2019: Taiwan needs your help
The KMT is resurgent, the DPP is split
This month the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the pro-Taiwan, pro-democracy party in Taiwan, elected a new pro-Tsai chair, spurning You Ying-lung (游盈隆), an insurgent candidate from the nativist wing of the party. For the last couple of years You had been running the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation, which has forwarded poll after poll which he has framed as criticisms of the DPP’s leadership, including his most recent, which he positioned to support his Chairmanship campaign.
You has been a DPP member for nearly three decades. He created the DPP’s polling apparatus and was director of its think tank. He also served as vice-chairman of the old Research, Development and Evaluation Commission, a cabinet-level agency that was one of the most quietly powerful in the government before it was folded into the new National Development Commission under Ma Ying-jeou. He was vice-chair of the Mainland Affairs Council in Chen Shui-bian’s first administration. He had credibility as a long-time party stalwart
You’s failed attempt to become chairman reveals deep splits within the DPP and major problems with the Tsai Adminstration’s domestic policy. The president has alienated the party’s deep green base, who treat her as not sufficiently pro-independence and many stayed home in the recent election. The administration has also managed to alienate civic society groups, especially labor. The pension reforms, while necessary, also angered voters. Meanwhile the DPP’s choice of candidate for Kaoshiung was poor, and incumbent DPP Mayor Lin Chia-long in Taichung, an academic married to an heiress, failed to impress Taichung’s staunchly working class voters.
The November election exposed dangerous faults in the DPP between the fading older generation of independence warriors and Taiwan nationalists — along with the Deep Green base that supports them — and the next generation of DPP leaders like Premier William Lai and Tsai Ing-wen herself, who began as politicians, bureaucrats, and administrators, not activists. It also showed that the policy changes the DPP are making are either erroneous or too slow in bearing fruit.
Furthermore, civic society groups and other progressive forces view the party as a neoliberal tool, and contend that it has done little for the lives of ordinary people in Taiwan, a view widely held in Taiwan society. They may gravitate toward the infant New Power Party (NPP), which has become the standard-bearer of progressive politics in Taiwan. Yet the NPP, while pro-Taiwan, is far from being able to replace the DPP as the major pro-Taiwan party.
Meanwhile the resurgent pro-China party, the Chinese Nationalist Party or Kuomintang (KMT), has reactivated its old faction networks and they carried the party to victory in Kaohsiung and Taichung. The KMT faces its own problems, but they are now a serious threat to win the presidency in 2020. That would be very bad for Taiwan.
And that’s where you come in. Because, now, more than ever, Taiwan needs you.
At this point it looks like the coming year is going to be a brutal one for the pro-Taiwan side. The DPP factions will be at odds with each other, while the other pan-Green parties are too small to take its place. You’s insurgent campaign may have failed, but the Deep Green forces that have traditionally supported the DPP are not going to vanish.
Outsiders who are watching the pro-China KMT come back, buoyed by its Taiwan factions, and who shake their heads as the DPP is consumed with infighting, may well give up on Taiwan. You, the reader, can help explain why they shouldn’t give up on the island democracy whose defense is vital to the security of US allies Japan and Philippines, as well as friendly nations around China.
Taiwan needs you.
Taiwan needs you. Taiwan needs Taiwan supporters in the US to write letters to your members of Congress explaining why they should support Taiwan. Taiwan needs you to write letters to the international media and to online magazines and websites. Taiwan needs you to talk to the people back in Taiwan, to urge them to continue to support pro-Taiwan candidates. Taiwan needs you to bone up on its history and culture, so you can talk credibly against people who are spreading pro-China propaganda, and to people who simply do not understand Taiwan at all. Above all, Taiwan needs you to support organizations that support Taiwan with your time and money.
The coming year will be one of the hardest for the pro-Taiwan side since the dark days of the 1980s. Let’s all do what we can to ease the pain, to forge a happier new year for us all.
Support American Citizens for Taiwan
Please consider becoming a Friend of ACT with a donation of your choosing.
