By June Tsai
On the weekend of Aug. 18 and 19, Cheng Hung-yi, the host of a political talk show, introduced a book that would attract widespread public attention. The program was broadcast by Sanlih E-Television, which is widely viewed as a pro-localization network. The book that is attracting so much press coverage is the Chinese-language version of "Formosa Betrayed," written by George Kerr.
Within one month of the book's publication, six printings had been made of the Chinese version, with 2,000 to 3,000 copies in each printing, according to Lim Bun-kim, director of Avanguard Publishing House. The copies sold exceeded the number of all the books it had sold over the past 15 years, Lim said Oct. 2. The Chinese version of "Formosa Betrayed" hit local bookshelves as early as 1991, and 1,000 to 2,000 copies were sold each year afterward, he noted. Avanguard Publishing is known to local readers as an authoritative source for publications on Taiwanese literature and nonfiction books about Taiwan.
Most people that flocked to his shop for this book were over the age of 50, Goo Seng-sam, founder of Taiouan Shop in Taipei, said Oct. 1. Many purchased it for their own reading, but also bought five, 10 or 20 copies to give out to people they knew, he added. "Taiouan" means Taiwan in Holo Taiwanese, and as the name indicates, the shop sells all kinds of products related to Taiwan, such as books, maps, CDs and aboriginal handicrafts.
Kerr's work is regarded as one of the most influential books on Formosa--a name generally used in his time--during its transition from Japanese colonial rule to the Kuomintang administration.
Having served before 1940 as an English teacher in Taipei, Kerr came to Taiwan again after World War II as an American Foreign Service staff officer. He was vice consul in Taipei when he witnessed the KMT's takeover of the island and the resulting aftermath, according to data provided by the Taipei-based 228 Peace Memorial Museum.
The most notorious event during this period was the February 28 Incident in 1947. Chiang Kai-shek appointed Chen Yi to be the governor of Taiwan and handle the takeover. Corruption and mismanagement led to a popular uprising, which was forcibly put down by the military. Kerr wrote reports that were sent to the U.S. embassy in Nanjing, China, and then to Washington, D.C.
The reports contained his firsthand account of the events leading up to the incident and the consequences, as well as his criticism of the Chiang administration. No longer welcomed by the Nationalist government, Kerr left the island on March 17, 1947.
The essential part of "Formosa Betrayed" lies in Kerr's reports. The book argues in favor of a self-ruled Formosa, which was "potentially too important to be treated merely as an ordinary Chinese province" by the U.S. government and whose "wealth and technological development placed it too far ahead of the mainland Chinese provinces to permit an easy return to Chinese control," as the book states.
Kerr's book failed to attract interest from publishers in his home country, but was eventually published in 1966 by Eyre & Spottiswoode Ltd., a London-based company. Taiwan's status was a dilemma for the U.S. government at the time and should have been interesting to readers, yet "Taiwan is too small a place, and topics on it did not have a market," Lim said. It was not until 1992 that the second edition was published by the California-based Taiwan Publishing Co.
The Chinese-language version fared no better. Although the translation was completed by a Taiwanese-American activist, Rong Chen, and was published in Tokyo and New York in 1974, it was banned in Taiwan under the KMT administration, according to Lim. Copies of the pages were smuggled in from abroad. By the 1980s, an abridged Chinese-language version of "Formosa Betrayed" could be found underground in Taiwan. Tens of thousands of copies of it were sold at anti-KMT political rallies, Lim recounted.
The book inspired Taiwanese students studying in the United States during the 1960s and the 1970s and spurred them to think about Taiwan's history and the identity of its people. Goo was a part of this generation.
Studying mathematics and computer science at Columbia University, Goo's eyes were opened by the abundant books, magazines and materials available in the university's Asian Library. The newspapers and magazines there offered a much different view of China, which was depicted as a land of enchanting beauty by textbooks and propaganda back home. This led him to discover the true face of Taiwan.
Seeing the free discussion about politics on the U.S. campus, the students' participation in issues concerning human rights and the atmosphere of an open society was a culture shock for Goo. It was a total contrast to the close-minded and authoritarian environment on the island, and the disparity made Goo wonder what had brought Taiwan to where it was.
"The first book on Taiwan I came across in the Asian Library was 'Formosa Betrayed,' and it touched me," Goo recalled. He said reading the book changed his life forever. He took part in street demonstrations during the 1980s after he returned home. Goo later quit his position as a research fellow at the Industrial Technology Research Institute of Taiwan and established the Taiwan-themed shop in 1993.
At its peak, around 1,000 copies of "Formosa Betrayed" were sold within one week recently in his shop, where one could also buy the English version. Goo said the sales could represent "a desire for historical truth," as the book provided a firsthand account. Though some people of his generation heard stories about the February 28 Incident from their parents, and now everyone is free to talk about it, most could not really share what had happened, according to Goo. This book filled in the gap, a missing chapter of history for most people.
The book's zeal for detail and accuracy, its sympathy and humanitarian intent were and are appealing to Taiwanese readers, Lim noted. The book was a hit when it first appeared in 1991, four years after the lifting of martial law in Taiwan. Now sales peaked again 16 years later. Its sales are phenomenal, Lim noted, given that nowadays around 3,000 titles are published in Taiwan each month while, in contrast, 90 percent of them sold fewer than 500 copies.
Lim felt the media's promotion of the book deserved most of the credit. It is difficult, however, for this book to penetrate the group of people who opted to watch other news channels or talk-show programs for political opinions, as the news media in Taiwan are also divided along political lines.
"The average person only chooses to absorb what he wants to," Hsu Hsueh-chi, director of the Academia Sinica's Institute of Taiwan History, said Oct. 3, adding that "those who don't believe continue to do so."
Hsu noted that some Taiwanese scholars have recently condemned Kerr's book as an unexamined account with observations made by an intelligence agent rather than a diplomat or a scholar. Yet she stressed that Kerr's book offers a different perspective from that of any government authorities. "Regarding political incidents or cases, what people had been told were one-sided statements from the ruling administration," Hsu said.
As a veteran publisher who has been dedicated to publishing "opposition" books since 1982, Lim has something else to worry about. He lamented that fewer people would sit down to read. The situation worsened in recent years, "as there seems to be no need for knowledge of Taiwan's history since the Taiwanese identity is getting clearer in this country."
Lim stressed that the attainment of knowledge, especially historical knowledge, required reading, not surfing the Internet. He recalled that Cheng suggested reviving the habit of reading for knowledge on Taiwan's history through introducing classics such as "Formosa Betrayed."
Its effectiveness is yet to be seen. Yet for Goo, there are still reasons for optimism. Considering Taiwan's history is still marginalized in local educational institutions, he said that he expected parents reading this book to pass it on to their children and encourage them to challenge existing historical knowledge and what they were taught in school.
This article is published in Taiwan Journal Oct. 12, 2007
Sep 7, 2009
Banned Tibetan writer publishes in Taiwan
By June Tsai
It has been 40 years since the beginning of the euphemistically named Cultural Revolution in China. Hundreds of books have been published about that time of chaos and upheaval, yet comparatively few have been penned about the sad fate of Tibet, whose exiles recently marked the 47th year since the Tibetan uprising, which attempted to free the country from Chinese occupation, or about the cultural genocide that followed. Of those accounts that have been written on the subject, almost none have been from the perspective of Tibetans themselves.
Taiwan's Locus Publishing Co. recently released three books in the Chinese language by the same author, offering a rare glimpse of life in Tibet during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Tibetan author Woeser, born 1966 in Lhasa, spent six years conducting research and writing about Tibet, an effort that has resulted in her three volumes, "Forbidden Memory: Tibet During the Cultural Revolution," "Remembering Tibet" and "Notes on Tibet." The first two are brand new, while the third was banned in China in 2003 and is now in print in Taiwan under the title "A Poem Named Tibet." "Forbidden Memory" contains hundreds of photographs taken between 1966 and 1970 by Woeser's father, Tsering Dorje. In addition to being an ardent amateur photographer, he was also a member of the People's Liberation Army, despite being ethnically Tibetan. Her father was stationed outside of Tibet after 1970 owing to partisan conflicts within the military. He died in 1991 in Tibet, leaving behind a collection of photos. In the preface to her book, Woeser wrote that it was not until 1999 that she decided to rediscover the stories and memories hidden behind those pictures, which she sent to Wang Lixiong, a Chinese expert on Tibet, to get his impression of their importance. Wang returned the photos to her, insisting that they bear witnesses to an age that has been wiped out by force and needs to be rediscovered.
Although Woeser had not met Wang at the time she asked for his advice on the photos, the two got to know each other quite well and later married. Wang wrote in an introduction to the book that Tibet is a lacuna in any study, either official or private, of the Cultural Revolution. There are only three documents about the Tibet of those years available in the official Archive in the "Tibet autonomous region." These documents exist, but they are classified and strictly guarded by the Chinese military. It is as if, he wrote, there were no Tibet between 1966 and 1976. Wang urged his Tibetan wife to shoulder the responsibility of recovering the memories from that time period by hearing and retelling the stories of her people.
Thus in 1999, Woeser, with photos in hand, began visiting and interviewing people who had lived through that period. Most of her interview subjects--more than 70 people in all--were Tibetan, though some were Chinese or Muslim. The result is "Remembering Tibet," a collection of oral histories.
If photos congeal the truth of historic moments, then names tell an even harder truth. The Chinese title for "Forbidden Memory" sounds like the Tibetan word for revolution. According to Woeser, when the Chinese army marched into Tibet in the 1950s, there existed no such word for revolution in the Tibetan language. In Chinese, the Tibetan word that was coined sounds, appropriately enough, like the word for "holocaust." Woeser's attention to a period of history that is embarrassing to the authorities in Beijing no doubt came as a disappointment to them. For all intents and purposes, she was expected to become a model Tibetan that the communist government could show to the world to demonstrate its success in civilizing Tibet. She attended the Chinese Department of South-West Nationalities Institute in Chengdu where she studied Chinese literature, and was employed as an editor at Tibetan Literature, a Chinese-language journal based in Lhasa. With her talent, background and education, she was to have been one of the leading luminaries of China's "New Tibet." These plans changed in 2003, however, after Woeser published a compilation of 38 short travel stories called "Notes on Tibet," which deviated from the official line. Nine months after the book was published, it was banned, and Woeser was fired by her work unit and driven out of Tibet. The government confiscated her home and deprived her of health and retirement benefits.
The strict state censorship on literature that takes place today, she now believes, is an example of the same government-imposed controls over thought that were employed during the Cultural Revolution. She therefore decided to publish the book of photos under her real name on the 40th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution, but pragmatically chose to do so through a Taiwanese publisher. She and Wang now live in Beijing.
Wang, an author himself, was in Taipei last month to promote his new book. While there, he also took the opportunity to boost Woeser's three books, since she herself was not able to travel to the country.
Meanwhile, Tibetans living in Taiwan took to the streets of Taipei March 10 to commemorate the Tibetan uprising against China's occupation in 1959, the year when their spiritual leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama was driven into exile. Taiwanese human rights groups as well as several politicians took part in the march to show their support for a free Tibet. Human rights groups asked the ROC government to designate March 10 Tibet Day, and to dissolve the Cabinet-level Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission, which represents the ROC's claim of sovereignty over Tibet and Mongolia. Instead, the ROC government should respect the will of the people of Tibet to choose their own destiny, protesters urged.
Tsegyam Ngaba, head of the Tibet Religious Foundation of H.H. the Dalai Lama and de facto ambassador of Tibet's government-in-exile to Taiwan, said in a telephone interview that he greatly appreciated the sense of mission demonstrated by the publisher for supporting such books that, despite their importance to Tibetans, are unlikely to become bestsellers. He expressed his hope that the books, though they represent only a tiny portion of Tibet's plight, would allow Taiwanese people to learn more about Tibet than its religious aspects, which is inseparable from Tibet's overall situation.
This article is published in Taiwan Journal March 31, 2006
It has been 40 years since the beginning of the euphemistically named Cultural Revolution in China. Hundreds of books have been published about that time of chaos and upheaval, yet comparatively few have been penned about the sad fate of Tibet, whose exiles recently marked the 47th year since the Tibetan uprising, which attempted to free the country from Chinese occupation, or about the cultural genocide that followed. Of those accounts that have been written on the subject, almost none have been from the perspective of Tibetans themselves.
Taiwan's Locus Publishing Co. recently released three books in the Chinese language by the same author, offering a rare glimpse of life in Tibet during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Tibetan author Woeser, born 1966 in Lhasa, spent six years conducting research and writing about Tibet, an effort that has resulted in her three volumes, "Forbidden Memory: Tibet During the Cultural Revolution," "Remembering Tibet" and "Notes on Tibet." The first two are brand new, while the third was banned in China in 2003 and is now in print in Taiwan under the title "A Poem Named Tibet." "Forbidden Memory" contains hundreds of photographs taken between 1966 and 1970 by Woeser's father, Tsering Dorje. In addition to being an ardent amateur photographer, he was also a member of the People's Liberation Army, despite being ethnically Tibetan. Her father was stationed outside of Tibet after 1970 owing to partisan conflicts within the military. He died in 1991 in Tibet, leaving behind a collection of photos. In the preface to her book, Woeser wrote that it was not until 1999 that she decided to rediscover the stories and memories hidden behind those pictures, which she sent to Wang Lixiong, a Chinese expert on Tibet, to get his impression of their importance. Wang returned the photos to her, insisting that they bear witnesses to an age that has been wiped out by force and needs to be rediscovered.
Although Woeser had not met Wang at the time she asked for his advice on the photos, the two got to know each other quite well and later married. Wang wrote in an introduction to the book that Tibet is a lacuna in any study, either official or private, of the Cultural Revolution. There are only three documents about the Tibet of those years available in the official Archive in the "Tibet autonomous region." These documents exist, but they are classified and strictly guarded by the Chinese military. It is as if, he wrote, there were no Tibet between 1966 and 1976. Wang urged his Tibetan wife to shoulder the responsibility of recovering the memories from that time period by hearing and retelling the stories of her people.
Thus in 1999, Woeser, with photos in hand, began visiting and interviewing people who had lived through that period. Most of her interview subjects--more than 70 people in all--were Tibetan, though some were Chinese or Muslim. The result is "Remembering Tibet," a collection of oral histories.
If photos congeal the truth of historic moments, then names tell an even harder truth. The Chinese title for "Forbidden Memory" sounds like the Tibetan word for revolution. According to Woeser, when the Chinese army marched into Tibet in the 1950s, there existed no such word for revolution in the Tibetan language. In Chinese, the Tibetan word that was coined sounds, appropriately enough, like the word for "holocaust." Woeser's attention to a period of history that is embarrassing to the authorities in Beijing no doubt came as a disappointment to them. For all intents and purposes, she was expected to become a model Tibetan that the communist government could show to the world to demonstrate its success in civilizing Tibet. She attended the Chinese Department of South-West Nationalities Institute in Chengdu where she studied Chinese literature, and was employed as an editor at Tibetan Literature, a Chinese-language journal based in Lhasa. With her talent, background and education, she was to have been one of the leading luminaries of China's "New Tibet." These plans changed in 2003, however, after Woeser published a compilation of 38 short travel stories called "Notes on Tibet," which deviated from the official line. Nine months after the book was published, it was banned, and Woeser was fired by her work unit and driven out of Tibet. The government confiscated her home and deprived her of health and retirement benefits.
The strict state censorship on literature that takes place today, she now believes, is an example of the same government-imposed controls over thought that were employed during the Cultural Revolution. She therefore decided to publish the book of photos under her real name on the 40th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution, but pragmatically chose to do so through a Taiwanese publisher. She and Wang now live in Beijing.
Wang, an author himself, was in Taipei last month to promote his new book. While there, he also took the opportunity to boost Woeser's three books, since she herself was not able to travel to the country.
Meanwhile, Tibetans living in Taiwan took to the streets of Taipei March 10 to commemorate the Tibetan uprising against China's occupation in 1959, the year when their spiritual leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama was driven into exile. Taiwanese human rights groups as well as several politicians took part in the march to show their support for a free Tibet. Human rights groups asked the ROC government to designate March 10 Tibet Day, and to dissolve the Cabinet-level Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission, which represents the ROC's claim of sovereignty over Tibet and Mongolia. Instead, the ROC government should respect the will of the people of Tibet to choose their own destiny, protesters urged.
Tsegyam Ngaba, head of the Tibet Religious Foundation of H.H. the Dalai Lama and de facto ambassador of Tibet's government-in-exile to Taiwan, said in a telephone interview that he greatly appreciated the sense of mission demonstrated by the publisher for supporting such books that, despite their importance to Tibetans, are unlikely to become bestsellers. He expressed his hope that the books, though they represent only a tiny portion of Tibet's plight, would allow Taiwanese people to learn more about Tibet than its religious aspects, which is inseparable from Tibet's overall situation.
This article is published in Taiwan Journal March 31, 2006
Sep 6, 2009
Pro-democracy activist speaks out
By June Tsai
Chinese pro-democracy activist Wang Dan is scheduled to teach at Taiwan’s National Chengchi University, one of the country’s top universities in the humanities and social sciences, in the fall semester, having received his Ph.D. in history from Harvard University. Wang, a student leader in the 1989 Tiananmen protest, offered his thoughts on the landmark event of 20 years ago and his views on cross-strait relations, as well as speaking on his recent plans and himself in an e-mail interview with Taiwan Today staff writer June Tsai.
Q: Your doctoral dissertation is a “comparative study of state violence between mainland China and Taiwan in the 1950s.” Why do you focus on the 1950s? What do you expect from your teaching at NCCU’s Graduate Institute of Taiwan History?
A: During the 1950s, the ruling parties on both sides of the Taiwan Strait faced similar crises in maintaining political control, and they adopted similar strategies in consolidating their regimes, which was by means of social fear. The ways they wielded state violence were different, yet both were characterized by totalitarianism that intruded deeply into the social sphere and the individual’s psychology. This comparative study thus aims to provide insight into the nature of totalitarian regimes.
In Taiwan, studies of the white-terror rule have made considerable progress, yet they still lack a comparative reference. I hope my own study can provide some new perspectives for this research, and would like to encourage students to take a broader approach to history.
Q: You were a student in love with literature and you write poetry. How did you become a political activist?
A: My political enlightenment was due to the overall social environment on the mainland during the 1980s. That was a decade full of idealism, and the major concern of the society at the time was political liberalization. This Zeitgeist wielded great influence on students. As a student at Beijing University, which has a history of liberal thinking and free discussion, my passion for public affairs was stimulated by campus life. While loving literature, I also turned my attention toward politics.
Q: Twenty years after the Tiananmen Square incident, what do you think about all that happened?
A: The significance of the 1989 Tiananmen protests can be summed up in three points. First of all, it was an enlightenment, an intellectual movement culminating in action. Led by students, but joined by all people from all walks of life, the protests helped spread the idea of democracy. In the 1980s, official documents still condemned democracy as something belonging to Western capitalism; yet in the 1990s, words such as “human rights” were written into China’s constitution.
Second, the protests prepared a generation for the next wave of the pro-democracy movement. Many participants from that year started to take the ideals of democracy and human rights as personal causes. Many civil rights lawyers in China today were protesters in 1989.
Third, the movement paved the way for China’s future democratization in terms of political culture and psychology. China has been a society in which individuals are overly dependent on the state for improvements in their lives. In some sense, the 1989 protests were a continuation of the traditional political culture. People pinned their hopes for reform and liberalization on the rulers’ good will. This dependent mentality prevents the development of a civil society and citizenship awareness in China. The government’s suppression crushed hopes and resulted in apathy toward politics, which has lasted until today.
The other side of the movement is that, from then on, there has evolved a distance between the individual and the state, which I think allows a civil society to form, although at great expense. After 1989, any call for political reform was totally suppressed.
Q: Can the apathy toward political affairs among the young generation be turned around?
A: The apathy, to a great extent, is not of their choice. For 20 years, the state’s control of information has prevented young people’s passion for politics from receiving intellectual resources and support for action. Moreover, the suppressive environment provides no soil for an enthusiasm for public affairs to grow. Thus, instead of considering their political apathy, we should deal with the root causes of this issue from, putting our efforts into changing the external conditions. Once the environment is changed, people’s desires for political reform will grow and prosper again. In Hong Kong, where there is freedom of speech, a historic number of young people participated in the memorial for the Tiananmen massacre. This is clear proof.
Q: Has China made any changes in its recent decades of economic achievement? In this context, what is the significance of Charter 08, the first human rights document drafted by the civil society in China?
A: There have been changes on the social level and big improvements economically; but in politics, nothing has really changed, and the Chinese government remains dictatorial. The Charter 08 campaign of last December is a renewed call for political and social reform. It represents an attempt by the civil society to confront the state. I believe there will be more such attempts in the future. And only when such attempts increase will they accumulate sufficient social strength to interact with the state. This is a process that takes time. For now, the government is still unwilling to make any positive response.
Q: How should the international community engage today’s China in this regard?
A: I believe engagement with China should not be conducted with only economics in mind. The world’s leaders should also be aware of the social injustice lying behind China’s economic development. If not, the international society will be caught off guard once the social crisis explodes.
Q: To what extent do you think China’s democratization, if it does happen, could be modeled on Taiwan’s experience?
A: Judging from the present situation, I don’t think Taiwan’s experience could be duplicated in China. The reasons are, first, the opposition in Taiwan has been accumulating political strength through local elections since the 1950s. There is no such possibility in China. Second, during the late period of Chiang Ching-kuo’s rule and throughout the Lee Teng-hui era, the ruling Kuomintang was willing to respond to the society’s demands for democratization, yet there is no sign of such responsiveness with China’s leadership.
Moreover, Taiwan’s small and medium-sized enterprises were in great part credited for its economic rise, whilst in China, the “middle class” is a fake, and is actually part of “bigwig capitalism.” It is therefore unlikely that China will move toward democratization based on the growth of a middle class with necessary riches and education.
The future of China’s democratization will have to rely on the development of its civil society. Only when a substantial socioeconomic power truly independent of the state develops amid the Chinese public can democratization be possible. The advance of the Internet offers great hopes in this regard, and many, including myself, are waiting with open eyes.
Q: What is your take on the current exchanges between mainland China and Taiwan, which are expanding around an economic pivot? What do they imply for the societies on both sides of the Taiwan Strait?
A: There are many issues you cannot solve solely by means of economics. The expanding cross-strait exchanges will have greater impact on Taiwan’s future than on that of China, since cross-strait affairs are not generally what concern Chinese people the most. However, closer ties have helped cool down some extremist nationalist hotheads. What worries me is that the present mode of exchange could serve to hide political and social issues from view, and hinder mutual understanding between peoples on both sides, for what we see of each other is not the true other.
For example, that democratization and its further consolidation in Taiwan necessarily involved localization is a historic reality. Yet I don’t think China’s government grasps this. Chinese decision makers on Taiwan-related affairs do not have a deep understanding of Taiwan, much less of its history. That is also why I chose to focus on Taiwan’s history in my study. Mutual understanding based on truth, and seeing the true other, is important for the future of the peoples on both sides.
Q: You have published several collections of poetry and essays in Taiwan, expressing your inner experiences since the 1990s. Do you still have that young soul for literature while engaging in political activism and academic study?
A: It is never a problem for me to roam between the world of lyrics and the world of reason.
Q: If you were able to make a choice, what would you hope to be?
A: If I had the choice, I wish I could be a travel journalist.
This article is published in Taiwan Today in Aug. 7, 2009.
Chinese pro-democracy activist Wang Dan is scheduled to teach at Taiwan’s National Chengchi University, one of the country’s top universities in the humanities and social sciences, in the fall semester, having received his Ph.D. in history from Harvard University. Wang, a student leader in the 1989 Tiananmen protest, offered his thoughts on the landmark event of 20 years ago and his views on cross-strait relations, as well as speaking on his recent plans and himself in an e-mail interview with Taiwan Today staff writer June Tsai.
Q: Your doctoral dissertation is a “comparative study of state violence between mainland China and Taiwan in the 1950s.” Why do you focus on the 1950s? What do you expect from your teaching at NCCU’s Graduate Institute of Taiwan History?
A: During the 1950s, the ruling parties on both sides of the Taiwan Strait faced similar crises in maintaining political control, and they adopted similar strategies in consolidating their regimes, which was by means of social fear. The ways they wielded state violence were different, yet both were characterized by totalitarianism that intruded deeply into the social sphere and the individual’s psychology. This comparative study thus aims to provide insight into the nature of totalitarian regimes.
In Taiwan, studies of the white-terror rule have made considerable progress, yet they still lack a comparative reference. I hope my own study can provide some new perspectives for this research, and would like to encourage students to take a broader approach to history.
Q: You were a student in love with literature and you write poetry. How did you become a political activist?
A: My political enlightenment was due to the overall social environment on the mainland during the 1980s. That was a decade full of idealism, and the major concern of the society at the time was political liberalization. This Zeitgeist wielded great influence on students. As a student at Beijing University, which has a history of liberal thinking and free discussion, my passion for public affairs was stimulated by campus life. While loving literature, I also turned my attention toward politics.
Q: Twenty years after the Tiananmen Square incident, what do you think about all that happened?
A: The significance of the 1989 Tiananmen protests can be summed up in three points. First of all, it was an enlightenment, an intellectual movement culminating in action. Led by students, but joined by all people from all walks of life, the protests helped spread the idea of democracy. In the 1980s, official documents still condemned democracy as something belonging to Western capitalism; yet in the 1990s, words such as “human rights” were written into China’s constitution.
Second, the protests prepared a generation for the next wave of the pro-democracy movement. Many participants from that year started to take the ideals of democracy and human rights as personal causes. Many civil rights lawyers in China today were protesters in 1989.
Third, the movement paved the way for China’s future democratization in terms of political culture and psychology. China has been a society in which individuals are overly dependent on the state for improvements in their lives. In some sense, the 1989 protests were a continuation of the traditional political culture. People pinned their hopes for reform and liberalization on the rulers’ good will. This dependent mentality prevents the development of a civil society and citizenship awareness in China. The government’s suppression crushed hopes and resulted in apathy toward politics, which has lasted until today.
The other side of the movement is that, from then on, there has evolved a distance between the individual and the state, which I think allows a civil society to form, although at great expense. After 1989, any call for political reform was totally suppressed.
Q: Can the apathy toward political affairs among the young generation be turned around?
A: The apathy, to a great extent, is not of their choice. For 20 years, the state’s control of information has prevented young people’s passion for politics from receiving intellectual resources and support for action. Moreover, the suppressive environment provides no soil for an enthusiasm for public affairs to grow. Thus, instead of considering their political apathy, we should deal with the root causes of this issue from, putting our efforts into changing the external conditions. Once the environment is changed, people’s desires for political reform will grow and prosper again. In Hong Kong, where there is freedom of speech, a historic number of young people participated in the memorial for the Tiananmen massacre. This is clear proof.
Q: Has China made any changes in its recent decades of economic achievement? In this context, what is the significance of Charter 08, the first human rights document drafted by the civil society in China?
A: There have been changes on the social level and big improvements economically; but in politics, nothing has really changed, and the Chinese government remains dictatorial. The Charter 08 campaign of last December is a renewed call for political and social reform. It represents an attempt by the civil society to confront the state. I believe there will be more such attempts in the future. And only when such attempts increase will they accumulate sufficient social strength to interact with the state. This is a process that takes time. For now, the government is still unwilling to make any positive response.
Q: How should the international community engage today’s China in this regard?
A: I believe engagement with China should not be conducted with only economics in mind. The world’s leaders should also be aware of the social injustice lying behind China’s economic development. If not, the international society will be caught off guard once the social crisis explodes.
Q: To what extent do you think China’s democratization, if it does happen, could be modeled on Taiwan’s experience?
A: Judging from the present situation, I don’t think Taiwan’s experience could be duplicated in China. The reasons are, first, the opposition in Taiwan has been accumulating political strength through local elections since the 1950s. There is no such possibility in China. Second, during the late period of Chiang Ching-kuo’s rule and throughout the Lee Teng-hui era, the ruling Kuomintang was willing to respond to the society’s demands for democratization, yet there is no sign of such responsiveness with China’s leadership.
Moreover, Taiwan’s small and medium-sized enterprises were in great part credited for its economic rise, whilst in China, the “middle class” is a fake, and is actually part of “bigwig capitalism.” It is therefore unlikely that China will move toward democratization based on the growth of a middle class with necessary riches and education.
The future of China’s democratization will have to rely on the development of its civil society. Only when a substantial socioeconomic power truly independent of the state develops amid the Chinese public can democratization be possible. The advance of the Internet offers great hopes in this regard, and many, including myself, are waiting with open eyes.
Q: What is your take on the current exchanges between mainland China and Taiwan, which are expanding around an economic pivot? What do they imply for the societies on both sides of the Taiwan Strait?
A: There are many issues you cannot solve solely by means of economics. The expanding cross-strait exchanges will have greater impact on Taiwan’s future than on that of China, since cross-strait affairs are not generally what concern Chinese people the most. However, closer ties have helped cool down some extremist nationalist hotheads. What worries me is that the present mode of exchange could serve to hide political and social issues from view, and hinder mutual understanding between peoples on both sides, for what we see of each other is not the true other.
For example, that democratization and its further consolidation in Taiwan necessarily involved localization is a historic reality. Yet I don’t think China’s government grasps this. Chinese decision makers on Taiwan-related affairs do not have a deep understanding of Taiwan, much less of its history. That is also why I chose to focus on Taiwan’s history in my study. Mutual understanding based on truth, and seeing the true other, is important for the future of the peoples on both sides.
Q: You have published several collections of poetry and essays in Taiwan, expressing your inner experiences since the 1990s. Do you still have that young soul for literature while engaging in political activism and academic study?
A: It is never a problem for me to roam between the world of lyrics and the world of reason.
Q: If you were able to make a choice, what would you hope to be?
A: If I had the choice, I wish I could be a travel journalist.
This article is published in Taiwan Today in Aug. 7, 2009.
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