The Old Soldiers Just Won't Fade Away

The world has turned over many times since I took the oath on the plain at West Point, and the hopes and dreams have long since vanished, but I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barracks ballads of that day which proclaimed most proudly that old soldiers never die; they just fade away. -- Douglas MacArthur

One of the most divisive issues in Taiwan is one outsiders rarely hear about and Taiwanese themselves refrain from expressing opinions on, except around those they trust: Taiwan's system of military villages.

When the KMT split with the CCP and retreated to Taiwan, it brought with it hundreds of thousands of soldiers, a largely unskilled and semi-literate population with few economic prospects. The government set about constructing a system of military villages to house these soldiers, distributing them all over the island, in anticipation of that glorious day when they would retake the mainland. As the years rolled by and eroded this ideal from policy into theology, this population was largely left out of the economic miracle. It remains, however, a fierce supporter of the pan-Blue parties, the PFP and KMT.

The villages themselves are slowly disappearing (perhaps they will become tourist sites), being replaced by expensive high-rises built at government expense, ostensibly to house the dwindling population of military families, but in fact, now occupied by their descendents. For many native Taiwanese with roots that predate the arrival of the KMT and its dependents, the villages represent a parasitical population that they have supported for fifty years. A deep anger runs through the population at this perceived abuse of taxpayer funds. Taiwanese argue that the children of those families who now occupy those apartments, which they obtained free from the government, receive special treatment that is undeserved. Side by side with this anger, however, is also a recognition that the old soldiers had it especially tough, forced to leave their homes and live in penury in a foreign land.

Everyone recognizes, however, that the villages themselves had their own special culture:

The military villages - called jiancun in Mandarin Chinese - played a unique role in giving Chinese immigrants a foothold in postwar Taiwan.

Originally built as temporary bamboo-and-mud shelters while Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalist government plotted to recover China throughout the 1950s, the villages evolved into permanent communities of one- and two-story brick and cement homes when it became clear that the planned incursion would never take place.

The families who occupied these isolated pockets of mainland culture, ringed by bamboo fences, spoke provincial dialects different from the Taiwanese language. Military rations of rice, flour, and cooking oil were delivered directly to village homes, and some of the larger settlements initially had their own schools.

With their husbands frequently away on duty, village mothers, who were known for being tough, spent much of their time playing cards and cooking the regional specialties of their native provinces. It was a communal life: Villagers shared public bathrooms and children often shared a bed with a parent.

But mainlanders' communication with neighboring Taiwanese was limited. Locals viewed the villages as closed societies and were wary of their military affiliation. Intermarriage between mainland men and Taiwanese women eventually bridged the two communities in the 1960s.

Taiwan News reported today that funding for the villages remains a thorny issue, as Greens and Blues joust over the next round of funding for the military dependents.

In a vote 4-3, the committee passed a proposal to reconsider the bill after Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) joined DPP legislators in criticizing the amendment to the Act for Rebuilding Old Quarters for Military Dependents.

....

Speaking at a weekly meeting of the DPP Central Standing Committee, the party's highest power core, Su referred to the amendment as a pork barrel bill that will benefit only a small number of people while sacrificing the interests of most other people in society.

The amendment, if passed, will be a clear violation of the principle of social fairness and justice, as it was designed to benefit some 400,000-500,000 retired servicemen who retreated from China to Taiwan with the KMT government more than 50 years ago, and would cost the current DPP government an enormous amount of money, Su said.

....

Lin warned that the amendment, if passed, would mean an addition of NT$1,500 billion to the government's expenditures over the next few years. The money would be allocated to help 430,000 retired servicemen resolve their housing problems, even though many of them already own residences, he said.

Lin questioned the need for such legislation, considering the fact of the government's shortage of funds to resolve other more pressing problems in this society. He said many college students had called the DPP and suggested that the government use the money to lower their tuition fees or to provide school children from low-income families with free lunches.

Meanwhile, the Taiwan Society (composed of scholars supporting Taiwan's independence from China) issued a statement opposing the amendment, saying that such legislation would only escalate tensions between people of different ethnic backgrounds.

The society said it suspected that opposition parties of trying to use such legislation to encourage one group of people to confront another group of people who are not eligible for such benefits.

One reason that identity issues on Taiwan remain so divisive is, as this case illustrates, that they are money issues.

[Taiwan]