Chapter 2 Taiwan on the Global Stage
2.2 The Ideological Battle For Legitimacy
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The map shows how Taiwan is at a vital position to assist the U.S. in keeping Chinese forces within the first island chain.
2.2 The Ideological Battle For Legitimacy
Beyond strategic and tactical considerations, Taiwan’s partnership with the United States and opposition to China take on ideological dimensions of liberal democratic values emphasizing checks and balances and individual rights versus authoritarian values emphasizing collective well-being and state control. While these questions concerning values and political legitimacy may seem less important than raw material power comparisons between nations, they play a huge role in the lived experience of everyday people. Political values are the essential cleavage between Taiwan and China in terms of how their respective leaders claim political legitimacy, and this cleavage has foreign policy ramifications.
The United States is a country that prides itself on its democratic values and unabashedly seeks to spread those values to the world in the belief that doing so will make the world a safer place. This perspective also has deep implications for the international community. As Senator and 2020 presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren notes in a 2019 article in Foreign Affairs, “There’s a story Americans like to tell ourselves about how we built a liberal international order—one based on democratic principles, committed to civil and human rights, accountable to citizens, bound by the rule of law, and focused on economic prosperity for all” (Warren 2019).
Warren later argues that in upholding and further building this liberal international order, the United States should not shy away from defending those who advocate for democratic values in the face of pressure from repressive governments: “Around the
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world, we should aggressively promote transparency, call out kleptocracy, and combat the creeping influence of corruption. And we should stand with those who bravely fight for openness and pluralism in Moscow, Beijing, and beyond” (Warren 2019).
Since Taiwan’s democratization in the 1990s, it has come to represent a shining ideological victory for the U.S. over China, as the world now has a Chinese democracy, disproving the Chinese Communist Party’s argument that democracy and human rights are incompatible with Chinese culture. In touching on the ideological implications Taiwan’s democracy holds for China in his 2016 article, Ian Easton notes: “The CCP views Taiwan, which exists as a free and independent state that is officially called the Republic of China (ROC), as a grave threat to its grip on power. Taiwan is anathema to the PRC because it serves as a beacon of freedom for Chinese speaking people everywhere” (2).
Cédric Alviani, RSF’s Taipei bureau chief who I interviewed on March 26, 2019, echoed this sentiment:
Taiwan represents the best we could hope for the Chinese society because in a few decades Taiwan has managed to turn itself into a peaceful society that is very respectful of the human rights, of the rule of law, of the democratic process. So this is the blatant example that what the Chinese authorities say has no ground. President Xi Jinping likes to say that democracy cannot work in a Chinese culture context, that freedom of the press cannot apply in an Asian culture. All these things are obviously not correct, and Taiwan is the proof of this.
Taiwan, for its part, engages in democracy promotion as part of its foreign policy strategy. One example of this is the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, established in 2002 by Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and founded by the Taiwanese government.
The organization describes its own mandate on its website as follows: “Domestically,
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its commitment to human rights; internationally, the Foundation hopes to become a strong link in the world democratic network, joining forces with related organizations around the world” (TFD, Background).
Also on the organization’s website is an explanation of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy’s dedication to democratic values from the chairman, Su Jia-Chyuan: “In the near future, not only will we persist walking down on the road of democratic reforms, but also are willing to perform our duties and to share our valuable experiences to the international society without holding anything back in order to spread our democratic experiences and human rights ideas to every corner of the world” (Su).
One example of a democracy promotion activity put on by the foundation is a youth conference for young promoters of human rights from all around Asia called the Asia Young Leaders for Democracy program (AYLD). A web page explains: “Each year, young practitioners advocating for democracy or human rights across the countries in Asia are selected to participate in the AYLD which empowers them through lectures, discussions, and site visits” (TFD, What is the AYLD?).
The Taiwan Foundation for Democracy is proof that Taiwanese leaders take liberal democratic values seriously and consider it worthwhile to invest taxpayer money to try to spread and safeguard those values in the region.
Within the big-picture ideological struggle between China and liberal states like Taiwan and the U.S., NGOs play a critical role. Less attached to the interests of particular countries, NGOs are often seen as relatively free from conflicts of interest and therefore objective and trustworthy in setting global discourse. For Taiwan, NGOs play an even more important role than in most countries because of Taiwan’s global political
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An active push for enthusiastic engagement in international activities through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has surged as an alternative approach to the expansion of Taiwan’s international space.
NGOs have long been cherished as an avenue through which Taiwan can navigate the turbulence of globalization, the rapid revolution of information technology, and the high degrees of complexity and interdependence in numerous transnational and interconnected issue areas across which various powers and interests compound and compete. By complementing the role and function of states, NGOs are an international venue for the representation and articulation of Taiwan’s public interest in areas such as the promotion of human rights, environmental sustainability, local community infrastructure construction, public health advancement, agricultural assistance, and humanitarian reliefs. They also represent an important forum in which Taiwan can share its experiences, learn from the experiences of others, and develop networks of connections. (Lee 2012)
As will be discussed in detail in this thesis, I argue a similar point to Lee’s. I argue that Taiwan’s NGOs play an important role in granting it a way to influence organizations it does not have direct access to.