Written by Brian Hioe.
Image credit: Taipeh Democracy Memorial Park by Zairon/ Wikimedia Commons, license: CC BY-SA 4.0.
Contemporary Taiwan is often hailed as a beacon of democracy in the region. Namely, Taiwan today holds free and fair elections after transitioning from its authoritarian past, which saw a history of one-party rule by the KMT. In various indexes of democracy, Taiwan usually scores highly regarding freedom of the press, speech, and expression.
Part of the reason why Taiwan scores highly in contemporary indexes of democracy may be to differentiate Taiwan from China at a time of rising tensions between Western powers and China, raising questions about whether this proves a way that the Cold War framing of “free China” has subtly made a comeback. The underlying pressure to differentiate Taiwan from China has always been a substrate of Taiwan’s modern politics, whether in the present or in authoritarian times.
Complicating and filling out our picture of Taiwan’s democratisation, then, it may prove useful to examine the regional political outlook for comparisons. Taiwan has increasingly attracted international attention because of the resilience of its democratic institutions.
By contrast, the praise heaped on Taiwan’s democracy and its technological sophistication occurred during democratic deterioration in other parts of Asia. For one, 2019 saw the outbreak of protests in Hong Kong, originally against an extradition bill that would have allowed for Hongkongers to be deported to China to face charges. This was seen as possibly allowing for the future political arraignment of Hongkongers in China. Though the bill was later withdrawn, the demands of the protest eventually shifted to broader calls for genuine universal suffrage.
Subsequently, early 2020 saw the outbreak of protests in Thailand against the monarchy. In particular, with the ouster of pro-democracy politicians in the 2014 military coup, late 2019 and early 2020 saw another wave of protest activity that expressed popular dissent against the military regime and the monarchy that worked hand-in-hand with it. This proved one of the few times in recent memory in which demonstrators openly defied Draconian lese majeste to criticise the institution of the monarchy itself directly.
Likewise, 2021 saw a military coup in Myanmar that overthrew the National League for Democracy-led (NLD) government and imprisoned its head of state, Aung San Suu Kyi. While this is not the first time that Myanmar has seen a military coup in contemporary history, this marked a blow to hopes for liberalisation under a power-sharing arrangement with the NLD. By now, the conflict has since devolved into a full-on civil war, with former NLD politicians establishing a government-in-exile known as the National Unity Government.
Comparatives between Taiwan and Hong Kong are not new, given that the danger to democratic freedoms in the two polities comes from China. It is less common to see comparisons between Taiwan and Southeast Asia countries. However, the comparative frameworks that emerge to make implicit or explicit comparisons legible are often shaped by global geopolitical developments.
Hong Kong, Thailand, and Myanmar all saw the deterioration of democratic institutions. This took place in the form of military coups in Thailand and Myanmar, while in Hong Kong, this occurred through the banning of pro-democracy politicians. Although the influence of the “China factor” is a common element visible in Taiwan and Hong Kong, this is less apparent in Thailand and Myanmar–even if pro-democracy forces sometimes frame China as backing the military juntas in these places.
We might turn next towards examining Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea. Political trends in these polities demonstrate the significant extent to which nostalgia for past authoritarian times as a time of greater social order and vigorous national prosperity, in line with strong economic growth, has come to the fore.
Appeals to past glories were implicit in the rise to power of political leaders who were children of former dictators. This was the case with the rise to power of Park Geun-hye in South Korea as president from 2013 to 2017, as a candidate of the Saenuri Party, before later being removed from office following impeachment in December 2016 on charges pertaining to abuse of power.
Specifically, Park was the daughter of former dictator Park Chung-hee, who ruled from 1961 to 1979 before his assassination. In a throwback to the authoritarian period, after Park’s ouster, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service admitted to interfering in elections to benefit Park.
In the Philippines, appeals to a past authoritarian era could be seen during the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte from 2016 to 2022, during which Duterte launched a wave of violent repression against critics in the guise of efforts to crack down on drug trafficking. Duterte was then succeeded in 2022 by “Bongbong” Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the son of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr., who ruled over the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. Both Duterte and Marcos Jr. campaigned to restore past national glory with a conservative framing.
Former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe was relatively open in his nostalgia for the period of the Japanese empire. His push to reinterpret Article 9 of the Japanese constitution to allow for the waging of war in the defence of allies was criticised domestically as an attempt to restore Japan’s past imperial glories.
In a time of rising US-China tensions, the “China factor” looms as an exogenous factor in domestic politics. In examining regional comparisons, it may be worth examining then why exactly Taiwan apparently has not seen a wave of nostalgia along the lines of the Philippines, South Korea, and Japan that resulted in the election of a conservative political leader. There is no shortage of politicking in Taiwan on the basis of appeals to history, particularly from the pan-Blue camp.
What proves of note, then, is how trends regarding national identification-and the externality of the “China factor” are often what prevented the KMT’s victory, despite mobilising on appeals to the authoritarian past. It may ultimately be identity trends vis-a-vis the “China factor” that serve to deter Taiwan away from authoritarian nostalgia. This proves an element of regional comparisons worth examining further in Taiwan.
Brian Hioe is one of the founding editors of New Bloom. He is a freelance journalist, as well as a translator. A New York native and Taiwanese-American, he has an MA in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University and graduated from New York University with majors in History, East Asian Studies, and English Literature. He was Democracy and Human Rights Service Fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy from 2017 to 2018 and is currently a non-resident fellow at the University of Nottingham’s Taiwan Studies Programme.
This article was published as part of a special issue on Taiwan in Transition.
