April 2000

Aftermath of Taiwan vote

Voters on Taiwan rejected the ruling Nationalist Party (KMT) on March 18 by electing as president Chen Shui-bian. Chen and vice-president-elect Annette Lu were democracy activists beginning 20 years ago challenging martial law. They have the credentials of their opposition, having suffered imprisonment and even physical retaliation by the secret police.

In February on the eve of the election, Beijing had threatened drastic measures-military force-if Taiwan declared independence, or even indefinitely delayed steps toward unity. Its military posturing was less dramatic than during the 1996 elections, when it test-fired missiles in nearby waters. Chen's Democratic Progressive Party is the party associated with independence for Taiwan, but that was not its campaign issue. A vote for Chen was the only way to oppose the corrupt KMT, although such was its continuing clout as a political machine that Chen's victory over a divided KMT was with just under 40% of the vote.

The KMT had welcomed the people of Taiwan back from a half century of Japanese colonial rule with a bloody massacre on Feb. 28, 1947. Two years later three million soldiers, bureaucrats and hangers-on fled ahead of Mao Zedong's advancing army to Taiwan for refuge. The KMT's claim to be the legitimate government of all China with plans to reconquer the mainland became more fantastic with every passing year, but it was the pretext for controlling Taiwan with an iron hand under martial law and for continued U.S. bankrolling of the economy and military. Even today, three decades after Nixon's China diplomacy, the U.S. remains Taiwan's high-tech arms supplier.

There is no doubt that reunification remains a pillar of government policy in Beijing, now as under Mao. In 1949 they could not not have followed the KMT to Taiwan, especially after the U.S. guaranteed its security. What undercuts the warmongering from Beijing today, and caused Beijing to offer more conciliatory words immediately after Chen's election, is not so much whether China has the ability to intervene, but rather its dependence on an inflow of foreign capital to fuel economic growth still projected at 8% a year. Taiwan capitalists taking advantage of lower-paid workers on the mainland are central to that growth.

Chen has already stated that Taiwan is not interested in autonomy on the model of Hong Kong's return from colonial rule. But in the wake of his election, the legislature removed the ban on direct trade with the mainland and transport and postal connections left over from the half-century-old state of war.

-Bob McGuire