Cindy Sui just published an excellent article in The Asia Times looking at the different impressions of recently departed Taiwanese President Chen Sui-Bian's possible legacy amongst the Taiwanese polulace. It takes a careful look at the talents and contradictions that defined the man throughout his time in power, and finds that Taiwanese people, at least at this early date, view his time in office as a mixed-bag of historic accomplishments and broken promises. Sadly, the one success that both critics and fans have attributed to him, creating a government with zero-tolerance for in-house corruption, is about to be sullied by some shocking events including the discovery of his son-in-law's insider trading, his wife being put on trial for embezzlement, and accusations that he faked an assassination attempt on himself in an attempt to gain sympathy votes for the 2004 election.
Regardless of how history comes to view Chen, it's incredible to think how different the Taiwan-China world (or China world, depending on your politics) is from the world we imagined/feared back during his early days in power. Sure, the future is generally impossible to predict accurately, but when it comes to divergence from expectations, there are degrees of seperation. When the U.S. invaded Iraq, for example, some predicted that it would ensure U.S. security for all eternity and provide Bush Jr. a spot in the ranks of presidents with infinitely high approval ratings, while others were sure the opposite would occur. Suffice to say, while no one person on either side may have been absolutely right about everything, only one of those groups was really in the ballpark.
When it came to this whole Chen business, however, pretty much all of us were way off. I remember sitting in a classroom at the People's University of China in Beijing back in the summer of 2004, joining American and Chinese students arguing about the probable events of 2008. This was around the time that Beijing Olympics were ceasing to be a date in the distant future and becoming a fast-encroaching, city-renovating reality. While we disagreed on many things, everyone seemed to believe that something drastic was going to happen. We were primarily arguing about who was going to take the leap first - China or Taiwan - and what the sensible act of recourse would be for the other side. When we talked about other issues (Tibet, the American public's perception of the games) it was always in the context of how Chen and the PRC would interact.
Fast-forward 4 years and not a lot of that makes sense anymore. Chen never made that "independence" announcement of his. (Oh..) The KMT is back in power. (Huh?) And China kind of digs them. (What?) And Tibet is the one drawing attention away from the games. (Those guys?) But then there was that accidental publicity coup with the earthquake, which came right after that cyclone (Natural disasters? Those only happen in India and places that end in -istan. Who's FEMA? What's a "Live Strong" bracelet?)
At the time we didn't know any of this would happen. We were focused on one thing: The Status Quo. Nobody wanted Taiwan or China to do anything to change the status-quo. Lots of smart people wrote lots of long papers on the need to avoid revisionism. It was very important that nothing changed. Of course we were all imagining that if the change came, it'd be big and it'd be drastic.
This was also an era when the force seen to be countering Chen's personal Taiwanese nationalism was a grassroots nationalism on the mainland. There were anti-Japanese protests and anti-American protests, but these were inextricably tied up with the Taiwan, the clear and present issue. These were two big, unstoppable forces that were about to collide, and would surely make a big mess in the process.
In retrospect, I think we all thought it would depend on who broke first: Chen or China. We didn't see anyone else in the equation. But in the end, it was a different player - the Taiwanese people - who made a move. Back then we believed that people on the island were kind of ambivalent about the whole China thing, they just wanted a fresh face that would stamp out corruption and keep economic growth on an upward path. Even those who didn't agree with his nationalist stance on independence per se might be won over by his efforts at localism, such as his use of taiyu and the promotion of hakka.
But things worked out quite differently. True, China played a role by sitting back and waiting to see how things worked out, but in the end it was the Taiwanese who got fed up of the whole thing. The economy wasn't getting any better, and many blamed Chen for denying Taiwan access to China's growing economy (a charge that may be unfair, in retrospect) and spending money on ridiculous personal projects like eliminating Chinese names from street signs. Chen's one unshakable accomplishment - stamping out corruption - has now been undermined by these financial scandals involving his family members.
Meanwhile, the once hated KMT ( and hated by both Taiwanese and mainlanders alike) was holding historic meetings with the PRC, despite not being in power. They soon took the legislature back from Chen's DDP, however, and the KMT's Ma Ying Jeou beat out the DPP's candidate in this year's presidential elections. The party that got the rest of the world involved in this business by escaping to Taiwan (and not being swiftly thrown in the ocean) in the first place is back in power, and seems far more moderate and sensible than Chen to both the PRC and the Taiwanese populace. (Or at least the minimum-majority)
As Sui points out, Chen has left an odd legacy. Instead of provoking an all-out breach with the mainland, Chen's policies have probably made the mainland more willing to compromise when it is dealing with other, less-belligerent representatives of the island. In Taiwan this "theory of relativity" has worked in the opposite way, as Chen's extreme positions have accustomed the middle to a certain sense of nationalism, one felt a little more strongly now than in the era before Chen took power.
Situations like the Tibet protests and the Sichuan Earthquake were impossible to predict, despite their enormous impact. With Chen, however, maybe the signs were there if we had chosen to look for them. Personally I was too busy reading papers about 2008 doomsday scenarios (and listening to KMT-hating-70%-hakka-by-blood friends) to realize that there are other major actors besides political parties and presidents (human populations, for example). There's still plenty of time for sh@t to go down - it ain't August yet - but it looks like Taiwanese and mainlanders alike will be watching the mind games. (Alright, seriously, this has moved even further down on Google. What the f@ck?)
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