Taiwanese Romanisation). The former is a rather loose, seminar-like group established in 1996. It is supported by some 600 people, mostly local school teachers, interested in the cultivation of Taiwanese and its alphabetic representation. The latter was formally registered with the Interior Ministry in 2001. It comprises about two hundred members from Taiwan and abroad. Among the members are scholars, politicians, journalists, teachers and clergy of the Presbyterian Church23. 25 As indicated above, arguments in favour of or against particular scripts belong largely to socio-political debates on practical needs and cultural symbolism. The choice of a particular writing system may generally serve as an indicator for a changing national identity in colonial or post-colonial societies, as for instance in the former Soviet states Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, where the abolition of Cyrillic writing clearly reflects a cultural trend towards de-russification after the fall of the Soviet empire24. Similarly, sociological studies on written Taiwanese analyse the option for a particular script in ideological terms. For instance, comparing ideological convictions of Taiyu activists of the 1930s with those of the present generation, A-chin Hsiau writes:25 “Comparatively speaking, contemporary attempts to establish a Hoklo [i.e., Taiyu] script and establish Hoklo literature has achieved more than the efforts to promote writing in tai-oan-oe and hsiang-t’u literature in the Japanese colonial period. On the one hand, the promoters of the latter in the early 1930s still held a relatively intense Han cultural consciousness. Thus, all of them, with the notable exception of Ts’ai P’ei-huo (Cai Peihuo), advocated using characters to write Hoklo in order to maintain Taiwanese connections with the Chinese Mainland and Han culture. […] By contrast, devoting themselves to the establishment of a unique Taiwanese culture, the advocates of new writing methods in the last decade have been, almost without exception, Taiwanese nationalists. Most of them do not stick to Chinese characters and freely romanise certain Hoklo morphemes. Romanisation makes it easier to write Hoklo China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 93 and facilitates the development of Hoklo literature. The use of phonetic characters represents a historic step toward local nationalism within an old ideographic area dominated by China, including other bordering countries”. Written Taiwanese: official measures 26 Official language planning agencies have thus far steered off orthographic standardisation. The extent to which statements and decrees formulated by government agencies have passed over this issue is striking26. In 2002, official examinations for Taiwanese and Hakka teachers took place. The procedure of the examinations was regulated in a law that passed the legislature in late 200127. According to the examination sample published in advance, candidate teachers were free to use characters, any romanisation system or a mixed script in the written examinations28. Standardisation of requirements for language teaching has, in other words, not been matched with orthographic specifications. 27 This neglect cannot be attributed to a lack of awareness, as orthographic issues have long been on the agenda of academic symposia organised by language planning institutions. A first symposium ‘Issues concerning local language education’ was held in June 1990 at the Academia Sinica. The event was jointly organised by seven local governments. The nine papers presented at this occasion focused on two issues exclusively: character usage and romanisation. Since then, numerous similar events have followed, and orthographic issues have continued to play an important role in the academic agenda. Also in the early 1990s, the Ministry of Education encouraged private research on local languages by awarding prizes for studies on Taiwanese and Hakka in five different categories: lexicon and orthography, grammar, teaching, traditional popular sources, and Chinese translations of studies on Taiyu29. 28 Official measures in the field of orthographic standardisation for local languages have not gone beyond non-binding recommendations. Spelling schemes for three script types have been put forward, viz. Chinese characters, a romanisation system, and phonetic symbols. Recommendations for character usage were devised in a research project initiated by the NLC and carried out between 1995 and 1999. The project aimed at the compilation of the four-volume lexicon for Taiwanese with approximately 600 monosyllabic entries. By the spring of 2000, two volumes of the lexicon had been published30. The publication of the final issues is listed among the NLC current projects31. As regards orthographic standardisation, the aim of the project is described in rather vague terms. The compilers express the hope that the lexicon will “reduce difficulties in writing Southern Min”32. 29 Phonetic symbols for Mandarin, Taiwanese and Hakka were devised in a research project carried out at the Preparatory Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica, between October 1999 and September 200033. The need for a new system was explained with the high degree of orthographic diversity in Taiwanese and Hakka sources. This was considered “inconvenient for the reader and harmful for the research on and development of Southern Min and Hakka”34. It is assumed that the project will benefit the promotion of local language education, the compilation of books in and reference works for local languages, and the development of local language literature35. 30 Systems for the romanisation of local languages were published in early 1998, viz. the Taiwan Language Phonetic Alphabet (TLPA) for Taiwanese and Hakka. Both systems were developed by the Linguistic Society of Taiwan (Taiwan yuwen xuehui)36. TLPA systems are recommended for the indication of character readings and not as China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 94 substitutions for the character system. Both TLPA versions have gained acceptance in textbooks and dictionaries37. 31 Meanwhile, the NLC has announced the establishment of a database for national languages. This project is scheduled for completion in June 2004. The plan includes the publication of online databases for Mandarin and local languages, the compilation of language atlases, research on Taiwanese and Hakka grammars, the compilation of teaching materials, the compilation of a trilingual Mandarin-Taiwanese-Hakka dictionary of frequently used expressions, databases for Taiwanese and Hakka proverbs, a database of loan words used in Taiwan, and dictionaries for Austronesian languages. It is not clear what the status of the databases is. The Minister of Education is merely quoted as saying that “the work on databases for local languages (Taiwanese, Hakka, Austronesian languages) should be intensified in order to fit the needs of the new school curriculum”38. One of the “expected benefits” of the databases is the “availability for use in scientific research and education”39. Governmental and non-governmental co-operation 32 The inclusion of Taiwanese and other local languages into the school curriculum marks a crucial turning point in Taiwanese language policies. For various practical reasons, the decision to make learning a local language compulsory for primary school students entails a number of related language-planning measures. Most importantly, Taiyu textbooks need to be compiled. Textbook compilation is for obvious reasons receiving increasing attention of academics and language revivalists: they are the only source of written Taiwanese with a substantial readership outside particular interest groups. Thus far, textbooks for various levels have been published, viz. for elementary and secondary school students40. School textbooks are typically compiled by municipal or county governments, in co-operation with academics and local language revivalists. Textbooks jointly compiled by groups of authors generally gain more acceptance than those published by individuals. 33 Textbook compilation has thus far not come along with orthographic standardisation. This has led to the awkward situation that primary school students at different schools learn different forms of written Taiwanese, depending on the policy of the respective school authority and the non-governmental advisors. Future research needs to examine the way central and local government agencies, universities and private interest groups interact in implementing language education reforms. For the purpose of this present study it is sufficient to point out that the co-operation of non- governmental and governmental language planners goes beyond the compilation of textbooks. Academics and members of private Taiyu circles are furthermore recruited for the organisation of preparatory courses for Taiyu school teachers and the development of curricula. 34 Is Taiwan on the way to becoming a multilinguistic society in which all languages are equal? I argue that despite the recent promotion of local languages Mandarin will remain more equal than other languages. The main reason is that language planning measures taken so far are largely of symbolic value, and will arguably not lead to substantial changes in Taiwan’s linguistic hierarchy. 35 In language planning theory, determining the written standard for a language relates to the field of corpus planning. Other aspects of corpus planning are “elaboration of phonological, grammatical, and lexical norms for a standard language variety”41. Orthographic standardisation as a part of corpus planning is unlikely to succeed if China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 95 implemented independently from other fields of language planning, such as status planning. Status planning relates to the sociocultural and political status of languages, for example “the status of a language as a medium of school education to various specialised functions, such as those of a working language to be used in a state bureaucracy, in juridical affairs, or as an official state language”42. In other words, the success of particular corpus planning measures ultimately depends on whether these measures occur within the context of status planning, and vice versa. As Haarmann puts it, “the elaboration of a written standard for a hitherto unwritten language requires the planning of social functions in which it can be used”43. A similar stance is formulated by Gadelii, who holds that “well-intentioned bilingual programmes and similar actions only have symbolic value in the long run if the languages involved are not recognized in other formal contexts”44. 36 Taking these aspects into account, it is obvious that recent language planning measures with regard to Taiyu and other local languages still lack comprehensiveness. Within the field of corpus planning, the main focus has been orthographic standardisation. Other aspects, like standardisation of pronunciation and grammar, have largely been ignored. More importantly, there are also crucial missing links between the different fields of language planning. Despite the introduction of nativist education, Taiyu continues to play a marginal role in education and in the media. In Shuanfan Huang’s words, “local languages have to contend not only with Mandarin, the official language, for breathing space, but also with international languages […] for survival”45. The role of Taiwanese in the school curriculum is thus not a sufficient formal context that could contribute to the implementation of a Taiwanese orthography. Stated conversely, the fact that the introduction of mother tongue education was not accompanied by orthographic standardisation is in line with the modest position of local language education in the school curriculum. 37 The MOE’s cautious approach to orthographic regulation is apparently not without reason. Official language planning institutions still suffer from their past sins. Bitter reminiscences about the government’s oppression of local languages before the 1980s now clearly undermine what Cooper calls “the coercive power of the state to enforce language-planning decisions”46. In other words, the governmental authority of the MOE and its NLC is in fact counterproductive when it comes to acceptance in Taiyu circles. NOTES 1. Shuanfan Huang, Yuyan, shehui yu zuqun yishi: Taiwan yuyan shehuixue de yanjiu (Language, society and ethnic identity: A sociolinguistic study on Taiwan), Taipei, Crane, 1993. 2. Paul Jen-kuei Li, “Formosan Languages: The State of the Art”, in David Blundell (ed.), Austronesian Taiwan: Linguistics, History, Ethnology, Prehistory, Berkeley, Taipei, Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines, 2000, pp. 45-67. China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 96 3. China Handbook 1951, Taipei, China Publishing Co., 1951. 4. Taiwan Yearbook 2003, online at http://www.gio.gov.tw/taiwan-website/5-gp/ yearbook/chpt02.htm, accessed June 10th 2004. 5. Karl-Eugen Feifel, Language Attitudes in Taiwan: A Social Evaluation of Language in Social Change, Taipei, Crane, 1994, p. 72. 6. Robert L. Cheng, “Language Unification in Taiwan: Present and Future”, in Murray A. Rubinstein (ed.), The Other Taiwan: 1945 to the Present, Armonk, Sharpe, p. 361. 7. Feifel, Language Attitudes in Taiwan, op. cit., p. 72. 8. Huang, Yuyan, shehui yu zuqun yishi, op. cit., p. 119. 9. Marinus E. Van den Berg, Language Planning and Language Use in Taiwan: A Study of Language Choice Behavior in Public Settings, Taipei, Crane, 1986, p. 184. 10. Huang, Yuyan, shehui yu zuqun yishi, op. cit., p. 146 11. Ibid. 12. Yang Chaur-shiang, “National Education Development and Reform for the New Millennium”, 1999, online at http://www.edu.tw/minister/case/report4.htm, accessed April 2nd 2002. 13. Ministry of Education (MOE), “Explanation Why the ‘Language Equality Law’ Will Be Drafted by the Council for Cultural Affairs”, 2004, online at http://www.edu.tw, accessed June 10th 2004. 14. Robert L. Cooper, Language Planning and Social Change, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 183. 15. A-chin Hsiau, Contemporary Taiwanese Cultural Nationalism, London, Routledge, 2000, p. 74. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid, p. 137. 18. “Shijie Taiwan Muyu Lianmeng” (Global Coalition for Taiwanese Languages), 2004, online at http://203.64.42.21/TG/BGLB, accessed June 10th 2004. 19. For details, see Henning Klöter, Written Taiwanese, Ph.D. dissertation, Leiden University, 2003. 20. Hsiau, Contemporary Taiwanese Cultural Nationalism, op. cit., p. 136; Lin Yangmin, Taiyu wenxue yundongshi lun (The History of the Taiyu Literature Movement), Taipei, Qianwei, 1996, p. 19f. 21. For a more comprehensive introduction to recent Taiyu literature, refer to Zhang Chunhuang et al., Tai-gi bun-hak kai-lun (An Introduction to Taiyu literature), Taipei, Qianwei, 2001. 22. For example, Dong Zhongsi, Taiwan Minnanyu cidian (A Dictionary of Southern Min of Taiwan), Taipei, Wu Nan Tushu Chuban, 2001; Qiu Wenxi and Chen Xianguo, Shiyong huayu taiyu duizhao dian (A Practical Comparative Mandarin-Taiwanese Dictionary), Taipei, Zhangshu, 1996; Shiyong Taiwan yandian (A Practical Dictionary of Taiwanese Sayings), Taipei, Zhangshu, 1999; Gô Kok-An, Taiyu siyong hanzi ziyuan / The Origins of Hanji Usage in Taiwanese: The Advanced Learner’s Dictionary for Writing Taiwanese, Taipei, privately published, 1998; Wu Shouli, Zonghe Taiwan Minnanyu jiben zidian chugao (A First Draft of a Basic Dictionary for the Southern Min Dialect of Taiwan), Taipei, Wen Shi Zhe, 1987; Guo–Tai duizhao huoyong cidian: cixing fenxi, xiang zhu Xia Zhang Quan yin (shang, xia ce) (A Comparative Mandarin-Taiwanese Dictionary For Practical Use, With Detailed Annotations of Xiamen, Zhangzhou, and Quanzhou Sounds), 2 Vols., Taipei, Yuanliu, 2000. 23. Klöter, Written Taiwanese, op. cit., p. 214ff. China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 97 24. Jacob Landau and Barbara Kellner-Heinkele, Politics of Language in the Ex-Soviet Muslim States: Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2000. 25. Hsiau, Contemporary Taiwanese Cultural Nationalism, op. cit., p. 139. 26. For example, in NLC, “Xiangtu yuyan jiaoxue xiankuang yu weilai yuwen jiaoxue zhi fazhan” (The Present Situation of Local Language Education and the Future Development of Language Teaching), Yuwen jianxun / Language Education Newsletter 3 (May), 2000, online at http://www.edu.tw/mandr/ publish/jian/03/p1.htm, accessed April 2nd 2002; DEJ, “How should the Ministry of Education implement local language education?”, 2001, online at http://teach.eje.edu.tw, accessed June 28th 2001. 27. MOE, “Jiaoyubu xinwen gao: Minnanyu, Kejiayu zhiyuan jiaoxue renyuan jiange gongzuo jijiang banli” (MOE News Release: Assessments of Personnel Assisting the Teaching of Southern Min and Hakka About to Take Place), 2002, online at http:// www.edu.tw/secretary/importance/901220-2.htm, accessed April 2nd 2002. 28. MOE, “Jiaoyubu xinwen gao: Jiaoyubu gongbu xiangtu yuyan jiaoxue zhiyuan renyuan jiange bishi, koushi shijian ji tixing” (MOE News Release: MOE Announces Time and Question Types for Written and Oral Tests for Personnel Assisting the Teaching of Local Languages), 2002, online at http://teach.eje.edu.tw/data/ sun/ 20022251056/910222.htm?paperid=2945, accessed April 2nd 2002. 29. NLC, Minnanyu zihui (yi) (A Lexicon of Southern Min, Part I), Taipei, 1998. 30. NLC, Fangyin fuhao xitong (System of Phonetic Symbols for Dialects), 1998, online at http://www.edu.tw/mandr/bbs/1-4-7.htm, accessed February 2nd 2003; Minnanyu zihui (er) (A Lexicon of Southern Min, Part II), Taipei, 1999. 31. NLC, “Guojia yuwen ziliaoku jiangou jihua” (The Plan to Set Up a Database for National Languages), 2001, online at http://www.edu.tw/mandr/business/kuhdbf.htm, accessed April 2nd 2002. 32. NLC, Minnanyu zihui (yi), op. cit., p. 1. 33. NLC, “Min Ke yu zhuyin fuhao zhuan’an yanjiu” (Special Aspects of the Research Into Phonetic Symbols for Southern Min and Hakka), 2000, online at http:// www.edu.tw/mandr/news/xtxj.htm, accessed April 2nd 2002. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. Dong Zhongsi, “Guanyu ‘Taiwan yuyin yinbiao fang’an’” [On ‘TLPA’], in Dong Zhongsi (ed.), ‘Taiwan Minnanyu gailun’ jiangshou ziliao huibian (A Compilation of Teaching Materials for “An Introduction to the Southern Min Language of Taiwan”), Taipei, Taiwan yuwen xuehui, 1996, pp. 27-69. 37. For example, Dong, Taiwan Minnanyu cidian, op. cit.; Qiu Wenxi and Chen Xianguo, Shiyong huayu taiyu duizhao dian, shiyong Taiwan yandian, op. cit. 38. NLC, “Guojia yuwen ziliaoku jiangou jihua”, op. cit. 39. Ibid. 40. For an overview, see Klöter, Written Taiwanese, op. cit. 41. Harald Haarmann, “Language Planning in the Light of a General Theory of Language: A Methodological Framework”, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, No. 86, 1990, p. 106ff. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid. 44. Karl Erland Gadelii, Language Planning: Theory and Practice. Evaluation of Language Planning Cases Worldwide, Paris, Unesco, 1999, p. 24. China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 98 45. Shuanfan Huang, “Language, Identity and Conflict: A Taiwanese Study”, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, No. 143, 2000, pp. 139-149. 46. Cooper, Language Planning and Social Change, op. cit., p. 77. ABSTRACTS The revival of the Taiwanese language (Taiyu) in the past two decades is a significant about-face, after the restrictive measures that the government has adopted for local languages in the past. This article compares the treatment of Taiyu by official language planning agencies during the Kuomintang) KMT and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) eras. It focuses on the debates on the creation of a written norm for Taiyu. Attention is also given to the activities of non- governmental language revival groups and the co-operation between official and unofficial language planners in the implementation of recent language reforms. China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 99 Book Reviews China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 100 Jean-Philippe Béja, A la recherche d’une ombre chinoise. Le mouvement pour la démocratie en Chine (1919-2004), Paris, Le Seuil, 2004, 266 p. Lucien Bianco NOTE DE L’ÉDITEUR Translated from the French original by Jonathan Hall 1 The title of this book is a bit misleading. The real subject is the democracy movement over the last twenty-five years (1979-2004) as this period covers two hundred pages, the sixty preceding years being swiftly dispatched in a thirty-five-page prologue. This is just as well, because a more evenly balanced account of the whole period could not have thrown much more light on already such thoroughly researched events as the May 4th movement and the Hundred Flowers campaign. On the more recent period, by contrast, the author has a lot to tell us. 2 I propose to follow the same trajectory and pass quickly over the prologue. I would simply add that one of the most clear-sighted critics of the nationalist dictatorship, Chu Anping (quoted on p. 29), had already observed as early as 1947, “at least, with the Kuomintang in power, the struggle for freedom is still possible ; however restricted such freedom may be, it is still a matter of degree. If the communists take power, the question will become whether any freedom can exist at all”. This foresight, which did not prevent Chu from siding with the communists by the end of 1948, apart from his criticism of the regime during the Hundred Flowers campaign (p. 38), clarifies under what conditions the struggle for democracy, studied in the rest of the book, had to be China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 101 conducted. I would just make one minor amendment : Wang Shiwei was not executed in 1946 (p. 31) but in 1947, when the communists were forced to leave Yenan. 3 The main focus of the book is on the movement for democracy during the period of the reforms, which is considered in two phases, before and after Tiananmen. The emphasis is on the first phase, since the first section, the virtuous circle of democratisation, is much longer than the second, the vicious circle of authoritarianism, which deals with recent years. It scarcely needs to be said that there is an imbalance in the contrast between the apparently positive term, the “virtuous circle”, and the phase to which it succumbs, the “vicious circle”, for the message of the work, unsurprisingly, is that whether it is vicious or virtuous, any attempt to democratise such a regime is a vain attempt to square the circle in question. So the imbalance is simply the author’s way of accounting for the facts. The first part opens with the democracy wall (1978-1979) and ends with the crisis in the spring of 1989. But there has been nothing comparable to these two events in the last fifteen years, especially since the author quite rightly excludes Falungong from his study of the democratic movement (p. 247). 4 Right at the beginning of the more substantial first section, Béja stresses two important points : 1) the lack of continuity or development between such events as the democracy wall and the Tiananmen demonstrations, just as earlier there had been none between the Hundred Flowers campaign and the democracy wall (or to go back still further, from the 1930s and the League for Democracy to the Hundred Flowers) ; 2) it is the factional struggle at the top of the Party that allows popular discontent to find an outlet. When he had taken advantage of the movement for democracy, Deng Xiaoping took care to stop it going too far, since for him and the other veterans “democracy can at best lead only to chaos, and at worst to civil war” (p. 80). 5 Having assimilated these broad outlines, the reader can easily follow (in Chapter 4) the finely developed examination of the discussion circles, the autonomous research centres, and the publications that also appeared autonomously in the 1980s, without harbouring too many illusions over the outcome. The more detailed account of the two years prior to Tiananmen (from the fall of Hu Yaobang to his death, in Chapter 6), occasionally gets in the way of the political history and the conflicts at the top of the Party. Similarly, there is an excursus in Chapter 8, dealing with the decision-making during the Tiananmen crisis, but in this case the interruption is entirely salutary. Thanks to the Tiananmen Archives, which he himself has presented to the French public1, Béja is able to confirm that the politburo, and even its standing committee, played a minor role throughout the crisis. The major decisions were taken within the Deng circle and by Deng himself, after consulting certain members of the standing committee and, more significantly, certain of the so-called Eight Immortals. So there was no adherence to institutional procedures by the regime. In this it followed Mao’s example of non-observance of the very procedures it had drawn up itself. A whole decade of reforms and opening-up had brought no changes whatsoever to the behaviour of the leadership. Deng’s legitimacy was charismatic in nature, and Béja considers this (p. 177) to be sign of the archaic nature of the political system2. 6 The last fifteen years since Tiananmen are dealt with more summarily, taking up three chapters as against six for 1979-1989. Chapter 9, “The consequences of the failure of 1989 for the democracy movement”, provides an excellent prognosis for subsequent developments. The first of these has been the “recoil of the intelligentsia” (pp. 206-213). A large section of the intellectuals have distanced themselves decisively from China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 102 the paths they followed in the 1980s, considering them to be a dead-end. In a sense, before Tiananmen, the intellectuals had been more optimistic, despite their discontent. But nowadays they believe that the reforms have solved nothing, and that the modernisation of China is a more complex and delicate undertaking than they had previously thought. Some of them even share the leadership’s fear that a democratic experiment might threaten their beloved stability, and this has encouraged them to conclude with the Party a “bargain between elites” (Adam Michnik is quoted on p. 212 et passim). Béja contrasts these new majority groupings with protesters like Li Shengzhi and Li Rui on the one hand, and the dissidents on the other, rightly describing the latter as socially isolated (p. 220). There is a possibility that their influence may be even smaller than the author maintains, although his analysis in Chapter 10, bolstered further in Chapter 11, already gives scant grounds for optimism, because he shows that the popular movements (of workers and peasants) arise from the need for self-defence (p. 230) and do not threaten the regime (p. 233). 7 The perspectives sketched out in the conclusion, “Post-political authoritarianism or democracy ?”, seem more doubtful. I am unconvinced by the “post-political” label and by the merging of Chinese conditions with the modernity pertaining in the west since the end of the cold war. As for democracy, we should hold fast to the acute observation on page 250, that “at present it cannot be maintained that the movement for democracy offers any promise of a political alternative”. But what about later ? One needs to be a die-hard optimist to even consider that there is a possible choice between the perpetuation of an (extremely) authoritarian regime and democracy. 8 It is possible to dissent from the perspectives that the author struggles to maintain in order to keep hope alive, while still judging, as I do, that the main body of the work is lucid and substantial. Moreover it is clearly argued and a real pleasure to read. It is also a positive gain to have such a useful and comprehensive guide made available in French. NOTES 1. Zhang Liang, Les Archives de Tiananmen, Paris, Editions du Félin, 2004, translated by Jean-Philippe Béja, Raphaël Jacquet, and Jade Orweil, with an introduction by Jean- Philippe Béja 2. Even if they operate somewhat crudely, such archaic elements can function very effectively, as Ian Kershaw shows in his essay on Hitler (in French, Hitler, essai sur le charisme en politique, Paris, Gallimard (folio) 1995). This essay is much more stimulating than the same author’s large biographical work Hitler (Paris, Flammarion, 1998, 2 vols.). China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 103 Antoine Kernen, La Chine vers l’économie de marché. Les privatisations à Shenyang Paris, Karthala, 2004, 274 p. Gilles Guiheux NOTE DE L’ÉDITEUR Translated from the French original by Jonathan Hall 1 Antoine Kernen is a teacher and researcher at the University of Lausanne. This work is the fruit of ten years’ of investigations in Shenyang, the provincial capital of Liaoning. Some of his findings have already been published in China Perspectives1. The work as a whole is a monograph focused on Shenyang, a large industrial city in northeastern China where the withdrawal of the state from direct management of the economy has created an unprecedented crisis. 2 The author relies extensively on the local press, with which he is very familiar. He has also made use of research by his Chinese colleagues, and has enjoyed access to a certain number of internal Party documents. In addition, he has included interviews with some local protagonists, such as the unemployed, entrepreneurs and city officials. Kernen has chosen to study the transition from a planned to a market economy not from the standpoint of public policy but from the point of view of the individuals affected by it. This leads him to take an interest in the strategies adopted by the inhabitants of Shenyang throughout the 1990s, which he labels “privatisation from below”. 3 His work takes a stand against the idea that the state is obsolete, by showing that on the contrary it has retained a central role in the transition, even if its means of intervention are being transformed. The privatisations are giving a major role to a new kind of state. The latter is no less interventionist than in the past but acts in a less China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 104 direct and centralised manner. On the one hand the government is privatising, while on the other it is developing new interventionist social policies. 4 The work is divided into two sections. The first is the longer, and covers the actual process of privatisation. The author starts with a sociological study of the provenance of the private entrepreneurs, showing—as is now well known—that the private sector was at first composed of people excluded from the socialist economy, before it expanded to include groups that were better integrated into urban society. Leaving aside the purely ideological issues, throughout the whole of the reform period the state and its administrators succeeded in keeping the private sector surrounded by uncertainty, and this in turn became a management strategy. By such means, the authorities kept the development of the private sector under control, and were able to select its main beneficiaries. The hesitations and uncertainties in policy which marked the development of the private sector impeded any real institutionalisation of its management by the state, but allowed carefully chosen entrepreneurs to profit from their favoured status. This system of distributing favours on a case-by-case basis, however, has prevented the emergence of any group consciousness. 5 The author’s next step is to address the slow pace in the privatisation of the state enterprises. Here he carries out a sociological analysis, focusing on the participants themselves as they transform their practical conduct. The fact is that the running of these enterprises has improved. Far from being resistant to change, they have been a leading force driving the reforms forward. Even when running at a loss, the state enterprises have sustained and contributed to the transformation, largely by fostering many new enterprises under their protection. The state enterprises have developed productive sidelines, and these have become platforms for individual enterprise and self-enrichment. 6 The second part of Kernen’s book deals with the role of the state in the transition period. As an agent in fomenting technological modernisation, the central state controls the flow of investments (particularly those from abroad) as well as bank loans. One of the aims of the Shenyang city council has been to develop industrial conglomerates capable of standing up to foreign competition. In addition to their interventionist industrial policy, the city authorities practice economic “localism”, regulating the markets in favour of the local producers. 7 Finally, the author analyses the means whereby the state manages poverty. Policies to encourage re-employment are at the centre of the city council’s concerns, so the loss of job security due to privatisation is matched by a new commitment on the part of the authorities. In Kernen’s view, the interventionist activity of the Chinese authorities is even more apparent in the way that it takes control over social security than in the field of economic modernisation per se. The state has assumed responsibility for some of the former social obligations of the enterprises, and it is attempting to introduce a more comprehensive system of social security. Its entry into this field arises less from a residual communist consciousness than from a concern with social order. It is a matter of forestalling any potential working class mobilisation. 8 There are several points that should be emphasised. First among these is the richness afforded by Kernen’s monographic approach. Admittedly, his analysis is narrowly focused on the specific situation of Shenyang, or more broadly that of northeastern China, while other studies have shown that the dynamic forces in play in the new focal centres of Chinese expansion (Zhejiang or Guangdong) are different. But Kernen shows China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 105 quite clearly the importance of the local level within the overall Chinese administrative apparatus. Local officials are no longer there simply in order to echo the orders issued from on high, but have now become “leading protagonists in the new methods of rule”. Insofar as the activity of the different administrations varies from province to province, the local level becomes a prerequisite for studying the general re- organisation of the state. 9 Under the strong influence of theories which emphasise dependency on a prior situation, the author insists on the historical rootedness of the transition. He shows that the individual practices which have contributed towards the building of the market economy are deeply embedded in organisational structures already in place. For example, even amidst their decline, the danwei work units still retain a major role in giving a sense of identity to the urban population, and are still at the intersection of a large number of their social networks. Many city dwellers have relied on this economic and social institution to enable them to work out their own strategies for change. 10 The high quality of Kernen’s investigation should be emphasised, for it gives a voice not only to the political and economic decision-makers, but also to the victims of their social and economic reorganisation. As an example of this one could cite the pages describing the workers’ demonstration and march to the Shenyang city hall to demand payment of their overdue retirement benefits (pp. 246-247). So the daily activities of the underprivileged, no less than the decisions of the officials in charge, are shown to contribute to the changing nature of the state. 11 This rich study incorporates many different voices. Even if he does not attach the same importance to it as other writers2, Kernen does mention the re-reading of the past on the part of the Liaoning authorities. In Shenyang, just as in the other cities and provinces of China, history is put to work to serve as the basis for projected economic developments. Moreover, the author makes use of Michel Foucault’s ideas on the nature of rule. This allows him to think about the heterogeneous forms of power, and to grasp the privatisation process both as a mutation in the procedures of government and as the formation of a new subjectivity. However, the nature of this new “subject” still needs to be specified. Although Kernen allows us to grasp the new modes of government adopted by the Chinese state, he has unfortunately not given sufficient attention to what he means by the “market economy” or the “private sector” (even though he does stress on several occasions the to-and-fro movements between the private and public sectors, and the difficulty in sticking to a legal definition of private ownership based on the possession of shares). This is most probably because the perspectives with which he began his study were of a political order, but they ended up as analyses in urban and economic sociology. Both of the latter seem to me to be particularly apt approaches to an analysis of the dynamic processes which are transforming contemporary China. China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 106 NOTES 1. See, in particular, Antoine Kernen, “Shenyang Learns to Manage its Poor”, China Perspectives, No. 11, May-June 1997, pp. 17-21 ; Antoine Kernen and Jean-Louis Rocca, “The Social Responses to Unemployment and the ‘New Urban Poor’ : Case Study in Shenyang City and Liaoning Province”, China Perspectives No. 27, January-February 2000, pp. 35-51. See also Antoine Kernen and Jean-Louis Rocca, “La réforme des entreprises publiques en Chine et sa gestion sociale : le cas de Shenyang et du Liaoning”, Etudes du Ceri, January 1998. 2. See Wu Fulong, “The (post)socialist entrepreneurial city as a state project : Shanghai’s reglobalization in question”, Urban Studies, Vol. 40, No. 9, 2003, pp. 1673-1698 ; Lisa Hoffman, “Enterprising cities and citizens : the refiguring of urban spaces and the making of post-Mao professionals”, Provincial China, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 2003 ; David S. Goodman, “Localism and entrepreneurship : history, identity and solidarity as factors of production” in Barbara Krug (ed.), China’s Rational Entrepreneurs : the development of the new private business sector, London, Routledge-Curzon, 2004, pp. 139-165. China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 107 Barbara Krug (ed.), China’s Rational Entrepreneurs. The Development of the New Private Business Sector London, New York, RoutledgeCurzon, 2004, 208 p. Gilles Guiheux NOTE DE L’ÉDITEUR Translated from the French original by Philip Liddell 1 This book, edited by Barbara Krug and devoted to the first generation of entrepreneurs since the reforms, is largely inspired by the New Institutional Economics. It brings researchers in management and economics into association with political scientists. All the contributions examine the characteristics of the business system1 adopted by China’s evolving economy, and aim at an understanding of the nature of the organisational forms being put in place there. As a group, the writers share two hypotheses : that the emergence of the business system is a process, which implies that the analysis is dynamic ; and that the participants in its construction are diverse : entrepreneurs, firms, government representatives. This requires an analysis based both at the individual level—understanding the participants’ intentions—, and at the corporate level—the co-ordination of individual actions. 2 Almost all the writers are careful to found their enquiries on field studies. As Barbara Krug points out in a methodological afterword, if one limits oneself to the available quantitative data, one runs the risk of taking as fact what is no more than a fleeting reality, a snapshot based on imperfect statistical concepts. The writers, rather than turning to China theories and models drawn from elsewhere, begin their research with empirical questions : how does an individual create an enterprise ? How does an entrepreneur interact with his environment ? China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 108 3 Rather than starting off with the demographic characteristics of the firms—forms of ownership, size, sector of activity, position in the market—as it is usually done in work devoted to the Chinese economy and the theory of organisations, the writers are concerned with the real conditions in which enterprises were created and with the entrepreneurs’ intentions. The enterprise is thus captured in its cultural and social context2. Five of the book’s eight chapters are based on three surveys carried out in 1999, 2000 and 2001 in the provinces of Shanxi, Zhejiang and Jiangsu, in a total of 74 enterprises (more than 200 questions were put to each person interviewed). 4 Four conclusions are worthy of note. Firstly, in an environment in mid-transition between the state plan and the market, enterprises have to be understood mainly as structures in a dynamic process. For example, enterprises often change their legal status and form of ownership, and this is apart from any consideration of their performance. The “privatisation” of collective enterprises is a well-known phenomenon. Often, they also change their field of activity. Barbara Krug and Laszlo Polos write about an entrepreneur who began by opening a restaurant before embarking on coal extraction and then on steel production (p. 82). An entrepreneur’s chances of success depend very much on what was produced before the firm was created (p. 63), hence the need to look into its history. Whereas neo-classical theory assumes that an enterprise is defined in terms of its production and according to exclusively economic factors, in the case of China the question of what is produced appears secondary. The level of profits and productive activity are, in China, very largely governed by the individual characteristics of the entrepreneur and of the local environment (p. 62). 5 The choice of industrial sector is not a condition for success or failure, whereas all markets are characterised by a surplus of demand compared with supply. Far more crucial is the quality of the associated partners and the managers. The failure to acquire know-how or technology is offset—and sometimes entirely compensated for— by having good connections with local and central political leaders. That is the book’s second important conclusion : the necessity for an alliance between entrepreneurs and bureaucrats. Barbara Krug and Judith Mehta suggest that a Chinese firm is defined, not by what it produces, but by its network of alliances (Chapter 2 : “Entrepreneurship by alliance”). It is the relations with local government and public agencies that ensure the protection of the property rights. In the absence of institutionalised regulatory mechanisms, the strategic factor for success is not choosing the industrial sector but choosing the right people, inside and outside the firm. In China, entrepreneurship does not depend on an individual’s faculty for identifying opportunities for profit but on “the ability to form an alliance” with those who possess or control financial or physical resources, or the human capital necessary for entering a market. Why would we not find in China the same collaboration that has come about in Russia between enterprises and the mafia ? Krug and Mehta put forward a series of hypotheses and stress the diversity of possible alliance networks. 6 A firm may call upon a range of networks, varying according to the institutional environment, the time and the location, and the interests in play. In this regard, several contributors show that families or family networks do not play any major or lasting role within enterprises. Several cases are cited where entrepreneurs may admittedly have borrowed from their parents, but have hastened to pay off these loans. Several informants declare that their families have been of little help to them, while China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 109 some assert that they have taken great care to exclude their parents from their business affairs (p. 100). This finding appears to invalidate the idea that, when entrepreneurs face an uncertain environment, they mainly rely on their family networks. In fact, a survey (reported on in Chapter 5 by Hans Hendrischke) carried out in the province of Zhejiang shows that, there too, a dynamic process is underway ; enterprises have recourse to different types of networks at times and with motives that are quite separate. Family is only one of the available networks. 7 All the writers emphasise the non-economic factors involved in production. On this subject, the contribution by David S G Goodman is especially innovative (Chapter 7, entitled “Localism and entrepreneurship : history, identity and solidarity as factors of production”). On the basis of a survey in Shanxi province, he shows how a discourse on the province’s identity is at the heart of the local authorities’ development strategy. This discourse, elaborated following the arrival of a new Provincial Secretary of the CCP in 1992, has the aim of encouraging local entrepreneurs to invest in the province. While funding from central government is in decline, this “localist discourse” and the local authorities’ drive to build up a new provincial identity are part of a medium and long- term strategy for mobilising the resources available on the spot. 8 Clearly, the book is not without its faults. While some writers deal with entrepreneurial activity in general, others concentrate more strictly on private (or near-private) entrepreneurs. But, in disciplines (management and economics) where analysis too often consists in measuring the gap between the abstract norm and the observed reality, this book opens up stimulating perspectives for research. It is a salutary and successful analysis, in which theory is founded upon research. NOTES DE FIN 1. See Richard Whitley, Divergent Capitalisms : The Social Structuring and Change of Business Systems, Oxford, OUP, 1999. 2. Mark Granovetter, “Economic Action and Social Structure : the Problem of Embeddedness”, in Mark Granovetter and Richard Swedberd (eds.), The Sociology of Economic Life, Boulder, Westview Press, 1992, pp. 53-81. China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 110 Isabelle Attané (ed.), La Chine au seuil du XXle siècle. Questions de population, questions de société Paris, INED, 2002, XXXVl + 602 p. Thierry Sanjuan NOTE DE L’ÉDITEUR Translated from the French original by Jonathan Hall 1 This collective work under the direction of Isabelle Attané is invaluable for its precise information and further reflections on developments in present-day China. It sets out to assess the main issues confronting a society in which the challenges of employment, urbanisation and an aging population are looming even larger than those arising from purely demographic shifts. 2 Jean-Luc Domenach’s stimulating introduction is followed by articles on demography, handled in its various aspects by Chinese and French demographers (Peng Xizhe, Peng Fei and Emmanuelle Cambois, Zeng Yi, Mo Long, Li Jianmin, Li Shuzhuo, Jiang Liwen, Michel Cartier, Alain Monnier and Youssef Courbage), but there are also articles on patterns of migration within China itself (Cai Fang) or those occasioned by China’s opening-up (Jean-Louis Rallu, Jean-Philippe Béja), the problem of the food supply (Claude Aubert), the care provisions in the countryside (William Hsiao and Liu Yanli, Charlotte Cailliez), the educational system (Liang Xiaoyan), the situation of women (Tan Lin), rising unemployment in the cities (François Gipouloux), and the growth of inequality (Jean-Claude Chesnais). 3 Furthermore, this complex volume with its variety of approaches is amply provided with many inserts and tables, in which Isabelle Attané provides further methodological information and clarifies some important issues. China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004 111 F0 4 On the negative side, there is a regrettable scarcity of maps BE apart from the set provided at the beginning. Nathan Keyfitz’s preface makes a very slight contribution and seems to be only loosely in touch with the high level of the work as a whole, which is a very searching study of contemporary issues. Finally, the work of Jean-Pierre Larivière on the census of 1990 is not mentioned, and there is no reference to Yves Blayo even though, back in 1997, he published a detailed overview of Chinese population policies in the same INED series. China Perspectives, 56 | november - december 2004