Arts, Faculty of
Political Science, Department of
DSpace
UBCV
Han, Enze
Master of Arts - MA
University of British Columbia
This thesis draws upon theories of democratization and nationalism, and focuses on the dynamics of the relationship between democratization and nationalism in an ethnically plural society. During a democratic transition in an ethnically plural society, it is nearly inevitable that groups with different ethnic identities will experience extensive conflicts. The argument of this thesis is that in Taiwan, because of the long-existing divergent national identities within the society, the democratic transition that started from the late 1970s has stimulated and accelerated the rise of Taiwanese nationalism, which has led to the increasing conflicts between it and the existing Chinese nationalism that the KMT government has for long upheld as its legitimacy symbol. The thesis is composed of four main chapters. The first chapter deals with theories of democratization and nationalism, and the relationship between the two in plural societies. It argues that democratization in an ethnically plural society will very likely bring a politicization of ethnicity and increasing ethnic conflicts. The second chapter reviews Taiwan's political history and analyzes the origins of Taiwanese nationalism. Following this discussion, the third chapter will highlight the DPP's Taiwanese nationalist agenda and President Lee Teng-hui's 12-year rule (1988-2000). The fourth chapter will analyze how divisive Taiwanese society has become after Lee's rule. A statistical analysis of the 2000 Presidential Election will provide strong evidence that in Taiwan, people's national identity decides their party affiliations, which has made the society intractably politically divided and very difficult to bridge. In the concluding chapter, how Chen Shui-bian's first four-year term has done nothing but worsen the existing division will be analyzed.
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A N I N C R E A S I N G L Y D I V I D E D S O C I E T Y D E M O C R A T I Z A T I O N A N D S U R G I N G N A T I O N A L I S M IN T A I W A N by E N Z E H A N B.A. , Beij ing Foreign Studies University, 2001 M.A. , The University of British Columbia, 2003 A THESIS S U B M I T T E D IN P A R T I A L F U L F I L M E N T OF T H E R E Q U I R E M E N T S F O R T H E D E G R E E OF M A S T E R OF A R T S in T H E F A C U L T Y OF G R A D U A T STUDIES T H E D E P A R T M E N T OF P O L I T I C A L S C I E N C E We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard T H E U N I V E R S I T Y OF BRIT ISH C O L U M B I A August 2004 © Enze Han, 2004 A N I N C R E A S I N G L Y D I V I D E D S O C I E T Y D E M O C R A T I Z A T I O N A N D S U R G I N G N A T I O N A L I S M IN T A I W A N by E N Z E H A N B.A. , Beijing Foreign Studies University, 2001 M.A. , The University of British Columbia, 2003 A THESIS S U B M I T T E D IN P A R T I A L F U L F I L M E N T OF T H E R E Q U I R E M E N T S F O R T H E D E G R E E OF M A S T E R OF A R T S in T H E F A C U L T Y OF G R A D U A T E S T U D I E S (The Department of Polit ical Science) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard T H E U N I V E R S I T Y OF BRIT ISH C O L U M B I A August 2004 © Enze Han, 2004 l U B C l THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA FACULTY OF G R A D U A T E STUDIES Library Authorization B In presenting this thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Name of Author (please print) Date (dd/mm/yyyy) itleofThesis: /)/? l/ict*Ai}yfj /),y„W,J . f i ^ w , Degree: Year: Department of The University of British Columbia Vancouver, B C Canada grad.ubc.ca/forms/?formlD=THS page 1 of 1 last updated: 15-Aug-04 Abstract This thesis draws upon theories of democratization and nationalism, and focuses on the dynamics of the relationship between democratization and nationalism in an ethnically plural society. During a democratic transition in an ethnically plural society, it is nearly inevitable that groups with different ethnic identities wi l l experience extensive conflicts. The argument of this thesis is that in Taiwan, because of the long-existing divergent national identities within the society, the democratic transition that started from the late 1970s has stimulated and accelerated the rise of Taiwanese nationalism, which has led to the increasing conflicts between it and the existing Chinese nationalism that the K M T government has for long upheld as its legitimacy symbol. The thesis is composed of four main chapters. The first chapter deals with theories of democratization and nationalism, and the relationship between the two in plural societies. It argues that democratization in an ethnically plural society wi l l very likely bring a politicization of ethnicity and increasing ethnic conflicts. The second chapter reviews Taiwan's political history and analyzes the origins of Taiwanese nationalism. Fol lowing this discussion, the third chapter wi l l highlight the D P P ' s Taiwanese nationalist agenda and President Lee Teng-hui's 12-year rule (1988-2000). The fourth chapter wi l l analyze how divisive Taiwanese society has become after Lee's rule. A statistical analysis of the 2000 Presidential Election wi l l provide strong evidence that in Taiwan, people's national identity decides their party affiliations, which has made the society intractably politically divided and very difficult to bridge. In the concluding chapter, how Chen Shui-bian's first four-year term has done nothing but worsen the existing division wi l l be analyzed. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract i i Table of Contents i i i I N T R O D U C T I O N 1 C H A P T E R 1 Democratization & Nationalism in Plural Societies 9 Democratization and Nationalism 10 Democratization and Nationalism in Taiwan 17 C H A P T E R II The Origins of Taiwanese Nationalism 20 The Formation of a Taiwanese Identity 20 The Politicization of the Taiwanese Identity 25 The Resurgence of Taiwanese Nationalism 31 C H A P T E R III Ethnic Conflicts in Taiwan's Democratic Transition 35 The DPP's Political Mobilization Strategy as the Opposition Party 36 The Democratic Transition under Lee Teng-hui's Rule 39 The Power Struggle within the KMT 43 Lee Teng-hui and James Soong 46 Effect of Lee's Term on Ethnic Relations in Taiwan 49 Conflicting National Identities 51 C H A P T E R IV A Divided Society and Polit ical Party Affi l iations 55 Methodology 57 Is National Identity the Only Salient Effect? 59 How Strong are the Effects? 61 C H A P T E R V Conclusion 64 Bibliography 69 Appendix 76 5 Introduction "Hundreds of protesters stormed the Central Election Commission headquarters after it certified the results of Taiwan's disputed presidential election,..., about 2,000 protesters scuffled with riot police guarding the building, broke windows, and tossed eggs after the commission officially proclaimed that President Chen Shui-bian won the election over opposition leader Lien Chan.. ." 1 "Nearly 500,000 people, many clad in throwaway yellow ponchos against a cold drizzle, surrounded Taiwan's presidential office and blocked major streets to protest last weekend's disputed presidential election. Some protesters brought a 15-foot-tall Statue of Liberty that had a tear in her eye and the slogan 'Strive for J ustice' written on her body in Chinese characters..." These were two scenes of events that happened days after the March 20, 2004 presidential election in the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan. 3 This time, people not only voted for the president and vice-president, but they were also required to participate in a referendum, which asked questions about how Taiwan should handle its relationship with the mainland China. 4 Although the referendum failed because it didn't pass the 50 per cent threshold,"^ President Chen Shui-bian won the reelection by a very small margin of 30,000 votes, or 0.2 per cent of more than 13 mil l ion ballot casts. However, a result based on such a small margin was considered by opposition leaders and their supporters to be totally unacceptable. Right after the poll ing results were released, the opposition, an alliance of the Kuomintang ( K M T ) and the People First Party (PFP), claimed that the vote was marred by irregularities and unfair electioneering by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). They demanded a recounting of the votes. The focus of the 1 See Associated Press Online, March 26, 2004. Acquired through Lexis & Nexis Academic Database. 2 Associated Press Online, March 27, 2004. Acquired through Lexis A Nexis Academic Database. 3 ROC and Taiwan will be used interchangeably in this paper for the purpose of convenience. 4 The referendum was composed of two questions asking whether the people of Taiwan think that the government should increase anti-ballistic defense capability in light of mainland China's missile threat and whether the government should start a peace talk with the mainland China. 5 The referendum only got 45 per cent of supporting votes out of the pool of eligible voters. 1 fights between the two sides was a mysterious gun-shot incident on the eve of the election that slightly wounded Chen and his running mate Ani ta Lu . Rumors were spread that Chen had staged this shooting to gain a sympathy vote for himself. There were also allegations that DPP radio stations in Southern Taiwan had spread rumors that the shooting was staged by the communist China in order to swing the vote to its benefit. A l l in al l , the March 20 election this year turned out to be a nightmare for Taiwan's young democracy. It is true that election disputes often occur in not-so-mature democracies. 6 Different from many other countries, however, the disputes in Taiwan fall closely along ethnic lines and thus have become a battle between two groups in a deeply-divided society. The DPP (Pan Green) mainly draws its support from people with a strong Taiwanese identity, while many K M T and P F P ' s (Pan Blue) supporters are those who still cling to a Chinese identity linked to the old notion of a Republic of China. 7 For the pan-blue, the victory of Chen Shui-bian means that the D P P ' s goal of an "independent Taiwan" comes even closer, meaning that the old Republic of China would cease to exist. For the pan-green, the Mainlanders are seen as those who want to sell out Taiwan and unify with mainland China, something that wi l l be detrimental to the de facto sovereignty Taiwan has enjoyed and deserves. In the internet chat rooms, there have been harsh verbal attacks made on each group. 8 For example, the Mainlanders have often been For example, alter the recent presidential election in the Philippines, there were protests charging unfair vote-counting by the incumbent President Arroyo. Even in mature democracies, election disputes are not uncommon as well, for example, the US in 2000. 7 In Taiwan's politics, Pan Green refers to the DPP and other small parties who strongly pursue an independent Taiwan Republic, while Pan Blue refers to the K M T . the PFP and others that still consider the Republic of China as the real sovereign of Taiwan. 8 For example, the chat room at www.yahoo.com.tw. 2 attacked by slogans such as "Chinese pigs, go back to Ch ina ! " There are also reports about Mainlanders being physically attacked by some Taiwanese. Scholars who study democratization in the East Asian context frequently compare Taiwan with South Korea. South Korea's democratic transition was often considered to have a strong militant character. Its transition was marked by military coups and violent mass protests. Compared with South Korea, the democratic transition in Taiwan had been seen as smooth and peaceful. Starting from the liberalization process initiated by the late president Chiang Ching-kuo during the mid-1980s, Taiwan has rapidly yet peacefully changed from an authoritarian Leninist party-state to a liberal democracy without any big bumps on the way. Its successful transition was solidified by the first direct popular presidential election in 1996 and was further reinforced by a peaceful power transfer in 2000 when the opposition leader Chen Shui-bian won the presidential election. Beneath this fast and peaceful transition, however, key problems remained, and need to be solved before Taiwan's young democracy can be considered to be fully consolidated. One of the most prominent issues concerns Taiwan's national identity. Although the official name of the country is still the Republic of China, pointing to an ancient Chinese identity, over the past several decades a distinct Taiwanese identity among the population l iving on the island has grown. Before the mid-1980s, the Chinese identity of the Taiwanese people was not challenged, as both Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo intended to build a new China on the island, a Chinese alternative to the Communist China across the Taiwan Strait. After democratization took off, people's self identification has undergone a dramatic change. According to research surveys conducted by the National Cheng Chi University, the proportion of those proclaiming 3 Taiwanese identity rose from a base of 19.8 per cent in December 1991, and to a peak of 42.1 per cent in July 1999. In contrast, the proportion of those proclaiming a Chinese identity was dwindled from 25.5 per cent in the beginning of 1990s to 10.3 per cent at the end of 2000. The proportion of people who have a double identity has generally remained around 40 to 50 per cent (Ho and Liu 2001). This identity change has gone hand-in-hand with the process of democratization in Taiwan. Indeed, Taiwan's democratization, to some extent, can be seen also as a Taiwanese nation-building process. The inauguration of Lee Teng-hui as the president of the ROC in 1988 was widely perceived as a victory on the part of the Taiwanese. The transition from authoritarian regime to a democracy was marked by a Taiwanization process that replaced Mainlanders with native Taiwanese in various state and political party organizations. Therefore, as the democratization process proceeded, conflicts between the Taiwanese and the Mainlanders grew. The unsolved national identity issue has increasingly given Taiwan's politics an ethnopolitical character. The unresolved national identity issue has left Taiwanese society severely divided. On one side are people who identify with Taiwan as a sovereign nation, and on the other are those who consider themselves as belonging to the Chinese state. On top of this division between people's national identities, there is another more obvious bitter divide between the majority of native Taiwanese, who migrated from the Chinese mainland before 1945, and a minority of Mainlanders, whose families arrived after 1945 during and after the Chinese civil war9. Indeed, the deep suspicion and hostility surrounding the 9 Actually, the terms Taiwanese and Mainlanders are artificially concocted by Westerners. The terms used in Taiwan are "Ben Sheng Ren," as native province people, and "Wai Sheng Ren," as people from-other Chinese provinces. 4 disputed presidential election this year was a clear manifestation of this cleavage within Taiwanese society. When Dankwart Rustow (1984) explains the dynamics of democratic transition, he argues that in order for democratization to occur, the country should have one single background condition, which is national unity. To Rustow, i f there is not a commonly accepted view of the identity of the state in which a given population lives, it is not possible to transform that state into a democratic one. Taiwan's democratic transition has challenged this assumption, because Taiwan's democratization proceeded without the settlement of people's national identities. In other words, the presumed national unity was not there when Taiwan undertook its democratization. So, the unresolved national identity issue has put a big hurdle on the road for the consolidation of Taiwan's young democracy. Larry Diamond (1999) argues that a consolidated democracy is one in which, "at the mass level, there must be a broad normative and behavioral consensus- one that • cuts across class, ethnic, nationality, and other cleavages." In Taiwan, political parties are mainly organized around the different national identities upheld by different sections of the population. Therefore, according to Diamond's definition of a consolidated democracy, Taiwan definitely still has a long way to go. How Taiwan can overcome this hurdle to its democratic consolidation is thus worth extensive scholarly attention. Indeed, Taiwan's democratic consolidation should be examined as a case of democratization in a plural society. According to the definition given by Webster's New International Dictionary (Gove 1971), "plural society" refers to " a state or condition of society in which members of diverse ethnic, racial, religious, or social groups maintain an autonomous participation in and development of their 5 traditional culture or special interest within the confines of a common civi l ization." Often, because of the coexistence of multiple collective identities, politics in a plural society exhibits a fragmenting nature. And the presence of multiple strong ethnic identities means that democratization often results in a society fragmented along ethnic lines. In this sense, achieving democratic consolidation in an ethnically plural society requires extra attention to the building of democratic institutions that not only reflects the majority of people's political aspirations but also protects other minority groups. If this is not successsful, increasing ethnic conflicts wi l l l ikely result. Because of the existence of different ethnic identities, Taiwan's democratic consolidation has taken on an ethnopolitical nature. However, in order to successfully tackle the democratic consolidation issue, it is necessary first to look at the questions of why and how the interethnic relations between the native Taiwanese and Mainlanders actually worsened during the democratization process. This thesis draws upon theories of democratization and nationalism, and focuses on the dynamics of the relationship between democratization and nationalism in an ethnically plural society. During a democratic transition in an ethnically plural society, it is nearly inevitable that groups with different ethnic identities wi l l experience extensive conflicts. The argument of this thesis is that in Taiwan, because of the long-existing divergent national identities within the society, the democratic transition that started from the late 1970s has stimulated and accelerated the rise of Taiwanese nationalism, which has led to the increasing conflicts between it and the existing Chinese nationalism that the K M T government has for long upheld as its legitimacy symbol. 6 The democratic transition in Taiwan involved in a power redistribution between the minority Mainlanders (Mainland Chinese) and the majority native Taiwanese. Although a democratic transition in essence involves a power transition from the old autocracy to the people, the power redistribution in Taiwan took place mainly between two ethnic groups. As part of an emigre government from mainland China, Mainlanders have long dominated the island's politics. Therefore, the power transition between the K M T authoritarian regime to the people was, to a great extent, a power transition from the dominant Mainlanders to the dominated Taiwanese. After the Taiwanese took over power, the Mainlanders started to feel themselves deprived of the previous political privileges and targeted and sidelined in the national economic and political redistribution. This exacerbated the bitterness felt between these two groups. Furthermore, as in other plural societies, the national identity issue has been intensively politicized and exploited by politicians for their own political gains, which unfortunately has further deepened the existing divide between the Taiwanese and Mainlanders. The thesis is composed of four main chapters. The first chapter deals with theories of democratization and nationalism, and the relationship between the two in plural societies. It argues that democratization in an ethnically plural society will very likely bring a politicization of ethnicity and increasing ethnic conflicts. The second chapter reviews Taiwan's political history and analyzes the origins of Taiwanese nationalism. Because of their similar experiences under the Japanese colonization, different communal groups in Taiwan coalesced into a single group. After the arrival of the K M T government and the violent confrontation between the Mainlanders and the Taiwanese, a politicized Taiwanese identity was formed. After years of oppression during the KMT's 7 authoritarian rule, democratization which started in the late 1970s reawakened dormant Taiwanese nationalism, leading to the current predicament. Following this discussion, the third chapter will highlight the DPP's Taiwanese nationalist agenda and President Lee Teng-hui's 12-year rule (1988-2000).10 It will look at the political reforms carried out by Lee and his power struggle with the Mainlanders within the K M T party. How Lee fostered the strengthening of the Taiwanese nationalism and the increasing conflicts between the native Taiwanese and the Mainlanders will also be examined. The fourth chapter will analyze how divisive Taiwanese society has become after Lee's rule. A statistical analysis of the 2000 Presidential Election will provide strong evidence that in Taiwan, people's national identity decides their party affiliations, which has made the society intractably politically divided and very difficult to bridge. In the concluding chapter, how Chen Shui-bian's first four-year term has done nothing but worsen the existing division will be analyzed.11 Despite his successful reelection in 2004, how to soothe the ethnic conflicts between the pan-blue and pan-green will be the most daunting challenge for Chen. Therefore, this thesis hope to highlight the ethnopolitical nature of the Taiwanese politics and hopes to draw appropriate attention from scholars interested in studying the possible democratic consolidation in Taiwan. Lee Teng-hui is the first Taiwanese to be the President of Republic of China. During his 12 years of rule, Taiwan successfully achieved its democratic transition from an authoritarian regime. 1 1 Chen Shui-bian, as the DPP candidate, won the 2000 Presidential Election, which marked the power transition from the long-ruling K M T to the opposition DPP. 8 Chapter One Democratization & Nationalism in Plural Societies The successful coup d'etat in Portugal in Apr i l of 1974 that ended the dictatorship of Marcello Caetano and began what Samuel Huntington has termed the "Third Wave of Democratization" in the modern world (Huntington 1991b, 16). This new wave of democratization spread from Southern Europe and Latin America to Central and Eastern Europe, and Asia, and culminated in the break-up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. These great achievements were lauded by Francis Fukuyama (1989) as heralding the "end of history. However, the third wave of democratization has also led to a series of ethnic conflicts in these newly democratizing countries. The use of ethnic hostility by former communists in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia to support ethnically exclusive regimes and authoritarian tendencies is well known (Horowitz 1994). Russia's poorly institutionalized partial democracy has also caused tense relationships with many of its neighbors, and the state has used brutal military force to reassert control in Chechnya. Some countries have had to be partitioned so that a smooth democratization could proceed, such as the former Czechoslovakia; others have degenerated into civi l war without any new chance that a peaceful transition can be achieved, such as some former Soviet republics like Azerbaijan. In As ia, following Indonesia's democratic transition in 1998, that country has been struggling with its rampant ethnic conflicts across the archipelagos and even faces a possible break-up. Scholars like Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder (1995) even argue ' that democratization wi l l very likely lead to an insurgence of ethnonationalism, and even 9 wars among countries. But why? Are ethnic conflicts in newly democratizing plural societies really inevitable? Democratization and Nationalism Conventional theories of democratization have barely mentioned the possibility that increasing ethnic conflicts might occur in democratizing ethnically plural societies. 1 2 For those theories, the pre-existing ethnic relations within democratizing societies are assumed to be irrelevant to the possibility of successful democratic transition. The problem of "lack of national unity" was little mentioned by these theories. This is probably partly because most of the "Third Wave" literature focuses on democratic transitions in Latin America and Southern Europe, where the challenge of competing * • 13 nationalisms within one territorial state was not generally a salient issue. Therefore, the national unity issue was simply overlooked by these theories. However, during the virulent democratic transitions of the former Communist Bloc, nationalism played a pivotal role in the Eastern European countries' self-determination from the Soviet domination. Ethnic conflicts intensified in countries where different groups claim different national identities that are difficult to reconcile. Conventional theories of democratization in trying to answer questions as to why ethnic conflicts would be intensified during the democratization process. What is the relationship between democratization and ethnonationalism? What are the specific features of democratization in ethnically plural societies? This is the biggest theoretical puzzle that this thesis needs to address. 1 2 For some good read of conventional democratization theories, see, for example, Sorensen (1993), Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens (1992). Haggard and Kaufman (1995), Di Palma(1990), and Bermeo (1992). 1 3 For example, the most influential study of democratic transition is the four-volume work Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democracy, edited by O'Donnell, Schmitter, and Whitehead (1986). This lack of appropriate attention was pointed out by Linz and Stepan (1996). 10 When Rustow devises a model for democratization, he wisely points out that the most fundamental precondition is existing national unity within the territory of a state. This is also the inclusiveness that Robert Dahl (1971) has mentioned in his theory of polyarchy. For Dahl, polyarchy (a.k.a. democracy in the normal sense) is a political system that is highly inclusive and extensively open to public contestation. The majority of the citizens in a democracy-to-be must have no doubt or mental reservations as to which political community they belong to (Rustow 1984, 350). However, in an ethnically plural society, this condition rarely exists. In ethnically plural societies, there exist more than one nation. One's loyalty to the state is different from one's loyalty to the nation. The state is a political definition, defining the major political subdivion of the globe (Connor 1994). Nation mainly refers to a group of people bounded by certain psychological bonds. This group's core members share a distinctive and enduring collective identity based on shared historical experiences or myths, religious beliefs, language, ethnicity, or other cultural traits. The most important criterion is indeed the psychological perception by the people that they belong to one specific group. This psychological base of group identification is reinforced by cultural, economic, and political differentials between the group and others (Gurr 2000). In ethnically plural societies, group relations are politicized i f one group is treated differently by denial or privilege. As a result of their different experiences of treatment under the existing political structure, naturally these groups might take political actions in support of their own collective interests. When groups hold the principle that the political and national unit should be congruent, nationalism occurs as a result of a feeling of anger aroused by the violation of that principle (Gellner 1983). Furthermore, ethnicity is one of the most n difficult types of cleavages for a democracy to manage. Because ethnic conflicts revolve around exclusive symbols and conceptions of legitimacy and have a primordial appeal with the people, they are very difficult to break down and thus are less amenable to compromise than those revolving around material issues (Diamond and Plattner 1994). Ethnicity is indeed one of the most difficult social cleavages that to bridged successfully. People cling to their own national identities and rarely agree to compromise. Unfortunately, this uncompromising character of ethnicity goes against the essence of democracy. Democracy is essentially a political regime with temporary majorities. There should be ample space for a reshuffle of government by different political associations. However, in an ethnically plural society, i f there is one majority and one minority, the principle of majoritarian rule wi l l only reinforce the existing line of division within the society. Because of the fixed nature of ethnicity, democratic elections wi l l take on the character of a "census" and constitute a zero-sum game: the majority ethnic group of coalition or party wins by its sheer demographic weight, and the minority sees no chance of winning and-is excluded not only from the government but also from the larger political community (Diamond and Plattner 1994). Therefore, the biggest obstacle in constructing a democratic multiethnic political entity during the process of democratization derives from the inherent difficulty of the regime in maintaining the inclusiveness of a polity superimposed on an ethnically divided society. In societies where ethnic cleavages are not sharp, political affiliations are fluid, and majorities and minorities can be made and unmade. However, in ethnically divided societies, the division is ascriptive and immutable, and as a result, political parties that span group lines wi l l be difficult to organize. The competitions between political parties become the 12 competition between different ethnic groups. And the majoritarian rule is not a solution but a problem, because it permits what seems to be permanent domination of the minority by the majority. Purely procedural conceptions of democracy are thus inadequate for ethnically divided societies, for the procedure can be impeccable but the exclusion complete. Because ethnic conflicts are very easily to be seen as threats to one's most fundamental self, opponents are readily transformed into an inhuman "they", whose menace stimulates and justifies the violence and savagery that have been the common result of ethnic conflict (Dahl 1971, 107-108). Therefore, political exclusion of the minority absolutely goes against the inclusiveness that a polyarchy should have, and a system of peaceful public contestation seems hardly possible in such divided societies. Not only is democracy as a political system problematic in ethnically plural societies, but the process of democratization wi l l also likely lead to the politicization o f ethnicity and increasing ethnic conflicts. Generally speaking, ethnicity can be politicized according to two needs, one primordial and the other instrumental (Frye 1992, 607). Central to the primordial argument is the notion that ethnic groups form to satisfy individual's primal needs to belong to a larger collective identity and to orient themselves within a confusing and changing Hobbesian world (Frye 1992, 607). During the democratic transition, several aspects seem to make primordial appeals to ethnicity more attractive. First, transitions from authoritarian rule are periods of great uncertainty that place tremendous strain on the social fabric. As ethnicity involves group solidarity, it is very likely to become the unit that people turn to during the vibrant transition period. Second, the transition process also includes social discussion of issues that cut to the core of ethnicity and bolster appeals to primordial ethnic sentiments (Frye 1992, 607). The 13 most important thing is, however, the settlement of the authoritarian legacy during the democratic transition process. Since ethnic groups have often been singled out for persecution by coercive governments, one should not be surprised by their resurgence when repression is decreased. Pent-up historical grievances, fuelled by romanticized versions of the past, naturally come to the fore during the vibrant transitional periods. Third, economic and political reforms during the transition period are more likely to be perceived as benefiting one group more than the other (Frye 1992, 607-608). On the other hand, the politicization of ethnicity can also serve as an instrument in the pursuit of great economic and political power. Ethnic groups may form to reduce the costs of collective actions and press their demands on the government. Periods of transition give these ethnic groups the opportunity to lobby the authorities for the redress of ethnic concerns (Frye 1992, 608). One group plays an extremely crucial role in instrumentally polit icizing ethnicity: politicians and ethnic entrepreneurs. Leadership plays important role in pushing forward the democratic transition. The leadership's composition and level of craftsmanship are particularly important when the newly institutionalized rules of the political game start to function and need sustaining in a newly democratizing society. However, the political leadership can nurture multiple and complementary political identities as well as polarized and conflicting identities (Aklaev 1999). In Politics in Plural Societies, A l v in Rabushka and Kenneth Shepsle (1972) argue persuasively that politicians are often the main cause of the intensification of ethnic conflicts in deeply divided societies. According to Rabushka and Shepsle, politicians are office-seekers, and they are in the business of winning elections. In order to win elections, they must assemble electoral 14 organizations, while the natural cleavages that divide people in the community provide the obvious and perhaps strongest nuclei around which coalitions can be built (1972, 59). Theories of popular mobilization often stress the importance of political elites who rally the masses by playing on cleavages and grievances in society (Frye 1992, 602). A s mentioned earlier, ethnicity is the most difficult type of cleavage to be reconciled in democratic societies. Ethnicity cuts into the core of people's self-identity, and thus wi l l very likely become the most salient cleavage that distinguishes between "we" and "they". Even in situations where people might have double identities, the politicization of ethnicity wi l l force people to make "either/or" choices. Therefore, an ethnic cleavage is the easiest cleavage for politicians to exploit and make it politically salient. In this way, politicians can appeal to the masses with ethnic fervor, and thus define the election in terms of the issues on which they feel wi l l give them advantage. In ethnically plural societies, groups that have been previously excluded from economic and political distribution tend to "ethnisize" politics to promote support. A s a response to the domination by other groups, these excluded politicians have incentives to fan the flames of ethnonationalism. For the dominant group, opposition to the government is always portrayed as resistance to the popular w i l l , and depicted as consisting of particularly dangerous enemies (Horowitz 1994, 35). Ethnonationalism also allows aspiring politicians to make claims in the name of the masses without necessarily committing themselves to policies of sharing power and wealth with the masses once they have seized control of the state. Thus, outbidding becomes the rule of the political game. Somebody is always prepared to offer more or less and the bluff cannot be seen. Politicians wi l l only be able to win elections with extreme positions on ethnic issues, 15 while others with ambiguous positions wi l l be easily defeated. As a result, intra-group politics soon become the politics of outbidding. Brokerage institutions, such as multi-ethnic coalition parties, might become easy to be broken down. Competitive politics ultimately wil l lead to winners take all and losers whose temporary status is made permanent (Rabushka and Shepsle 1972, 66). Once ethnicity has been politicized and deep ethnic divisions are mobilized into electoral and party politics, they tend to "produce suspicion rather than trust, acrimony rather than civil ity, polarization rather than accommodation, and victimization rather than toleration" (Diamond and Plattner 1994, xix). The situation wi l l get even more complicated when a large minority of a country is considered by a neighboring state as irredenta. If the dominant ethnic group pursues aggressive nation-building policies that alienates the minorities, it may fan extremist nationalism in the neighboring country, which in a vicious cycle could delegitimize the government for not defending the interests of their conationals or for not pursuing irrendentist policies. For the dominant ethnic group, the minority group wi l l always be suspected being an enemy and traitor that wi l l sell out to the neighboring country. As a result, mutual suspicion and animosity between these two groups can be very difficult to soothe. A l l of the above-mentioned ethnic problems are most likely to erupt during the early stages of democratic transition. During the process of democratization, both old and new elites use all the resources they can muster to mobilize mass allies, often through nationalist appeals, to defend threatened positions and to stake out new ones (Mansfield and Snyder 1995, 7). Since when incipient democratization starts, democratic institutions are usually not fully entrenched, the only way to get legitimacy is through appealing to 16 the masses. As a result, demagogues wi l l very likely to pursue populist policies to woo the nationalist fervor within the society for their political gain. A lso, the lack of political institutionalization makes it very difficult to create common public forums to break up governmental and non-governmental information monopolies, and to professionalize journalism, so that erroneous arguments wi l l be challenged. In the absence of these institutions, an increase in the freedom of speech during the early stages of democratization can create an opening for nationalist mythmakers to hijack public discourse (Snyder and Ballentine 1996). Ethnonationalism is not a spontaneous phenomenon, but the product of deliberate elite efforts to make falsifiable myths to mobilize latent solidarities behind a particular political program. Usually this mythmaking overemphasizes the cultural and historical distinctiveness of the national group, exaggerate the threat posed to the nation by other groups, and play down the costs of seeking national goals through militant means (Snyder and Ballentine 1996, 11). In sum, during the early stages of democratization, when there is a lack of well-instituted mechanisms to effectively mitigate these falsifiable nationalist myths, ethnonationalism is likely to soar. Democratization and Nationalism in Taiwan A look at the comparative literature thus suggests that democratization wi l l very likely lead to a politicization o f ethnicity and increasing ethnic conflicts in ethnically plural societies where different national identities exist. Sure enough, in Taiwan, the surging of Taiwanese nationalism has perfectly coincided with the pace of democratization starting from the late 1970s. The rise of a Taiwanese identity accelerated during Lee Teng-hui's 12 years of rule. As democratization progressed, ethnic relations 17 between the native Taiwanese and Mainlanders worsened. Indeed, Taiwan is to this way divided into two camps, one that identifies strongly with an independentTaiwan and the other that still accepts a Chinese identity. Conventional studies of Taiwan's democratization have not paid enough attention to the ethnopolitical nature of Taiwan's politics. Many have concluded that Taiwan finished consolidating its democracy in 2000 when the opposition Democratic Progressive Party achieved electoral success in both the presidential and Legislative Yuan elections. However, recent events unfolding in Taiwan revealed a society riven with suspicion and confrontation, suggesting that Taiwan does not yet have a mature consolidated democracy. In Taiwan, politics revolves so closely around people's divergent national identities that the inclusiveness which both Rustow and Dahl designate as the essence of democratic consolidation is clearly missing. The divisive power of ethnic politics is really not even considered by many scholars who study Taiwan. Conventional studies of Taiwanese politics have overlooked or downplayed the consequences of the continuing ethnic division for Taiwan's democratic health. Therefore, a close study of the ethnopolitical nature of Taiwan's political landscape can f i l l in the blank left by the conventional studies of Taiwan's democratization. Only when the ethnopolitical nature of Taiwan's political landscape be understood fully can the political division in the island now be analyzed and its future democratic consolidation be achieved. A t the same time, by studying the democratization and the surging Taiwanese nationalism in Taiwan, this thesis also wants to point out the need to study democratization in ethnically plural societies in the specific framework that 18 take full consideration of the divisiveness that democratization can bring to the countries involved, if divergent national identities exist. 19 Chapter Two The Origins of Taiwanese Nationalism Military expeditions to Taiwan from mainland China began 1500 years ago, and waves of Chinese settlers soon followed. These were the Hakkas which lived in Guangdong and Fujian provinces. For the next thousand years, there was limited, albeit consistent, migration of Chinese from the Fujian province into Taiwan. These early settlers were mainly fishermen or traders, and they lived along the west coast facing the Chinese mainland. In the mid-17 l h century, the M ing dynasty collapsed. With the intrusion of the Manchu troops into China proper, waves of Chinese people fled the mainland to Taiwan (mainly from Fujian). A M ing loyalist, Zheng Chenggong (known in the Western world as Koxinga the Pirate), also fled to Taiwan and set up a pro-Ming regime in the island. Zheng's regime was finally subdued by Manchu troops. The Manchu troops conquered Taiwan, and for the first time, officially brought Taiwan into the Chinese empire, as part of the Qing Dynasty set up by the Manchu rulers (Metraux 1991). In 1894, China came to the defense of Korea, which was a tributary state of the former, against a Japanese invasion. The outdated Chinese navy was no match for the Japanese, and Japan won decisively (Metraux 1991, 19). Japan then forced China to sign the Shimonoseki Treaty in 1895, and ceded Taiwan to Japan as a prize of victory. The Formation of a Taiwanese Identity Nationalism, as defined by Ernest Gellner (1983, 1), is "primarily apol i t ical principle, which holds that the political and national unit should be congruent." By this 20 definition, nationalist sentiment is the feeling of anger aroused by the violation of the principle, or the feeling of satisfaction aroused by its fulfillment. Er ic Hobsbawm (1990) further adds that this principle also implies that the political duty of the members of a nation to the polity that represents this nation overrides all other public obligations. However, nationalism as a political principle is a rather modern phenomenon with origins no earlier than the seventeenth-century Brit ish rebellion against the monarchy. Different scholars, nevertheless, have assigned different factors to explain the emergence of nationalism. Some scholars emphasize the rise of the modern state as a centralized administrative power in the context of a competitive state system, which creates a distinction between state and society (Breuilly 1982). Some argue that it was because industrialization required a mobile, literate, and culturally homogeneous population (Gellner 1983). Benedict Anderson (1983), in his seminal work, Imagined Community, argues that it was the print-capitalism of newspapers and novels that enabled individuals within a specific administrative territory who did not have social contacts to develop a sense of linkage among themselves and finally to form an imagined national community. There are also others argue that the occurrence of nationalism was due to a need of people to belong to a coherent and stable community, which has been fragmented by weakening familial, communal and religious ties (Kedourie 1993). Nationalism also usually occurred as a result of the contact of local people with colonial powers. Through contact with foreigners, a centrifugal phenomenon might occur among groups of people, which might not have conceived themselves as belonging to one single unity before. For example, the formation of the Indian nation occurred as a result of the British 21 colonialization despite the diverse linguistic, religious, and ethnic diversity that India possesses. Before the 1895 concession of Taiwan to Japanese colonial rule, almost all the residents in the island, except for those aboriginal people, were descendents of immigrants from two Chinese provinces, Fujian and Guangdong. Those who came from Fujian were generally divided into two groups according to their respective hometown prefecture: Zhangzhou and Quanzhou. Because these two groups came from one province, they were usually lumped together and categorized as "Hok lo " , despite the fact that they speak different dialects of Southern M i n (Min Nan Hud). Another group was the Hakka, who migrated primarily from Guanggong province and the spoke the Hakka language. According to historians studying pre-colonial Taiwan, during the Qing period, the Zhangzhou, Quanzhou and Hakka people treated one another as distinct ethnic groups (Hsiau 2000, 4). Competition for land and other economic resources was usually based on communal identities. Competition often caused frequent and intense armed conflicts among the three groups during the period from the late seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century (Huang 1992). Japan ruled Taiwan from 1895 to 1945. A t first, there had been Taiwanese armed resistance towards the Japanese colonial authority, but as a result of military suppression in the first two decades of colonial rule, the armed resistance was successfully crushed. The Japanese colonial administration, just like the British in India, helped spur the formation of the concept of the "Taiwanese nation." Japan governed Taiwan very strictly. The Japanese ruled the island through a powerful and highly centralized bureaucracy and a strict police force. Although some 22 leading Taiwanese sat on a variety of advisory boards and held some local posts, real power remained in the hands of the Japanese, and resident colonial masters enjoyed elite privileges denied to local citizens (Metraux 1991, 26-28). Despite its harsh colonial politics however, Japan did much to modernize Taiwan's economic infrastructure. Japan was the first country in As ia to modernize itself. L ike the other colonial powers in the West, Japan considered itself as superior, and thus to have an obligation to modernize its colonies, namely Korea and Taiwan. The Japanese built a domestic network of roads and railways, connecting the important points of the island for the first time. The Japanese also built modern schools, hospitals, and industries, and greatly upgraded agricultural techniques (Metraux 1991, 27-28). It was indeed the modernization of transportation, communication, administration, and education launched by the Japanese colonial government as the first modern state apparatus on the island that penetrated the pre-modern local communities. The modernization process and the modern state apparatus, to a certain degree, blurred the communal boundary between the Hoklo and the Hakka people. To the Japanese colonial rulers, all the residents were Han Chinese, and thus they were grouped as one single group. In this sense, local communities were integrated into an island-wide embryonic "imagined political community" (Hsiau 2000, 10). The national consciousness as Han Chinese was politicized through numerous anti-colonial struggles, and transformed into a sense of identification with Taiwanese, as opposed to the colonizers (Wakabayashi 1994). It was primarily because of the confrontation between the colonized and the colonizer that the categories of "tai-oan-lang" (which means "Taiwanese people" in M i n Nan Hua) and 'tai-an-oe" (which means "Taiwanese language") were created (Hsiau 2000, 4). 23 During fifty years of Japanese colonial rule, Japan not only introduced modernity to the island, but also tried to force the island to sever connections with its Chinese roots, and assimilate the local people into a Japanese identity. By the end of the 1920s, the colonial administration began to actively promote Japanese language education. Local colonial governments created Japanese language study groups of different types and launched various Japanese, learning campaigns. In addition, a rule was enforced to ban the use of Taiwanese language in such public places as government offices, banks, and companies, and to require that these institutions to employ only those who had command of Japanese (Hsiau 2000, 36). After the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) erupted, a more radical Japanization campaign, namely the Kominka movement, was carried out in Taiwan to change the island into a monolingual society. As a result of the radical Japanese-language campaign, the number of Taiwanese who could "comprehend" Japanese reached 80 per cent of the total population in 1943. Because of Japanese education, the younger generation in the island before the 1945 handover had Japanese as their major medium of communication. Japanese hence became the dominant language in Taiwan, particularly in the public domain (Hsiau 2000, 45-46, 51-52). Therefore, after 50 years of common confrontation of Japanese colonialization, the penetration of the modernization introduced by Japan, and the resocialization introduced by Japan, the previous different communal groups coalesced into one single group. A single Taiwanese identity was thus formed. However, the real politicization of the Taiwanese identity occurred when the Taiwanese met the Mainlanders after Taiwan was handed back to the Republic of China after the World War II. 24 The Politicization of the Taiwanese Identity Because of the 50 years of Japanese colonization and its resocialization, when Taiwan was returned to China, the Mainlanders who took it over came across a society that was very different from theirs, despite the fact that most Taiwanese had also once been immigrants from the mainland. Taiwan by then was a society that was eighty per cent literate and a region with one of As ia 's most developed transportation infrastructures, including railroads, paved roads, bridges, buses, automobiles, and bicycles. The mainland, however, had suffered from years of war destruction and was no match for Taiwan's level of economic development and modernization. Many Taiwanese behaved like Japanese, and their respect and admiration for the Japanese - the administrative efficiency, economic achievements, and social stability that their rule had produced -were obvious (Hsiau 2000, 52). Therefore, the Mainlanders who came to Taiwan were amazed by the modernization Taiwan had enjoyed, while the Taiwanese felt uncomfortable with their unsophisticated mainland cousins. As agreed in the Cairo Declaration of December 1943, Taiwan was returned to the R O C government in 1945. The Taiwanese had at first eagerly welcomed the Nationalists in 1945 as liberators and looked forward to participating as citizens in the Republic of China. Indeed, during the Japanese colonial period, the political aspiration of many elites in the island was to return to the embrace of the motherland. The idea of going back to their Chinese cultural roots was very appealing, at least in the very beginning. The K M T troops who arrived in the island in the fall 1945, however, were a "bedraggled, rag-tag lot," with low morale and little discipline (Rigger 1999). Once the K M T administration was installed on the island, social stability dropped sharply, and 25 relations between the native Taiwanese and the new arrivals deteriorated quickly. To the K M T , Taiwan was only a sideshow, and their top priority was to fight against the Red Army of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) , and to prevent more territory in mainland China from falling into the Chinese Communist.Party's hands (Rigger 1999, 55). To the . local Taiwanese people, even though Japanese colonial rule had been repressive, the Japanese nevertheless had been very efficient, honest and disciplined. Compared with the Japanese, the first K M T administration was considered riddled with corruption, economic chaos, and political discrimination against them. Because of their disappointment towards the K M T administration, a sequence of violent an t i -KMT actions took place in the spring of 1947, and culminated in a bloody crackdown - in an event now known as the "2-28 Incident" 1 4 (Hsiau 2000, 5). The "2-28 Incident" smashed any remaining goodwill harbored by the Taiwanese people towards the K M T government. For the first time, an ethnic divide between the local Taiwanese people and those late-come Mainlanders emerged, even though they are all ethnically Han Chinese. In fact, the "2-28 Incident" served as a major source of contemporary Taiwanese nationalism. The memory of it keeps reminding people of the repression that Taiwanese people suffered at the hands of the mainland Chinese. After the defeat of the Japanese in 1945, China fell into civi l war between the K M T Nationalist troops and the C C P ' s People's Liberation Army (PLA) . The K M T lost badly to the C C P , and the political system over which Chiang Kai-shek presided in China 1 4 The 28 February 1947 arrest of a woman selling cigarettes without a license was the spark which led to large-scale public protests against repression and corruption. For some ten days, Chiang Kai-shek's governor for Taiwan Chen Y i kept up the pretense of negotiations with leaders of the protest movement, but at the same time they sent troops from the mainland. As soon as the troops arrived, they started rounding up and executing people, in particular scholars, lawyers, doctors, students and local leaders of the protest movement. According to some estimates, in total between 18,000 and 28,000 people were murdered. Thousands of others were arrested and imprisoned in the "White Terror" campaign which took place in the following decade. Many of these remained imprisoned until the early 1980s. Until a few years ago, the events of 1947 were a taboo subject on the island. 26 collapsed.' 3 In 1949 Chiang fled to Taiwan together with the R O C government. At the same time, the C C P founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the mainland. The Taiwan Strait divided the two Chinas. A t first, the United States had no hopes for the K M T government, and believed that in no time the P L A would be able to conquer Taiwan. However, the outbreak of the Korean War and the P R C ' s intervention on the North's behalf changed the U.S. 's strategic thinking. The U.S. government decided to support the K M T government as its front against the aggression of communism, and its navy subsequently occupied the Taiwan Strait. Support from the U.S. provided Chiang with an opportunity to consolidate the K M T ' s control on the island, and to wait for a future retaking of the Chinese mainland. A divided China has existed ever since. After the R O C government retreated to Taiwan, it was faced with a society that was socially more Japanese than Chinese. The daunting task for the government was to, on the one hand, "de-Japanize" and, on the other, to "S in ic ize" the people. The most crucial project in re-socializing the Taiwanese people was to promote a new national language - Mandar in 1 6 . Mandarin was the official spoken language used during the Qing Dynasty and the subsequent Republic of China. The use of Mandarin was regarded as a primary criterion of Chinese citizenship and patriotism (Hsiau 2000, 125-130). Further more, as the People's Republic of China provided the most serious external threat to the legitimacy of the R O C government, the promotion of Mandarin as the national language became a testimony of the Chineseness of the R O C government. Therefore, propagating 1 5 Chiang Kai-shek was the chairman of the K M T party, Generalissimo of the Nationalist Army, and once president of the ROC government. 1 6 Albeit debatable, linguistically speaking, Mandarin and Taiwanese {Min Nan Hua) are one single language in the sense that they both are based on one single writing script, but just with different pronunciations. Mandarin is a spoken language based on Beijing dialect, while Taiwanese is a dialect spoken in Southern Fujian and also Taiwan. Both spoken languages are mutually unintelligible. The same is true with Cantonese, and many other local dialects, especially in Southern China. See Xu (1994, 99). 27 Mandarin, banning Japanese, and restricting public use of local languages was the official language policy adopted by the R O C government when it first came to Taiwan. This language policy was carried out through a variety of ways. First, Mandarin was made the language of schooling. Beginning in 1956, students, especially those in elementary and high schools, were forbidden to speak local languages in school. If they did, they were punished. Second, in 1965, the Taiwanese Provincial Government required that all civi l servants speak Mandarin during office hours. It also stipulated that Mandarin be the language in jurisdictional courts. Finally, the use of non-Mandarin local languages on television and radio, another major agent of socialization, was severely restricted. For example, in 1972, the Bureau of Culture of the Ministry of Education stipulated that non-Mandarins programming should be reduced, such that Taiwanese language programs, which included soap operas, puppet shows, traditional operas, and commercials, should take up less than one hour per day on each channel (Hsiau 2000, 125-130). The R O C government also aimed to build Taiwan as the real China, as against the mainland which was stolen by the "communist bandits," and to revive Chinese national culture in Taiwan. Because the K M T believed that local Taiwanese culture was only a regional branch under the roof of one single Chinese high culture, when it arrived on the island, the K M T started to promote an elite Chinese culture as the authentic Chinese culture while at the same time repressing local Taiwanese cultural activities. For example, Beij ing Opera, Chinese painting, and calligraphy were introduced and promoted on the island, while local Taiwanese operas and puppet shows were ignored or even repressed. Furthermore, in school, Chinese history, geography, and literature were taught extensively, while Taiwanese history and geography were not emphasized at all. 28 Owing in part to preexisting skepticism about the trustworthiness of Taiwan's intelligentsia, once the R O C government took over Taiwan from Japan, the K M T appointed newly arrived Mainlanders - rather than local Taiwanese - to the positions of responsibility in the island's government. The preference for mainland immigrants over local Taiwanese in positions of legal or administrative responsibility was easily justified as a result of the dearth of trained Taiwanese lawyers or public officials (Wachman 1994). 1 7 The R O C government also moved its entire state apparatus from the mainland to Taiwan. It continued to use the constitution that was adopted in 1946 in Nanjing. A l l three branches of legislative organs, the National Assembly, Legislative Yuan, and Control Yuan, to which representatives were elected in 1947 and 1948 on the mainland, were also moved to Taiwan. However, because the mainland was currently occupied by the communists, it was impossible to hold re-elections for these bodies. As the R O C government considered itself the sole sovereign entity representing of the China, it was illegitimate to run elections in Taiwan only. As stipulated by Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion, all these old representatives were to be kept in their positions until day the mainland should be recovered. Therefore, even though Taiwanese could participate in local level elections and governments, the national level legislature had no correction to the Taiwanese public and was increasingly considered by local Taiwanese as representing the domination of Mainlanders over Taiwanese. 1 7 Because during the Japanese occupation, no Taiwanese were permitted to hold management positions, so the Mainlanders claimed that local Taiwanese were incapable of managing the society. 29 When Ernest Gellner defines the formation of a nation, he argues that shared cultural traits are necessary but not sufficient conditions for nationality. Nations are the artifacts of men's conviction and loyalties and solidarities, and it is their recognition of each other as fellows that turn them into a nation (Gellner 1983, 7). Although some Taiwanese nationalists claim that Taiwanese culture and Chinese culture are different, these differences are mainly regional variations and do not necessarily constitute a different culture (Wachman 1994, 101-102). Nevertheless, it is the perception and conviction on the part of the Taiwanese that they belong to a different nation that really counts. This formation of a Taiwanese nation was indeed achieved through interactions with occupiers of the island from Japan and mainland China. The formation of the Taiwanese nation was a process driven by specific historical experiences that made the Taiwanese people perceive they belong to one nation, distinct from the Japanese and Chinese nations. The formation of the Taiwanese nation is indeed a perfect example of an ' "imagined community." Specific economic, social, and political events and situations formed among the local Taiwanese a sense of identification with the island as a self-contained political community. The specific colonial history of the island and the local Taiwanese's confrontation with the mainland newcomers stimulated the formation of the Taiwanese nation. Although later many Taiwanese nationalist historians and artists have tried to claim the distinctiveness of Taiwanese history and culture, they are mainly an artificial re-invention process. The reason for this re-invention is the perception and conviction among the Taiwanese that they are different from the Chinese, and they belong to their own nation. 30 However, during the early years of the K M T rule in Taiwan, draconian policies against political dissidents and public unrest were successfully suppressed by the Provisional Amendments for the Period of Mobilization for the Suppression of Communist Rebellion and martial law. The former enabled the president to enjoy more power than the constitution prescribed. The latter, enforced from 1949, designated the island a combat area in China's c iv i l war, thus permitted secret trials in military courts for anyone accused of sedition (Tien 1989). As a result, power was really concentrated in the president himself, which made both Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo political strongmen without any real challenge to their power. Polit ical associations and social movements were severely sanctioned, and any mention of Taiwan independence was a total taboo. Therefore, during the early years of the K M T ' s rule in Taiwan, there was no way for Taiwanese nationalism to have a chance to express itself. The Resurgence of Taiwanese Nationalism The resurgence of Taiwanese nationalism coincided with the pace of political liberalization and democratization of the K M T regime. Chiang Ching-kuo became chairmen of the K M T and president of the R O C after his father, Chiang Kai-shek, died in 1975. During the later days of Chiang Ching-kuo's rule, the K M T government started to adopt some moderately liberalizing reforms. One of the policies that the K M T used was a "Taiwanization of the party apparatus and the state organs". As the older Mainlanders in the party and state organs started to die off, younger and better educated people were recruited to replace them. The younger generation, either born or raised in Taiwan, was more oriented towards local Taiwanese affairs and less towards the traditional 31 preoccupation with the mainland (Dickson 1997). As a result, the share of Taiwanese in 18 both the K M T party and the state apparatus increased substantially. Because the number of senior office holders and legislators dwindled after more than twenty years without elections, supplementary elections were necessary to replenish their ranks (Rigger 2001, 16-17). In 1968, the K M T decided to hold supplementary elections for the three chambers of Legislature, the National Assembly, the Legislative Yuan, and the Control Yuan, thus broadening electoral participation in the island to the national level. A group of people contested in local and national elections as non -KMT candidates, calling themselves the Tangwai (outside of the party). In the second round of Legislative Yuan elections held in 1972, all the non -KMT candidates campaigned jointly under the banner of Tangwai (Rigger 2001, 18). Meanwhile, the Tangwai campaigned as a single group for local elections as well. This was the origin of a formal political opposition in Taiwan. However at first, the opposition politicians tended to settle for localized activities and were generally reluctant to raise issues regarding regime legitimacy or to challenge the government's fundamental policies. The turning point came in 1977 when a mass protest in Chungli against irregularities in K M T vote counting touched off a serious clash between angry voters and the police (Tien 1992). In 1979, an opposition magazine Formosa (Mei Li Dad) was published by the Tangwai. In December that year, Formosa sponsored a demonstration to commemorate International Human Rights Day. In Kaohsiung, the mass march turned into a political riot, as violence erupted between police and demonstrators. Eight members of the 1 8 For example, Taiwanese among district cadres rose to 56.6 per cent in 1975 and 73.3 per cent in 1985. At the county level, the proportion of Taiwanese increased from 34.5 per cent to 53.9 per cent between 1975 and 1985. Taiwanese also held increasingly large shares of the seats in the KMT 's decision making Central Standing Committee. See Dickson (1997, 123-'l24). 32 Formosa staff were indicted on subversion charges and tried in military courts. Another thirty seven defendants were tried in civi l courts. 1 9 The Chungli Incident and Kaohsiung Incident paved the way for the radicalization of the opposition movement in the first half of the 1980s. The rising militant wing of the opposition began to adopt a confrontational line in their promotion of Taiwanese nationalism. According to Wang Fu-ch'ang, the chief goal of the Taiwanese oppositional movement before the Kaohsiung Incident was political democratization within the given political framework of the R O C . However, Wang notes that, the Kaohsiung Incident was a major setback in the opposition's pursuit of political liberalization, in which ethnic equality was the central issue. The opposition's strong sense of repression and the relentless suppression by the K M T government in the first half of the 1980s contributed to the radicalization of the opposition's political ideology and mobilization strategy. As argued by Wang, the Taiwanese opposition recognized that the very foundation of K M T rule was an official chauvinistic Chinese nationalism. This official Chinese nationalism, they believed, had justified the socio-political configuration that had resulted in a Mainlander-Taiwanese ethnic inequality. To challenge such an ideology, the opposition began to develop a discourse of Taiwanese nationalism. The first plank of the common platform shared by Tangwai claimed: "Taiwan's future must depend on common decisions made by all citizens of Taiwan" (Hsiau 2000, 90). Moreover, Wang points out that after 1986 the opposition, who rallied to the newly-established Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), launched numerous mass rallies and street protests to mobilize support. Taiwanese nationalism became the major 1 9 The eight members are Huang l-lsin-chieh, Shih Ming-the, Lin Yi-hsiung, Yao Chia-vven, Chen Chu, Lu Hsiu-lien, Chang Chun-hung, and Lin Hung-hsuan. See Rigger (2001, 21). 33 appeal of the mobilization, and contributed to a significant increase of support for the DPP (Wang 1996). Therefore, the emergence of Taiwanese nationalism was a result of both the experience of Japanese colonialization and political competition between Taiwanese and Mainlanders after K M T troops occupied the island. Although it had been latent during the first several decades of K M T rule, Taiwanese nationalism burst out into the open during the democratic transition period. The mobilization of the opposition rallied the mass under the banner of Taiwanese nationalism to defy the official Chinese nationalism promoted by the K M T government. The political competition between Taiwanese and the Mainlanders became a power struggle between the suppressed majority against the dominant minority. The democratization process provided a venue for the majority Taiwanese people to overthrow the dominant Mainlander minority and gain the political status that they long deserved. However, during the power struggle between the two groups, ethnic relations within the society deteriorated. 34 Chapter Three Ethnic Conflicts in Taiwan's Democratic Transition The loosening of the K M T authoritarian regime from the late 1970s not only stimulated political opposition to push the authoritarian government for liberalization and more political reforms, it also unleashed the power of the latent Taiwanese nationalism that had been suppressed for decades. With the K M T government increasingly tolerant of the opposition, the opposition Tangwai began to develop a discourse of Taiwanese nationalism to be used in their political mobilization. A milestone of Taiwan's democratic transition was reached in 1986 when the opposition Tangwai formed the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). For the D P P , Taiwanese nationalism provided a good rallying point to mobilize the public in support of a challenge to the political monopoly of the K M T . Indeed, democratization in Taiwan was a power struggle between the opposition and the rulers, between the minority Mainlanders and the majority Taiwanese, and between two competing nationalisms, a Chinese Nationalism endorsed by the K M T , and a Taiwanese Nationalism promoted by the DPP . This chapter wi l l focus mainly on the era after the death of the late President Chiang Ching-kuo and the ascendance of Lee Teng-hui. It wi l l first look at the political mobilization strategy of the DPP. Then attention wi l l be cast on Lee Teng-hui's term (1988-2000) to examine a series of political reforms carried out by Lee and his power struggle within the K M T . Specifically, ethnic conflicts between the Mainlanders and Taiwanese inside the K M T wi l l be emphasized. The main argument of this chapter is that the mobilization of the D P P and Lee's power struggle within the K M T worsened the ethnic conflict between the Mainlanders and Taiwanese. 35 The DPP's Political Mobilization Strategy Since its formation, to promote Taiwanese nationalism was one of the D P P ' s major political mobilization strategies. To the D P P , one powerful weapon that it could use to challenge the domination of the K M T was its upholding of Taiwanese nationalism. When Samuel P. Huntington discusses the transformation of one-party systems, he emphasizes the importance of delegitimizing the ideology that the party used to uphold. To Huntington (1991a, 585-587), ideology of the party defines the identity of the state; therefore, a good way to challenge its dominance is to challenge its ideological legitimacy. Therefore, in the D P P ' s Basic Polit ical Platform adopted in 1991, two articles specifically deal with Taiwan's self-determination, which is the ultimate form of Taiwanese nationalism. Article 3 of the section on national defense and foreign policy states that, "The future of Taiwan should be determined by all inhabitants in Taiwan. According to the principle contained in the U .N . Covenant on Social and Cultural Rights, all people possess the inherent right of self-determination.... The future of Taiwan should be determined jointly by all inhabitants in Taiwan in a free, un-coerced, universal, fair and equal way. No government or coalition of governments have the right to determine the political affiliation of Taiwan" (Lu 1992). The K M T ' s party ideology is the Three Principles of The People (San Min Zhu Yi) • • • 7ft that was initiated by Sun Yat-sen during the early years of Chinese revolution. One of the three principles is Chinese nationalism that promotes a strong Chinese identity to save the nation from Western and Japanese aggressions. After the K M T government retreated from the mainland to Taiwan, it had long relied on its version of Chinese nationalism to justify its rule on the island, especially the claim that the KMT-control led Republic of 2 0 The three principles are nationalism, democracy, and people's livelihood. 36 China was the sole legitimate government of all China. The K M T government enforced the Martial Law and other provisional regulations that suspended the old constitution, and extended the terms of representatives in the three parliamentary bodies, the Legislative Yuan, the National Assembly, and the Control Yuan, that had been elected on the Mainland during 1947-8. A l l these efforts were intended to keep the R O C ' s legitimacy, and at the same time, the K M T could easily control the legislature and the government by keeping the old representatives from the Mainland in position. Because of this, the DPP always criticized the K M T for using Chinese nationalism to preserve its monopoly of power and special privilege. To achieve democracy in Taiwan, the main target for its attack of the K M T was thus naturally on the K M T ' s claim of Chinese nationalism. The party's chief approach to opposition since its foundation was to launch mass rallies and street protests in the name of Taiwanese nationalism. The major native language, Hoklo (Min Nan Hud), became the dominant language in mass movements. Hoklo slang, music, folk songs, and the like, were typically used to heighten participants' Taiwanese consciousness (Hsiau 2000, 103). Memories of the past suppression of the Taiwanese by the Mainlanders were brought up to heightened the victimization of the Taiwanese in the history, and thus demanded that Taiwanese should be the master of their own political future. Specifically, memories of the "2-28 Incident" and the Kaohsiung Incident were exploited and politicized. Literature, songs, and movies about these past traumas were heavily used. For example, there was a redefinition of Taiwanese literature that started to criticize the conceptualization of writing on the island as a "frontier-region literature" and demanded that Taiwanese literature be judged from the viewpoint of the history of Taiwan, instead of the history of 37 China (Hsiau 2000, 98-99). Therefore, in the 1990s there was a series of movements aiming at the 'nationalization" of Taiwanese literature. There were also songs and movies that addressed the "sorrow of being Taiwanese." 2 1 For example, the movie The City of Sadness brought to the public the history of the "2-28 Incident". 2 2 The song Orphan of Asia was very popular during the 1980s. The D P P followed the political ideology developed by the Tangwai after the Kaohsiung Incident, and it devoted itself to the complete replacement of the old representatives of the legislature by delegates representative of the island, pushing for Taiwan's re-entry to the United Nations, and ultimately political self-determination for Taiwan. To justify its political ideology, some D P P theorists tried to develop theories to "re-invent" or "re-interpret" Taiwan's political history. For example, they wrote that Taiwan was not part of China for most its history: it was a colony of the Netherlands, China and Japan. Although the inhabitants of Taiwan are descendants of Chinese origin, they don't feel that they are culturally Chinese because of the different development across the Taiwan Strait. By doing this, the D P P hopes to redefine the island's political nature, so that it can challenge the Chinese nationalism that the K M T relied on. Although the DPP denied that it was a "Taiwanese-only" party, the majority o f its followers were nativeTaiwanese. It leadership was also overwhelmingly composed of Taiwanese. Its rhetoric was very Taiwan-centered, and mostly based on the Hoklo language. Its fervent promotion of Taiwanese nationalism was indeed very provocative to the Mainlanders. 2 1 :Sorrow of being Taiwanese" was mentioned by Lee Teng-hui in various occasions in emphasizing that Taiwanese had suffered for centuries under the domination of foreign regimes. 22 The City of Sadness was shot by the famous Taiwanese movie director Hou Hsiao-hsien, and it was the first tie that the history' of the "2-28 Incident" was made into a film. 38 However, pressure from the opposition D P P was not enough to challenge the domination of the K M T on Taiwan's political landscape. Although the D P P fervently promoted a political ideology based on its version of Taiwanese nationalism, it was nevertheless difficult for it to take full advantage of this nationalism issue, because the K M T had also undergone a dramatic Taiwanization process. Lee Teng-hui, the leader from 1988 to 2000, is a Taiwanese. As long as Lee was in power, there was little chance the K M T could be delegitimized just because the opposition was promoting Taiwanese nationalism. Therefore, the real power struggle at the early stages of democratization was between the Mainlanders and Taiwanese within the K M T itself. It was Lee Teng-hui's political reforms and his personal power struggle with other Mainlander elites within the K M T that had caused the increasing confrontation between the Mainlanders and the Taiwanese. Bizarrely enough, the Taiwanese within the K M T coalesced with the D P P on ^3 various occasions to force the Mainlanders to retreat from power." The Democratic Transition under Lee Teng-hui's Rule With the death of President Chiang Ching-kuo in January 1988, power was transferred to Chiang's vice-president Lee Teng-hui. Since he is Taiwanese, Lee's ascendance to power was considered by the majority Taiwanese as a national victory. Previously, all the Taiwanese in high positions in the K M T party and the government were of symbolic purposes. This was the first time that a Taiwanese became the country's political leader. When Lee first ascended to the top, his power base within the K M T was not strong. For the first two years of his term, Lee worked cautiously under the policies laid 2 3 For some detailed discussion olThis, please see some anecdotes in Wachman (1994). 39 out by the late president Chiang Ching-kuo, and he was not powerful enough to challenge the establishment within the party. Lee 's priority was to strengthen his power base and secure his position as the president of the R O C . As Lee succeeded the throne after Chiang Ching-kuo's unexpected death, it was uncertain whether he would last as president. After a series of negotiations and maneuvers, Lee Teng-hui successfully got reelected by the National Assembly as the R O C president in 1990, thus securing his leadership role within the K M T party-state.2 4 The time for Lee to undertake political reform was ripe. As mentioned earlier, the R O C Constitution adopted in the mainland had been suspended because of a series of emergency decrees of communist rebellion. The three branches of the legislature were also frozen after the R O C retreated to Taiwan. A s the Constitution was the symbol of the K M T ' s legitimate rule of all China, it was impossible to abolish it and make changes of it to match the current political and international situation of the island. As a result of this, the term of the delegates of the three chambers of legislature, who were elected on the mainland, was extended for life. The legislature was in effect a tool of the K M T authoritarian government to sustain its rule in Taiwan. No matter that Taiwan had undergone dramatic changes in itself for the past four decades, it was the still the same group of people who sat at the legislature and made all the national decisions. Most of the delegates were indeed very old, some could barely walk, but as the rubberstamp of the K M T ' s one China principle, they hung on there without any change. Increasingly, those old delegates became the target of the opposition's fierce attacks. The D P P considered them a fundamental obstacle to Taiwan's democratic transition, and it called on a tirade against the National Assembly as the "Ten-thousand-year National Assembly," and the old delegates as "old thieves" (L in and Tedards 2001). 2 4 For further details of this period, see Chou (1993). 40 A n opportunity came in 1990 when the student-led movement " W i l d L i l y Movement" started protesting and demanded for more democracy. Lee Teng-hui took this opportunity launch a series of political reforms. Receiving representatives of the student movement, he announced the convening of a cross-party National Affairs Conference ( N A C ) to set the terms of democratic reform. The convening of the N A C was a milestone in Taiwan's democratic transition. It brought reform forces into the agenda-setting process, not only giving Lee the leverage he needed against the conservative challenge, but also putting Taiwan officially on the path to democracy (Lin and Tedards 2001, 29). Some consensus was reached in the N A C by the K M T and the D P P , which included direct election of the president, complete re-election of the three legislative chambers, direct election of the provincial governor of Taiwan, and amendments to the Constitution (Zhang 2000). After the N A C , Lee believed that he had got a political mandate to carry out more political reforms. In Apr i l 1991, the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion was terminated, and the old delegates were required to retire by the end of that year so that the three legislative bodies could hold elections. The end of the Temporary Provision also meant that the K M T government no longer considered the People's Republic of China illegal, and started to accept the situation of the two separate political entities across the Taiwan Strait. This was obviously a break-through in Taiwan's path to democracy, as the old burden of the One China principle was technically removed, and people in Taiwan would now have the legality to select their own government. 41 After the termination of the Temporary Provisions and the reelections of the legislative bodies, Taiwan's democratic transition proceeded quickly. In 1992, the newly elected National Assembly carried out a second wave of constitutional reform by a decree stating that president of the R O C and governor of Taiwan should be directly elected. For years, the opposition D P P had demanded direct elections for all levels of government, partly because for the D P P , direct elections represented a big step forward towards Taiwan's independence. However, within the K M T , there were increasing divisions between those who supported direct elections and others who supported party nomination process. For the conservative camp within the K M T , the direct election of the R O C president in Taiwan would only show agreement with the "Taiwan Independence" clause of the opposition party DPP . It would also cause more uncertainties in the election, and might bring about another strong-man president. The split within the K M T party thus became more apparent, as one mainstream surrounding Lee Teng-hui, and another non-mainstream surrounding some Mainlander elites. This split also paved way for a later fracturing of the party, as a faction within the K M T broke away to form the New Party in 1993. Another big wave of Lee Teng-hui's Constitutional reform came after he was elected by direct popular election in 1996. The 1996 election was the first direct popular election in the R O C ' s history, and Lee won a majority of 54 per cent of the vote. As there is a two-term restriction of the presidency in the R O C constitution, after Lee was elected, he had no concern for another election of his own, so his plans for Constitutional reform 2 5 Obviously, elections can not be carried out on the Chinese mainland, so it is only people living in Taiwan have the right to vote, which justifies the DPP's claim that Taiwan is and should be an independent country. 2 6 The ROC constitution was originally a parliamentary system, where the Prime Minister should be the real head of the government. However, Chiang Kai-shek, as a strong man. gave more power to the presidency than it should have. Therefore, the debate at the time of the second round Constitutional reform, was revolving around whether the ROC should stick to the original parliamentary system or become a presidential system. 42 became much bolder. In 1996, following his reelection, Lee called a National Development Conference (NDC) , evidently trying to emulate the success of the 1990 National Affairs Conference. The N D C produced proposals for Constitutional changes aimed at achieving Lee's personal objective: increasing the power of the presidency vis-a-vis the Legislative Yuan and downgrading the provincial government. Lee had an obvious interest in strengthening the presidency and hoped to prevent the provincial governor from becoming a rival to the president (Clark 2001, 104). Therefore, in 1997, the Taiwan Provincial Government was officially abolished. The abolishment of the provincial government fit very well the DPP 's assertion that Taiwan is an independent country, and again alienated some within the K M T . James Soong, then Taiwan's provincial governor, went into self-imposed exile, which paved the way for a splintering of the K M T in the 2000 elections. The Power Struggle within the KMT When Lee Teng-hui first succeeded Chiang, he didn't have a tangible power base of his own, and many actually considered him as merely a ceremonial figure in the post-Chiang transition period (Tien 1996). As a native Taiwanese himself, he naturally received suspicion from the Mainlander elites within the party and had to constantly combat with them for his political survival. Gradually two conflicting factions occurred within the K M T , one "mainstream faction" surrounding Lee Teng-hui, and the other "non-mainstream faction", surrounding some Mainlander elites, with Hao Pei-tsun as one of the most prominent figures. Roughly speaking, the former was composed primarily of Taiwanese and the latter of Mainlanders. The power struggle between these two was thus 43 a very obvious example of the conflicts between native Taiwanese and Mainlanders within the K M T party. Hau Pei-tsun was appointed as the premier of the R O C in 1990 after he was removed from the military as the top general. Hau was a very strong personality. Therefore, although he was a Mainlander and strongly supported unification with the mainland China, he won support, or at least respect, from within Taiwanese society for his success in curbing crime in Taiwan after the end of the emergency rule (Moody 2002,. 31). Yet Lee and Hau were seriously at odds with each other, the disputes centering somewhat on policy but also on the form of government and, at a deeper level, over the identity of Taiwan's political community. A power struggle between these two strong men developed and became focused on whether the R O C constitution should specify a parliamentary or presidential system. In those days, the president appointed the premier, but the premier governed by retaining the confidence of the legislature, not by serving the pleasure of the president. Therefore, there were two power centers within one political system. Lee and Hau clashed in areas where the authority of their offices overlapped. Hau had long-standing connections in the military and argued that control over military affairs, including appointments, lay with the premier through the minister of defence. Lee, anxious to break up Hau's network and diversify the high command, asserted control in his capacity as commander-in-chief (Moody 2002, 31). Because of the Mainlander elites and the unification ideal he represented, Hau increasingly became the central figure in two interrelated conflicts: that between the K M T and the D P P and that between Mainlanders and Taiwanese. Whereas President Lee was viewed by Taiwanese as one of their own, Hau was always the target of all those 44 disillusioned or angry with the government, with the K M T , and with the Mainlanders (Wachman 1994, 180). Throughout 1991, Hau was the target of scathing barbs from legislators and political cartoonists. Wachman comments that, "recalling some of his exchanges with members of the opposition in the Legislative Yuan, one gets a palpable sense of the way in which ethnic politics came to dominate national affairs." With the convening of the National Affairs Conference and rounds of Constitutional reform, the constitutional change to direct popular election of the president tipped the balance of power in the executive branch to the president. With the support of the opposition party, Lee adroitly forced the resignation of Hau Pei-tsun in 1993. Lee then appointed Lien Chan, a native Taiwanese, as the premier, which resumed a process of replacing Mainlanders with Taiwanese within the K M T top party apparatus. The departure of Hau Pei-tsun marked the biggest defeat of the Mainlanders with the K M T party, and thus angered and alienated many Mainlanders. In 1993, immediately preceding the K M T Fourteenth Party Congress, a small group of the party's most popular vote getters, most of them Mainlanders of the non-mainstream faction, splintered off from the K M T and formed the New Party (NP). It was noteworthy that the key members of the N P were Mainlanders who felt they could no longer depend on the K M T , which was by then most heavily influenced by Taiwanese, to protect their interests. The formation of the N P was the first big break-up of the K M T party since it came to Taiwan. The conflicts between the Mainlanders and the Taiwanese within the K M T continued, however, until another big break-up occurred when James Soong walked out in 1999to run as an independent candidate for the 2000 Presidential Election. 2 7 For a detailed documentation of the conflicts between Hau and the opposition politicians, see Wachman (1994, 180-186). 45 Lee Teng-hui and James Soong James Soong was a Mainlander who was born and grew up in Taiwan. He used to be a young protege of the late president Chiang Ching-kuo and was instrumental in Lee's original appointment as president over the objections of older Mainlanders in the K M T . Over the years, Soong proved himself to be a capable administrator and loyal supporter of Lee. During the honeymoon period of the two, the relationship between Lee and Soong was often described as that of "Father with Son" (Zhang 2000, 182). Soong was elected Governor of Taiwan Province in 1994 with a land-slide victory, and developed a strong base of popular support within the K M T and the general society. Because of his populist approach to the public, using Taiwanese to communicate, albeit awkwardly, with local people, and also because of his own hard work, Soong won praize from both Mainlanders and native Taiwanese. During his term as the provincial governor, Soong earned high levels of job approval from the public - constantly over 80 per cent. His performance and persona as a governor gave him a base of support that cut across the traditional divides of party and ethnicity (Diamond 2001, 65). According to many reports, Lee became jealous of Soong's popularity and growing stature as a political leader, worried that i f Soong became the next president he would not be beholden to Lee and might not uphold his policies (Chao and Dickson 2002, 8). Meanwhile, because of the popularity Soong enjoyed and also due to his own political ambitions, conflicts between the two started to loom large. This may have been an important calculation in Lee's decision to downsize the provincial government and turn the post of governor from an elected position to an appointed one with little authority. 46 After Lee was reelected as President in 1996, the move to clip the wings of the incumbent governor of Taiwan province started. After the convening of the National Development Conference, a report asserting that the provincial level government was redundant and thus made the whole government less efficient were released. In 1997, at the National Assembly meeting, the constitutional amendment stipulating the abolition of the system of popular election of the provincial governor and members of the provincial assembly was passed (Lu 2002, 60). Lee thus removed Soong from the position that could have challenged his authority. Relations between the two men were irreparably damaged. James Soong considered this result unacceptable, and went into self-exile in the US. When James Soong returned to Taiwan in March 1999, the election campaign was just about to start. Soong proposed to hold a democratic primary election within the K M T to determine the presidential nominee. Because of the popularity he enjoyed within the K M T party and also the sympathy many had towards him after the dissolution of the provincial government, Soong would very likely have won that democratic party primary election within the K M T . But President Lee, also the party chairman of the K M T , insisted that the party should use its indirect method of selection by the 2,000 delegates at the party's fifteenth national congress, which was loyal to Lee, to determine the candidacy (Diamond 2001, 66). Indeed, at that time, Lee Teng-hui cared more about his own political legacy than whether his party could win the election or not. He wanted to nominate someone who would not likely to challenge his policies and change the direction of the party and the country after he retired. Specifically, James Soong and Lee Teng-hui held divergent views on the cross-strait relationship, which traditionally is the 47 most salient issue in any of Taiwan's national elections. Soong preferred to work with mainland China pragmatically, while Lee has always tried to redefine the relationship between the two by emphasizing Taiwan's separate national identity. If Soong got the nomination within the party, then the historical course Lee had set would be reversed. Lien Chan however, as a mediocre politician, was expected to remain loyal to Lee. Lee reportedly hoped to be able to influence Lien from behind the scenes, thus assuring the continuation of his preferred domestic and foreign policies (Chao and Dickson 2002, 17). A s a result of this, Lien Chan got the nomination. James Soong was furious about Lee's manipulation and decided to break away from the K M T and run as an independent. Therefore, the K M T party suffered a huge split. With his popularity within the K M T and his Mainlander background, Soong drew both Mainlander votes and Taiwanese votes from the K M T vote base, and enjoyed the highest polling rate among the three candidates in the early rounds of the election campaign. By then, the political priority for Lee Teng-hui was to stop Soong rather than to lect Lien. Preventing Soong's victory became his most impassioned goal. During the final weeks of the campaign, Lee Teng-hui spent most of his political energy and rhetorical fire attacking Soong rather than Chen Shui-bian, the D P P candidate. The K M T in time revealed a scandal about Soong, which seriously undermined his popularity and cost his presidency. Chen Shui-bian, the D P P candidate, won the election as traditional K M T voters split between Lien Chan and James Soong. It was the first time in R O C ' s history (in Taiwan) that the K M T had to hand over power to another party. 48 Effect of Lee's Term on Ethnic Relations in Taiwan The ascendance of Lee Teng-hui to power and his growing popularity among the Taiwanese population, to a great extent, should be considered to be a result of Lee's Taiwanese background. To many of the local Taiwanese, Lee's ascendance to the presidency was a national victory and a milestone in Taiwanese' struggle to overthrow Mainlander domination. According to many Taiwanese, Lee was the first Taiwanese to be the national leader for more than 400 years of Taiwan's colonial history. In a society that had been suppressed during the past century, first under Japanese colonial rule and then the authoritarian K M T regime, the democratization process unavoidably unleashed the desire of the Taiwanese people to be their own masters. The interlinked issues of national identity and cross-Strait relations have indeed been at the heart of political debate and conflict in Taiwan since the democratization process took off. The unresolved national identity issue, whether Taiwan's citizens were Chinese or Taiwanese or both, and the unsettled national status, whether Taiwan's ultimate goal was to become part of a unified Chinese nation and state or to become an independent polity, remain the biggest cleavages within Taiwanese society. As the ultimate goal of political parties is to win elections, therefore, whichever issue can most effectively mobilize the general public is the one to exploit. Because of the primordial feeling attached to one's nation, nationalism has proven to be the most effective weapon to mobilize people and to draw support for the building of one's own nation-state. In the early 1970s, Chiang Ching-kuo began to Taiwanize the K M T party and government in order to draw a new generation of talent into the K M T and to improve the K M T ' s reputation in society. As a emigre government, it is unavoidable for the K M T to 49 recruit local elites into the state apparatus to replenish the diminishing number of Mainlanders. During the 1970s and 1980s, many Taiwan-born technocrats and local Taiwanese politicians found their way to some important positions in the party-state. However, even so, party power remained predominantly in the hands of the Mainlanders before Chiang Ching-kuo's death, with most of the Taiwanese politicians only symbolic figures. Therefore, although the Taiwanization process already started when Chiang Ching-kuo was still alive, its scale was not extensive enough, and its effect not substantial enough. The Taiwanization process really speeded up under Lee. By the end of his presidency in 2000, native Taiwanese held the most important positions, including the presidency, vice-presidency, and the premiership, which broke a tradition of ethnic balancing set by his predecessor (Chao and Dickson 2002, 6). He also set about adding Taiwanese officers to the top ranks of the military. Therefore, during the 12 years of Lee Teng-hui's rule, most of the prominent Mainlander politicians were removed from the political stage. As we have seen in both cases of Hau Pei-tsun and James Soong, it was the coordination between the Taiwanese within the K M T and the opposition party that made the Mainlander politicians difficult to survive in such an increasingly Taiwanese nationalistic environment. The resentment felt by Mainlander politicians who were replaced or demoted during Lee's personnel changes created tensions within the K M T . As a result, the K M T split twice, and the newly formed New Party and People First Party were predominant Mainlander political parties. However, as the minority of the society, Mainlanders are increasingly marginalized, and there is no hope for Mainlander politicians to regain their lost political power again. Although this kind of power 50 transition is common in any democratic transition, because it was related to ethnic relations, it makes the Mainlanders in Taiwan feel especially suppressed. A s democratization restored the majority status of native Taiwanese, now it was the turn for the Mainlanders to be dominated. It is thus understandable for the Mainlanders to feel disillusioned and dissatisfied with the politics in Taiwan. However, unfortunately, their feelings were mainly overlooked during the Lee Teng-hui's term. Conflicting National Identities A strong nationalist himself, one of Lee's biggest achievements during his term was the promotion of a surging Taiwanese national identity. During most of the Chiang era, the Taiwanese were given to understand that they were Chinese. Taiwanese might have their own distinct language and culture, but these were usually considered as a regional variation of the grand Chinese culture, and Taiwan was no-doubt part of China. This kind of one-China stance was the symbol of the K M T authoritarian rule, and thus has undergone serious challenge since the start of Taiwan's democratization. A s we have seen, since the democratization process started in the latter days of Chiang Ching-kuo's rule, the fervor of Taiwanese nationalism has been unleashed and started to play the dominant role in the island's democratic politics. Through education and re-socialization, more and more native Taiwanese people start to take on a singular Taiwanese identity, while the number of people identifying as Chinese has continuously dwindled. According to surveys conducted by the Election Study Center of National Chengchi University in Taiwan for the past 10 years, in 1992, only about 17.3 per cent of the population considered themselves as Taiwanese, 26.2 per cent of the population thought they were Chinese, and about 45.4 per cent of the population had a double 51 identity, which means they thought they were both Chinese and Taiwanese. However, in 10 years, Taiwanese identity had surged to the front. In 2003, 43.2 per cent of the population considered themselves now as Taiwanese, an increase of about 25 per cent from 1992. People who had a Chinese identity dwindled to only 7.7 per cent of the population. The double identity remains at about 42.9 per cent (see Chart 3.1). This diverging trend can also be detected in people's preference of the cross-strait relations with the mainland China. Although more than half of people prefer to keep the status quo, the trend for an independent Taiwan is definitely uprising, while the number of people wanting to see a unified China is decreasing year by year (see Chart 3.2). However, the conflicting national identity issue hasn't really been resolved. Although Taiwanese identity has started to take the lead, more than 50 per cent of the population still can accept a somewhat Chinese identity. Taiwan is thus divided into groups of people who have different visions of their national identity. Although Lee Teng-hui's term made a great contribution to the democratization in Taiwan, it also caused the increasing division within the society. Although increasing ethnopolitics are unavoidable in democratizing plural societies, it might pose a severe challenge for the development of a healthy democratic system and for the consolidation of democracy. How these different visions of national identity have played out in Taiwan's electoral politics is thus very intriguing, as it wi l l have great impact on Taiwan's democratic consolidation. The next chapter wi l l discuss how political parties were mobilized along ethnic lines, and how people's national identity would decide the result of national elections. 52 Chart 3. 1 I d e n t i t y D i s t r i b u t i o n P a t t e r n i n Taiwan (1992-2003) 4.9 l 1 I i I i : 1 1 i 1 l i I l : I i I ^ I ,1 1 I 1 i Year Chart 3.2 Cros s - S t r a i t Relations Preference D i s t r i b u t i o n • U n i f i c a t i o n Immediately •Prefer U n i f i c a t i o n Keep the Status Quo and Decide Later -X— Keep the Status Quo Permanently -3K—Prefer Independence 54 Chapter Four Divided Society and Political Party Affiliations Since the start of democratization in the latter days of Chiang Ching-kuo, and through 12 years of rule under Lee Teng-hui, Taiwan has been transformed from a Leninist authoritarian party-state to a relatively democratic country. The by-product of it, however, is a surging Taiwanese identity, and an increasing division within society based on people's national identity. As the previous chapter has shown, after Lee's term, the number of people embracing a purely Taiwanese identity has soared to historical highs, although still another half of the population accepts a somewhat Chinese identity. How this conflict between people's national identity has played out in Taiwan's electoral politics is very intriguing. Larry Diamond (1999) defines consolidated democracy as "at the mass level, there must be a broad normative and behavioral consensus- one that cuts across class, ethnic, nationality, and other cleavages." Therefore, a test of the robustness of Taiwan's democratic consolidation requires us to look at the party affiliation in Taiwan, and see how the political parties in Taiwan are organized along ethnic lines. This chapter will thus do a preliminary anatomy of the Taiwanese electorate, and to identify whether people's different national identity has played the most important role in their party affiliation in Taiwan's young electoral democracy. Because of the unavailability of up-to-date survey data, I will use the 2001 Taiwan Legislative Yuan Election Survey compiled by the Academia Sinica. The survey data set is composed of questions for both the Legislative Yuan election of that year, and the presidential election the year before, so I think it reflects the pattern of division within the Taiwanese society after Lee Teng-hui's 12-year rule. 55 During the 2000 presidential election contest, there were three parties competing for the presidency, DPP, K M T , and PFP. 2 8 The DPP had been the opposition party during the democratic transition period since 1986, and in 2000 it remained a Taiwanese-based political party that has Taiwanese independence in its party platform. It has also been the most fervent promoter of Taiwanese nationalism. The K M T , however, had by 2000 undergone substantial Taiwanization, and most of its key posts have been occupied by Taiwanese. Because of Lee Teng-hui's power reshuffling in the K M T , many Mainlander elites had broken away to form new political parties, such as the New Party in 1993. Before the 2000 election campaign started, the K M T suffered a major split. James Soong broke away to run as an independent. Because of Soong's Mainlander background, and the political support he drew, Soong distinguished himself from the other two parties. Therefore, the 2000 presidential election was a three-way race, where DPP had a pro-independence discourse, the K M T in the middle, and James Soong (PFP) was more sanguine to deal pragmatically with mainland China. The main argument of this chapter is that people's vote choice in the 2000 presidential election was in large part determined by their national identity. Whether someone identifies him/herself as Taiwanese, or both Taiwanese and Chinese, or Chinese heavily influenced which party this person would vote for. Hypothetically, someone who considered him/herself as Taiwanese would vote for the DPP. Someone with a dual identity or a Chinese identity might vote for the PFP and the K M T . Further more, I suspect that the PFP voters might have an even stronger Chinese identity than the K M T voters. Some regression models will be used to illustrate these correlations. 2 8 James Soong ran for the 2000 presidential election as an independent, and he formed the People First Party after the 2000 election. As the survey was compiled in 2001, so PFP was the term used to refer to James Soong's political supporters. 56 Methodology In order to test whether Taiwan's electorate chose which party to vote for based on their national identity, I use an equation model to see the relationship between party choice and national identity while controlling other social economic variables for the three parties. The sample size of all three groups is pretty decent in my dataset. There are 739 people who identified themselves as Taiwanese, 1046 people who identified as both Taiwanese and Chinese, and another 172 people who had Chinese identities, which also roughly reflected the distribution of people's national identity in the Taiwanese society. Such a big sample size can help produce relatively statistically unbiased results. The equation model is as following: Party Vote = P o + p , income+p2 education+p.* economic performace+p4 democracy satisfaction+ ps unification or indepence+p<; social welfare+p7 reform+Ps male+p<> region+Pio national identity+M The dependent variable is a binary one asking whether people voted for one specific party. It is coded " 1 " for those who voted, and " 0 " for those didn't. For the independent variables, I include people's national identity, whether they identify themselves as Taiwanese, both Taiwanese and Chinese, or Chinese, as the major independent variable. I control people's income, education, gender as basic social indicators. I also control people's perception of previous year's economy (ecopreperf), satisfaction with the current democracy (demosat), their opinion on unification and independence (poin), and whether they support more social welfare (socwel) and more political reform (reform). There is also another variable region that I included in the model, because I want to see whether there were regional differences of people's voting 57 pattern. After all, the DPP is a Southern-based party with headquarters in Kaohsiung. Also demographically, most Mainlanders tend to live in the northern and eastern part of the island, while more Taiwanese reside in the middle and Southern part of the island. I run one OLS regression on each question, and the results are presented in Tables 1 to 3 (See Appendix). From the result produced by the regressions on the vote for the three political parties, we can see that people's national identity had a very strong effect in deciding which political party to vote for in the 2000 presidential election, even though other variables also showed some effects in people's voting preferences. For the likelihood to vote for the DPP, other things being equal, people with a dual identity would have 17 per cent less chance to vote for the DPP than those with a Taiwanese identity. The effect of Chinese identity was even stronger. For someone who identified as Chinese, s/he had 28.4 per cent less chance to vote for the DPP than a Taiwanese. For the likelihood to vote for the PFP, there is a total different story. People with a dual identity would have 15 per cent more chance to vote for the PFP than a Taiwanese if other things being equal. For those Chinese identifiers, they had 17 per cent more chance to vote for the PFP than Taiwanese identifiers. For the K M T voters, the national identity issue also exerted strong effect. People with a dual identity had 5 per cent more chance to vote for the K M T than someone with a Taiwanese identity. People with a Chinese identity had 13.7 per cent further more chance to vote for the K M T than a Taiwanese. However, we can also tell that this effect is not as strong as those who voted for the PFP. This finding also confirmed my early suspicion that the K M T tended to occupy the middle ground between the DPP and the PFP on the national identity issue. 58 Is National Identity the Only Salient Effect? From the findings above, we have found that indeed people's national identity had very strong effect in deciding which party to vote for in the 2000 presidential election. However, we also noticed that there were still other factors that might have played important roles. It could be that people's national identity is only one of the a number of factors salient in deciding their vote choice, or it may be that no matter how different people were in terms of other social economic indicators, it was their national identity that played the only significant role. In order to see which is correct, I interact each independent variable with people's national identity based on the equation model above. The rationale behind this was that, i f people's national identity is the single most important salient factor in deciding their vote choice, then when I interact people's national identity with other variables, which means to see the effect of other variables on people's vote choice within the same national identity group, the effect of those other variables should drop. If there are still other variables that show consistent effect within each identity group, then we can draw the conclusion that the national identity is not the only salient variable that decided people's vote choice. The equations are as following: Party Vote = 00+ Pi income*twchid + p2education*twchid + p3ecopreperf*twchid +Pjdemosat*rwchid +p5poin*twchid + p<;socwel*twchid + P? reform*twchid + Psmale*twchid # p 9 region*twchid + M The results of the three regressions are presented in Table 4-6. It seems that there are some discrepancies in each group's voting pattern. It seems that different variables had different impacts on different groups' choice of which party to vote for. For the dual identity group, when their income increases, chance for them to vote for the D P P 59 decreases, and for them to vote for the PFP and K M T increases. The relationship between income and party support seems to be the opposite for both the Taiwanese group and the Chinese group, but those results are statistically insignificant. The effects of perception of economic performance are also very strong in influencing the dual identity group's chance to vote for the DPP. With one unit of increase in level of unsatisfactory perception, there would be 17.9% less chance for the dual group to vote for the DPP. It was not statistically significant for the other two groups. The only explanation for this is probably that, for the dual group, identity is not as crucial in deciding their preference of specific political parties as the other two groups, so they are probably more rational in choosing which party to vote for. So their perception of economic performance became more salient. Similarly, their chance to vote for the PFP would increase by 15.3% with one unit of decrease in economic performance perception. There is another variable, "support for independence or unification" that remains statistically significant for the Taiwanese group in their support for the DPP, and for the Chinese group in their support for the K M T . For the Taiwanese, if their support for unification increased, there was less chance for them to vote for the DPP. And interestingly, this effect for the Taiwanese group was even stronger than the dual group and the Chinese group. With one unit increase in the Taiwanese group's support for unification, there would be 5% less chance for them to vote for the DPP, while there was only 4.1% less for the dual group, and 1.9% less for the Chinese group. It seems that, for the Taiwanese, if they prefer unification more than independence, they would be the least likely group to vote for the DPP. The other interesting factor is that, for the Chinese, i f their support for unification increased, they were less likely to vote for the K M T . With 60 one unit of increase in their support for unification, there would be 2.5% less chance that the Chinese group would vote for the K M T . The explanation for this is probably that for the Chinese group, they had lost confidence in K M T ' s ability to promote unification, so they switched to support the PFP which had a clearer pro-unification political stance. Therefore, for the Chinese identifiers, their dissatisfaction with the K M T ' s effort in pushing for unification made them less likely to vote it. As a result, I argue that people's national identity played the most salient role in deciding people's vote choice in the 2000 election. Most of the other results are not statistically significant. I found that almost all the previously statistically significant variables dropped their statistical significance when I interacted them with people's national identity. Because the effect of national identities was so strong that all other factors, which were statistically significant within the general population, dropped their statistical significance when people were sorted by their national identities. Therefore, I think that the fact there were no other statistically significant factors influencing people's vote choice strongly supported my argument that indeed people's national identity was the single salient factor that decides which party one would vote for. How Strong Are the Effects? So how strong indeed is people's national identity in deciding his/her vote choice in the 2000 election? In the previous O L S regressions, we have seen the effects of national identity on people's vote choice. However, because people's vote choice is a binary dependent variable, as " 1 " for yes and " 0 " for no, I suspect that those results might lack precision in predicting the true value of the effects of national identity on people's vote choice. Because the O L S regression might produce fitted probabilities that can be 61 less than zero or greater than one, which is absolutely nonsense in a binary variable within a zero to one scale. I have to use some binary response models to overcome these limitations. Thus, I do a logit analysis, of which the results are presented in table 1 -3 too. In order to interpret the logit properly, I used Gary King's Clarify software to calculate the probabilities. I hypothetically set up a model with people who had income in the middle range, middle level of education, moderate perception of economic performance and democracy, moderate support for either independence or unification, moderate support for social welfare and economic reforms, and who was male, and I did some simqi analyses to see how people's national identity change would impact on his vote choice for each one of the three party. The results are presented in Table 7-9 in the appendix and also the chart 3 below. Chart 4. 1 Hypothetical E f f e c t s of National I d e n t i t y on People's Vote Choice 70. 00% 60. 00% 50. 00% S 10.00% o 30.00% -2 20. 00% 10. 00% 0. 00% HTaiwanese Male • Taiwanese Female • Dual I e n t i t y Male ••Dual Identity Fema 1 e • Chinese Male EChinese Female DPP Vote KMT Vote Party votes PFP Vote 62 From the logit findings above, it is obvious that the difference among people's national identity had the strongest effect on deciding his/her vote choice in the 2000 presidential election. People with a strong Taiwanese identity tended to have more than 60 per cent of chance to vote for the DPP . Although divided between the choices of the K M T and the PFP, people with strong Chinese identity also had about 60 per cent of chance to vote for both parties. The correlation between people's national identity and their choice of political parties is very strong, and it perfectly reflects the fact that the issue of national identity has been so intensively politicized in Taiwan. A s a result of the resurgence of Taiwanese nationalism an the politicization of the identity issue since the start of Taiwan's democratization and particularly during the Lee Teng-hui's term, national identity started to play the most salient role in influencing people's vote choice. After Chen Shui-bian got elected as the president in 2000, the K M T expelled Lee Teng-hui from the party and started to work closely with the PFP. A coalition called "Pan-Blue" was thus formed. As a result, Taiwanese electorate was divided into to camps, one with strong Taiwanese identity and coalesced around the D P P or the "Pan-Green," and the other that has a moderate stance of the identity issue and support the "Pan-Blue." A politically divided society thus came into being. 63 Chapter Five Conclusion Nationalism is a modern phenomenon. With the introduction of modernization and experience of colonialization, boundaries dividing previous small social units brake up and a bigger community- the nation is formed. The formation of Taiwanese nation reflects such a process. Because of the modernization introduced by the Japanese and the colonial experience the people on the island had, they started to coalesce into one single group, called the Taiwanese. The initial excitement of going back to the embrace of the Chinese motherland was shattered by the encounter by the Taiwanese people with the coming of the K M T troops in 1945 and the flooding of Mainlander refugee in 1949. The traumatic repression of the "2-28 Incident" and the suppression suffered by the Taiwanese K M T people under the authoritarian regime further politicized the ethnic division between the majority of Taiwanese and the minority Mainlanders. The K M T authoritarian regime was essentially a Mainlander regime. Its 40 years of autocracy is generally considered as a period of Mainlander domination of the majority Taiwanese. When the opposition Tangwai started to gain momentum in pushing for political reforms and demanding democracy, one of the main strategies that the Tangwai used was to rally people around the banner of Taiwanese nationalism. The reawakening of a Taiwanese identity perfectly went hand in hand with democratization. Starting from the loosening o f the grip by the K M T regime during the latter days of Chiang Ching-kuo's rule, the increasing space afforded to the political opposition provided Tangwai and later the Democratic Progressive Party an opportunity to exploit the Taiwanese identity issue as their rallying point against Mainlander domination. 64 However, the ascendance of Lee Teng-hui and the accelerated pace of Taiwanization within the K M T , to a certain extent, prevented the D P P from fully taking advantage of the surging Taiwanese identity for its own political gain. On the other hand, it was the power struggle between the Mainlanders and Taiwanese within the K M T that illustrated the fiercest battle between the two different ethnic groups. As we have seen in both the cases of Hau Pei-tsun and James Soong, after the defeat of the Mainlanders, the previously privileged ethnic group felt disillusioned about their political future and became increasingly grumpy about their declining political influence in Taiwan's politics. Through a series of political reforms conducted by Lee Teng-hui, the old Constitution were amended six times, and it gradually changed from a Constitution originally designed for the whole China into one that fits more with the current political situation of the Taiwan Island. Through the abolition of the Temporary Provisions, forced retirement of the old delegates of the three legislative chambers, direct election of the president, termination of the provincial government, and other constitutional amendments, the R O C government gradually abandoned the K M T ' s traditional one China burden, and started a new process in defining a new Taiwanese national identity in the island. The national identity issue in Taiwan is indeed very complex. It is not exactly an ethnically issue, but it also involves people's self-identification of which nation they belong to, whether it is China or Taiwan, and their preference of the relationship between Taiwan and the mainland China. After more than a decade of democratization and the politicization of the national identity issue, people's identity has also drastically changed; Previously, almost the majority of the people accepted a somewhat Chinese identity, but now almost half of the island's people uphold a singular strong Taiwanese identity. The 65 different national identities and people's conflicting political aspirations for Taiwan's current and future relationship with the mainland China have divided the society into two camps: one pan-green, led by the DPP and pursuing an independent Taiwan; and the other pan-blue, led by a coalition between the K M T and PFP and still clinging to the Republic of China ideal. Peoples' different national identities thus have become the most salient effect in deciding their vote preference in Taiwan's electoral politics. As we have seen in the statistical study of the 2001 Legislative Yuan election, people support their political parties mainly out of their acknowledgement of their national identity, whether they are Taiwanese or Chinese, or whether they believe the country they live is rightly called Taiwan or the Republic of China. Political Leadership has proved to be very important in the process of democratization as well as in the intensification of ethnic conflicts in Taiwan. No doubt that Lee Teng-hui has made a great contribution in bringing about dramatic political changes to Taiwan, but he is also personally responsible for the souring of inter-group relations between the Mainlanders and the native Taiwanese. His fierce power struggle with his Mainlander opponents within the K M T has caused severe splits of the party around national identities. He has always exploited the national identity issue for his own political gain. He mobilized the mass and allied with the opposition party to fight against the Mainlander elites within the K M T . He thus extensively Taiwanized the K M T , and set up an agenda to push for an independent Taiwan. 2 9 Lee's outright promotion of Taiwanese culture, language, history etc, was most of the time at the detriment of the Chinese consciousness that had existed in Taiwan since the K M T retreated to the island. Although for the native Taiwanese, this is a natural trend for their cultural awakening, the 2 9 In 1999, Lee Teng-hui expressed his "Two States Theoy". 66 process of cultural redefinition unavoidably alienated the Mainlander group within the society. Therefore, people's conflicting national identity and their different opinions about the relationship between Taiwan and the mainland China have caused a serious divide within the Taiwanese society. The divide that resulted from the democratization process has only worsened since Chen Shui-bian, the DPP leader, came into power in 2000. Because of James Soong's decision to run as an independent in the 2000 presidential election, the K M T ' s voters were split into two camps. As a result of this, Chen Shui-bian came up with a slight margin of win in the three-race. In the 2001 Legislative Yuan election, Chen's D P P party also won the election, but fell short of a majority. The first 4 years of DPP rule, its performance was mediocre. It failed to deliver economic development to the populace. Many of D P P ' s previous electoral policies hadn't come into reality. Further more, the president was always dealing with an opposition majority legislative yuan, therefore, the D P P had real difficulty passing bills and implementing policies. In order to cover its meager performance and boost its popularity and further to secure his reelection, the president Chen Shui-bien and his party have been playing the identity-card very intensively. Especially during the election campaign preceding the 2004 election, the sub-ethnic divide had been severely politicized and exploited. For example, there were such verbal accuses that i f someone would vote for the pan-blue P F P - K M T coalition, s/he must be a traitor for the communist China, etc. The DPP has been using the slogan "Love Taiwan" as a campaign theme. Only those who love Taiwan wi l l vote for the D P P , while others who do not love Taiwan wi l l not. The message the D P P tried to send was that the pan-blue does not love Taiwan, but is rather a traitor for communist China. These kinds 67 of politicizations of people's identity thus made it more difficult to heal the divided society. Thus the mass protests were organized by he opposition coalition after they lost the election by a very small margin. The ethnic conflicts existing within the Taiwanese society thus provide the biggest challenge for the reelected D P P government. However, with various de-sinicization movements pushed by the DPP government, the trend is for more and more people to discard their Chinese identity and adopt a Taiwanese one. In this sense, the democratization going on in Taiwan is also a nation-building process. Probably one day, a singular Taiwanese identity wi l l be achieved, but during the process of nation-building, conflicts between groups with different national identities are indeed unavoidable. What has happened in Taiwan also supported what the theories of democratization in ethnically plural societies have informed us. The liberalization and break-down of the previous authoritarian regime provides ample space for politicians of different camps to exploit nationalism for their political gains. Because of the immature democratic institutions, the free-range surging nationalisms wi l l thus very likely bring about increasing ethnic conflicts between groups with different identities. The danger of this intensification of ethnic conflicts has not really attracted enough attention from dominant theories of democratization. Thus, what can be done to prevent this kind of escalation of ethnic conflicts is a key topic for future research. This thesis also highlighted the ethnopolitical nature of Taiwan's politics, and thus hopes to draw more scholarly attention to the issue of the divided society and the implications it might have for the deeper consolidation of Taiwan's young democracy. 68 B I B L I O G R A P H Y Aklaev, Airat R. 1999. 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Lee Teng-hui: 1988-2000 zhi zheng shi er nian (Lee Teng-hui's Twelve-year Rule: 1988-2000, in Chinese). Taipei: Commonwealth Publishing Co., Ltd. 75 Appendix Table 1 Dependent Variable: whether \oted for DIM' in 2000 Presidential Election (1 for ves. 0 for no) Independent Variables L P M (OI.S) Lo»it(MLF.) Income -0.009 -0.003 (0.005) (0.026) F.d ucation -0.031* -0.16* (0.006) (0.031) Perception of previous year's -0.107* -0.534* economic performance (0.029) (0.15) Democracy satisfaction -0.1 IS* -0.67* (0.02) (0.12) Support for independence or -0.041* -0.219* unification (0.005) (0.03) Support for more social 0.01 0.067 welfare (0.006) (0.034) Support for reform or more -0.013 -0.067 stability (0.005) (0.025) Male 0.04 0.198 (0.026) (0.137) Mid Taiwan 0.056 0.29 (0.035) (0.18) Southern Taiwan (1.035 0.20 (0.031) (0.163) Eastern Taiwan -0.127* -0.72* (0.056) (0.32) Both Taiwanese and Chinese -0.17* 0.76* (0.03) (0.147) Chinese -0.284* -1.53* (0.05) (0.304) Constant 1.51* 5.287' (0.12) (0.67) Log-likelihood Value - -665.96 Pseudo R-Squared 0.22 0.181 76 Table 2 Dependent.Variable: whether .voted for I'M* in 20(10 Presidential Flection (1 for \cs, 0 for no) Independent Variables L P M (OLS) Logit (MLK) Income 0.007 -0.05 (0.005) (0.03) Education 0.02* 0.11* (0.005) (0.03) Perception of previous year's 0.1* 0.71* economic performance (0.03) (0.18) Democracy satisfaction -0108* 0.48* (0.02) (0.11) Support for independence or 0.03* 0.19* unification (0.005) (0.03) Support for more social welfare 0.00004 -0.01 (0.006) (0.04) Support for reform or more 0.009* 0.06* stability (0.004) (0.03) Male -0.06* -0.34" (0.026) (0.145) Mid Taiwan 0.002 0.06 (0.03) (0.2) Southern Taiwan -0.09* -0.53* (0.03) (0.19) Eastern Taiwan 0.08 -0.72 (0.05) (0.32) Both Taiwanese and Chinese 0.15* 1.08* (0.03) (0.19 Chinese 0.17* 1.1* (0.05) (0.28) Constant -0.6* -7.02' '.(0.11) (O.-'S) Log-likelihood Value -599.8 Pseudo R-Squared 0.147 0.153 77 Table 3 Dependent Variable: whether\otcil for KMT in 2000 Presidential Flection (1 for yes. 0 for no) .'.' ' :U<T:' Independent Variables LPM (OLS) Logit (MU.) Income -0.02 -0.014 (0.004) (0.033) Education 0.001 0.008 (0.005) (0.04) Perception of previous year's 0.013 -0.13 economic performance (0.023) (0.2) Democracy satisfaction 0.01 0.083 (0.02) (0.12) Support for independence or 0.008 0.066 unification (0.005) (0.04) Support for more social welfare -0.007 -0.06 S i l l l l l l ll^^p (0.005) (0.04) Support for reform or more 0.01* 0.09* stability (0.004) (0.034) Male 0.006 0.05 (0.021) (0.17) Mid Taiwan -0.06* -0.53* (0.03) (0.26) Southern Taiwan 0.025 0.1<S6 (0.025) (0.195) Eastern Taiwan -0.05 -0.457 (0.05) (0.403) , Both Taiwanese and Chinese 0.05* 0.464* (0.02) (0.212) : Chinese 0.137* 0.986* (0.04) (0.3) Constant, •^^J!''. 0.01 -3.13* ."(6.1) (0.81) Log-likelihood Value -481.6 Pseudo R-Squared 0.035 0.043 78 Table 4 Dependent Variable: whether voted lor DIM* in 2001) Presidential Flection within each national identity «rou p (1 lor yes, 0 for no) Taiwanese lioth Taiwanese Chinese . and Chinese Income 0.01 -0.012* 0.015 (0.085) (0.01) (0.018) Education -0.024 -0.034 -0.084 (0.009) (0.012) (0.02) Perception of previous year's -0.036 -0.179* 0.09 economic performance (0.044) (0.06) (0.125) Democracy satisfaction -0.071 -0.138 -0.058 (0.039) (0.047) (0.076) Support for independence or -0.05* -0.041 -0.019 unification (0.009) (0.012) (0.02) Support for more social 0.005 0.013 -0.013 welfare (0.01) (0.014) (0.027) Support for more reform or -0.015* -0.0095 -0.023 stability (0.008) (0.01) (0.018) Male 0.05 0.05016 -0.05 (0.045) (0.056) (0.1) Mid Taiwan 0.02 0.07 0.035 (0.06) (0.076) (0.145) Southern Taiwan 0.0013 0.0243 0.2413* (0.053) (0.0068) (0.12) Eastern Taiwan -0.184 -0.0106 -0.022 (0.11) (0.131) (0.221) Constant 1.235* (0.188) R-square 0.24 79 Table 5 Dependent Variable: whether voted for PFP in 2000 Presidential Election within each national identit> <;rnup (1 for yes, 0 for no) Taiwanese Both Taiwanese Chinese and Chinese Income -0.006 0.019* -0.003 (0.008) (0.01) (0.017) Education 0.007 0.024 0.014 - (0.009) (0.012) (0.02) Perception of previous year's 0.061 0.153 -0.079 economic performance (0.042) (0.06) (0.118 Democracy satisfaction 0.04 0.101 0.095 (0.037) (0.045) (0.072) Support for independence or 0.02* 0.036 0.0195 unification (0.009) (0.012) (0.02) Support for more social 0.008 -0.00644 0.019 welfare (0.011 (0.013) (0.025) Support for more reform or 0.008 0.0115 0.006 stability (0.007) (0.01) (0.017) Male 0.016 -0.104 0.0114 (0.042) (0.05) (0.1) Mid Taiwan 0.01 0.003 -0.008 (0.055) (0.07) (0.136) Southern;;Taiwan -0.054 -0.094 -0.163 (0.05). (0.064) (0.114) Eastern Taiwan 0.14 0.06 -0.06 (0.1) (0.12) (0.21) Constant -0.35* (0.18) R-square 0.18 80 Table 6 Dependent Variable: whether voted for KMT in 2000 Presidential Election within each national identity grou p (1 for yes. 0 for no) Taiwanese Both Taiwanese Chinese , and Chinese Income -0.006 0.003 -0.026 (0.007) (0.009) (0.015) Education -0.0H3 0.000 -0.005 (0.1 HIS) (0.01) (0.017) Perception of previous year's -0.022 0.058 -0.122 economic performance (0.04) (0.05) (0.1) Democracy satisfaction 0.034 0.004 . -0.026 (0.03) (0.04) (0.06) Support for independence or (Ml 15* 0.008 -0.025* unification (0.008) (0.01) (0.02) Support for more social -0.013 -0=003 0.007 welfare (0.01) (o.oi) (0.02) Support for more reform or 0.012 0.002 0.009 stability (0.006) (0.01) (0.01) Male -0.01 0.02 -0.02 (0.04) (0.05) (0.08) Mid Taiwan -0.05 -0.09 0.09 (0.05) (0.06) (0.12) Southern Taiwan . 0.01 0.04 0.096 (0.04) (0.05) (0.1) Eastern Taiwan -0.08 -0.06 -0.05 (0.09) (0.1) (0.18) Constant 0.1 (0.15) R-square 0.05 81 Table 7 Hypothetical Effects of National Identity on People's Vole for DPI' Incohiejs,-.' CAN 2000/mn Education High School Perception of previous year's economic performance 2 (1 to 3 scale) Democracv Satisfaction 2 (1 to 4 scale) Support for independence or Unification 5 (as of 10 points scale) Support for more social welfare 5 (as of 10 points scale) Support for reform or more stability *;5-(as of 10 points scale) Male Yes Both Taiwanese and Chinese -0.182 (0.036) Chinese -0.354 (0.064) Taiwanese , 0.655 (0.044) Female Yes Both Taiwanese and Chinese -0.185 - ' ' (0.036) Chinese -0.347 (0.061) Taiwanese 0.609 (0.051) 82 Table 8 ' fv, , i Hypothetical Effects, of National Identity on People's Vote for PFP Income „, C A N 2000/mo Education High School Perception of previous year's economic performance 2(1 to 3 scale) Democracy Satisfaction 2 (1 to 4 scale) Support for independence or Unification 5 (as of 10.points scale) Support for more social welfare 5 (as of 10 points scale) Support for reform or more stability , . j . 5 (as of 10 points scale) Male Yes Both Taiwanese and Chinese '0.107 , ".,?-(0.023) Chinese 0.115 (0.04) Taiwanese 0.069 (0.02) Female Yes BotlrTaiwanese and Chinese 0.136 (0.03) Chinese 0.145 (0.05) Taiwanese 0.094 (0.023) 3' 83 Table 9 Hypothetical Effects of National Identity on People's Vote for KMT Income CAN 2000/mo Education High School Perception of previous year's economic performance 2 (1 to 3 scale) Democracy Satisfaction 2 (1 to 4 scale) Support for independence or Unification ."" 5 (as of 10 points scale) Support for more social welfare 5 (as of 10 points scale) Support for reform or more stability 5 (as of 10, points scale) Male Yes Both Taiwanese and Chinese ; 0.048 :-, • V (0.024) Chinese 0.13 (0.051) Taiwanese 0.103 (0.025) Female Yes Both Taiwanese and Chinese 0.047 (0.023) Chinese 0.126 (0.051) Taiwanese 0.10 (0.026) 84
Thesis/Dissertation
eng
Political Science
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Graduate
An increasingly divided society : democratization and surging nationalism in Taiwan
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