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Opinion
The Future History of Taiwan
by William R. Stimson
 Europe
and America have their coffee shops. Taiwan, in the Chinese tradition,
also has tea houses. Here the solitary poetic spirit repairs to the most
old-fashioned of settings to conjure up a Chinese culture and a Chinese
mind that is utterly new and has never been before, and yet at the same
time is more like what has gone before than anything now existing. The
poet -- like the artist, the writer and the true scholar -- knows
culture is not some inviolable tradition, written in stone, but an
ever-expanding dance of freedom, aliveness and innovation whose aim is
to create the better man, the superior person, the truer life. It
thrives on freedom from the tyranny of ideas, dogmas and power. It
reinvents the present in a way that reconfigures not just the future,
but the past as well. History cannot change; but our way of looking at
it does. We come to see the past in a different way. We draw new
conclusions.
On the streets of Taipei today, and on TV screens and front pages around
the world, the red shirts are out in number demanding that the President
of Taiwan resign because of all the corruption scandals. Who among his
loyal supporters down here in the heartland of Taiwan where I live isn’t
a little bit glad to see the man and his party get this deserved slap in
the face. The common people put him and his party in power because he
promised to deliver them from the thieving KMT – not take over their
role. “I feel betrayed,” a staunch Green supporter said to me the other
day with a sunken look. That’s the general feeling in this part of
Taiwan: betrayal, shame, and disgust that the President would let this
happen. But let us remember that history may view the events of today
quite differently than we do now.
I think historians will look back and see that in these times Taiwan was
moving towards the future in a radically different way than China.
Authoritarianism in China, so long bolstered by aping the outer form of
European Communism, now cloaks itself in the outer forms of American
Capitalism to head into what promises to be a big, powerful future.
China wears the different garment, talks the different talk, and walks
the different walk. But the footprints it leaves behind in the lives of
its own people show the claw marks of the same ugly beast. Taiwan is
different. Not just because of the Green Party, and the indigenous
Taiwanese intelligencia and pro-democracy advocates that came together
under its banner, but also because of the Blues, and the innocent foot
soldiers, thugs, entrepreneurs and bluebloods who gave rise to them. The
magic that happened in Taiwan couldn’t have happened without both camps.
The DPP and the KMT: each played its role. They are the pieces of a
whole. In China this whole didn’t survive. In Taiwan it did. This is
what future historians will see. That throughout Taiwan’s long history
the island often served as a refuge for that which was hard pressed and
on the run elsewhere won’t be contested. But whereas present historians
stress this as a disadvantage, future ones are apt to see it as a boon.
Something got preserved here, something survived, that got wiped out in
mainland China. In Taiwan alone the whole of Chinese culture comes
forward to meet the present-day world. The seed reached these shores,
sprouted, and it grew.
The nations of the world make a huge mistake by not noticing this and by
failing to admit Taiwan as a full-fledged member of the global
community. They also err in not affording Taiwan the umbrella of
protection it needs and deserves for its messy and puerile democracy to
come to term and give birth to something that has never before existed
in Asia – a Chinese culture that is alive with a freedom commensurate
with its genius, and thus a Chinese culture that has been delivered to
the source of its real creative power. The crippled beast on the
Mainland, masquerading as the “one” China, bristling daily with more
missiles and armaments, is not intact, as its erratic and unpredictable
behavior shows. It is a scary threat to global security. The world is
too blinded by short-term greed to notice.
The very messiness of Taiwan’s democracy — the fact that the issue of
official corruption is, for the first time in a Chinese culture, being
openly addressed on the streets here, and most certainly in the tea
shops also — is evidence not of Taiwan’s failure but of its great
accomplishment. No matter which side you’re on, Blue or Green, this is
obvious. Why it isn’t obvious to the red shirts raising such a ruckus in
the streets today boggles the imagination. In China, demonstrators like
them have been met with tanks and bullets. To even broach the subject of
corruption in that country lands one in prison, or worse.
Because China is so important to the world, and because in Taiwan alone
the whole of it is preserved, this island is a global resource and needs
to be protected from the giant on the mainland, at least until which
time the rulers there learn how to let China be free, how to let it be
alive, and how properly to relate to it, its traditions, and, most of
all, its people -- especially those brave souls who dare speak the
truth. These don’t belong in jail. China desperately needs them in its
tea houses, where they can happily write their hearts out like they do
here in Taiwan.
October 8,
2006
William R. Stimson is an
American writer who lives in Taiwan. More of his writing can be found at
www.billstimson.com
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Opinion
The Week of October 8, 2006
Goodbye America? N-deal Setback may be Tip of
Iceberg! by Rajinder Puri
India's Leadership Crisis : Impact on Defense and
Politics by Gaurang Bhatt, MD
Presidential System of Government for India
by Dr. Subhash Kapila
Always Yes to Planned Murder by Terrorists by
V. Sundaram
Parliament Attack: The Clemency Chaos by
Nagesh Padmanaban
Indo-Pak relations: It’s time to end the relations
by Dr. Deepak Pawar
Dengue Et Al: A Billion Terrorists Strike
by Col. Rahul K. Bhonsle
SPAC: Special Purpose Acquisition Company by
Deepak Dahiya
Railway Safety is No Accident! by Arya Bhushan
Empires and Dust: Travels in Modern India -
III by Ashish Nangia
Distressed Habitation by VK Joshi
Dal: A Lake or a Polluted Pond? by Naira
Yaqoob
A Matter of Faith by Naira Yaqoob
In Search of God by Pradeep Joshi
Mahisasura-Mardini: The Sacred Narrative of Durga
Ma by Aparna Chatterjee
Is Hero Worship still there? by TA Ramesh
Pandit Shyamaji Krishna Verma: Salutations to a
Great Revolutionary by V. Sundaram
Secret India at war celebrates its re-invented
past by Marc-Olivier Parlatano
Creation of a second capital of Karnataka in Belgaum
by Niranjan Babu Bangalore
The Future History of Taiwan by William R.
Stimson
Sex Workers Take Charge by Usha Revelli
New Day Dawns for Child Servants by Mini Sharma
From Tashkent to the World by Albina Belevich
A Circle of Peace by Stephanie Hiller
Text Books for Change by Deepti Priya Mehrotra
Happy Dusshera! by Glory Sasikala Franklin
Where Myths & Superstitions Heal by Anil Gulati
Of Birds, Bees, Beasts and Other Animals by
Julia Dutta
When I was Pin-ned down! by Prakash Pathre
The Witty Side by Melvin Durai
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