The Garden Path: Connecting Bike Routes To Campaign Trails

Like any other season, election season in Taiwan is marked by certain changes that clue us in that change is afoot. Fall has the changing of the leaves and Spring is a vibrant flurry of rebirth.

In Taiwan we don't need groundhogs, robins or Poor Richard to tell us election season is upon us. We simply need to look for the first awkward signs of a politician astride a bike. This past weekend we got our first indication that this is an election year. Like Bambi taking his first, unsure steps onto the ice, Taiwan's president Ma Ying-jiu gingerly made his wobbly way out on his bicycle in an electioneering photo-op thinly disguised as public service.

Unlike the play acting and costumed fantasy in which he hoped to indulge, Ma was not the spry yearling full of boundless energy, hope and possibility. Rather, the ROC's president looked feeble, wooden and old. And unlike his carefully groomed popular image of vitality and virility, the KMT chief looked ghoulishly pale and weak.

This less than flattering image of the ROC's former golden boy as doddering, impotent and out of touch does not come as a major surprise when Ma and his cohorts continue to belch policy and ideology that fits modern Taiwan about as well as a woolen Mao suit.

According to a report from the China Post:

Ma joined the biking trip yesterday morning to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Republic of China. He encouraged youths from around the globe to experience the beauty of Taiwan — the gorgeous scenery, delicacies and friendly people — on bike, saying that biking is a good way to discover Taiwan.

During his tenure as ROC president, Ma Ying-jiu has pursued an agenda that has primarily served corporate interests and the interests of the PRC at the expense of the environmental, economic and political interests of the Taiwanese people. Young people have felt the most alienated by rising inflation and stagnant earnings amid skyrocketing housing prices.

Moreover, Ma has led the country headlong into his reality distortion of a rabbit hole that is his own fixation and faith in his Chinese Nationalist ideology; the confluence of ethnic nationalism, racialism and historical fantasy that resembles the Cold War rhetoric spouted by the KMT Central Standing Committee during its heyday as the seat of power during Taiwan's four decades of authoritarian martial law--an era of which Ma was and still is an ardent defender.

Ma's ideology and his fear in its terminability is made clear by his frequent invocation of the "100 year" meme.

We have... and will undoubtedly continue to see the KMT drag out their beloved "centenary" prop during this election cycle capped by their curious denial of historical bifurcation that occurs whenever the slogan "Taiwan 100" is deployed.

It is evident that Taiwan and the ROC are mutually exclusive as one is the common name for the island and the other is the name of the state that extended its political domain over the island 66 years ago... at gunpoint.

To talk about "Taiwan-100" one would have to include Taiwan's experience as a Japanese colony with Viscount Kodama Gentaro and Goto Shimpei featuring more prominently than Sun Yat-sen. This is a fact that is often lost in the idealogical and slanted education system that is still structured as a colonial framework for transforming "backward" Taiwanese into "modern" Chinese and elevating the nationalist construction of the Han ethnic group onto the chauvinistic seat of hegemonic superiority... a charge that has often been leveled at Ma and his party.

The fact of the matter is that the KMT and the ROC are very close and for much of Taiwan's experience with them, they operated as a single party state. This is why we are now seeing such a drive to raise the ROC's profile, especially after 20 years of decline in Taiwan's popular nomenclature where simply "Taiwan" has supplanted "ROC" as the country's common name beginning at the dawn of the Democratic era in the 1980's when Taiwanese gained the space to reinterpret their own narratives.

Yes, Ma will continue these "ROC/Taiwan-100" events to do everything in his power to secure his exalted status as a "Descendent of the Dragon", but it will take a lot more than bike rides to breathe any more life and vitality into the tired political/cultural program he champions; a program that has already been subverted and transformed by Taiwanese while Ma was busy chasing a dragon.

Boycott ROC Centennial Cycling Events

This coming year we, as cyclists, and as residents of Taiwan, will be asked to participate in a number of cycling and other events as part of the centennial celebrations for the founding of the Republic of China by Sun Yat-sen in 1911.

Taiwan's government has already planned a number of events to coincide with this celebration and organizers are more eager than ever to promote these events with an eye on the centenary.

I would like to call on all cyclists in Taiwan to use this opportunity to conscientiously BOYCOTT these events.

Although the ROC's 100th birthday has given us a wonderful excuse to participate in some very attractive events, I also feel it is in our mutual interests to stand up for Taiwan as our mutual social and cultural commons and resist these events which, among other things, serve to further the political goals of an ideology that seeks to marginalize Taiwan in favor of a Chinese nationalist center that is located far away from our lives and only accessible to a few.

You may ask why you should care about this dispute or feel this is an issue of simple partisan politics in the often monochrome world seen through the lenses of either "green" or "blue".

The answer is simple.

Taiwan is the center of our lives. We live here. We work here. We raise our families here. We build meaningful relationships with our family, our neighbors, our friends, and our environment. As long as we consider Taiwan to be our shared center from which we all stand equidistant, then we shall all be able to enjoy a sense of equality with no single group's culture, ethnicity, class, political affiliation or religion taking precedent over anyone else's.

The Republic of China and its ideology of Chinese nationalism has been the sole possession of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) 73 of the past 100 years, as the KMT and the ROC were indelibly linked as a one-party state under martial law until internal and external forces pressured the KMT to begin a process of reluctant liberalization in 1988.

The Republic of China was founded when Taiwan was a Japanese colony and Taiwanese did not choose the Republic of China as their government. In fact, they rejected it in 1947.

Taiwanese who opposed its rule were either imprisoned or executed.

For most Taiwanese, the ROC starts in 1988 when martial law was lifted and for the first time Taiwanese were free to discuss and interpret their world and their identities.

Still, many people will call this ancient history and may even suggest that I am stirring the sediments of ethnic strife.

I disagree as any person of any ethnic background should support equality. Some people simply do not want to forfeit their advantage.

What I find even more repugnant about this whole ROC centennial business is that the ideals and ideology of the ROC were created to be a highly centralized state culture to be known as "Chinese culture". This construction, which I have continued to expound upon on this blog, has created and maintained an imbalance in Taiwan, in which those who identify closer with KMT party ideology are more equal. These values are reinforced through various points of contact with the state including; schools, government offices, farmers and fisherman's unions and other public spaces. Identification with this ideology has been deployed by some members of society to limit the social mobility of others and to ensure that access to power was limited to an ethnic and ideological elite with the intent to maintain power and protect and expand their personal fortunes.

More importantly, the goal of the Republic of China is, and has been, transformative in nature. It was constructed with the purpose in mind to transform a diverse and pluralistic population into a mono-culture, which was idealized as being ethnic Han. By conflating Han into Chinese and Chinese into "modern", the Chinese nationalists in both Taiwan and China initiated a civilizing project that has wrecked havoc on local cultures and led to greater strife.

The ROC was, and still is, a colonial project.

As long as the ROC continues to seek the establishment of a culture, as enshrined in its constitution, it is a threat to the rights of everyone on Taiwan. In many Taiwanese families the culture of one parent will be promoted over the other. Some Taiwanese will be more equal than others, while some people's culture and ethnicity will be degraded by a systemic partiality that weakens us all and locates our center in a land most of us have had little or no experience. Even if we did believe the myth that Taiwanese ancestors came from China, Taiwan has a growing number of children with one foreign born parent. There is no cultural space for these families. And then there are the indigenous peoples who are pressured to conform to these ROC ideals for greater social mobility.

I also feel that with such a close affiliation with the KMT, any event that seeks to promote the glories of the ROC in China will only serve to support the KMT by proxy in seeking an imaginary parity with China.

The KMT and its leaders are and have been focused on power and greed. They are also closely affiliated with the scourge of organized crime that has been hurting Taiwan for decades. These are the people who have become rich and powerful and thus are seeking to protect their fortunes and interests. These political elites and their patrons are the ones who seek to prevent all Taiwanese from standing up with strength.

As athletes, as residents, as families, as people... we have a moral obligation to boycott these events until the ROC either retreats to a position where all people are equal... or is totally abandoned for something better, inclusive and freely chosen by the people who live here and love this land.

We must not let ourselves be used as pawns to lend any endorsement to this party and this ROC state structure which makes our Taiwanese children fight a daily battle for their authenticity.

Boycott ROC 100!

Don't be naive and think your enthusiasm for cycling will not be portrayed by political actors as enthusiasm for their ROC and a Chinese Taiwan.

Here is a message I received that really prompted me to speak out on this issue:

100 years? Who says? This kind of event doesn't make me feel very enthusiastic. It actually makes me very upset. It makes me feel like we, as athletes, are being used to support Chinese nationalist ideology that only serves to marginalize us even more as proud Taiwanese.

I will be very wary of these "100 year anniversary" activities and how they will be used politically.

There wasn't a single Taiwanese to sign the ROC constitution. Not even in 1947. We didn't taste democratic freedom until 1988... and they want us to rally for the anniversary of a nation / constitution we were not allowed to know until very recently? For most of the ROC experience on Taiwan, beginning in 1945, only a few people could enjoy the privilege of being close to the ROC. To the rest of us, it was a promise that was never kept. Many of those in the seats of power right now worked very hard to keep us at arms length and maintain their privilege.

I am sure there are critics out there who will tell me not to think too much, that I am taking it too seriously, and that this is just about an athletic event. I would disagree. This is a very political exercise with a very political goal.

Before jumping into these events I will have to consult my conscience.

100年? 誰說的? 「建國百年單車活動」並沒有讓我感覺非常熱血。事實上，這項活動讓我非常生氣。它讓我覺得，政府在利用身為運動員的我們，灌輸中國民族主義的意識型態，而刻意淡化了我們以身為台灣人而感到驕傲的事實。

對於「中華民國一百年」的慶祝活動，我感到非常的擔憂與關切，尤其是這些活動是如何的在政治方面被操縱與被利用，更是不能忽視的重點。

在中華民國憲法簽訂之時，並沒有任何一個台灣人參與。即使是在1947年也沒有。我們到了1988年以後才嚐到所謂「自由民主」的果實，而現在我們卻要慶祝這一個我們到近期才「被允許」了解的國家？從1945年開始的「中華民國」在台灣，一直都只有極少數的人可以享受到「中華民國」的好處。對於大多數的我們而言，「中華民國」是一個從未實現的諾言。而目前掌握政權的那些人，他們正努力嘗試著將我們隔絕在外，以保持他們長久以來的特權與地位。

我很確定有人會批評我說，「你想太多啦！」，或是「建國百年單車活動只是一項單純的運動盛會！」。但是對我而言，我是以非常嚴肅的態度在看這一連串的「建國百年活動」。我完全不認同「建國百年單車活動只是一項單純的運動盛會」這樣的論述。我認為，這是一項帶有明顯「政治目的」之政治活動。

在參加這一連串的「百年建國活動」之前，我必須捫心自問是不是對得起自己的良知。

ADDED:

To better understand some of the ideological racialism and essentialism at play, check Ma Ying-jiu's New Year speech. Michael Turton does a wonderful job with his analysis. Here

With this frame I highly recommend looking back over my article on CommonWealth Magazine's piece on cycling and tourism with an eye on Ma's rhetoric. Here

I would also like to suggest a few sources for learning more about Taiwan's problematic post-cloniality along with the methods and ideology used by the KMT to maintain a society of ethnic strife with the aim of transforming Taiwanese into Chinese.

1) Stevan Harrell from the University of Washington sets the table in the introduction of Cultural Encounters on China's Ethnic Frontiers. By using Edward Said's framework for understanding the processes of coloniality, Harrell shifts the focus to Chinese nationalism.

2) In Rescuing History from The Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China, Presenjit Duara shows very clearly how ideas such as "history" and "culture" were constructed by Chinese nationalists to serve their political goals.

3) One of my favorite scholars is Frank Dikotter, who has several wonderful works on the topics of race and gender in China. Dikotter demonstrates how Chinese nationalism piggy-backed upon other popular movements at the time that favored social darwinism. Many of the early Nazi beliefs in a "master race" and biological determinism are still extant in Chinese nationalist ideology. Here is The Construction of Racial Identities in China and Japan.

4) Steven Phillips from Stanford has a marvelous book on the earliest contact between Chinese nationalists and Taiwanese. Between Assimilation and Independence is a gem in its ability to cut to the core of how Taiwanese were perceived by the ROC, and how the KMT injected ethnicity into the relationship between the citizen and the state.

Maybe I am being naive myself, but I think these book offer some valuable insight into understanding the incongruity of the ROC in Taiwan.

Update 2:

Associated Press Article on the problematic ROC.