Public Culture and the Taiwan Imaginary
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Public Culture and The Taiwan Imaginary: Freedom, The Nation, and Welfare aa-Social Justice Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Wei Mei-chuan Government Department London School of Economics and Political Science University of London February 2006 UMI Number: U615871 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U615871 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 F Abstract This thesis attempts to develop a fresh perspective on the study of political development. By drawing on the experience of Taiwan’s postwar political trajectory while critically appropriating the existing concepts relevant in the field, I employ ‘public culture’ as a new conceptual tool for understanding and explaining political change. Public culture is defined as the process o f public deliberation in which public intellectuals as well as the general public are engaged, public consciousness is formed and contested, and public consensus to various degrees is arrived at. Central to the concept of public culture is the role of political ideology and intellectual articulation and debates in social evolution and transformation. Modernisation theories and ‘transitology’ remain dominant in the comparative study of political development. The public culture perspective developed in this thesis counters the economic determinism of modernisation theory and the elitism of transition theory while retaining the historical and structural approaches typical of the former and attention to the role of elite actors characteristic of the latter. Public culture is an attempt to provide an angle from which the context and text of ideological discourses and their sociopolitical implications can be analysed for a better explanation of Taiwan’s experience. This thesis demonstrates that Taiwan’s postwar public culture is featured by a twin development of liberalism and nationalism against the backgrounds of the Second World War, Chinese Civil War and Cold War. In the same context welfarism as social justice emerged as another influential discourse. Postwar Taiwan’s institutional change from authoritarianism to liberal democracy reflects this feature. Author’s Declaration I declare that the work presented in this thesis is mine alone. Wei Mei-chuan 3 Acknowledgements Without the support and assistance of many people, this thesis would not have been possible. My deepest appreciation goes to my supervisor, Dr. Lin Chun, for her patience and trust, and for enabling me to conduct a research project that requires intellectual capabilities superior to what I have acquired. My gratitude also goes to my advisor, Dr. Cecile Fabre, for her invaluable comments and suggestions and Dr. Tseng Yi-jen, in Taiwan, for directing me to Habermas’ theory of public sphere. I have learnt a great deal from them and should have learnt more. Parts of the thesis have been presented at the Government Department’s Comparative Politics Workshop and the annual meetings of the Taiwan Political Studies Association and the Political Studies Association. I would like to thank all who participated, particularly Dr. Wang Fu-chang, from the TPSA conference, for carefully reading my paper and giving me very helpful comments on my critical examination of the existing approaches to the study of Taiwan’s democratisation. Thanks to Perry Anderson, Chiang Yi-hwa, Chien Sechin Y. S., Shaw Carl K. Y., Tsai Ying-wen, Wang Chaohua, and Wu Nai-teh for sharing their thoughts on Taiwan politics. Much appreciated is the support from Michael Bacon, Joel Bentsur, Chen Chun-hung, Chiu Hua-mei, Chiu Yu-bin, Alan Chong, Chow Po-chung, Philip Cook, Chico Gaetani, Rotem Gonen, Stephen Green, Lin Chiung-chu, Markus Jaeger, Jenny Ng, Steven Pang, Jeong-won Park, Frank Shih, Li-kim Tan, Siao-see Teng, Nebojsa Vladisavljevic and friends in Taiwan. Finally and most importantly, I owe a special debt of gratitude to my family in Taiwan- my parents, siblings, siblings-in-law and my boyfriend- for their unflagging support, especially during difficult times while I was writing this thesis. This thesis is dedicated to my parents and supervisor. 4 Note on Romanisation The political division between Taiwan (or the Republic of China) and the Chinese mainland (or the People’s Republic of China) extends to the different systems of Romanisation used by each side. This presents problems for any work that deals with both Taiwan and China when it comes to presenting Chinese proper names and terms in English. The principle that has been adopted in this thesis is to use the Wade-Giles system for the names of individuals, places and terms in Taiwan. In contrast, the (Hanyu) Pinyin system is used for the names of individuals, places and terms in the Chinese mainland. The Wade-Giles system has been used for all references of Chinese-language works. With regard to the citation of Chinese names, the Chinese method of naming has been adopted in this thesis. That is, the surname or family name comes before the first name. 5 Contents A bstract............................................................................................................................................ 2 Author’s Declaration ........................................................................................................................ 3 Acknolwedgements ............................................................................................................................4 Note on Romanisation .......................................................................................................................5 Chapter One Introduction: Situating Postwar Taiwan—A Historical Review ....................... 8 A Historical Account of Taiwan’s Postwar Political Development ........................................9 A Brief Discussion of the Concept of Public Culture ............................................................32 Theory and History ................................................................................................................33 The Orignisation of The Thesis .............................................................................................35 Chapter Two Public Culture and Taiwan’s Modern Development ........................................37 Modernisation Theory, Transitology and Taiwan’s Political Development .........................37 The Perspective of Public Culture .........................................................................................47 Defining Public Culture.........................................................................................................48 The Elements/Dimensions of Public Culture ........................................................................58 Political Development: the Evolution of Public Culture .......................................................64 Public Culture and Taiwan’s Political Development —Liberalism, Nationalism and Welfarism as Social Justice .................................................65 Chapter Three Liberalism and Taiwan’s Political Development ............................................. 82 The Chinese Civil War, Cold War and the Liberal Movement in Postwar Taiwan .............. 82 A Liberal Seed in Illiberal Soil: The Aftermath of the KMT’s Defeat and the ‘Free China Movement’ from 1949 to 1960 .............................................................84 The Silenced Liberal Voice and Its Re-emergence, 1961-1975 ......................................... 100 The Dangwai Era: the Turn towards Democratisation, 1975-1987 .................................... 105 Liberalism Challenged: Confronting Egalitarianism, Nationalism and Postmodernism, 1987 to the present 109 Feminist Interventions: The Debate Between Liberal and Lesbian Feminists .................... 122 Chapter Four Nationalism, Taiwanese Consciousness, and Taiwan’s Identity Predicament ............................................................... 132 The ‘Nationalistic Turn’ in Taiwan’s Public Culture .......................................................... 132 The Beginning of the Tragedy—The ‘Febyuary 28th Incident’ in 1947 ............................. 134 Official Chinese Nationalism vs. Taiwanese Consciousness, 1947-1970 .......................... 139 Neocolonialism, Anti-imperialism, Chinese Nationalism and the Nativist Literary Debate, 1971-1979 ........................ 143 The ‘Chinese Consciousness vs. Taiwanese Consciousness’ Debate and the Emergent Taiwanese Nationalism, 1980-1990 ................................................................................... 161 The ‘Taiwanese Nationalism vs. Chinese Nationalism’ Debate and Identity Politics, 1991 to the present ............................................................................. 180 6 Chapter Five Welfarism and Social Justice ...........................................................................216 The Historical Background of the Welfare Development in Taiwan ..................................216 Social Investment in Postwar