Last updated 24 Mar 2006 - Check back for updates

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Notes on CSIS Taiwan Conference

Summarizing. I left the conference very optimistic about the state of cross strait relations and the future of Taiwan democracy. I also left very alarmed and concerned over the situation regarding US efforts at democracy promotion and the feasibility of the National Security Strategy.

Part of the reason I'm writing this is to improve the public discussion over these sorts of issues.

Provocations

First I'd like to make some very provocative statements, which seemed to flow against the conventional wisdom.

The Anti-Secession Law was in general a good thing

Elsewhere in my blog, I've mentioned that I'm one of the few people who think that the Anti-Secession Law was a good thing, and that people are essentially shooting the messenger for an unpleasant message.

Chen Shui-Bian not Beijing is the main roadblock in improving cross strait dialogue

One of the main disagreements I had was over the nature of the roadblock regarding cross-strait relations. One speaker expressed the opinion that Taiwanese political parties should unite because as long as they are disunited it removes attention from where the problem really is, which he argued was the PRC's outmoded 19th century notions of what the nation-state is and the inability to allow for federal or confederal interpretations of "one China."

I don't think that this is the case at all. There is nothing ideologically that I can see that keeps Beijing from accepting a broad definition of one China or for allowing the sort of self-government that currently exists.

The most that can be said is that there is concern over the "Gorbachev paradox" which is that if you suddenly become less authoritarian the old restraints disappear immediate, but the new institutional to replace them take years to implement. I believe the general fear is that if the PRC gave up the threat of force, that Taiwan would immediately declare independence, the United States would recognize, and that there would be a domino effect that would cause China to collapse in the way that the Soviet Union did.

The "bottleneck" is that there is a numerically small but political significant fraction of the Taiwanese electorate that wants nothing to do with any form of "one China" even one that allows for Taiwanese self-government. Because of this group, Chen Shui-Bian is either unable or unwilling to articulate any version of "one China."

The reasons that "deep green" has for opposing any form of "one China" are several and various. There is a mode of thinking (which is expounded by Ross Terrill's the "New Chinese Empire") that Chinese nationalism is inheritly authoritarian if not evil, and that the world would be better off if China does collapse like the Soviet Union. There is also a mode of thought, that a compromise with the PRC would eventually result in Beijing taking over, and that any sort of "Chinese rule" even if democratic and even from Taipei rather than Beijing is inherently a bad thing. There is also the fear that a deal with Beijing would allow pan-Blue to "roll the clock" back in Taiwan to the 1960's.

In any case, while the PRC is very flexible as to what "one China" means, there is a segment of the Taiwanese electorate which makes up a crucial segment of the pan-Green support base which opposes any interpretation of "one China" and are opposed to any sort of creative solutions because they might work.

It is a good thing that Beijing has become involved in Taiwan domestic politics

The other major disagreement I had was that I seemed to be one of the few people there that thought that involving the CCP into Taiwan domestic politics is largely a good thing.

The first reason is that as long as Beijing sees any possibility that it can get what it wants through the ballot box, it will refrain from using missiles or any other coercive actions.

The second reason is that the dialogue between the CCP and the political actors on Taiwan really is a conversation of equals. There hasn't been any apparent effort by the CCP to bully or dictate terms, and the conversation appears to be a real conversation. This is important because having these conversations is giving Beijing a more accurate assessment of Taiwanese public opinion, and what options are open and what options are not.

The third reason that this is a good thing is that it forces Beijing to treat the political processes on Taiwan as legitimate. Much more importantly it provides a mechanism by which Taiwan now has input into the political process in Beijing. Something that should be noted is that the political dialogue that Beijing has had with the political parties in Taiwan, hasn't as far as I've seen caused any of the political parties in Taiwan to change their behavior, but it has caused major changes in the way that Beijing handles Taiwan.

As far as the negatives, one could argue that it polarizes Taiwanese opinion, but I don't think the polarization is greater that it would be without dialogue. The other thing is that I do not believe that Beijing has an explicit aim of destablizing the Taiwanese political system, nor do I think that this will be a consequence of political dialogue. Keep in mind that the criteria for public discussion is acceptance of the "one China" principle. One possible scenario is that if pan-Blue shows some tangible results from a loose "one China dialogue" this is going to be overwhelming political pressure on the DPP to accept some form of "one China" or else be annihilated in the polls. In this scenario, CCP involvement in Taiwanese politics becomes stabilizing rather than destabilizing.

As far as the divisions involved with relations with the PRC, a lot has to do with alternative interpretations of history. The pan-blue interpretation of the authoritarian period in the 1960's and 1970's is generally positive. Despite a government that was clearly non-democratic, it provided the fundamental institutions and economic growth for a later democratic transition. The pan-green interpretation of this period is generally negative. It was a dark period of evil authoritarian rule, that Taiwan is now wonderful for getting out of that era.

(I'm simplifying here. In most two-party systems, most people don't care about these sorts of issues, but the party faithful do. The other interesting thing about Taiwanese public school history books that I've seen is that there is a huge blank spot after WWII and the 1980's.)

OK. That period is done with. But now lets put these two views of history in the context of the CCP on Mainland China, and see where that gets you. The KMT looks at the CCP and sees the KMT at an earlier stage. DPP looks at the CCP and sees the same thing. You see why this becomes a hot button issue.

Introductions

One of the first speakers was Carl Gershman, President of the National Endowment for Democracy.

He began with a retrospective look at US democracy promotion efforts in Taiwan. And one of the things that I became more aware of was how much the United States was constructively involved in Taiwanese democratization and some of the issues with democratic consoldiation.

Then he started saying some interesting things. I wish I could remember better what he said because all I have in my notes was

AAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

Whatever it was, it made me totally angry.

Thinking back. His point seemed to be the problem with arguments over Taiwanese identity is that it distracted from the "real problem" which was Beijing's commitment to outmoded 19th century concepts of unitary states, and that this strategy causes conflict with peripheral communities, and that one strategy was to combine the efforts of peripheral communities to force Beijing to open up its political system for its own good.

I think that was what it was. I was just too angry to think or write straight.

Put of my response was as above. I don't think Beijing is the main road block in this cross-strait relations, moreover, I do not think that Beijing is inalterably wedded to 19th century ideas of sovereignty.

As a followup question, I asked "How does one promote democracy without making democracy a partisan issue, and what lessons can Taiwan provide the Mainland for what happens after a democratic transition."

The answer simply shocked me in that he didn't seem to have ever thought of the answer to the question. His answer was that all of their efforts were to take things one stage at a time.

My jaw totally dropped. That is a truly shocking and totally unacceptable answer. After seeing a failed democratic transition in Russia, one in Iraq that is in critical mode, and having democratic transitions in Iran and the Palestinian territiories that are put into power Islamist governments, it is simply shocking to not think about what happens the day after.

And thinking about the day after, is the main reason that PRC is not extremely interested in multi-party democracy. The main experiences that the PRC has seen with democratic transitions are in the collapse of the Soviet Union and the descent into warlordism that accompanied the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911. The leaders of the PRC tend to be very non-ideological. If you can convince Beijing that a multi-party democratic system will lead to a richer and stronger China, then there's nothing to keep them from adopting it. The trouble is that they don't believe that it is the case, and they have some very, very good reasons for thinking that it is not the case.

The other thing aboutjoining perpherial communities is that you have to keep in mind that different communities have different interests. My sense is that among some "deep green" in Taiwan, that they want tanks in the streets in Hong Kong, because "success" of one country, two systems in Hong Kong, means that one country looks a lot more attractive in Taiwan. By the same token there is relatively little sympathy for Tibetan independence among most Chinese liberals.

In the follow-up question, I felt less angry (and I'm still not sure what Dr. Gershman said to push my buttons), but it was still interesting.

see Killing Democracy

Also, I think I figured out why I was angry. See JosephWangChinaBlog for details.

The Red Meat Speech

At lunch there were two speeches by John Kuan from KMT and I-Chung Lai from the DPP. There was a reference to the speech that Dr. Kuan gave in the next day's talk with Ma Ying-Jiou

http://www.brookings.edu/comm/events/20060323.pdf

Q: Yesterday, at CSIS, we had a joint CSIS-Brookings conference on consolidating Taiwan's democracy were your chairman, Mr. Kuan Chung, he gave a rather confrontational talk which was percieved here to be a bit destructive to democracy in Taiwan. How do you intend to work toward reconciliation in Taiwan with this kind of signal coming out of your party? Reconcilation and consensus building is a major target of your party, I presume.

Ma Ying-Jiou didn't answer the question, because he wasn't at the CSIS talk, and he didn't get the context.

But I think since I heard the speech that Dr. Kuan gave, and I can put it into some context. Political parties have two goals, one is to rally their base and the middle, the second is to achieve consensus. Now, when I heard Dr. Kuan's speech, which was about how Chen Shui-Bian was making Taiwan an awful place, I was very, very happy, because he basically said what I felt, and that is the sort of the purpose of these "red meat" speeches. The American analogue would be the type of speech that Dick Cheney gives when he talks about Democrats or Howard Dean gives when he talks about Republicans.

Consensus building is part of democracy, but so is energizing and rallying your base. I hearing Dr. Kuan's speech, I was quite energized. I like to think of these sorts of speeches as candy bars. Sure, I need to read objective political reports and to consider all sides of an issue. Reading those is like eating tofu and salad. It's good for me, I need to do it. But sometimes I really do need to hear speeches like the one that Dr. Kuan gave or to read the UDN editorial page. It's a candy bar. Really bad for you if that's the only thing you eat, but you just need one every now and then, or else things get too depressing.

The one thing I would point out is that even though it was confrontational and non-concilitary, it is an accurate representation of what pan-blue will say on the campaign trail in 2008. Campaign stump speeches in front of sympathetic audiences are not known to be non-confrontational. That's just the way that democracy works.

I've read things that deep green has said on the campaign trail in 2004 and they are far, far scarier, from a US national interest point of view, than anything Dr. Kuan said. One thing that would have been interesting is to hear the campaign stump speech for the DPP by Lai I-Chung, but Dr. Lai didn't give the DPP "red meat" speech and instead gave a personal, relatively objective, and much better received talk on Taiwanese democraticization. Part of the problem that the DPP has is that it hasn't figured out what to put in the "red meat" speech. Part of the issue with this red meat speeches is that you want to energize the base, and get support from the moderates, which largely involves not scaring them. The KMT has come up with a "party line" which I think will do this. The DPP right now is in total internecine warfare trying to come up with a intra-party consensus, and it isn't getting very far because the division between "deep green" and "pale green" is too deep.

So while Dr. Kuan essentially read from the KMT 2008 script, Dr. Lai didn't read from the DPP 2008 script because the DPP has not yet figured out what is in its script. The one bit of useful information that Dr. Lai did mention is that the DPP will put out its China policy on 4/2. It will be interesting to see what it says.

The problem for the DPP is that the KMT is pretty single mindedly aimed at taking back the presidency in 2008 and this single mindedness is stopping intra-party disputes, both personal and ideological. The pan-green is very divided. The big problem is that there is a substantial fraction of pan-green that does not care about winning elections. For many "deep green" a DPP president that makes concessions on one China is going to be as bad as a KMT president, and if the DPP moderates itself, they are going to lose these votes.

As I mentioned elsewhere, this is because Chen Shui-Bian made a strategic mistake. At one point, he could have abandoned the hard line wing of his coalition, gotten the support of pan-blue and then put a "one China" counter proposal on the table. It's much too late now, and I hope that the electorate is going to hammer "pan-green" for not making these choices.

At the same time, my hope is that if pan-blue wins a landslide in 2007 and 2008, that it will be gracious and magnamious in victory. The "pan-Green are devils and pan-blue are angels" speech that Dr. Kuan gave is appropriate as a stump speech before an election. It's not the type of speech one gives if one wins, especially if one wins big.

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