I have been back in Taiwan for a couple of weeks now, giving me a slightly different perspective from that in my office in London. Officially I have been on vacation in southern Taiwan until yesterday, and Kenting is not the best location for establishing the national election mood. However, I wanted to share a few initial impressions of the campaign.

A first one is that the enthusiasm level is lower than I have ever experienced in a presidential election. Although most of the audience at the New Year party probably were not old enough to vote, I was struck by how a passionate New Year music event in Taoyuan could go dead on Ma Ying-jeou’s appearance. I have not found people enthusiastic about any of the candidates so far. Of course this may change as I widen my circles of conversation this week and start to attend some campaign events.

I have written separately about the way the presidential campaign has overshadowed the legislative campaign. Nevertheless, I have been pleased to see quite extensive media coverage of the legislative races at this stage. Actually on the ground legislative campaigning appears more extensive than the presidential one. Comparatively DPP candidates appear more willing to include Tsai Ing-wen in their campaign posters, but as Michael Turton has noted on his blog a high proportion of KMT candidates also have Ma on their street posters.

A second thing that I notice is the high degree of government purchased print and television advertising promoting government achievements. I know that this was a feature of previous elections, but my impression is that the level is higher this year. I can see it is important for citizens to understand what their government is doing, but the level of government paid advertising looks like an attempt at free advertising for the ruling party. Ideally what is needed is comparative statistics on the use of these kind of ads.

Thus age old problem of ruling party abuse of public office for electoral benefit appears as serious as at least the 1990s. Though a trivial case, the New Year party mentioned above exemplified this phenomenon. On the stage next to President Ma were the KMT legislative candidates for Taoyuan County seats, but none of the opposition party candidates. This was an event organized by the KMT controlled Taoyuan County government. I cannot be certain whether there were similar practices in DPP controlled counties but clearly this problem remains unresolved.

The third point is the role of the third party, the People First Party. For much of the late Chen Shui-bian era the PFP was in the process of being swallowed by the KMT, at most it was a semi-independent KMT faction. What is especially interesting this year is how the PFP and Soong Chu-yu are operating more like the New Party of the 1990s. In other words, they are actually trying to maintain real distance from the parent party and attacking both sides. This was apparent from seeing PFP candidates appearing on pro Green talk shows and often being more critical of the KMT. It is still not certain how effective this will be in allowing the PFP to win a handful of legislative seats, but it does reflect a changed strategy by Soong. Also it reveals that there is a market to be tapped among voters that probably chose Ma in 2008 and are having second thoughts this time.

A last impression is how the KMT is trying to revive the ghost of Chen Shui-bian. The anti-Chen appeal did make a major impact on a number of campaigns from 2005-2008. By the 2008 presidential campaign Ma was strong enough that he could run a relatively positive campaign and no longer rely on the Chen ATM. Since this election is looking so close, Ma’s team is trying to relink the DPP and Tsai to memories of the Chen era scandals. It is still unclear how effective this will be and given the poll blackout it will be harder than ever to judge the mood of the electorate.

Dafydd Fell is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies. His new book is entitled Government and Politics in Taiwan.

It would have been Asia’s first country where gays could legally marry: Almost a decade ago, the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) drafted a bill, which would make same sex marriage legal on the island. After eight years in power and almost four years in opposition, the draft has yet to be reviewed by the legislature. Neither the DPP nor the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) seem too eager to promote LGBT rights.

Incumbent President Ma Ying-jeou supported pride parades in Taipei, where he was mayor for two terms. Ma Ying-jeou also stated that homosexuality was natural and couldn’t be oppressed and that gay rights were part of human rights. Since his time in the presidential office, however, his administration has been mostly quiet about same sex marriage.

It was only recently that the government announced it would explore the topic in the national human rights report. Originally it was expected to be released on December 10 to coincide with the international human rights day. The government has, however, announced that the report will be published in February – after the election. Earlier in July, Interior Minister Jiang Yi-hua didn’t give any specific information about the report, but said further study on the topic and a consensus in Taiwanese society were needed before same sex marriage could become legal.

The country’s LGBT organisations critisised the announcement as another move by politicians to draw support from the gay community just before the elections, without actually passing such a law. The DPP’s presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen went a step further and pledged to support civil unions should she be elected. Another promise was offered by the same party that drafted a same sex marriage bill nine year’s ago, which still hasn’t materialized.

Gays still good for slander

Ironically, both candidates have themeselves been “accused” of being gay. Ex-president Chen Shui-bian of the DPP suggested, three years ago, that there was a DVD showing president Ma Ying-jeou having sex with a former radio DJ. What followed was some speculation in the local media, but the failure of the ex-president to present the alleged DVD put the topic to an end.

DPP candidate Tsai Ing-wen, on the other hand, was asked by a former DPP chairman to clarify her sexual orientation. Declining to answer, Tsai said that it would make her an accomplice of gender oppression, since everyone had a right to privacy.

Gays absent from this year’s presidential TV debate

During a TV debate in 2008, a representative from the Tongzhi Hotline – an organisation providing phone counseling to LGBT’s and their families – was given the opportunity to ask both candidates about their prospective gay politics. Ma Ying-jeou emphasized his support of gay issues, but fell short of promising same sex marriage. Both he and his then contender, the DPP’s Frank Hsieh cited a lack of consensus in Taiwanese society.

In this year’s official televised debate, there was no LGBT representative among the 12 civic groups that were picked to ask questions, sparing the candidates to justify their own and their parties’ policies regarding same sex marriage.

While the same sex marriage issue in Taiwan is less influenced by Christian beliefs and the concept of sin, this is a society deeply rooted in Confucian values such as filial piety. Hence, the concept of having off-spring is still a very important one, especially for the prospective grand parents.

Anti-gay movements have therefore focused more on traditional family values, and less on religious beliefs. Last April, the “Chen Ai Alliance” (Alliance of true love), for example, started a petition attacking the government’s plan to teach gender and sexual diversity in primary and junior high schools. The organisation spread fear among parents, saying that the proposed reference books could confuse their children regarding their sexual orientation at an early age, implying that they could become gay themselves. The Ministry of Education finally gave in and suspended the distribution of the state-approved teaching materials.

Apparently, politicians in both camps are still cautious about same sex marriage, obviously fearing a too progressive stance that would translate into less votes – despite the fact that Taiwan is widely seen as one of – if not the most- gay-friendly nations in Asia. A lack of influential religious opposition compared with western countries and a fairly open and tolerant society, however, could still make Taiwan the first country in Asia to allow same sex marriage. Such a move would not only support the nation’s LGBT-community, but also give the island – at least temporarily – more attention in the international media, making Taiwan stand out even more as one of the most democratic societies in the region.

Martin Aldrovandi is a Swiss journalist working for Radio Taiwan International

The campaigns for the January 14 presidential and legislative elections in Taiwan will be remembered mostly for the allegations and counter-allegations made by the main contestants in the race rather than their policy platforms. It would therefore be logical to assume that the headline-grabbing scandals will be determinant factors in voting decision.

They will not. Despite claims, which first emerged in Next Magazine and have since been picked up by international media, that the National Security Council ordered the national security apparatus to spy on President Ma Ying-jeou’s opponents in the election, there is little evidence that such allegations have had any impact on expected voting patterns. This also appears to be the case with repeated allegations that cabinet officials have violated political neutrality by supporting Ma.

The same applies to the charges by Ma’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) that Tsai Ing-wen, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate, illegally profiteered from her role in Yu Chang Biologics Co when she was vice premier. In both cases (there were other, lesser ones), documents have been brought forth that appear to support the claims advanced by the accusers.

Rather than influence voters, however, the controversies simply have reinforced pre-established views about the candidates and the parties they represent. For the pan-blue, or pro-KMT, camp and the media associated with it, the allegations against Tsai appear to have compounded the view that the DPP was, and remains, corrupt, claims that played a significant role in bring Ma into office in 2008.

On the pan-green, or pro-DPP, side, the allegations of illegal surveillance — which Tsai, if perhaps hyperbolically, has likened to the Watergate scandal — seem to confirm the view that the KMT was, and remains, authoritarian and inclined to use state resources to clamp down on its opponents. Conversely, the DPP’s claims also seem to have reinforced the perception within the pan-blue camp and abroad that the pan-greens are “irrational,” “paranoid” and prone to conspiracy theories.

One consequence of those congealed perceptions is that voting patters have remained unaffected, seriousness of the scandals notwithstanding. How else could we explain the fact that opinion polls conducted before the scandals and those that were held in their wake have yielded very similar results?

In a presidential campaign that can only be described as underwhelming, the scandals and the subsequent negative campaigns have failed to convince voters to change their longstanding political preferences. Where refreshing policy proposals, rather than the vague promises served, could perhaps have swayed voters, scandal failed to do so. The only thing that was achieved in the process is that the age-old blue-green divide was brought into sharper contrast, a consolidation that, sadly, will prevent Taiwan from moving forward as a developing democracy.

J. Michael Cole is deputy news chief and a reporter at the Taipei Times newspaper and a correspondent on China for Jane’s Defence Weekly.

It used to be great fun watching Taiwanese politics. For Northern Europeans, accustomed to business-as-usual parliamentary democracy, Taiwanese politics had a lot of excitement to it: parliamentarians throwing tea cups and fists at each other in the plenum, people prostrating on the ground and crying hysterically, fireworks, horns and what not. Yet, this time around, the election campaigns seem to be rather bland, at least so far.

Has something changed in Taiwanese political culture? Taiwanese politics used to be highly contentious and society strongly politicized. There are a number of underlying structural reasons for this. Politicization, popular interest and participation in politics reached a zenith during Chen Shui-bian’s second term in office, when a vicious battle for control of the political system raged between the two main political camps. After the 2004 presidential election, the DPP had its best shot yet at dismantling the KMT’s structural dominance, although eventually, these efforts failed, and the DPP was for some time left in the doldrums.

The popular enthusiasm on display in Taiwanese politics is nowhere more evident than in its ubiquitous mass rallies—zaoshi wanhui (造勢晚會). Taiwanese political parties regularly used to be able to mobilise hundreds of thousands of people for various political mass activities, especially before and around presidential elections. The height of this battle-by-mass-rally political culture occurred around the years 2004–06 that saw a number of massive rallies attract people in the high hundreds of thousands. Some events even drew millions of people, such as the “hand-in-hand rally” organised by the pan-greens before the 2004 presidential election and a counter-rally by the pan-blues two weeks later. Post-election, the losing political team topped up by organising a week-long demonstration stand-off outside of the presidential offices.

There are, of course, a number of election rallies planned now as well: the DPP is reportedly aiming to organise some 30–40 mass rallies with at least 50,000 supporters attending each of these, while the KMT went all-out in securing permission to hold mass rallies on the highly symbolic Ketagalan boulevard in Taipei on 12–13 January, just before polling day. Nonetheless, the level of enthusiasm appears to have declined from previous years.

Undoubtedly, one reason for this relative lack of popular interest this time is that on the most contentious issues concerning identity and Cross-Strait relations, the main candidates have been circumspect, even ambiguous. These issues have previously shown themselves to be double-edged swords to politicians. Consequently, both of the main candidates, Ma Ying-jeou and Tsai Ing-wen, have threaded cautiously on them. The role of political parties has been crucial in organising political mass action in Taiwan. It is therefore unsurprising that when leading politicians avoid the use of these contentious issues as mobilising tools, this results in less popular participation.

Whether or not Taiwan experiences a return to the days of competitive mobilising of people power to sway the political balance, partly depends on the two political parties again becoming more evenly matched, also in the legislature, and the DPP taking a second shot at breaking the KMT’s structural lock-hold on power. However, it is not at all certain that ordinary voters will put up with another protracted and divisive power struggle. The scars from previous battles are still raw.

Dr Mikael Mattlin is a researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. His recently published book on Taiwanese politics is titled Politicized Society: The Long Shadow of Taiwan’s One-Party Legacy (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2011).

[I will post a review of Mikael’s book here soon; it is excellent and highly recommended. Jon]

On December 28, Next Magazine published an investigative report describing an alleged operation by which the head of the National Security Council (NSC) bypassed official channels to order members of the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau (MJIB) to provide information about Tsai’s campaign activities, meetings, etc. to the Presidential Office.

The story cites multiple sources inside the MJIB, NSC, and the National Security Bureau (NSB), and the reporters obtained copies of internal MJIB documents that specifically describe illegal operations against Tsai (mentioning her by name). Most egregiously, requesting agents to assess how various meetings Tsai held would shift vote counts in the respective areas. The report also gave the dates of the operation, starting from Tsai’s victory in the DPP primary back in May 2011, and named 28 agents in charge of various geographic zones. The report went on to say that these reports were forwarded to the Weng Shih-tsan, Director of the NSC Secretariat, “for the reference of President Ma.”

All the agencies involved, as well as Ma himself, quickly denied any wrongdoing. Nonetheless, there are sufficient grounds to believe the main substance of the allegations is credible. This can be demonstrated by the process of elimination of the other possible hypotheses, of which there are two.

First, there is the hypothetical possibility that Next Magazine simply fabricated the story. Although many people look down upon it, Next Magazine is the best investigative media that Taiwan has got. It probably has broken more scandals than all the rest of Taiwan’s journalists put together. Even when reporting salacious or sordid stories – which they do frequently, to shift the copies off the shelves – their reporters are usually very careful to verify sources and where possible to procure hard evidence (photographs, documents, etc.). They also, as a matter of policy, give people accused a chance to reply before publication (for example, in this case, the various agencies were informed of the article the day before and asked to comment, and a summary of those comments was printed at the back of article). Finally, the Next Group (including Next Magazine, Apple Daily, and now Next TV), run by Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, is by no means considered a “green” media outlet.

Putting all that together, it is highly unlikely they would destroy years of reputation-building by simply fabricating such an explosive story. Indeed, the costs could possibly be quite a bit higher than commercial, considering the legal and other forms of pressure the government could bring to bear. Instead, we can be confident that the Next reporters did talk to some sources in the relevant agencies, and that the documents they have displayed were given to them by one of these sources.

That brings us to the second alternative hypothesis, which is that some agents within one or more of the intelligence services themselves fabricated the documents and scripted the interviews which were presented to Next’s reporters. That is, the reporters were victims of an elaborate disinformation campaign; they received information and evidence that appeared to be authentic, but was not.

Connoisseurs of conspiracy theories will undoubtedly find this pleasing. But it quite comprehensively fails the Occam’s razor test. It would require a complex coordination among a number of agents from multiple agencies, all of whom would be at significant risk if any of them made any slipups. Furthermore, the motive for such action is totally unclear.

Moreover, the history of these agencies, especially the MJIB (known during the Martial Law era as the Garrison Command) makes such activities seem plausible. Wiretapping has always been widespread in Taiwan, and as recently as Chen Shui-bian’s term in office, the KMT accused him of carrying out quite similar election-related operations. Amid such accusations, a law to prohibit misuse of the intelligence agencies was enacted for the first time in 2005. Ma made a very specific point of including in his inauguration speech in 2008 that under his Administration, illegal wiretapping would not be tolerated, showing that he understood this to be a current issue.

Third, one of the main lines of defense from the MJIB so far has been that any information gathered was done for the protection of candidates. However, according to the relevant regulation, coordinating responsibility for candidates’ security lies with the NSB; the MJIB is only one of the agencies the NSB can authorize to assist it with this responsibility. The Next report specifically says that the MJIB carried out this operation and passed its information directly to the NSC, bypassing the NSB (one of the NSB sources was apparently angry about this). The NSB statement is notably circumspect, not mentioning the operation itself, only denying that any “high-ranking official” within the NSB had criticized the NSC, and then going on to offer praise to NSC Secretary General Hu Wei-chen for his uprightness. An additional piece of circumstantial evidence is that Weng Shih-tsan, who reportedly played the key role in transmitting the intelligence, was himself a long-serving agent of the MJIB before being transferred to the NSC in 2010.

What does it mean?

Thus, for purposes of political analysis, we can only conclude that the operation described by Next did in fact occur. However, what we do not know is to what extent President Ma was directly aware of these activities. He has denied ordering any such operation, or receiving any such intelligence information. It is well within the realm of possibility either that orders were given in a very vague way; or that they were given by someone else actually or purportedly acting on Ma’s behalf; or indeed that no orders were given, but the MJIB and/or the NSC acted on their own initiative as an effort to please Ma or some others of their superiors at one or another level.

What impact might this have on the campaign? The DPP is citing a number of instances where KMT figures took measures suggested that they had prior knowledge of Tsai’s activities (such as meeting or calling the person Tsai was to meet). It is very difficult to pin down any one of these incidents conclusively. More importantly, it is even less easy to ascertain what if anything Tsai might have gained from any particular meeting in terms of votes, much less to what extent any preemptive actions from the KMT side would have reduced such a gain.

As for political responsibility at the top, the DPP and Tsai’s campaign have strongly asserted that Ma must have known about the operation, but they have hedged their statement slightly (given the likely difficulty of proving his knowledge) by saying that if he didn’t, it proves his incompetence. Certainly if a genuinely rogue operation was carried out, it would constitute a quite serious lapse in the chain of command, and one would expect Ma to be genuinely angry about it. However, one can also imagine that he might prefer to wait until after the election to take any disciplinary action. The calls of some, such as the International Committee for Fair Elections in Taiwan, for an independent investigation are warranted, but it is hardly realistic that such an investigation could not only be properly organized but also make a conclusive finding within less than two weeks. At most, announcing an investigation before the election might earn Ma some credit for trying his best. At worst, it could be seized upon as some kind of admission of guilt. Surely Ma would play it safe and try to ride it out.

Here the lessons of Watergate are instructive, although perhaps not in the way the DPP and sympathizers have been asserting. Recall that the Watergate burglars were caught red-handed almost five months before the election, and investigators quickly found evidence of financial connections to the Nixon campaign. However, Nixon steadfastly denied any involvement, and he was re-elected as easily as he could have expected. Even as the investigation expanded, and key White House officials resigned and were indicted, Nixon continued to deny his involvement and to resist resignation for over two years after the burglary. If the “smoking gun” recording of him discussing the cover-up had not emerged, he might well have been able to serve out his term.

What will the impact of the revelation of the operation be on the election results? In principle, such an impact might be significant. Although the shock value would seem to favor the DPP, Ma and the KMT are doing their best to counterattack, accusing Tsai of making irresponsible accusations, etc. Voters who have already made up their minds are perhaps rather unlikely to change their votes either way as a result. However, in a very tight race, even rather small shifts of undecided voters could have a decisive impact.

However, regardless of who the actual or intended end users of such information were, the mere existence of such operations itself poses a threat to the integrity of the election process. As such, it behooves a serious examination from all who are concerned with or study Taiwan’s politics, as a concrete indicator of why the health of Taiwan’s democracy, vibrant as it is, cannot be taken for granted.

For interested readers, here is the NSB press release and a report about the NSC release. The MJIB press releases are here and here  and the relevant law is available here. All links in Chinese.

Bo Tedards is a Taipei-based political analyst and formerly Director of International Cooperation at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy.

1. Recently, the U.S. congress tried to pass acts like SOPA and Protect IP in order to make the law ​​more stringent on protection of intellectual property rights, but it has also led to concerns of controlling over Internet and suppression of freedom of speech. Taiwan has always closely followed in the footsteps and aligns closely with the United States on intellectual property issues, so how do you look at the endless violations of copyright online, and how would you protect the inviolability of freedom of expression online?

2. Regarding network environment and network infrastructure applications, Taiwan is rapidly lagging behind other Asian tigers. What do you think the crux of the problem is? How will you solve this problem?

3. Net Neutrality is the basis on which successful web site services such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Youtube, etc. have been able to develop. However, there is little discussion of this issue in Taiwan, while some Internet service providers have been trying to (or already have) set bandwidth limitations over specific sites and modes of transmission. What is your view on this?

4. The ECFA that Government signed with China is designed to reduce the bilateral trade restrictions, however, the biggest barrier between Taiwan and China is nothing but Internet and information. It is well known, China’s Golden Shield is the most complex system for filtering and control of Internet speech. The gradual implementation of the Web site registration and users’ real-name system, among other measures, are turning the Internet in China into an Intranet. Many websites from Taiwan are blocked in China, and many Chinese websites in are extremely slow in Taiwan, which is extremely inconvenient for netizens to communicate on both sides. If you are elected, will you prioritize this issue, and how will you negotiate with China?

5. One of the things that all Taiwanese can agree on is the poor quality of Taiwan’s media. Hence, many citizen reporters have come forward and begun to use their personal efforts to cover issues ignored by the mainstream media on the Internet and raise enthusiasm from more people for public affairs. How do you view the rise of citizen media? If you are elected, will the Government you will be leading recognize the right for citizens to report? And what measures will you take to encourage more “small media” to appear online?

6. “Open data” is one of the most prominent topics online. Its main purpose is to let more people access to government information through popular pipelines like the Internet, so that in a democratic society citizens can supervise the government and representatives not just during election time. At the same time, the large amount of data that government controls are valuable and can serve as the basis of the application for Internet entrepreneurs under the premise of not violating the principle of privacy and confidentiality. Do you know what the inadequacies of the Taiwan government on open data are? If you are elected, how would you gradually improve them?

7. Digital divide is a phenomenon of modern society, which has many definitions and evaluation criteria, I am not attempting to repeat this, but it is definitely the key to national progress. However, with more and more Internet services that require larger bandwidth and faster and uninterrupted Internet connections, the “haves” and “have-nots” gap is now even more difficult to preempt. Government has always approached this problem by supplementing the hardware when the real gap lies in the ability to use and to learn quickly. Do you recognize the new problems caused by digital divide, and how will you deal with them?

8. To directly listen to public opinion through the Internet, and to have dialogue with netizens is what many leaders of democratic countries regularly do. Even the leaders of China have attended such direct online events and to answer questions from Internet users. The views of netizens may not necessarily be representative, but they are certainly the fastest channel for government to understand the response to policy and current events: to rule by reading newspapers is surely outdated. Because of the election, citizens have the opportunity to throw questions to the Presidential candidates. After the election, this opportunity is gone. If you are elected, can you promise to hold virtual town hall meetings with netizens regularly every quarter or six months, and to answer questions by yourself directly?

9. Non-polluting Internet business is more suitable for the Taiwan government to invest in than energy-intensive and polluting petrochemical or electronics industries. Yet, for decades the government has not changed its direction, still betting on heavy industry or the so-called high-tech industry, resulting in uneven distribution of resources that are seriously squeezed. While environmental pollution in Taiwan has reached the end of the bearing capacity at the moment, do you consider to direct resources to the Internet industry and to adjust the industrial structure?

10. The Internet is about to or has been pervasive, affecting social, national, and even international levels. Would you consider establishing a high-order “Chief Internet Officer” in the governmental system, or recruit an “Internet consultant” in particular on the list of national policy consultants? If so, what kind of authority and responsibility will you give him? If not, why is that?

Portnoy Zheng (鄭國威) is author and editor at Global Voices Online and owner of the pan-science blog. 

Facts:

Every direct observer of the vibrant campaigning Taiwan who does not just rely on TV News reports and texts in English or Chinese is struck by the noice, soundtracks, polyphony and multilinguism of the campaign. Indeed, beyond the historical political liberalization process, the Taiwanese electoral culture is also the product of the different linguistic fields for which different forms of linguistic capital and language proficiencies are expressly required for candidacies to ROC top positions.

Social representations of language use in the Taiwan society, and basic sociolinguistic-like analysis might stress the sole official language – Mandarin Chinese referenced as “National Language” –  and a classical diglossia between this “higher” language versus “lower” ones including other mutually unintelligible Sinitic languages or “dialects” and marginally Aborigine Autronesian languages. Ethnic and political boundaries would complete this demolinguistic panorama with Taiwanese and Hakka languages for DPP Southern middle class versus KMT urban Northern high-educated upper-class in Mandarin.

The legitimate agents of such statements are the reporters and academic observers who are themselves conditioned by linguistic habitus, did not study this topic or rely on very smooth corpora. However, an ethnographic approach of language strategies of electoral candidates might fine-tune this description by pointing the struggle between two social fields with different linguistic economies resulting of the social integration process of the ROC to the Taiwan society at the turn of 21st century.

The fact is that grassroots elections preceded the arrival of the ROC in Taiwan, and local elections were held as soon as ROC institutions settled in the island. By proscribing the Japanese colonial language, Taiwanese languages became languages for campaigning. The other fact is that the Media were strongly held by the State and the Party with an exclusive promotion of Mandarin while the top positions were reserved to Nationalist Party leaders.

From the late 80s, these two fields went in contact with memorable clashes such as CHU Kao-cheng using Taiwanese for the first time at a national institution. With the direct election process for top positions of the ROC, KMT Mainlander political staff who was not proficient in Taiwanese languages had to start to learn them as soon as the early 90s with James SOONG and the younger generation whose the best representative is MA Ying-jeou.

Notes from the 2012 field:

This on-going process may seem to come to a critical point for this 2012 presidential bid. Indeed, since 1996, at least one candidate was able to make the show in Taiwanese languages – i. e. LEE Teng-hui, CHEN Shui-bian or Frank HSIEH – but among the candidates of the on-going race, none of them is at ease with the linguistic habitus of electoral meetings. Ethnicity is not relevant as an explanation because if SOONG and MA might be categorized as Mainlanders, the loudly advertised Hakka identity of TSAI Ying-wen does not induce automatic Hakka performance in front of an assembly of Hakka supporters.

The point is not the strategy which does not look like to have changed, but the problem of proficiency of the candidates in Taiwanese languages. All the candidates are multilingual but as learners of “foreign” languages for legitimate languages such as English at school and then Taiwanese languages with special coaches for special purpose : electoral campaigning. As learners of any foreign languages, they need to practice or might regress : preliminary observations point that SOONG, MA and even TSAI are not proficient as they were able to be ten years, four years ago or even just last year!

Finally, multilinguism remains beyond the symbolic initial speech for TV debates during which every candidate greet the audience in three or four different Sinitic languages;  or the candidates for vice-presidency who are outstanding performers in Taiwanese such as WU Dun-yi and SU Chia-chuan. Plurilinguism is also changing from Taiwanese languages to English in which both heavy weights candidates feel more comfortable to speak, and these striking speeches performed in English at the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei last November 22^th by TSAI and MA.

The final rush will show if it is a temporary switch to be forgotten during the three ultimate weeks whether it is the beginning of the irrevocable shift of the linguistic practices in public life in Taiwan.

Yoann GOUDIN is a Ph. D Candidate in Didactics at INALCO (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales) in Paris. He is currently a visiting scholar at the Institute of Linguistics at Academia Sinica, and recipient of the TFP (Taiwan Fellowship Program) awarded by the Center for Chinese Studies, ROC.

 

In a recent post on this blog, Bonnie Glaser of CSIS asserted that the US announcement of Taiwan’s candidacy for the Visa Waiver Program and the recent spate of high-level US visits to the island were signs of a “clear preference” of the Obama administration for President Ma Ying-jeou over his challenger, Dr. Tsai Ing-wen of the DPP.

I cannot agree.  US officials have clearly stated that the VWP announcement had its own timeline, and was simply the result of Taiwan fulfilling a set of criteria set by the United States.  Indeed the negotiations on Taiwan’s participation in the Visa Waiver Program were initiated by the Chen Shui-bian administration and took several years in coming. Of course it is likely that the Ma administration has worked harder to fulfill those criteria with the upcoming elections in mind, but that is another story.

On the high-level visits: another reason for the recent spate might be that the Obama administration is listening more closely to Congress, which has been increasingly vocal in arguing for more high-level visits to the democratic island. If the US government would let the Taiwan elections play a role in decisions to send high level visitors to the island, it would actually be in clear contravention of its own stated policy of strict neutrality in the Taiwan elections. We can trust the US to stick to its words, can’t we?

But Glaser’s article is also problematic for other reasons. It portrays the US as having “lingering worries” and being concerned about “Tsai’s unwillingness to be forthcoming about concrete policies towards the Mainland that she would pursue if elected.”

There may be some officials in some corners of the US government who still cling to such a position, but there many others in the Obama administration and in Congress who are more concerned about President Ma drawing too closely towards China at the expense of relations with the United States.  They are pleased with Tsai’s vision of rebalancing Taiwan’s relations and moving it closer to the US and its allies in the region.

Dr. Tsai has shown herself to be a creative and pragmatic thinker, but the response — from Ma and from Beijing – has been to revert to old and empty “One China” mantras.

The “lingering worries” officials are also barking up the wrong tree: if they really want stability in cross-Strait relations they need to lean much more heavily on Beijing. The root cause of the instability is that China does not wish to have a democracy on its doorstep, and that it sees Taiwan as a springboard for its power expansion into the Pacific. Taiwan is not threatening China in any way, except by being a vibrant democracy.

Perhaps these US officials should wonder aloud whether the Chinese leaders are both willing and able to continue the stability in cross-Strait relations the region has enjoyed in recent years. They might add that it is far from clear that the leaders in Beijing and their advisers fully appreciate the depth of the mistrust of their motives and PRC aspiration in countries surrounding China, and particularly in Taiwan.

The other problematic aspect in Glaser’s analysis is that she portrays a win by Tsai Ing-wen as adding a problematic issue to a long list of contentious issues, ranging from North Korea to the South China Sea.  It is a fiction to believe that by accommodating China on the Taiwan issue, one could get it to be more cooperative on other issues. China will play hardball on those other issues no matter what happens in Taiwan. The only way to get it to play by international rules is for the US to play hardball in return.

Winston Churchill once remarked that “One can always rely on the Americans to do the right thing …. after they have exhausted all other options.”   One would hope that the United States has learned its lessons from its earlier mistakes and that it will now be fully supportive of Taiwan and its democracy. The United States needs to show it wants to be on the right side of history.

Gerrit van der Wees is Senior Policy Advisor to the Formosan Association for Public Affairs and editor of Taiwan Communique, both based in Washington DC.

Ma’s history of underachieving is good reason for him not to be re-elected for another four years, so says Jerome F Keating. He also discusses how leaks from the US and its recent emphasis on the visa waiver programme demonstrate it is meddling in the election. Michael Turton weighs in on the US interfering in the election. Taipei Times editorial discusses how the timing of the US visa waiver announcement is very bad, as is the timing of unprecedented visits from US officials. In similar non-interference vein, a Chinese official urged the port city of Xiamen to make more effort to strengthen ties with Taiwan ahead of the election.

Having made their plays for independent voters, the candidates now turn their attentions to the base (although if you need to shore up the base at this stage, its probably a bad sign). According to Michael Turton’s discussion of the discrepancies in the latest polls, targeting the base might be a really good or a really bad idea, but frankly, no one knows. For the record though, the latest China Times poll puts less than 5% between Ma and Tsai, while the TVBS poll has 6% between them. Apple daily puts 8% between them. In each case, Ma has a handy lead. The DPP plays down the latest Apple Daily poll.

This Taiwan Thinktank poll has Tsai trailing by 0.4 percentage points, with James Soong being the deciding factor in the overall outcome – “I believe that if we voted with the current figures, Tsai would win but not by a large margin. The first factor is the shift in James Soong’s votes. The other factor is votes from those who live overseas. But the bigger factor is still Soong.” Soong is down with that, averring that if he wins 5% of the vote then the KMT will lose. A more believable poll shows that young people are worried about their futures, particularly in regard to future job opportunities. Having courted them by dressing up their platforms up with social media flim-flam, will the parties actually come through for this cohort?

United Daily News scrutinizes the four qualities that Tsai has emphasised about herself: “ability to maintain a manner neither self-effacing nor overbearing in facing China; ability to engage in humble soul-searching in facing the people; ability to grasp the international situation facing the world; and ability to keep up with the times. The bit-chomping author blows up each claim as soon as he (I bet it’s a man) has listed them.

Ma cites how improved relations with China has provided Taiwan with a new line of defence.  Ma also responds to Tsai’s allegations that he has sacrificed Taiwans’ sovereignty. From the same piece, Ma harrumphs, “Maybe the milk fish farmers in Tainan, southern Taiwan, will still vote for the DPP as they usually do, but they have acknowledged that being able to sell fish to China is a good thing.”

All three candidates are campaigning hard in their latest stops on the trail (Tsai to deliver an important cross-Strait relations talk in Kinmen). Tsai and Ma continue to exchange words following their presentations last Friday over the issues of national identity and democracy.

Peng Ming-min has a long interview piece in the Taipei Times relating to his role as Chairman of the International Committee for Fair Elections. Peng is a smart guy with pro-democracy bona fides, but he’s also one of the fathers of the Taiwan independence movement. Saying that ‘the committee is neutral and non-partisan’ doesn’t change the fact that their judgements will instantly be written off as partisan prejudice.

Tsai discusses how democracy has become more constrained under the Ma administration. I just finished reading this article that says the same thing about Chen’s administration. So do we now consider LTH as the paragon of democratic values?

President Ma had a simply wonderful Christmastime, visiting several locations on Christmas eve. Dressed for the occasion in a spiffy white jumper and down-to-earth-just-like-you-and-me blue jeans, Ma did carol singing, gift giving, board playing and attended Midnight Mass.

Finally, the Taipei Times has an article based on the post that Bonnie Glaser made here just before Christmas. Alas, your favourite Taiwan 2012 election blog did not merit a mention, forever doomed to anonymity by the callous indifference of the descriptor “an online article”.

Mail me at jonathan.sullivan@nottingham.ac.uk, follow me on Twitter @jonlsullivan, or access my papers at http://jonlsullivan.com

East Asia Forum discusses US and Chinese interests in the election. The Washington Times has a similar article. The KMT gives five reasons to be suspicious of the TaiMed case and Tsai’s involvement. The KMT United Daily News explains why the TaiMed and Fubon scandals are completely different kettles of fish.  The latest China Times poll puts Ma ahead by 5.2%. Do they think increasing the number of decimal places will make it more believable?

Ma and Tsai exchanged words over the interpretation and validity of the 1992 consensus. Former president LTH considers Ma’s insistence on the 1992 consensus is not based on fact and also urged voters to support the DPP – ““Ma’s continuous remarks that the ‘1992 consensus’ exists is unacceptable as it is an action that distorts history and is effectively lying to Taiwanese.” Ma denies selling out Taiwan to China over agreements made between Taiwan and China during the past few years. Tsai warns of unification with China if Ma is elected for a second term – “If President Ma is re-elected, this generation might face the issue of ultimate unification.” Jerome F Keating discusses the outcomes of the legislative election

Finally, this being the season for being thankful, I would like to extend my gratitude to the contributors who have helped make this blog such a success thus far: Sigrid Winkler, Dafydd Fell, Michael Turton, Jens Damm, Mikael Mattlin, Sheng-chih Wang, Julie Chen, Linda Arrigo, Gunter Schubert, Harry Wu, Chris Wang, Paul Katz, Muyi Chiu, Dalton Lin, Tim Rich, Malte Kaeding, Sasa Istenic, Chun-Yi Lee, Julia Famularo, Wang Hong-zen, Jeremy Taylor, Bonnie Glaser, John F. Copper, Scott Simon, Cal Clark, Lin Pei-Yin, Ko-hua Yap, Jerome Soldani, Tony Liu, Ben Goren, Michal Thim. My thanks to everyone who has helped spread the word, and for retweets to @TimMaddog, @Taiwanderful, @davidonformosa, @chungiwang, @Koxinga8, @KeepTWfree, @TaiwanCorner, @taiwanreporter, @filination, @Brownlaoshi, @blickpunktaiwan, @Portnoy and so on.

The campaigns won’t stop for Christmas, but the blog will be taking a few days off. If anything interesting happens, be sure to let me know by mail at jonathan.sullivan@nottingham.ac.uk or Twitter @jonlsullivan. Normal service will resume on Dec 28, and we have a great line up of people to guide you through to Election Day. Happy Holidays everybody.

 

Today, the U.S. finally announced that Taiwan has been officially listed as a candidate for the U.S. Visa Waiver Program (VWP).  The announcement was made just three weeks before Taiwan’s presidential elections.  It came on the heels of a visit to Taiwan in early December by US Deputy Secretary of Energy Dan Poneman, the highest ranking US official to visit the island in eleven years.  In September, U.S. Assistant Commerce Secretary Suresh Kumar traveled to Taiwan.

This spate of visits and policy decisions comes after an extended lull in the US-Taiwan relationship, with only a trickle of official exchanges and a lot of rancor over Taiwan’s re-imposition of a ban on imports of U.S. beef in January 2010.  The recent steps are welcome; they further consolidate an already strong US-Taiwan relationship.   Taiwan is America’s ninth largest trading partner and a growing import market for US exports.  Last year US exports to Taiwan surged 41 percent to $26 billion.  Nevertheless, the fact that these steps were taken so close to Taiwan’s elections calls into question the Obama administration’s claim to being neutral about the election’s outcome.  Although US officials studiously avoid saying so directly, there is a clear preference for Ma Ying-jeou to win a second term in office.

US worries about a DPP victory derive in part from the US experience with Chen Shui-bian, who pursued pro-independence measures that Beijing judged as provocative, resulting in heightened tensions in both cross-Strait and US-China relations.  Even though the DPP and its presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen have learned lessons from that period, the US still has lingering worries.  Tsai’s unwillingness to be forthcoming about concrete policies toward the Mainland that she would pursue if elected has exacerbated Washington’s concerns.

Obama administration officials’ preference for a Ma victory is also a consequence of their hope to avoid introducing additional contentious issues to the increasingly complicated US-China agenda.  Bilateral tensions have run high in recent years over a long list of issues, including North Korea, South China Sea, China’s military modernization, and China’s currency valuation and trade practices.  US arms sales to Taiwan in January 2010 and September 2011 infuriated the Chinese and soured US-China relations as well, but the impact was relatively confined and short lived compared to the likely Chinese reaction to the return of the DPP to power.  Past experience demonstrates that when Chinese fears of Taiwan independence spike, other issues are crowded out in US-Chinese consultations, making compromises and solving problems even more difficult than usual.

If Tsai wins, the US will do its utmost to encourage the DPP to be pragmatic in its approach to Beijing, while at the same time pressing China to be flexible as well.  Finding a mutually acceptable formula that would enable the semi-official SEF-ARATS channel to remain open will be an urgent priority.  Active diplomacy would likely be undertaken by the US to urge both sides of the Taiwan Strait to find a creative way forward that enables the numerous cross-Strait communication channels that have been established in recent years to continue to function.

Regardless of whether Beijing and Taipei are able to work out a modus vivendi, in the absence of policy steps by Taiwan that damage American interest in the maintenance of cross-Strait peace and stability, US-Taiwan relations are likely to remain positive and strong.  Washington may see advantages in a Ma Ying-jeou victory, but if Tsai is elected, the U.S. will look forward, and seek to work with her to develop a positive relationship and sustain robust ties.  If Chinese leaders assume that the US will reflexively revert to the old playbook that was employed during the Bush administration to cope with Chen Shui-bian to manage a new situation, they would be mistaken.

Bonnie S. Glaser is a Senior Fellow in the Freeman Chair in China Studies at CSIS

Having been in Taipei also during the 2008 presidential elections, I have to admit that I have been disappointed by how little the elections have been present in daily life in 2011. In 2008, the city was plastered with faces and banners demanding Taiwan’s right to join the United Nations and the World Health Organization. Even as a bystander I could feel the heat building up to a boiling point. The issue of Taiwan’s international status was so hot then, that I decided on the election day to rather watch the outcome of the polls from Hong Kong, and more importantly to verify that Taiwan had not yet come under Chinese missile attack before I boarded my plane back to Taipei. For the 2012 elections, it appears safe for me to stay in Taipei.

This year, the issues fought about the hardest in the campaign seem mainly to involve topics such as the legality of piggy banks for campaign donations and the correct display of fruit prices.

Granted, also now in 2011, political talkshows on TV are going on for hours, in the newspapers wars are fought, and slowly but steadily Ma and Tsai’s faces start to show up on Taipei’s buildings, buses and billboards (I personally have not come across Soong’s face yet). Occasionally also a taxi driver would get into a political discussion with you, but so far I have not experienced a staunch supporter of either candidate, most could find positive and negative points in Ma and Tsai (again Soong has not received much consideration), even when they claimed to have a clear political inclination to one camp.

The assessment of the candidates that I could gather from my, admittedly, rather unrepresentive sample of people that I talked to shows mainly that the voters find it hard to decide for one or the other candidate.

As stated above, I have yet failed to meet anybody who gave credit to James Soong, apart from one friend who thinks that he is a warmer person and more in touch with his emotions than Ma Ying-jeou. According to her, if a child, crying and looking for its mother came running up to Ma, he would back away instead of giving the child a hug – especially if the child had a dripping ice cream cone in its hand. But even my friend has not decided yet who to give her vote to.

While Ma has been described to me as pretty much anything ranging from an evil villain to the saviour of Taiwan, nobody at all seems to genuinely like him as a person. If charisma was to play a vital role in this election, he can already start packing his campaign utensils. However, he appears to score higher when it comes to policies, although green supporters naturally despise him for his China connections.

For Tsai, the most commonly detected flaw is her failure to define her policies. Nobody can pinpoint what she is trying to do with regards to China, but also in light of issues that trouble Taiwan domestically, such as unemployment or the economy, she does not manage to paint a clear picture. However, I have never heard even one derogative word on the ground about her being a woman aspiring to run a government, despite Taiwan still being a strongly male-dominated society. Chapeau for that, even in Europe we can learn from this example.

Sigrid Winkler recently received her PhD from Free University Brussels, and is currently conducting post-doctoral research in Taiwan. 

An alleged leaked document from DPP HQ lists businessmen returning from the mainland, undecided voters, and defectors from the Soong camp as areas of vulnerability. Did we really need a leaked document to tell us that? The fundamental strategy in the run up to the election is to play it safe– “The last thing you want is to win 1 per cent of support and lose 3 or 5 per cent for a stupid mistake, such as a careless comment.” But they do plan to stage 40 huge rallies before the elections. Meanwhile, Ma’s campaign promises to focus on addressing tough policy issues: “Explaining government policies and goals will continue to be the core of our campaign. People want to hear more details about candidates’ platforms and want to know which candidate would solve problems for them”. The KMT’s alleged smear campaign has backfired according to this article, and their excessive negative campaigning demonstrates a lack of positive achievements. Perhaps that’s why they have shifted focus to Ma’s wife.

Michael Turton discusses how Ma is trying to elevate the stock market prior to the election. Ma also pledges more support for farmers and agricultural exporters. Is this what they mean by ‘vote buying’? Ma spent the night at a fruit growers house  – “I’ve become friends with most of the families I have stayed with during the long-stay trips and home stay is a great way to better understand local issues,” Ma said. However there’s at least one sector not feeling the KMT love, as aboriginal groups demand an audience with Ma having been denied access to recent debates. One group spreading the love KMT message is the Straits Exchange Foundation, who’s Chairman urged Taiwanese businessmen working in China to “make the right choice” and support the KMT. It doesn’t say whether he was wielding a baseball bat and electrodes at the time. Ma touts his success in getting agricultural products into the Chinese market, but the Taipei Times says the KMT’s boasting about its economic achievements is flawed, given the impact of greater economic integration with China. They also dismiss Ma’s claims to being “thrifty” given his enormous personal wealth and willingness to part with tax payers’ money. The Tsai campaign is focusing on small and medium sized enterprises as key to increasing competitiveness, and pledges to increase ICT investment so that Taiwan is on a par with Korea.

This China Times editorial discusses how DPP spin doctors are seeking to protect Tsai by covering up the truths of her involvement in TaiMed. The alterations of the TaiMed documents led the DPP to accuse the KMT of falsifying evidence. The prosecutor argues there is no bias in his investigations into the recent scandals. This piece discusses the irony of Ma and the KMT in attacking Tsai given Ma’s own previous involvements in alleged scandals. Speaking of which, the DPP continues to pressure Ma over alleged connections to the Fubon banking group. But Fubon Group says Ma rejected their financial donations and Ma denies any conflict of interest. Feeling left out (it must be a weird feeling for Soong not to be under attack) the PFP gets involved  by accusing Ma of taking unlawful donations in his 2008 election bid. Both Tsai and Ma say they have sufficiently explained away their recent scandals. But here they are accusing each other of being unethical and manipulative. The Academia Sinica President says the Yu Chang controversy  saga needs to end already. Are the recent scandals evidence of how the blue/green battle has become a divide between classes? (Me either, but read it anyway).  The TaiMed scandal continues to backfire against the KMT says Michael Turton. Scandals are dominating the news and directing attention away from more important policy issues—has it ever been any different?

Legislative candidates have picked their running numbers while some thought it was cosplay day. Jerome F Keating predicts a big shake up in the legislative Yuan as a result of the election. Not so fast, says the KMT, who reckon they’ll get 60 legislative seats and thus still have a decent majority. Pundits are not impressed by the performance of the legislative Yuan and argue it can only be reformed if the KMT loses its majority. Former President Chen Shui-bian doesn’t want a pardon from the DPP if they are elected; he just wants all his money back (sorry, he wants a retrial). Like every financially pressed university chancellor in the world, Ma promises to increase the number of Chinese students attending Taiwanese universities. With impeccable (and in no way contrived) timing, KMT Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin, announced his highest approval rating to date in five years on the job. The DPP attacked Ma over his comments that he was surprised to see a decline in the rate of suicides; the ever self-deprecating President expected it to be much higher. In related news, Ma says that Kim Jong Il’s death is of no significance to Taiwan.

New Straits Times discusses how PRC citizens are proud of Taiwan’s elections. At least one professor is optimistic that the Taiwan election may serve as a beacon of democracy for democratization in China ::awkward silence, people shuffling towards the door:: Speaking of profs, the folks at James Town Foundation finds there is little difference between the two parties cross strait policies and that neither independence nor unification are likely in the near-term. And if you didn’t see this already, the Wilson Centre panel from a couple weeks back is worth catching (with Karl Ho, Dafydd Fell, Cal Clark and John Hsieh).

And finally, Soong’s running mate is going to visit Bhutan in order to understand how their happiness index is so high despite limited resources. What would this campaign be without the eccentric electromagnetic wave attracting man?

Mail me at jonathan.sullivan@nottingham.ac.uk, follow me on Twitter @jonlsullivan, or access my papers at http://jonlsullivan.com

Many people commenting on Taiwan 2012 have cited the Chengchi/XFuture exchange market’s measures of candidate support levels. Given widespread skepticism about substantial variation and idiosyncrasies in Taiwanese media polls, it is not surprising that people have been casting around for more reliable numbers.

A further reason for the popularity of the election market in this campaign is that it has consistently reported optimistic numbers for Tsai Ing-wen; the favoured candidate for many in the English language blogosphere. Whereas blue friendly media polls have given Ma a lead of between 4 and 10 points consistently throughout the campaign, the election market has had Tsai ahead (on occasion by a large margin). The XFuture website features markets for individual components of the candidates’ platforms, support levels among different segments of the electorate, and for individual legislative districts. As a companion to the campaigns for interested observers it is terrific.

But are the numbers meaningful? Who should we believe when there is a near-20 point difference between the media polls (Ma ahead handily) and the prediction market (Tsai well ahead)? With exquisite timing several Taiwanese political scientists have just published a paper in the Journal of Prediction Markets (yes, there is a journal for everything). The paper is available here ($). I take the liberty of pasting the abstract below:

“This paper devises a methodology to compare the accuracy of prediction markets and polls. The data of the Exchange of Future Events (xFuture) for Taiwan’s 2006 mayoral elections and 2008 presidential election show that the prediction markets outperform the opinion polls in various indices of accuracy. In terms of the last forecast before the election date, the accuracy of the prediction markets is 3 to 10 percent higher than that of the opinion polls. When comparing the accuracy of historical forecasts, the prediction markets outperform the polls in 93 to 100 percent of the cases. Moreover, the average accuracy of the prediction markets is 9 to 10 percent higher than that of the polls, with a standard deviation more than 2 percent less than that of the polls. To examine the robustness of these comparisons, this paper conducts two tests including daily forecast and normalized accuracy, and finds that the prediction markets successfully pass the tests with a significantly better accuracy than the polls.”

Click here for the latest market conditions for the presidential candidates.

Mail me at jonathan.sullivan@nottingham.ac.uk, follow me on Twitter @jonlsullivan, or access my papers at http://jonlsullivan.com

Taipei and Kaohsiung are not only first and second biggest cities in Taiwan respectively divided by Tropic of Cancer that cuts Taiwan in half and making both places feel like they are located on two distant continents. These two cities also represent the geographic division of  the Taiwanese political landscape. North is blue, South is green, people say in Taiwan when they talk about the political basics. Although there is a great deal of oversimplification in that, it is to a considerable extent true that Taipei stands firmly as KMT stronghold while Kaohsiung is a safe haven for DPP. To a considerable extent, not absolutely though. In 2008, the KMT was extraordinarily successful and secured 6 mandates in Legislative Yuan (LY) elections out of 9 in the area that now constitutes Greater Kaohsiung. In 2008 presidential elections Kaohsiung County still supported DPP candidate Frank Hsieh but Kaohsiung City voted for Ma Ying-jeou.

The setting for 2012 is clear: is DPP about to reclaim Kaohsiung and how does the KMT plan to defend its gains deep inside “hostile” territory? This was my first question for representatives of both major competitors. The second addressed the influence of parallel presidential and legislative elections on campaign strategy. The third was about specific campaign issues related to Kaohsiung and the fourth question challenged both representatives to answer why should voters cast a ballot for their party.

The following text is a brief summary of both interviews. It needs to be noted positively that unexpected visit of a foreigner curious about election campaign was in both cases met with somebody willing to take questions. I can imagine completely different situation in the Czech Republic where I come from. Yet, it needs to be also said that if openness was to be measured, then the DPP scored considerably higher, with district office campaign director Gary Lin willing to take additional questions and going a little more beyond more or less official campaign proclamations.

The KMT legislative candidate in Kaohsiung 7^th district is incumbent legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅), known for his close relations with the media and frequent use of legal charges against political opponents. I met and interviewed his office assistant Mr. Ching-Wei Huang and a campaign volunteer who did not reveal his identity. Chiu’s DPP challenger is Chao Tien-lin (趙天麟), former magistrate councilor with considerably lower profile (for good or bad) compared to Chiu Yi. As noted above, Mr. Gary Lin who is head of the Chao’s election office answered the questions.

How were the expectations of the candidates? I addressed this first to the KMT HQ. Mr. Huang answered that loss of any seat out of 9 available would be regarded as defeat. This appears over ambitious considering that KMT can hardly hope to repeat its gains from 2008 and that securing all seats is unlikely even for the DPP. The volunteer who assisted the interview gave me more realistic estimate of 5 mandates. How were the concurrent elections influencing campaigning for the KMT? According to Mr. Huang, the two elections are tied together in any case and rather than addressing differences in campaign strategy, he took care to highlight achievements of KMT administrations which should secure victory for KMT in both elections. This actually answered third question too. KMT achievements on a local level were reiterated and confidence expressed that the party will secure victory based on these achievements. The overall impression and conclusion is that main KMT campaigning tool in this particular district is Chiu Yi’s popularity and the playing card of achievements is employed more strongly on the central level. Mr Huang also stressed that the party put an emphasis on convincing abstainers to come to vote this time. It remains to be seen if this will be good enough to secure at least 5 seats in Greater Kaohsiung.

Interviews in the DPP office brought out some interesting points. Perhaps the most interesting one came up with the questions on the combination of presidential and legislative elections and their influence on campaign strategy. Mr. Lin pointed out that one of the visible effects are campaign posters/billboards where LY candidates are together with Tsai Ing-wen. Lin referred to her rising popularity which may help to boost popularity for less known DPP candidates for the LY. This may have implication for KMT, yet, in opposite manner. KMT candidates may prefer not to link their campaign with Ma Ying-jeou’s reelection bid due to his low approval ratings. KMT candidates may simply feel that linking their candidacy to presidential election is striping them off advantages of a locally built support base. Indeed, it has strong logic in South and during my visit of Kaohsiung I saw only a small number of posters where local candidates were pictured together with Ma. Observations from Taipei seem to be similar so far. One can see considerably more posters where Tsai is together with a local LY candidate.

When talking about how the DPP is going to get their voters back, apart from naming alleged KMT mismanagement (those in social policy area are the most important), Gary Lin mentioned that DPP will appeal to voters to return from Taipei where many people from Kaohsiung work to come to their hometowns in Kaohsiung area and elsewhere. On a local level, one of the central issues of Chao’s campaign (and DPP’s in general) is to make Kaohsiung a greener (environmentally speaking) city which may have an appeal in a city known for its industrial pollution. What are the DPP’s expectations? According to Lin, the party is quite confident in securing 7 seats, while the remaining 2 are considered undecided (including the 7th district). At this point, NCCU’s Exchange of Future Events for Kaohsiung shows that the DPP is closer to reaching its goal when predicting that 6 seats will go to DPP and remaining 3 are still undecided. It also gives nearly 67% to Tsai Ing-wen and only 37% to Ma Ying-jeou. Thus, it seems that Kaohsiung after 4 year-long intermezzo is set to become green again.

Michal Thim is currently enrolled in the International Master‘s Program in Asia-Pacific Studies at National Chengchi University in Taipei and research fellow at the Prague-based foreign policy think tank, Association for International Affairs. This report is based on interviews conducted by Michal at the election headquarters of the DPP and KMT in Kaohsiung’s 7th election district for Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan on December 5, 2011. The views expressed in this article by party officials are their personal opinions which do not necessarily correspond with the official position of the respective political party. Michal  wishes to thank Mr. Richard Lin for his invaluable assistance. A large range of associated images are available here.

Immigration policy never seems to be a hot debated issue in Taiwan’s presidential elections. However, population movement between Taiwan and China is considered a serious national security issue. Until now none of the three presidential candidates have proposed a clear picture of migration policy toward PRC Chinese. Here I will talk about Taiwan’s migration policy, and then focus on the possible migration policy change towards PRC Chinese and overseas ethnic Chinese, who are mostly living in Southeast Asia.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF IMMIGRATION CONTROL

Currently there is a very complicated immigration system in Taiwan due to its unique political history with China. Residents living outside Taiwan are categorized into 6 groups, which can be basically aggregated into two: foreigners and ethnic Chinese. Such a complex immigration system has developed in different periods in the past 60 years because of the change of political milieu and social change that the Taiwanese government faced. To lure overseas Chinese with ROC passports to come to Taiwan to invest, to study or to visit relatives, so that ROC Taiwan could compete in terms of political legitimacy with the PRC, overseas Chinese are granted a special certificate (Huaqiao shenfen zhengmingshu, Overseas Chinese Certificate), which is only issued to those overseas Chinese who can prove that they or their parents had ever held ROC passports. Overseas Chinese can use this certificate to apply for settlement inTaiwan. About three-quarters of the overseas Chinese immigrants are from Asia.

But since the ‘ROC’ was expelled from the United Nations in 1971, and after the US recognized the PRC in 1979, Taiwanbecame a political pariah in the international community. Many Taiwanese moved out this country to seek political security overseas in the 1970s and 1980s. There is no data available for emigration at that time, but Figure 1 below demonstrates that whenever there was a blow to Taiwan’s political stability, the number of emigrants increased, e.g., the Taiwan Strait crisis in 1996 when China launched long-range missiles to intimidate former President Lee Teng-hui. In addition, since the mid-1980s Taiwanese investment in Southeast Asia and China increased enormously, and many people are assigned to work overseas. It is even claimed that there are more than half million Taiwanese living in Shanghai. This creates a new category for immigration control. If these Taiwanese have left Taiwan, and have applied for naturalization in other countries, they will be regarded as ‘overseas Chinese’, but different from the traditional meaning of ‘overseas Chinese’ who mostly come from Mainland China. Basically these overseas Taiwanese have no problem to apply for new passports to return to Taiwan if they can show their old Taiwanese ID card, passport or household registration.

Figure 1 Migration Registration of Resident Population inTaiwan

Regarding the category for PRC Chinese, mutual exchanges between Taiwan and the PRC were banned before 1985, and there were no mutual visits between the people on the two sides. After 1986, when the Taiwan government relaxed its control of the veterans, who fled to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-shek army, to visit their home towns, exchanges between the two sides increased significantly, including economic investments and personal visits. Marriages between the two sides have taken place since then, and it created a big problem for Taiwan government to accept those ‘enemy people’ to have family unions in Taiwan. It had to abolish the archaic regulations, and in 1997 the law ‘Act Governing Relations between Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area’ (Liangan renmin guanxi tiaoli) was passed to accommodate the new migration situation. This law also applied to people in Hong Kong and Macao. However, the control over PRC Chinese is harsher than for foreigners due to the ideology of national security. So currently there are two laws to regulate marriage immigrants, one is the law for PRC Chinese, while another is for all other foreigners.

CHARACTERISTICS OF TAIWAN’S IMMIGRATION POLICY

The most important ideology that sustains immigration policy in Taiwan is the patriarchal jus sanguinis principle, which dominates postwar Taiwanese immigration policy. As discussed previously, political rivalry between the PRC and ROC created a specific immigrant category for overseas Chinese. It is based on a jus sanguinis principle, and this principle has not changed too much until now. It was patriarchal because before this revision of the Nationality Law in 1999, only descendants of male ROC/Taiwan passport holders could apply for naturalization. Any marriage immigrant before naturalization without attachment to a Taiwanese national, either spouse or child, has to leave when the temporary residency permit expires. This practice supports the patriarchy family ideology in Taiwan, since most permanent settlers are women from China and Southeast Asia.

Another key concept of Taiwan’s migration and citizenship policy is ‘population quality’ (renkou suzhi) and the categorization of individuals and migrants as being of lower or higher quality. The mission of the Taiwanese government is to ensure the reproduction of a good quality population, while preventing any contamination of  low quality population coming into the society. A ‘Population Policy Committee’ was set up in the 1960s, which still remains an important body in the Ministry of Interior, to direct the policy to reproduce a ‘good quality’ population. Taiwan’s government explicitly states that it will attract ‘high quality population’ to work and to settle down as it states in the ‘Guidelines for 2009 Policy Implementation’ that ‘the government will improve the effectiveness of border control, prevent human trafficking, formulate a consistent policy to prosecute, protect and prevent human trafficking, and to actively attract overseas high quality persons’.

The third characteristic of Taiwan’s migration policy is the emphasis on ‘national security’. Since the defeat of KMT in 1949, Taiwan was built as the bastion to fight against Communist China. Population movements were regarded as threatening for national security, so they needed to control them. Such a principle is especially applied to PRC immigrants, who could be denied entry into Taiwan at Taiwan’s airport if they are considered potential threats to the national security. Chinese immigrants are not allowed to work before they get the permanent residency status, which takes about six years to acquire. Even when they are naturalized, they are suspected to be communist Chinese spies, and are not allowed to be civil servants within the first ten years of naturalization.

PROPSECTS

The principles of Taiwan’s immigration policy have not changed very much in the past few decades, and it still dominates the ways of thinking about migration in Taiwan. The major immigration policy changes made in the past are due to international political changes, which are strongly related to the China factor, and domestic social pressures. In the near future, we can foresee some changes that might be made.

First of all, the China factor will strongly influence Taiwan’s immigration policy. Current migration policy toward Chinese spouses and foreign spouses is discriminatory, and a strong pressure comes from China and domestic NGOs to have equal treatment between these two groups. Especially the new government in 2008 led by President Ma Ying-jeou is heavily tilting to China, and it has relaxed the ban of Chinese students to study in Taiwan after 2012, who will be very likely to settle down in Taiwan after the graduation and become permanent migrants. In addition, the short-term de-sinicization process between 2000 and 2008 by former President Chen Shui-bian is reversed after the new government, and a relaxation on the immigration of overseas Chinese is underway. More overseas Chinese would be able to apply for immigration in the coming years. It also means that the ‘national security’ principle will be down played, while the jus sanguinis principle, the imagined Chineseness, will again be enforced. One piece of evidence is the number of approved overseas Chinese to settle down in Taiwan increased from17,000 in 2007 to 31,000 in 2009. I still don’t know how the migration policy would be changed if Dr. Tsai Ing-wen wins the election, but the Chineseness might be again downplayed, and more resources might be directed to local cultural affairs like aborigines.

What will be kept intact is the ideology of  ‘population quality’. This principle applies to all foreign residents, no matter what ethnicity they are. Scholars who did research on population policy in 2007 subcontracted by the Ministry of Interior say nothing about blue-collar immigrants in Taiwan, and the reason is ‘the government declined to put migrant workers policy as a part of population policy’. However, this report put much effort in formulating policy to attract ‘high quality human resources’. In other words, the government will keep its strict control on marriage immigration and labor migration.

Dr Wang Hong-zen is Professor and Chair of the Graduate Institute of Sociology, National Sun Yat-sen University.

At the moment, the presidential election in Taiwan features a very competitive race between incumbent Ma Ying-jeou of the KMT and Tsai Ing-wen of the DPP, with James Soong running a very distant third. The outcome of this election has the potential to affect U.S-Taiwan relations. If and how it will do so depend upon three distinct factors:  1) the policies of the winning candidate; 2) U.S. views about Taiwan; and 3) China’s reaction in cross-Strait relations which might create tensions between Washington and Taipei.

The United States has a long-standing policy of supporting peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait in what might be called the “Establishment” position, although two contending perspectives have been emerged. One believes that the U.S. should abandon its strong support of Taiwan because it creates an impediment to improving relations with China; and the other wants Taiwan to be more aggressive in confronting the PRC. In general, the supporters of the Establishment view favor Ma, while the advocates of the other two favor Tsai, obviously for very different reasons.

Over the course of the campaign, we can see a cycle of polarization on national identity and cross-Strait relations. The two major candidates started out with seemingly reasonable and moderate positions on cross-Strait relations, although their critics would dispute this conclusion. Ma’s “Three Nos” (No Unification, No Independence, and No War) represents the current status quo which seems acceptable to most parties; and Tsai’s proposal for developing a “Taiwan Consensus” for dealing with China is certainly an important policy goal.

By October and November, though, greater polarization erupted. For example, Ma’s proposal for concluding a “peace accord” with China within a decade raised fears that, if re-elected, he would try to push Taiwan toward Unification. Similarly, Tsai’s strong rejection of the “1992 Consensus” (that there is one China but that the ROC and PRC have different interpretations of what it is) raised fears that her election would destroy the basis for doing business with China.

The cycle continued in that by late November both candidates were moving toward the middle on cross-Strait relations. Tsai pledged not to provoke the PRC and even indicated that she was open-minded about visiting China. Ma continued to voice strong support for maintaining Taiwan’s sovereignty and even backtracked on his “peace accord” proposal after the negative public reaction that it produced. Thus, he quickly said that this would not be a Unification Treaty and indicated that it could only be signed if approved by a popular referendum.

Both candidates, therefore, are quite likely to want to have good relations with the United States and to try to pursue policies that are consistent with current American policy regarding the Taiwan Strait area. However, both could create problems or opportunities in cross-Strait relations that could affect the Washington-Beijing-Taipei triangle significantly. Ironically then, the PRC’s reaction may be the most important factor in determining how the election will affect Taiwan-U.S. relations.

In terms of challenges to the current rapprochement in cross-Strait relations, Tsai’s election would raise the most obvious problem given that her rejection of the 1992 Consensus is anathema to China. Ma’s election could raise problems as well, though, since his proposal for a “peace accord” could have raised unrealistic expectations in China.

There are also opportunities that either candidate could promote as President. The most obvious is that a Ma victory would lead to a continuation of the status quo of a “quiet” Strait. Yet, either Tsai or Ma could also promote a positive transformation in cross-Strait relations, albeit at a significant risk to the status quo. A Tsai victory would challenge the stability in Taipei’s dealings with Beijing. Yet, if China and the DPP could work out a modus vivendi, this would remove a major threat to peace and stability in the area. Certainly, Tsai appears to be one of the few DPP leaders who could make progress here. Similarly, if Ma were to pursue a “peace accord,” short-term problems would probably erupt, but a formal “live-and-let-live” agreement could ease tensions dramatically.

Cal Clark is Professor of Political Science at Auburn University, USA.

What’s that you say? Oh, there’s a campaign going on…

The second TV debate went off on Saturday; I will post some analysis soon. In the meantime Ben Goren gives his impressions. How did the candidates handle the TaiMed scandal in Saturday’s debate? (more here.) China limits the broadcasting of Saturday’s exercise in democratic performance. A short overview of the debate from Reuters. Want China Times discusses how the debate tested Tsai’s morality. Taipei Times has a detailed overview of the third round debate in which the candidates were grilled by civic groups, although some consider that the candidates avoided tackling the tougher issues. Tsai discussed the need for new leadership and set out her vision for the future of Taiwan; Ma played the father figure, defending women (while attacking Tsai’s integrity!), children and youth; James Soong emphasised the concept of security at all levels of  society: “a state leader’s most important task is to keep the country safe.”

Tsai describes the continuing saga over Taimed as an attempt at “character assassination” while Ma claims he had nothing to do with it. Indeed, Ma says he will give up his re-election bid if it can be proven that he ordered special investigation probe. Do you remember the KMT ad in 2000 attacking Soong for making just such an empty promise? China Times editorial discusses the lack of integrity and responsibility shown in the TaiMed scandal and links it to Tsai’s inability to lead. Michael Turton has analysis of the scandal here and here and discusses the impact of the scandal on the latest polls.

Jerome F. Keating weighs in on the TaiMed scandal and suggests the KMT is resorting to old tactics. Parts II and III of his analysis here. Here’s a video of Tsai defending herself. The View from Taiwan has a video of the founder of TaiMed discussing the KMT’s smear tactics. Frozen Garlic discusses Ma’s strategy in the debate to continue to attack Tsai personally rather than discuss public policy and how the KMT has dominated the agenda of the campaign issues. Politics from Taiwan discusses the DPP’s decision to make aboriginal languages into national languages.

Shelley Rigger predicts that Taiwan will stick with Ma as the safe choice. The polls say she could be right. The latest Asia-Pacific Market survey poll puts Ma up 7 points. Apple Daily says polls largely unaffected by recent mudslinging. Latest poll from United Daily News also puts Ma ahead by 7, and similarly this China Times poll, which also shows results from the VP debates. The latest Liberty Times poll puts just 1%  between Ma and Tsai, narrowing from 2 points last week. Political scientists suggest that independent neutral voters and first time voters will determine the outcome of the election. Numerically its true, but we say this every election and then the turnout figures for these cohorts are too low to make that much difference. Here’s an overview of the recent Brookings event where “anxiety” appears to be the key word over the outcome of the election and the future of cross-Strait issues.

The DPP accuses the KMT of vote buying in Taichung county; now there’s a thing. In this Taipei Times interview with Lee Chin-lung, he discusses the need for better policies. The Financial Times blog looks at the support of prominent businessman for the Ma campaign; now’s there’s a thing. The Washington Post discusses how the eyes of the great powers are focused on the Taiwan election and its tight competition: yes, Taiwan’s four-yearly moment in the spotlight is upon us. To prove it, BBC News has a video providing an overview of the election and the issues that’ll affect its outcome. Meanwhile, Tsai slams Ma over the enormous financial assets the KMT has accumulated over the years (surely not?) and proposes creating 800,000 social housing units if elected. The DPP urges China to not interfere in the elections after recent comments from high ranking officials  on cross-Strait issues. Asia Sentinel discusses the looming election and the role of external interference.

The three candidates fleshed out their cultural policies recently and agreed on not extending the life of the three original nuclear power stations, although the candidates have opposing views on the life of the fourth plant. At his cultural policy discussion Ma is confronted multiple times by protestors. The KMT allegedly turned down Jimmy Carter paying a visit to Taiwan for the January elections (they also turned down the EU delegation of observers). After having their issues ignored during both the presidential and vice presidential debates, aboriginal groups want their policy issues to be addressed – “No one talked about such serious issues; the only thing Aboriginal they do is to greet voters in Aboriginal languages.” Taipei Times has an editorial on how Ma has alienated aboriginal groups and pushed them towards voting for his rivals. Howevefr, United Daily News has an article on why the current First Lady is much more respectable than any potential DPP ones—what can you say to that?

Tsai says the reason the KMT has been promoting such scandals is to draw attention away from the fact that it has nothing to offer. This editorial on how the KMT’s smear campaigns show how it is increasingly desperate agrees. Meanwhile, James Soong stands aloof. But not forgotten: Here’s Soong’s opinion of the  Taimed scandal. Asia News Network discusses how the striptease scandal has turned the campaign into a  circus without credibility; Haha, they must not have witnessed many campaigns then. And finally, a calendar of a KMT legislative candidate shows an incorrect timeline regarding the history of China; tsk tsk.

Mail me at jonathan.sullivan@nottingham.ac.uk, follow me on Twitter @jonlsullivan, or access my papers at http://jonlsullivan.com

The idea that incumbent President Ma Ying-jeou could fail in his re-election bid was unthinkable half-way through his term, and unlikely until as recently as a couple of months ago. Ma entered office with a landslide victory and an unequivocal mandate to steady the ship with regards to cross-Strait relations and reinvigorate the economy. All but the most partisan DPP supporters were disillusioned with the Chen adminstration’s governance problems (not all of its own making), over-emphasis on ideological issues and, ultimately, high level corruption scandals. With a correspondingly large majority in the legislature, an untainted personal lustre, and facing an opposition in utter disarray, the KMT looked all set to resume the position it unexpectedly (and begrudgingly) gave up when Chen won the presidency in 2000. That election was lost as a direct result of infighting within the party, and scholars have observed how the KMT never gave up thinking of itself or behaving as if it was still in power. Thus the conditions in which Ma took the presidency in 2008 appeared to have re-established order ‘under heaven’ and the KMT would again reign for a long time.

So, what happened? We should first acknowledge that Ma has successfully pursued détente with China, warming relations to historically high levels. And, despite a global recession eating in to economies the world over, Taiwan has escaped relatively unscathed. However, despite his parliamentary majority, Ma’s administration is seen as having been ineffective and Ma personally weak. His major election pledges and policies (6-3-3, ECFA) have failed to deliver generalized benefits. Both the middle classes and blue and green collar workers have suffered, economic inequalities have increased, creating a potent fusion of social justice and quality of life issues. The speed and unchecked nature of Ma’s entente policies has alarmed the median voter (i.e. the one who has unequivocally supported the status quo through three decades).

Yet, still, Ma possessed an array of incumbency advantages, some common to incumbents everywhere, others exacerbated by formal and informal political structures that, despite democratization, are essentially unchanged since the KMT was last in power (indeed since it was the only party around). Furthermore, he should have benefited from the aversion to change that characterizes many electorates: Voters are generally wont to avoid change after a single term unless there is a compelling reason to do so. This is particularly so in Taiwan where voters consistently aver a preference for stability and where the KMT has long owned the ‘stability frame’ (that said, stability is also beloved of the CCP and other change-resistant regimes). These factors contributed to my long held belief, coincidentally expressed on this blog recently by Gunter Schubert, that Ma has not been sufficiently awful to make a substantial enough number of voters want to exchange him for his unproven rival and the uncertainties that a DPP government could bring.

I have changed my thinking, partly due to Ma’s utterly inept and incompetent campaign (sorry Blue readers), and partly due to Tsai’s transformation from the unsure lightweight we witnessed in the ECFA debate, to a candidate of genuine presidential bearing. Her deft (indeed Reagan-esque) response to Ma’s insinuations about Chen Shui-bian was characteristic of a candidate who has grown in confidence and stature through a level headed but effective campaign. In my opinion, the only weaknesses in her campaign are a fuzzy economic program and the nebulous notion of a ‘Taiwan Consensus’, which I cannot imagine is practicable either in its means (bipartisan political consensus) or its end (as a platform from which to engage China). Then again, on the policy front Ma isn’t doing so well either, with his Big Idea of a peace accord totally out of touch with public opinion and hastily removed from sight.

Such are the suicidal shenanigans going on in Ma’s campaign, Tsai should probably cancel all her campaign events and let Ma deliver the victory for her (more seriously, the only thing that looks like stopping Tsai’s momentum is over-confidence and a failure of the confirmed green vote to turnout). What started as a series of marginal missteps has degenerated into a full blown catastrophe. The latest instalment, an obviously instrumental, and possibly fraudulent, attempt to tie Tsai to the corruption of the Chen administration, by digging up an old consulting issue. Despite the blue friendly media that predominate in Taiwan’s mediascape, and a vast array of surrogates lining up to do the KMT’s dirty business, the Yu Chang case has backfired spectacularly. Employing such tactics has been a staple of KMT campaigns since before democratization (in local and supplementary elections), but what surprises me is the clumsiness of the execution, more reminiscent of a township or village chief than someone running for president, indeed the incumbent president.

At this point (brought up in a western democracy I was taught to revere the horse race) I should like to quote a reliable opinion poll to show just what a pickle Ma has got himself into. Alas, readers of this blog will know the difficulties associated with that. Instead, let me leave you with this thought. At this moment in time the National Chengchi University/XFuture election market has Ma trading at 28, with Tsai in the high 60s. Ultimately, it predicts a 12 point Tsai win. Lest you quickly dismiss this as a quirk of the Chengchi computers, recall that the prediction market has an exceptional track record of accurately predicting Taiwanese election outcomes (my thanks to @TimMaddog). Take all the pinches of salt you need to swallow this extraordinary bit of data, but believe that Ma is in trouble.

Mail me at jonathan.sullivan@nottingham.ac.uk, follow me on Twitter @jonlsullivan, or access my papers at http://jonlsullivan.com

Having just come back from Taiwan after a busy week there, I cannot help but express a feeling that the prospects for the DPP in the upcoming presidential elections are low. It’s a feeling partly nurtured by my experience back in 2008 when I closely observed the election campaign and joined the EU delegation visiting Taiwan. This was a sad time for the then ruling party. My friends in the DPP were depressed and had long accepted defeat. Outgoing president Chen Shui-bian was a disastrous liability for the DPP and its candidate Hsieh Chang-ting who fought a losing battle. DPP rallies were as hot and loud as ever, but the median voter stood by unimpressed. Talking to a number of leading DPP figures at the time was odd as they anticipated the result – and some of them were guessing quite correctly how big the gap was going to be between the two contenders. These were the winds of change, and whatever the DPP did to denounce the KMT’s obvious objective to jumpstart a new unification policy after retaking power, most Taiwanese didn’t want to listen.

Four years later, the DPP has regained strength. The new leader, Tsai Ing-wen, has proven to be a blessing for the party, uniting it by striking a deal with the old leadership and dimming down party ideology to pave the way for a proper response to the KMT’s integration course. From the beginning, the opposition was doomed to react and could hardly influence the government’s agenda. There was much to criticize when it came to speed and context of cross-Strait negotiations pushed forward by Ma, but Tsai Ing-wen had to accept that full blown opposition to the KMT’s proactive China policy would be political suicide in the long run; hence the focus on technical details and parliamentary oversight. That is certainly important, but it never could shake the government’s course.

The DPP’s 10 year policy platform, promulgated in late August, was hotly debated by the media until its finalization. After that, it became just another document and has not impacted meaningfully on the public discourse so far. In fact, the DPP’s China policy has been spelled out in rather cryptical terms: “harmony without uniformity, seeking similarity in peace” (he er bu tong, he er qiu tong) corresponds nicely to the Chinese way of breaking complex issues down to catchy slogans, but it explains little in terms of how the DPP could do better than the KMT. My DPP friends have told me that Tsai would be willing to talk to China, that she would be more cautious, more realistic and more successful in protecting Taiwan’s sovereignty and dignity than Ma Ying-jeou. But it is far from clear for many Taiwanese, including those supporting the DPP, how Tsai will find a way around the ‘one China principle’ and the ‘1992 consensus’, both of which she rejects, and still be able to talk to the Chinese authorities if she becomes Taiwan’s next president. Tsai may still be given a chance to try, but only if the alternative – another four years of KMT-led dialogue across the Taiwan Strait, is considered worse. It seems to me that most Taiwanese do not think that way.

Tsai and her DPP thus focus on other issues related to domestic policy in order to win over the median voter: social justice, judicial and educational reform, new policies to protect labour and the environment. These issues matter, but they do not decide an election in Taiwan. Recent surveys promise a close race between the two major contenders and one may think back to 2004 when Chen Shui-bian caught up during the last weeks before the presidential election. It may have been a bullet that ensured him eventual victory, but this veils the fact that the winds of change were also weak at the time. Tight races suggest an advantage for the incumbent in Taiwan, not for the challenger.

Today, Ma Ying-jeou stands firmly enough after four years as president. For a majority of Taiwan’s voters, he is not really a corrupt leader or a maverick whose policies undermine Taiwan’s sovereignty and freedom. He made a silly mistake by advocating a peace agreement agenda for his second administration, but the damage to his campaign seems to be limited. The way for the DPP back to the presidential office is long – too long for now. The median voter is simply not alienated enough from the current government, and the DPP has too little to offer to convince them to switch camps. For a change of government in Taiwan, you need a corrupt incumbent (at least one who is successfully labeled so) or a sentiment of crisis with respect to cross-strait relations. The best prospects for change would be a combination of both, like in 2008. In present-day Taiwan, none of these factors count. Since there are no winds of change, I expect four more years of KMT rule – until I am proven wrong?

Gunter Schubert is Professor and Chair of Greater China Studies, University of Tuebingen.

One of the things that comes out time and again about Tsai Ing-wen is that she is a clean candidate. This is an important characteristic for all election candidates, but is particularly salient in an election where the incumbent prides himself on his own clean image and the challenger party has to deal with the baggage of a former party chairman and president jailed for corruption. With exquisite timing then, the KMT has launched a concentrated attack on Tsai’s image.

It started during the first presidential debate, where Ma made a concerted effort to tie Tsai to the Chen Shui-bian administration. Guilt by association is a common tactic, and though derided for his continual references to CSB, it is a vulnerability for the DPP. Of course, the KMT’s own history is, euphemistically, not blemish free either, and has been the subject of opposition attacks since the Tangwai era. It strikes me that voters may already be somewhat inured to revelations about the KMT. In any case, consistent revelations about the party (its connections to big business, media, civil service, military, China, the mafia etc. etc.) have not prevented it from maintaining its control of the legislature and being competitive in every executive election throughout the democratic period. Clearly, scandals and nefarious dealings have not devastated KMT support levels.

After ‘priming’ voters during the TV debate, the KMT reinvigorated an old issue (Tsai’s consulting role for a biotech company) in a legislative hearing that was clearly stage-managed. I am not a lawyer and have no detailed knowledge of the case. But an issue from 2007, which has not had any new developments, suddenly appearing on the public agenda at the sharp end of a campaign in which Tsai’s clean image is one factor in her strong poll performance, is obviously instrumental. And of course, it is the same tactic the KMT used in 2000, when friendly media broke the Soong Hsingpiao scandal. The difference is in the timing: this time round they waited until the final month of the campaign, no doubt hoping that it will dominate the rest of the campaign agenda.

Will it work, i.e. will it reduce Tsai’s support levels sufficiently that Ma will win regardless of the Soong-effect on election day? Let’s see. First, three decades of research on negative campaigning suggests that ‘there is no consistent evidence in the research literature that negative political campaigning ‘works’ in achieving the electoral results that attackers desire’ (Lau et al. 2007: 1185, italics in the original). Second, the majority of voters have already made up their minds who they are going to vote for. Confirmed DPP supporters will not be swayed by this. But, if the opinion polls are to be believed (Haha), a substantial segment of the electorate (10-20%) is still undecided, and we know that these voters tend to be influenced by what happens during the final part of the campaign. Furthermore, the KMT may be trying to create sufficient fear of a DPP comeback among (currently, self-declared) Soong supporters, that come election day, they do not dare register their dissatisfaction with Ma by making him vulnerable by voting Soong.

Could Ma risk a backlash? Research in the US suggests that voters (specifically weak partisans and independents) can withhold or withdraw their support for a candidate whom they perceive to be engaging in unfair, unwarranted or otherwise dastardly behaviour. If voters perceive these attacks on Tsai to be instrumental, could they hurt Ma (to whom the image of the gentleman-statesman is very important) more than Tsai? They could, which is why it is such a clever move to delegate the attack role to the party.

In a paper I have coming out in the Asian Journal of Communication using advertising as a proxy for campaigning, ad sponsorship was a robust predictor of all operationalizations of negativity, i.e. there is systematic evidence that presidential candidates get their parties to do the dirty work. In the paper I surmise that this is to avoid the backlash effect, to maintain ‘plausible deniability’ should voters react badly. Thus, while expecting attacks on Tsai to continue, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Yu Chang case itself is made by Ma’s surrogates in the party and media.

What should Tsai do? A far-away leading candidate would be best off ignoring the bait and staying above the fray. Responding can only keep the issue on the agenda. But Tsai is not in that position and cannot risk doing a John Kerry, i.e. letting the scandal grow in the vacuum of a non-response. The allegations have met with a forceful rebuttal, and the DPP has framed the attack as a dirty tactic. Unless the scandal continues to grow and eats in to her poll numbers (in which case a party-led counter attack would be appropriate), she should move on and get back on message.

Mail me at jonathan.sullivan@nottingham.ac.uk, follow me on Twitter @jonlsullivan, or access my papers at http://jonlsullivan.com

At the request of the author, this is an extended version of the post that appeared here last week.

Donald Tsang, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, desperately tried to retain his composure. He looked at the massive speaker’s desk in front of him. There were only a few metres were between him and the angry man in the red shirt. It should have been a routine visit to the legislature. Now ‘Mad Dog’ Raymond Wong kept shouting at him. Wong was visibly outraged by the governments’ indifference towards the elderly and a few moments later he should throw bananas towards Donald Tsang. This historic Wednesday in October 2008 saw a significant change in Hong Kong’s politics. It was the beginning of ‘radical’ politics, ‘Taiwanstyle’.

Three years later, in November 2011, the pan-democratic camp suffered a major defeat in the in the Hong Kong District Council (DC) Elections. Particularly hard hit were Raymond Wong and other so-called ‘radical’ democrats. The mainstream media was quick to conclude that this would be the end to their ‘radical and confrontational’ tactics (SCMP). But is this really the case?

Although the myth of Hong Kong people’s political apathy (DeGolyer and Scott 1996) has long been refuted, remnants of the ‘stability narrative’ (Ku 2002, Lam 2004) have contributed to the conception that Hong Kong people have to voice their political opinions in a ‘rational, peaceful and legal way’ (Hong Kong’s Information Service Department 2011). Although Hong Kong could best be described as a semi-democratic system without universal suffrage, the rule of law, civil liberties and freedoms are still guaranteed. This might have led to the consensus, among the administration, the media and the academic establishment that mass protests and Legislative Council (LegCo) debates are the ‘right’ way to articulate political options and any other forms are labeled as ‘radical’.

Indeed with the formation of the pro-democratic, grassroots oriented and left-wing League of Social Democrats社會民主連線 (LSD) in 2006 and the subsequent election of ‘Big Guy’ Albert Chan陳偉業, ‘Mad Dog’ Raymond Wong 黃毓民and ‘Long Hair’ Leung Kwok-hung 梁國雄 to the 2008 LegCo, a more innovative, energetic and confrontational style of politics and campaigning entered the political scene. All three legislators are veteran politicians and social and political activists. Radio host Wong has strong personal and educational links toTaiwan. Government representatives, pro-establishment and pro-Beijing figures were quick to condemn the actions of the trio in the LegCo as rowdy behaviour imported fromTaiwan(Wen Wei Pao 2010). This value judgement has been readily picked up by the mainstream media and not challenged by the academic establishment, avoiding any critical discourse of ‘Taiwanisation’. The following analysis is based on several years of continual and on the ground fieldwork, and extensive interviews with politicians from all political backgrounds.

It is important to point out that Taiwanpolitics is generally negatively framed by the mainstream media and the administration, particularly during the Chen Shui-bian era. Therefore connections of politicians and parties to Taiwanare frequently used to imply creating chaos and advocating separatism (footnote 1). Yet for observers of both Hong Kong and Taiwan politics and campaigns, the influence of Taiwan election campaigns and strategies is a long-standing phenomenon (footnote 2). The colourful style of campaigning with flags and banners is reminiscent of Taiwan and pan-democratic parties have also employed similar voter allocation strategies (Ma and Choy 2003). Hong Kong political parties and researchers have sent delegations to observe Taiwan politics and elections on a regular basis. The effects were obvious in the 2008 LegCo election campaign. Candidates from all backgrounds employed gestures directly copied from Ma Ying-jeou’s 2008 campaign literature.

Indeed the Democratic Party (DP) produced a short Youtube clip which was inspired by the iconic KMT clip ‘The power to change’.

The LSD fully embraced the entire spectrum of ‘Taiwanstyle’ campaigning. Taiwaninspired campaign elements included a large rally before the voting day, in fact the first of its kind in Hong Kong (footnote 3), the frequent use of gimmicks as well as the branding of its star candidates including comics, posters, and small toy figures. LSD candidates speeches were down to earth, spontaneous filled with foul language and particular in televised debates, very aggressive towards the pro-establishment camp.

The rise of the LSD can be largely explained by the frustration of a significant sector of society which feels alienated by the political establishment. The rapidly growing wealth gap inHong Kong, steady rising living costs and astronomical housing fees have met by no effective, coherent and long-term strategy of the administration. In fact the Hong Kong government is perceived as increasingly unresponsive to the demands of the people without real public consultations and accountability as well as democratic progress (DeGolyer et al. 2010). These issues, its charismatic leaders and a sophisticated new media and social network strategy of the party contributed to the great support from particularly young voters and followers.

Taiwanese theatre politics (Fell 2007) was subsequently introduced into the LegCo.  LSD legislators would frequently throw symbol laden items in the chamber at government members and verbally attack Donald Tsang for the administrations’ inadequate financial support of the grassroots.

The LSD split in early 2011, with Chan and Wong forming the de facto mirror organisation People Power人民力量 (PP). Yet the tactics of both parties remained the same with the PP further increasing the pressure on the government through street blockages following mass demonstrations and a siege to the LegCo building in July 2011.

The LSD’s Long Hair remarked that in fact these forms of resistance and theatre politics are not unique to Taiwan politics during the early years of democratisation. Indeed these are common ways of questioning the legitimacy of existing institutions (footnote 4). Yet the success of Taiwan’s democracy movement, its advanced and sophisticated campaign culture provide an ample resource that due to spatial proximity, language and cultural similarities as well as personal links can be easily accessed.

The recent DC election saw again frequent elements of Taiwanstyle campaigning, for example in the design of campaign leaflets as well as activities. Here again the PP was a front-runner with its appeal to young voters. An interesting observation was the clear reference to the popular Taiwanmovie那些年，我們一起追的女孩 [Once upon a time, the girl we chased together] (footnote 5). The film’s poster was used as the basis for a campaign leaflet by a young candidate targeting voters in his age group changing the film’s title into那些年，我們一起追的民主 [Once upon a time, we chased democracy together] (footnote 6).

The Legislative Council Elections in 2012 will employ a different voting system, favouring smaller parties and ‘star candidates’. Hong Kong’s deep rooted social problems are also far from being solved or even addressed. Adding the rising political awareness and participation of youngsters, the verdict on the fate of so-called ‘radical’ tactics is premature. It looks more like ‘Taiwanstyle’ campaigning is here to stay.

Footnote 1: In 2003 veteran pan-democratic lawmaker Emily Lau stated that Taiwan’s future should be determined by the Taiwanese people. This caused furious reactions by the pro-Beijing camp, asking for her removal from the LegCo and demanding an apology before ‘it is too late to regret’ (Chan 2003; Dao 2003). In late 2011 donations to the pan-democrats made by Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, residing inTaiwan, were used to suggest foreign interference in Chinese affairs (Chan 2011).

Footnote 2: Election campaigning inHong Kongis highly regulated. Campaign commercials in broadcast media are not allowed and expenses are capped at a very low level. Therefore newspaper advertisements are rare and appear only in the last 2-3 days before voting day.

Footnote 3: Personal interview with Albert Chan. October 2008

Footnote 4: Personal interview with Leung Kwok-hung. May 2011

Footnote 5: The official translation of the film’s Chinese title is ‘You are the Apple of my Eye’.

Footnote 6: The subtitle on the leaflet is directed at the Democratic Party and reads: ‘Where has the 2012 universal suffrage in the previous party platform gone? We had agreed upon a timetable and a road map, but where are they now?’

References:

Dao, Yuan (2003) “Apology should come from Emily Lau”
China Daily HK Edition 22 August 2003 Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2003-08/22/content_257428.htm> (accessed 27 November 2011).

Chan, Kam-lam (2003) “Censure Emily Lau for Taiwanremarks” China Daily HK Edition 5 September 2003 Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.china.org.cn/english/MATERIAL/74412.htm> (accessed 27 November 2011).

Chan, Tonny (2011) “Lai splashes $60m on his democrat buddies” The Standard 18 October 2011. Online. Available HTTP: <http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=30&art_id=116160&sid=34108425&con_type=3&gt; (accessed 27 November 2011)

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Malte Philipp Kaeding is Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Surrey. He is an Associate Fellow at the European Research Centre on Contemporary Taiwan (ERCCT) and a member of the Hong Kong Transition Project. 

I reached out to several China-based scholars who do work about Taiwan with a mind to having a ‘view from China’-type post. Unfortunately these attempts have not produced any results. I can’t tell whether this is because Taiwan’s elections are too ‘sensitive’, or whether there is simply not a lot to say about them. So, changing track, I asked a couple of former students from China to give me a ground level view, maybe talk about what they’ve heard or their own opinions. What follows here was written by a former grad student, who wishes to remain anonymous. This student has done research on cross-Strait relations and is currently pursuing doctoral studies in China. I found this personal view very interesting; I hope you do to. Jon

“In 2008 after Ma Ying-Jeou won the election, my American friend Bob, Taiwanese friend Neil, and I were chatting happily in Bob’s living room. “So, how do you think about relations between China and Taiwan?” Bob asked Neil and I. “Oh, we are like a family” I answered. “No, we are enemies” Neil retorted. Bob burst into laughter. “You were diplomatic”, said Bob to me, “but you were telling the truth”, he said to Neil.

I can still recall how shocked I felt at that moment. First of all, I was not trying to be diplomatic. Instead, I sincerely meant what I said. I had been grown up in that belief, because everybody told me that Taiwan is part of China, including my Taiwanese friends who were doing business on the Chinese Mainland. I did often read from the media that there were a group of people in Taiwan who had been actively pushing Taiwan towards de jure independence, and that they had a lot of supporters who were called the “pan-greens”. However, I genuinely thought that there were at least half of Taiwanese, if not the majority, who believed that Taiwan and the Mainland should be a family, and did not want Taiwan to be separated from China permanently. Secondly, despite the fact that Neil was a “deep-green”, we were very good friends. Both of us agreed that political differences could be put aside and that people from both sides of the Strait should be able to be friends if they harbor good will towards each other. Thus, I did not expect that Neil, as an ordinary Taiwanese, was in fact so hostile towards China.

That incident four years ago made me start to really look at the history of Taiwan as well as cross-Strait relations. Also thanks to my Taiwanese friends from different political backgrounds and with different political views, I have developed a better understanding on the mentality of Taiwan people. To a certain extent, I even have sympathy towards the pan-greens because I can understand the historical trauma behind such a mindset. Thus, I share the expectations of those color-blind voters inTaiwanwho care more about which party can provide Taiwan people with a better life rather than the simple ideological division between the blue camp and green camp. By the same token, I believe that there should be a more conciliatory solution between China’s takeover of Taiwan—the handover of a democracy to an authoritarian state as some scholars suggest (personally I think scholars who suggest such possibility are doing so out of sarcasm or ignorance), and formal declaration of independence of Taiwan as Taiwan Republic or whatever, because the biggest concern for people of the both sides is peace and prosperity.

I might prefer Ma as most of the mainlanders do, because I think it would be easier for KMT and the CPC government to reach mutual understanding which would better facilitate a peaceful and prosper co-existence between both sides of the Strait (some of my fellows might even prefer Soong, because according to the mass media on the Mainland, the PFP is more prone to unification, though not all of them understand that Taiwan’s concept of unification is entirely different from that of the Mainland). Yet it would also be interesting to observe whether and how the Mainland and Taiwan could learn to better cope with each other in a more flexible and pragmatic way if Tsai got elected—a lesson CCP and DPP will have to learn sooner or later.

As a Mainlander I also believe that there is such thing as the Chinese nation, because the ethnical, lingual and cultural linkage between people from the Mainland and Taiwan is simply undeniable. Taiwan exceeds the Mainland in terms of economic and social development. Thus,Taiwan’s toady could be China’s tomorrow. And there are always things to learn and reflect on from each other’s experience.

Furthermore, though PRC claims the “sole representative of China”, it is Taiwan which has best inherited Chinese culture and tradition, and even the tinder for the rejuvenation of Chinese nation. During the late 19^th and early 20^th century, China was witnessing one of the most abysmal situations in the history, with its territory occupied or colonized, people slaughtered and humiliated, endless anti-invasion and civil wars, and political oppressions (Taiwan was separated from the Mainland under such a background). During that period, the pioneer of modern Chinese thinkers has identified two essential elements–science and democracy for China to grow out of this pathetic situation. After almost 100 years, while the merit of science has been widely recognized, democracy remains ill-defined, under-nurtured and frequently questioned on the Mainland.

To me, democracy does not simply equal vote, though the latter is a necessary part of the former. The ideal of democracy is a more grandeur institution that can liberate each individual from the fetish of collectivism that has made an authoritarian political system possible, so that everybody has the opportunity to live his fullest potential. When democracy on the Mainland has only been “uninstitutionalized” at its best, it has been taking roots and bearing fruit in Taiwan. It is far from perfect, of course. Yet as Lung Ying-Tai, one of the most famous writers on Taiwan has said, Taiwan proves that democracy is workable in the Chinese community. If it is workable in Taiwan, it is bound to be workable elsewhere among Chinese people. It might take time for a breaking point. It might sound too idealistic to say that Taiwan is a beacon of democracy, but Taiwan definitely would be a model that people on the Mainland keenly observe and draw the best lesson from.”

Mail me at jonathan.sullivan@nottingham.ac.uk, follow me on Twitter @jonlsullivan, or access my papers at http://jonlsullivan.com

In a China Quarterly paper published last year (with the title “Chen Shui-bian: On independence”, which was supposed to be a play on Mao’s ‘On’ series), Will Lowe and I analysed all of CSB’s speeches in the first 6 1/2 years of his tenure (~2500). Our findings strongly suggested that CSB was not a serial independence monger. His discourse, especially after re-election, was dominated by Taiwan identity, but these expressions (by our definition) did not relate to sovereignty or constitute independence markers. Furthermore, we argued that the ‘fluidity’ of his rhetoric could largely be explained by the identity of the primary audience he was addressing, e.g. independence groups overseas were exposed to a lot of sovereignty language, while economists heard only about the economy.

With Eliyahu Sapir I am currently writing up a similar analysis of Ma Ying-jeou’s presidential discourse for a special issue of the Journal of Current Chinese Affairs. I can’t give away too much at this point, but I can share a couple of visual representations of Ma’s speeches (~2000). The first graph shows the proportion of Ma’s speeches that contained indicators in each of four categories, Chinese identity, Taiwan identity, the economy and pro-democracy. This graph doesn’t control for external events as the CSB paper does and its not spectacularly informative. But it does show that around two thirds of Ma’s speeches between May 2008 and August 2011 were ‘on the economy’, which was the most popular topic. At the start of his tenure, around 40% of speeches contained markers of both Chinese and Taiwan identity, but quickly diverged thereafter. By mid-2011 around half of Ma’s speeches contained references to Chinese identity, but less than a third Taiwan identity markers. Also declining in prominence is language associated with democracy. A little less than one third of speeches at the beginning of his tenure made reference to democracy,  falling by half by summer 2011.  Data for the paper will present a more detailed and nuanced picture, but the birds eye view is that Ma consistently emphasizes the economy, began with an equal emphasis on Chinese and Taiwan identity (which quickly and consistently diverged thereafter), and democracy is progressively less emphasized over time.

One of the other main findings of the CSB paper was that a lot of the variation in Chen’s speeches could be attributed to the identity of the audience to whom he was delivering the talk. In colloquial terms its known as playing to the crowd, it is also consistent with spatial politics models. The upshot is that political actors, be they CSB or Ma Ying-jeou, have different constituencies to engage, different stakeholders with varying preferences to win over etc, and one of the ways they can do so is by telling ’em what they want to hear. The chart below shows the proportion of speeches dedicated to each category, for 10 different audiences (for the curious, details are in the CQ paper). Again this is rough and ready, but we can see that Ma has substantially different emphases in speeches to different audiences. For instance, when talking to foreign media (fmed) Chinese identity is by far the most salient message. By contrast, when talking with business people and organizations (econ) the vast majority of what they get to hear is about economics. Sovereignty is only salient in New Year’s and National Day speeches (ndny), and to a lesser extent when Ma addressed foreign allies (alli).

There’s lot’s of fun stuff in this paper, I’ll try and post something more substantial once I’ve done some more work on it. But remember this is the analysis of speeches (not campaign ads etc.), and the timeframe doesn’t go up to the recent campaign period. Ma’s presidential discourse has been dominated by the economy and Chinese identity; it doesn’t surprise me that he would feel the need to do a bit of remedial work on Taiwan identity during the last part of the campaign.

Mail me at jonathan.sullivan@nottingham.ac.uk, follow me on Twitter @jonlsullivan, or access my papers at http://jonlsullivan.com