Empire of Lies

by Guy Sorman

  Chiang Kai-shek was not Mao Zedong. He may have been impervious to the demand for Taiwanese autonomy, but except for the single-China dogma, the Kuomintang had nothing in common with the Communist Party. Civil society in Taiwan was never destroyed. The country has always had a free-market economy, based on private ownership, trade, and enterprise. Artists are free to create, unencumbered by ideological compulsions and official aesthetic canons. The religious activities of the Buddhists, Daoists, and Christians were never in any danger. Several churches, especially the Presbyterian Church, worked actively for democracy without facing harassment. Chiang Kai-shek could hardly repress churches when he himself was Christian and an ally of the United States. The church in Taiwan played the same modernizing role that it did in South Korea and Hong Kong. It strived for social justice, provided succor to the poor, and promoted literacy and health care.

  Even when a dictatorship ruled Taiwanese society, it managed to preserve its autonomy and some degree of freedom. Was the passage from dictatorship to democracy the natural outcome of the generation of wealth? That’s what happened in South Korea. Yet the theory of an inevitable transition to democracy, once a certain per-capita income threshold has been achieved, does not hold in the case of Singapore, a prosperous China, which is still not democratic. Nor does it explain why India, a poor country, is a democracy. The truth is that the Taiwanese managed their transition successfully because of pressure from the United States. With the American government’s recognition of the Chinese Communist regime in 1976, the only way Taiwan could survive was by transforming herself into an exemplary democracy, a moral China versus a totalitarian one. Chiang Kai-shek’s son and successor was quick to grasp this. At the same time, the dictators in South Korea, too, realized that the United States would not support them against North Korea unless they came out clearly on the side of freedom.

  Another factor that proved decisive was the training that young Taiwanese received in the United States. Ever since the Sixties, the elite had begun to acquire a taste for democracy. Will the mainland Chinese get bitten by the same bug? It is hard to say, because most of them stay in the U.S., and the few who return are not old enough to assume political responsibility. In another twenty years, perhaps the cadres of the Communist Party will think of changing the Party from within. Many in China are counting on such a natural evolution, but, for the moment, it is only wishful thinking.

  The economic, social, and religious conditions of Taiwan cannot be compared with those of mainland China. The Chinese Communist Party has nothing in common with the Kuomintang. So far, no one is putting the least pressure on the Beijing government to give up its tyrannical ways. If anything, the opposite is true. In the name of international stability, the Chinese Communist Party and Western producers have forged a convenient de facto alliance to exploit Chinese rural labor. It was imperative for Taiwan and South Korea to adopt democracy, but the Chinese Communist Party is under no such compulsion. The happy metamorphosis of the Communist chrysalis into a pluralist butterfly seems improbable in Beijing.

  Asian values: a myth

  The Taiwanese feel that they have been shortchanged in their conversion to democracy. Western governments treat them like pariahs who don’t matter. Even the Vatican, which one would imagine to be a bastion of morality, is preparing to break diplomatic ties with Taipei for the sake of setting up an apostolic nuncio in Beijing. Celebrating mass in Beijing is reason enough, or so it seems, to make short shrift of human rights. The Taiwanese ask themselves what they have received in return for democracy. On the domestic front, there is a sense of disenchantment with politics. Corruption persists, particularly at election time, and when the members of the Taipei parliament don’t come to blows, they are trading insults with one another. Beijing television never misses an opportunity to telecast these shouting matches.

  Are the Taiwanese disappointed with democracy because they expected too much? The Chinese, brought up on Confucian values, tend to idealize their leaders, so perhaps the Taiwanese were not prepared to accept the mediocrity of democracy. “They will get used to it,” says Shih Ming-teh. “It is just a question of time.”

  Relatively unknown in the West, Shih Ming-teh is an icon in Asia. He belongs to the pantheon of freedom fighters that includes Aung San Su Ki in Myanmar, Benito Aquino in the Philippines, and Wei Jingsheng in China. He is for Taiwan what Nelson Mandela is for South Africa and Lech Walesa for Poland: a dissenter, a symbol, a destiny.

  When he was twenty, Shih Ming-teh was accused of conspiring against the Kuomintang dictatorship, tortured, and sent to jail. In fact, he was a student like any other who participated in the discussion groups of young people feeling the oppression of dictatorship. On his release, Shih Ming-teh was forty-nine. He left prison a changed man, having used his enforced leisure to educate himself. He became the symbol of Taiwanese resistance, the inspiration behind the Democratic Party that went on to dislodge the Kuomintang. I asked him the same question that I had asked Wei Jingsheng: How had he managed to survive the torture, the solitary confinement, and the hunger strikes? He said that his faith in Christianity proved helpful. But he left Catholicism for Protestantism, for the Catholic Church refused to support him, whereas the Presbyterians defended his cause. “Besides,” he says, “I prefer speaking to God directly, rather than through the priests, who know less than I do.” Shih Ming-teh held out because he “loves life.” Even in his most difficult moments, he never once doubted that life was good.

  When he was released, he decided to make the most of every moment. Unlike Mandela or Walesa, Shih Ming-teh did not take up any political office. Elegant, a bit of a dandy, and surrounded by a bevy of appreciative young women, he looks more like a film star than like a republican hero. When I tell him that he looks good at sixty-four, with his jet-black hair and unlined face, he laughs. Nineteen years in cold storage, he says, have preserved his appearance.

  But Shih Ming-teh is more than a flamboyant playboy. His struggle continues, though in a new form. “Democracy must be an exhilarating experience,” he says. The Taiwanese have won their freedom to enjoy it. It is important to talk loud and clear, say what you think, do all that was forbidden in the past and remains prohibited in the People’s Republic. It is also important to forgive. “I forgive you”: these were the first words that he uttered on his election as a legislator in 1995 to the representatives of the Kuomintang, once his persecutors, now his vanquished rivals.

  Does forgiveness come easy because he is a Christian? Shih Ming-teh finds my question silly. “Westerners are constantly harping on the relationship between history and culture, religion and democracy. In Asia, we want democracy because it works irrespective of where one comes from: the West, India, Japan, Korea.”

  During his exile in the United States, Wei Jingsheng had said the same thing about the People’s Republic. Asian democrats want democracy because it is efficient, though some in the West persist in the belief that democracy is not compatible with “Asian values.” When we talk of a cultural predisposition for democracy, we are falling into the hands of despots who tout Asian values, telling beatific Westerners that Orientals think differently. We would do well to heed the words of Shih Ming-teh and Wei Jingsheng. They know far better what is good for their fellow citizens.

  Shih Ming-teh does not deny that his countrymen are caught up in a climate of gloom and disappointment. They do not doubt the merit of democracy, but they do question its institutional framework. Taiwan blindly copied America’s presidential system, which is totally unsuited to local conditions. Taiwanese society is divided along ethnic lines, while in a mature democracy, public opinion is divided along ideological lines. Elections in Taiwan pit native Taiwanese against mainland Taiwanese. They may be best described as a kind of tribal war in which race is far more important than class. The Democratic Party, on the other hand, represents the interests of the native Taiwanese. Clamoring for independence from mainland China, it takes great care to preserve its folksy character.
The Kuomintang, on the other hand, flaunts its Chineseness, clinging to the idea of an eternal China. Such conflicting identities mean that only a parliamentary system can bring both parties to the negotiating table. The presidential form of governance has steered the country on a collision course.

  This is not an argument about technicalities. Democracy has failed in several countries that imported democratic institutions from the United States without taking into consideration local attitudes and issues. Democracy per se can’t be dissociated from the nature of the regime—presidential or parliamentary, federal or unitary. Wei Jingsheng believes that democracy in China can only be federal, while for Shih Ming-teh, it has to be parliamentary. In a parliamentary arrangement, ethnic belonging would take a backseat to economic and social issues. Does he think that Taiwan should have a Right and a Left? Shih Ming-teh bursts out laughing: “No one can be a leftist in Taiwan.” The left means socialism—in other words, communism or Beijing.

  Will the Republic of China fade away?

  Is there any democracy in the world whose very existence is as threatened as Taiwan’s? Yes, Israel—which is why so many Taiwanese identify with it. Israel’s enemies want to wipe it off the map; Beijing wants to annex Taiwan, not annihilate it. But the Taiwanese see no difference, living as they do under the constant threat of Chinese missiles pointing at them from Fujian Province, just 300 kilometers from their shores.

  Instead of worrying about the military threat to Taiwan and Asia, we need to examine the validity of Beijing’s claim. Legally, it is worth little. From the fifteenth century onward, Taiwan was gradually occupied by mainland Chinese before becoming a Japanese colony in 1895. In 1945, the Japanese ceded Taiwan to the government in Beijing. The question is, which government: the nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek, or the Communist Party of Mao Zedong that came to power four years later? In reality, Taiwan had been developing as an autonomous nation over the years. Chinese, yet with a distinct identity, it had never been ruled by Beijing. The Chinese demand for reunification thus rests more on symbolic than on legal grounds. There is the determination to settle scores with the Kuomintang army and to regain the art treasures of imperial China currently housed in a Taipei museum. There is also the megalomaniacal assertion of Communist power over Greater China that already encompasses the Tibetans and the Uigurs. Beijing’s claim to Taiwan, like its claim to Tibet and Xuijiang, is the expression of its desire for an empire. Had the Beijing regime not been communist, it would have probably ceased to be imperialist or looked for a more accommodating form of imperialism. An American- or a European Union—type of confederation, as suggested by the Chinese democrats, would abandon military threats in favor of civilized negotiation. Such a possibility, however, is remote.

  So how real is the Chinese threat? Undoubtedly, the People’s Army has the capacity to destroy Taiwan, but it can never conquer it. The Taiwanese pin their hopes on this distinction. Chinese missiles could devastate the island, yet the Chinese fleet would not be able to capture it. The Communist army is equally incapable of containing a people should it choose to rise against it. This is an optimistic view. The communists have no interest in destroying Taiwan because they could never colonize the island; all they can do is harass the Taiwanese, and their saber-rattling may wear down Taiwanese nerves but it can cause the Republic no real danger. Communist China is a virtual reality rather than a dangerous neighbor at the doorstep—and this attitude, which most of the Taiwanese hold, keeps them going.

  Such sanguine thinking will prevail only if Beijing remains rational. Currently, it is being cautious because it knows that an attack against Taiwan would strip Beijing’s China of all credibility. Having said this, we would do well to recall that the Communist government has not always behaved predictably. The Red Army launched military campaigns against India in 1962 and Vietnam in 1979 with the sole purpose of intimidating them. The Vietnam campaign was a fiasco. In the Year of the Rooster, Beijing’s army chief stated that in case of a conflict with Taiwan, he would not hesitate to paralyze the United States through a nuclear attack. How is one to read this statement? Those who believe in the rationality of the Communist Party say that growing Chinese provocation and military expenditure are not a cause for concern. China’s “modernization” of defenses is aimed solely at protecting the coastal regions where its economic activities are concentrated. The Chinese army’s arsenal of missiles is the modern-day Great Wall of China. Throughout China’s long history, the Wall has served as a protective rampart, nothing else. But who are the new barbarians China fears: the United States, or the democrats, the barbarians from within? After Tiananmen, Deng Xiaoping, who had ordered the massacre, thanked the army officers, calling them “the great steel wall of China.”

  There is another optimistic viewpoint. The Chinese army is acting provocatively only to get the world to take China seriously. Though China is a permanent member of the Security Council, its word does not carry much weight in international relations. The general impression is that unlike the United States, Europe, and Russia, it does not have the military might to back its position. As diplomacy and defending national interest are the main purposes of the Chinese army, it does not pose any serious threat.

  A reassuring analysis, indeed, but one that assumes that the army functions along rational lines. This has not always been the case, and no one can tell what will happen in the future. The analysis also overlooks the nature of the army, firmly established both at the country’s center and in the colonial periphery. The army is a powerful entity in its own right, not dependent on the Party. As in 1989, it continues to be the Communist regime’s ultimate protection against its citizens. Someday the Party may endanger the survival of the entire planet; for the moment, it is crushing its own citizens, the Chinese, the Tibetans, and the Uigurs. Fortunately, Japan and the United States are there to safeguard the freedom of the Taiwanese, but who is going to protect the Tibetans, the Uigurs, and the Chinese against their own army?

  Instead of worrying about China’s invading the free world—the danger is theoretical and remote—we should ask why the free world has chosen to support a communist-military complex that is holding 1.3 billion people hostage.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A Moral

  I had spent the first day of the Year of the Rooster with Wei Jingsheng, the exemplary democrat. On the last day, I was in Beijing, talking with China’s most popular novelist, Jiang Rong. For the second year running, his only novel, Wolf Totem, was the Number One bestseller, selling 14 million copies, of which 13 million were pirated. This high priest of subversion took ten years to write his 600-page magnum opus. Jiang Rong has been at loggerheads with the Party since his early youth. His pen name, “Barbarian from the North,” is deliberately provocative, a slighting of classical China. The only reason why his book has not been banned is its overwhelming success, which has forced the Party to take note of it. Jiang Rong does not give any interviews in China and never appears in the media.

  Wolves and dragons: two chinese totems

  Why has Wolf Totem received such widespread acclaim? At first glance, it appears to be a collection of stories about wolf hunting in the Mongolian steppes. Young Jiang had been sent there in the Sixties to complete his education among the masses. But the lessons he learned from his ten-year stint among the last of the Mongolian nomads were not those that the Party had in mind. There he came to know that there was not one but two Chinese civilizations: the nomadic (the official term is “barbarian”) civilization and the peasant one. Like their totem, the wolf, the nomads are “cunning, free, dignified, and independent.” The others, the “sheep,” are passive peasants trapped in an ideological prison, first Confucian and then Marxist. The totem of the Chinese peasant is the dragon, the mythical animal that brings rain vital for crops.

  On the basis of what he saw and experienced, Jiang constructed a literary epic, an Odyssey through China in which he rewrote her dual history. He tells us that when the Chinese behave like
wolves, China holds its head high; when they behave like sheep, it falls prey to the first barbarian invader, whether Western, Japanese, or Communist. The author, avowedly anti-Marxist, believes that the fate of a nation hangs on its culture, not on its economics.

  Is Jiang Rong a Chinese Solzhenitsyn? His book is both a legend about the wolves of the steppes and an exaltation of the wolf as a totem of freedom. It is a eulogy of the nomadic culture as against the sedentary peasant tradition. The clash between these two conceptions of man, the wolf and the dragon, is the true history of China, he says. This explains the author’s success, especially with young readers who willingly identify with the wolf.

  There are countless websites on this mythical battle, where eager readers use metaphorical allusions to get past the censors. Jiang Rong feels that the tremendous enthusiasm for Wolf Totem is because the Chinese have rediscovered their true nature. “The dormant wolf in the Chinese sheep has been aroused.” To change from a sheep into a wolf, all one has to do is discard the sheep’s garb of Confucianism and Marxism.