United Daily News (聯合報), March 14, 2021, Page A12
Over the past few years, I have written from time to time to warn of Taiwan’s deteriorating security - a view rarely echoed at the time by others - and was sometimes ridiculed as Cassandra. Recently, more and more Cassandras appeared worldwide. The research reports of foreign governments, Legislatures, and think tanks that I have collected could easily pile up to a person’s height. Former National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster under President Trump even called the months between the Winter Olympics in February 2022 to the Chinese Communist Party Congress scheduled for the year-end Taiwan’s "period of greatest danger." Still, the people of Taiwan seemed completely indifferent. Why?
On the surface, this is understandable due to Taiwan’s long peace and resultant lapse in vigilance. The fact that the United States sent aircraft carriers to save Taiwan from the missile crisis of 1996 reinforced the belief on the island that "China will not strike” and that "the U.S. will come to our rescue." Yet beneath the veneer, the sources of "indifference" are actually deeper and broader: deep in the hearts and minds of the people, and broad across the society.
In the 1990s, people in Taiwan were unanimous in their pursuit of democratization, “pragmatic diplomacy,” and reconciliation across the Taiwan Strait. Despite bitter internal strife, people generally shared a sense of "Lebensgemeinschaft” (community of life). It is a pity that the fierce and incessant partisan struggles starting around the millennium shattered the "community of life" into pieces. Electoral disputes surrounding those mysterious incidents, such as the “video tape” of the 1998 Kaohsiung mayoral election, the March 19 shooting of the incumbent President Chen Shui-bian on the eve of the 2004 presidential election, and the “strolling workers” bribery rumors in the 2006 Kaohsiung mayoral election, all had severely damaged mutual trust among political parties. Debates on cross-strait policy, such as the “1992 Consensus” and the Cross-Strait Agreement on Trade in Services, had all too often been redirected toward the question of identity over the country and the nation. So much so that in the small island of Taiwan today, not one single political symbol can unite all the people behind it – not the name of the country, the national flag, the national anthem; not the constitution; not the president, any institution, or religious leaders. Even the understanding of Taiwan’s history and bloodline is far apart.
Not only that, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) sought to monopolize the trademark of "love of Taiwan" before each election. After the electoral victories, the DPP manipulated state apparatus to suppress "those who are not with us” on the pretext of "transitional justice," by ignoring their great contributions to Taiwan, cutting off their historical memories, and depriving them of their entitled rights and interests. After Taiwan is thus split into “us vs. them,” how can one expect that all the people in Taiwan will rise as one in face of impending danger?
Indifference also stems from society-wide self-closure, particularly the collective inward turn of the mass media. In the 1980s and 1990s, major newspapers and television stations placed great emphasis on international news and stationed correspondents abroad in important cities such as Washington, D.C. During that period, the Taiwan people were kept abreast on international affairs and their global view was not at all inferior to that of Japanese and Koreans. In recent two decades when Taiwan’s economy remained stagnant and the media environment changed, international news coverage shrank dramatically; major media’s foreign offices closed up one by one. Hence the general public’s understanding of international affairs fell into fragmentation, even distortion.
Domestic news coverage is also responsible. In the 1990s, government ministers often held press conferences, appeared on television, or accepted exclusive interviews with media hosts or anchors. Taiwan people fully enjoyed the “right to know,” and most of them could name the who’s-who of the Ministers. After 2000, Ministers and high-ranking officials began to dodge the media, and grew increasingly reluctant to hold press conference to explain and/or defend the policies. As a result, most of the general public could hardly name a Minister or a high-ranking official today. The vacancies they left behind were filled first by Legislators. Later even the Legislators rarely showed up on the TV screen, yielding their posts to the “talking heads” who unabashedly entertained more than informed the public. No wonder that after President Trump lost his re-election campaign, over half of Taiwan’s media cried and screamed like an orphan.
The intellectuals as a whole who had played a significant role throughout the democratization process in Taiwan have also lost their aura. The senior scholars and experts came to learn that most politicians and the media cared only about where they stood on partisan spectrum, not the right and wrong of the policies. Not surprisingly, most of them chose simply to withdraw from policy discussions. The younger generation, struggling to earn a living in a flat-wage economy, have mostly lost the ambition to move the wheels of the country, focusing their energies on writing one academic paper after another without touching public policies. As a result, a whole generation of the best and brightest was left idling on campus.
How about think tanks? The think tanks of Europe, Japan and South Korea provide their societies with large amounts of research reports. In the U.S. they additionally supplied one-third of ranking officials to the administration. In Taiwan however, the vast majority of think tanks rely exclusively on the government or political parties for funding. They naturally only serve their donors quietly and are neither vocal nor influential beyond the walls. This involves a bigger problem. Although Taiwan is often hailed as a democracy, the state remains much larger than the society. As long as private enterprises could find ways to connect up with government officials, they would be sufficiently informed, perhaps even influential on policy decisions. The private enterprises thus see no need to donate to policy-research think tanks and/or to cultivate talents for the country. Hence, independent think tanks have little chance to thrive.
Among those think tanks, the lack of information and analysis on national defense is probably the most serious one. The Ministry of National Defense is always dominated by uniformed military personnel. Civilian experts specializing in national defense are a rare breed. Uniformed personnel are accustomed to keeping secrets; most are tight-lipped even after retiring from the military. The amount of information on defense flowing toward the general public is therefore much less than those in other democracies. It is pitiful.
The writing is on the wall. With one half of the Taiwan people alienated and aloof, the other half with their eyes half-closed, you will surely get an indifferent population with “life will go on as usual” mindset. The problem is: when something terrible indeed happens, who is to blame?