Reflections on the Ma-Wang Roadshow for KMT Chairman

Mayor Ma of Taipei and Wang jin-pyng, his opponent in the upcoming election for the KMT chairmanship, have taken their show on the road, traveling around the island to drum up support.

The Chinese language Liberty Times had a spot-on cartoon yesterday depicting the struggle as one between the Chinese KMT and the Taiwanese KMT. Wang is a native of the island, while Ma was born in Hong Kong and is supported by the die-hard mainlander crowd. Whoever wins the election is all but certain to be the candidate for President in 2008, as traditionally the Chairman of the party is also its Presidential candidate.

David over at jujuflop has already noted how this is actually quite an evolutionary election, one in which the KMT is parting ways with its past regardless of who wins. The old guard mainlanders born in China are giving way to the next generation, and Lien Chan, the previous chairman and loser in two Presidential contests, will probably be the last Chair born in China prior to 1949. This has caused considerable unease among the die-hard mainlanders, whose theology of return is being challenged by the reality of old age, death, and Taiwanese democracy.

It seems unlikely that the mainlander Old Guard will permit Wang to win, since Wang is a Taiwanese, and the Old Guard is still smarting from Lee Teng-hui's spectacular betrayal of the KMT. Lee, also a Taiwanese, was a long-time independence supporter who became Chairman of the KMT and President of Taiwan. When I worked for one of the pro-independence groups in Washington DC in the early 1990s there was considerable debate on Lee's actual position on independence, and there was a faction that thought he was a KMT spy. I never had any doubt after reading his award-winning PHD thesis in ag economics, published as Intersectoral Capital Flows in the Economic Development of Taiwan, 1895-1960. Read one way, the thesis is a coldly analytical account of how the two colonial governments of Taiwan, the Japanese and the KMT, utilized price differentials between the agricultural and industrial sectors to transfer capital from the agricultural sector to the industrial sector. Read another way, it is a stunning indictment of KMT agricultural and economic policy, showing how KMT economic policy was essentially a program of enriching the KMT and its cronies by squeezing money out of the Taiwanese.

Traditionally in Taiwan the government has been operated as a Leninist, one-party state. Hence, the government is essentially constructed so that it cannot operate unless the President is also the Chairman of his party. This structural feature of the system of one-party rule is one reason why the Chairmanship of the Party is such a key post. In US politics the Chairman of the Party is the supreme cheerleader and strategist for his party's candidate, but in Taiwan, the party Chairmanship has traditionally been the real source of the candidate's power. The DPP has been attempting to rectify that inherently Leninist structure both by separating the Presidency from the Chairmanship, and by instituting Constitutional reform. Those readers who read the mainlander screed ESWN posted to his blog last week, and the responses from myself and David at jujuflop, should reflect on this structural feature: one reason for the government's awkwardness and ineptitude was that it was never designed to operate as a democratic state, but instead, was erected to be merely the formal and visible skeleton of one-party rule. The DPP's proposals for constitutional reform are one attempt to address this problem.

UPDATE: The Taipei Times has an editorial on the election today, betting too on Mayor Ma. Interesting, the TT sees Ma as working on moderating his own stance on controversial issues involving the KMT:

"....Ma on the other hand has been something of a thorn in China's side on the erosion of democratic standards in Hong Kong and its human-rights situation in general. Ma, it appears, will want to tread a fine line between stressing Taiwan's Chineseness (during his terms as mayor he has been a tireless promoter of "mainland Chinese" cultural forms and activities) and his apparent dislike of the government and political system of contemporary China....

......

.....Ma seems ready to admit there are illegally acquired assets and that these assets should be restored to their rightful owners. He claimed that the KMT had a right to defend its legally acquired assets, which of course it does. But given the Control Yuan's findings and Ma's legal background, it will be interesting to see how he interprets what is "legally acquired."

UPDATE: Don't forget to read the comments below, as they disagree with my position.

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