ON May 30, 2018, PRC’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) spokesman An Fengshan asserted that mainland China and Taiwan have entered a phase of competition for better system and talents since CCP’s (Chinese Communist Party) 19th Party Congress last November.
Mr An quoted Taiwan’s public opinion, stating that (Taiwan’s political parties) KMT, DPP and CCP should join a contest of meritocracy, showing which party offers Taiwanese with more choices.
The key for any political party to appeal to people, Mr An went on to say, “is whether it persistently strives to achieve people’s aspiration and pursuit for better lives, whether it helps its subjects gain substantive benefits, whether it provides better opportunities to prosper, and the party should be able to bring people a better vision, hope and future.
“If these conditions are not met, anything else is unrealistic. Subjects will not be deceived by those merely chanting slogans such as “loving Taiwan” or claiming “universal values”.
Many argue that China’s system is unattractive. Sun Kuohsiang, a former foreign service official of Taiwan, indicated in Liberty Times on June 2 that according to a survey in 2016, only 7.7% of respondents in China and 12 countries in Asia agreed that the “China Model” is a fine example to be followed.
Even Chinese themselves prefer a system of freedom, democracy, rule of law and human rights.
Did you still remember, the image of a plain Chinese who stopped a column of tanks during the Tiananmen massacre in 1989 compels one to reflect how China manages to gain confidence over the past 29 years.
China’s economy quadruples under a “state capitalism” using subsidies, causing corruption, resulting in predatory economics, sustained by a technological totalitarianism monitoring its people and turning them into subjects.
TAO claims to offer Taiwanese people with substantial benefits, development opportunities and brighter visions.
However, these promises have two prerequisites.
First, death is the ultimate answer to any attempts to overthrow CCP.
Stein Ringen, a Norwegian scholar, points out that the Tiananmen massacre not only destroyed the corporeal lives of Chinese protestors but killed the hope itself for surviving Chinese.
Since then, Chinese are deprived of hopes for freedom as a way of life.
The impact lasts till today. Chinese society is filled with materialistic nihilism, cynicism and indifference.
In the novel Nineteen Eighty-four by George Orwell, the Party, Ingsoc, makes it clear to the whole country that any traitors will be executed after being tortured.
As a result, dissidents become cynical to “hate purity, hate goodness and want everyone to be corrupt to the bones” in their own minds.
This is a metaphor of CCP’s ruling today.
Secondly, a ubiquitous surveillance system monitors. CCP carried out the “Golden Shield” Project in 1998, and introduced the “Planning Outline for the Construction of a Social Credit System (2014-2020)” in 2014.
Under the system, people living and organizations operating in China, and all local governments, will be given scores based on their behaviors, including political ideology, criminal record, social circle, and financial behavior.
Beijing also exports surveillance technologies to Belarus, Cambodia, Ecuador and other countries in “Belt and Road initiatives”.
As Chinese officials pointed out, “IT covers China’s national interests wherever they are found”.
Under such “technological totalitarianism”, people are reduced to subjects “reified” by the Party-state.
Their prospects and hopes are patronage of the Party-state.
People are even deprived of memories (such as memories of what really happened in Tiananmen Square in June 1989).
Taiwan deserves the world’s support as a safe haven for Chinese people to become modern citizens.
In recent years, protests of different causes in Taiwan are popular, even to the extent of impeding Taiwan’s economic competitiveness.
Nevertheless, Taiwan’s people are not “subjects” but “citizens” with natural “rights” who refuse to be reified by a Party state.
One of the rights that Taiwan citizens have enjoyed and exercised is to change national governments with their votes.
Based on the universal values of rights of life, property, freedom, equality and pursuit of happiness, Taiwan citizens can not only reminisce what actually happened in history, but pursue transitional justice.
These universal values are exercised in Taiwan, now a safe haven not only for contemporary Han Chinese, but for aboriginal Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Indonesians, and their offspring.
As of June 4, 2018, Taiwan government has expressed willingness to obtain adequacy certification of EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), living up to the highest standard of protection of privacy.
The very existence of Taiwan citizens is a thorny reminder for CCP that there is a de-facto check and balance for its Orwellian dictatorship.
For the sake of Chinese in particular and humanity in general, Taiwan deserves the world’s attention and guardianship.
