Liberalism in Taiwan ft. Angelica Oung & Kwangyin Liu

The Neoliberal Podcast is made possible by supporters on our Patreon account. Patrons get access to exclusive bonus episodes, our sticker of the month club, and our community Slack. If you enjoy the podcast, please consider supporting the podcast. You can support us by going to patreon.com/NeoliberalProject. That's patreon.com/NeoliberalProject. Welcome everyone to another episode of the Neoliberal Podcast, part of the Progressive Policy Institute. I'm your host Jeremiah Johnson, and joining me this week is Angelica Ung. She's a reporter for the Taipei Times and the writer at the Substack Typology, which is a Substack about Taiwan and Taiwanese issues. Also joining us is Kuan Yin Liu, who is a climate and automotive reporter at Commonwealth Magazine in Taiwan. And today, what we're talking about is liberalism in Taiwan. What does it mean to be a liberal in Taiwan? What are the major political forces in Taiwan? And what should the rest of the world know about the issues that Taiwanese people care about? And the solutions that liberalism could provide for some of those issues? So Kuan Yin and Angelica, welcome to the show. Hello, hello. Hello, hi, Jeremiah and everyone. So I guess we'll just start off with some of the basics. The audience for this podcast is global in nature, and we do actually have many listeners in China and Taiwan, actually. But the majority are going to be western either Americans or Europeans. So for people who are not familiar with Taiwan, let's start with some of just the very basic facts. What are the major political parties in Taiwan and what are the dividing lines between those parties? Okay, so I guess I could start. So Angelica can interrupt me anytime. I should say that there used to be only one major political party, which was the KMT, Guomin Deng, or some people would refer to as the nationalist party. And there is another major party now, which emerged in the past two or three decades, which is called the Democratic Progressive Party, the DPP. So many people would understand them as the blue and the green party. And yeah, these are the two major political parties in Taiwan right now. There used to be more players, for example, the new party, but that was history. So I'll let Angelica fill in about the rest. Well, I have to say I'm so glad that Guomin is here to give you that history because I am a Taiwanese American. And I politically do consider myself much more American than Taiwanese. And the blue-green divide is very difficult for me to actually grapple with. Because the blue party, the KMT, was in charge for such a long time as a dictatorship. And I think that the two sides become very tribalized with a lot of animosity between the blue and the green. And for me, it's very hard to say to divide the two party on the traditional left-right axis. We would put most political parties on in the West. They are much more oriented in relation to their position to China. And I would agree with that. So the only, I would say the only dividing issue in Taiwanese politics is the attitude towards China. That issue just seems to dominate everything else. Like there might be slightly different opinions on what should we do with healthcare or what kind of train system should we build or housing policy. But really the most important thing is just foreign policy. How do we deal with China? Yeah, I would say so because the nationalist party, if people are familiar with modern Chinese history, they would probably know that the nationalist party used to rule the entire China. That was from the time between 1911 to 1938. So pretty short period of time they used to rule China. And that was the party that was established and led by Dr. Sun Yatsen. Some people might know. So after the Nationalist Party, the KMT, relocated to Taiwan, the supporters of KMT still helped the belief that yes, we're going to return to China one day. And actually my grandfather on my father's side was among the soldiers who retreated to Taiwan during the time of 1950s. So in my father was a career soldier actually. He retired from a military as a lieutenant colonel. So he grew up believing that we are Chinese. Like him and of course everybody in Taiwan, he believes that we're all Chinese and we should return to China one day. We would inevitably reunite with China one day. So he really is really representative of the blue thinking here. So yeah, I don't know what Angelica's family is like. Is there a generational divide in how Taiwanese people see themselves? Because you mentioned that your father and parts of your family may think, oh, we're Chinese, we're going to return to China one day either. We might our party might control China once again, but I've also read that increasingly young people in Taiwan see themselves as distinct from China that they identify as Taiwanese rather than Chinese. Do you think that that's something that is happening with a younger generation or is it more complicated than that? Well, I was just about to say that both Kuan Yin and my family originally came over from China after World War II. But there were a lot of people in Taiwan already by that point. And they were completely oppressed by the KMT as they came in. And this lay the ground word for a lot of bad feelings later on down the road. They would be, I guess the terminology would, you know, they would call themselves the Taiwanese and those of us who came afterwards after World War II called "White Shunnan" or, you know, from the mainlanders. But I think that difference is just getting completely erased. More and more people. It just doesn't matter anymore. I mean, we're all Taiwanese. And I think that is one of the reasons why KMT has been so fallen so far away from power now because increasingly there is a Taiwanese identity. So let's talk about what you mentioned there with the KMT because Taiwan is a liberal democracy. But it's still a very young liberal democracy. It has not been that way for very long. Can you explain the history after the KMT retreated from China? They set up an authoritarian government on Taiwan. But how did that authoritarian KMT government transition into a liberal democracy where the KMT willingly gave up power after they lost an election? I think Guanyin would be much better at describing this part of the world. There have been many theories. But the one I think that is most prominent was that it was indeed the late 1980s. And I think there had been already a lot of democratic movements. There have been activists who protested and some of them even fled to Japan or fled to the US because they were being prosecuted. Some of them were detained and jailed for inciting insurrections. And I think there came a time in the end of the 1980s. I'm not sure what was the real reason but what I heard was that Zhang Jingguo, who was the president at the time. And he was the son of the Changkai Shake, the general who lied KMT. So he willingly gave up power because of pressure from the US. Because at the time actually how Taiwan was able to prosper right after. defeat from the communists was because of assistance from the US. There have been a lot of resources, for example, food, oil, and a lot of raw materials, and as well as military defense protection and promises of that. So I think there have been this pressure from the US to push challenging goals to open up the system and to give up authoritarianism, mainly because maybe Jeremiah can answer this question too. Why would the US do that at the time? My theory was because at the time there was I think that the Cold War was still going on and the US needed an ally who is more democratic than authoritarian. So they could say that yes, we have this ally alliance of democratic countries to defend against the communist Russia and China. That's my theory. It is very interesting to see the US has had very mixed success with trying to pressure other countries to become more democratic. In some instances it seems to have worked and I don't want to give the US all the credit. Obviously all the Taiwanese people deserve most of the credit. But maybe US pressure played a part. You saw South Korea made a very similar transition where immediately after the Korean War, South Korea was a dictatorship and then slowly evolved. Today is a liberal democracy. But in other instances it hasn't always worked. The US foreign policy has obviously backfired in many famous cases. In the Middle East we were not able to promote democracy very well when some of the United States' leaders thought that we would be able to promote democracy very easily. So it's an interesting question. It's not something where there's no easy answer. I think democracy was fought for within Taiwan very strongly. And it wasn't an easy process where the KMT just yielded our power all at once. It was really fought for peace by peace. In fact, one of the funny Taiwanese stories you might have heard of from abroad are those stories of them fighting and brawling. And for a long time I didn't even know why they did that. Then I found out it was because there was this transition period when there were allowed to be in parliament. But the opposition party, the DPP, it was structured in such a way that they could never hold power. And it was very very frustrating and they started brawling as a physical expression of their frustration that structurally they would never be able to hold power, actual power even though they had seats in parliament. Unfortunately, this had a way of even after we fully democratized and after several successful transitions of power. So you really don't really have an excuse. This became almost a way of signaling to your most hardcore supporters in your party that you are taking issues seriously. So brawling became a chronic issue. And it wasn't just the DPP who brawled. The KMT started brawling as well. Yeah, because our Leigh Fire and our low-making unit is very much built for TV. I would say that's why a lot of people would hold up posters or or pick it or I think in one particular session when they were discussing they were actually debating over the import of US pork. There were lawmakers throwing inerts of pig on stage and that really made for some serious TV time. It makes me think about when the United States was a young democracy and you had a slave owning senator would walk into the Senate and beat another senator with his cane because that senator was an anti-slavery senator and they were literally like there were fights and violence in the US Senate back then. But I don't know, maybe it's maybe young democracies just have to have people fight in their Congress. I don't know. It's a process that's growing pains, I believe. So when we talk about growing pains one of the things I think about is the old generation who remembers a different style of government. Are there voters in the KMT or in the population who support the KMT that want a return to a more authoritarian style? I don't believe that. I don't believe that that is true but I think that the fact that they were in power as an authoritarian government for so long meant that their internal style. I mean a lot of the people still in charge are tremendously old and their young guard hasn't really been able to take power. So while nobody's seriously suggesting a return to authoritarianism it's been hard for them to pivot and grow as a party and it's also been hard for them to have a clean break with their past. I don't think there's really been proper reckoning of their legacy. That's an interesting question if there are people who are in favor going back to authoritarianism. I remember two years ago when there was the presidential election we had the KMT had a candidate, Han Goyu, who was a very pro, I would say pro-China as compared with Taiwan's pro-interpendence stance. At the time when Han Goyu was very popular actually my dad was a very strong supporter of his and people who supported Han Goyu would say that authoritarian terrorism isn't so bad if it helps to make money. Look at China even though China is a dictatorship it's people has been able to make money. So there was a time when the political campaigns were going on people would say that we don't mind authoritarianism as long as it helps as make money. But I think after the election campaigns are over we don't ever hear from these people again. One thing that's very interesting to me is that the KMT which is the nationalist anti-communist you know these are the people who literally fought a war with Mao and then had to retreat. But somehow the KMT ended up as the political party that is more pro-China these days. How did that happen? It's very I've always asked myself that question too. It's really hard to explain this transition. Well I can I can have a crack at it I guess. I feel like both the KMT and the Chinese government they at least agreed on one thing. They were Chinese. And the independent DPP for them they take China's not their problem it's not their home. Taiwan is their home and you know whether or not it's a matter of the KMT going back and taking over China obviously that became increasingly absurd as a belief. But there were still people who thought of China as as a motherland versus people who just didn't want anything to do with China at all. And that was a big separation. Is it almost like the the one China policy like are we going to keep pretending that there's one China or are we going to stop pretending that there's one China? Yeah I think that's the big division. I don't think even KMT can answer that question. I don't think they have decided on their position because I really think the conundrum here for the KMT is for them to evolve into a party that serves the people now. Because as long as they hold on to the Chinese identity it's almost like they're just living off the legacy that was created by Chen Khaixue and Sang Yanshan all these late predecessors and they have really failed to build an identity of their own. So to me it's another great danger for the Taiwanese liberal [BLANK_AUDIO] democracy is when our political system has one very strong political party. At the same time, we don't have a strong opposition party. So to me, that's another great danger, which we maybe can later come back to. I wonder because we've mentioned his name several times, and I'm probably going to pronounce it incorrectly. But Chang Kai-shek, who was the former president of the Republic of China of Taiwan, do people in Taiwan remember him fondly, or do they remember him as a brutal dictator or as a hero? What's the perception of him and how his history taught in Taiwan about him? I think the answers are going to be different. Every five years. It's a political issue. It's highly political because every five years you ask this question, people are going to give you different answers because people like I'm going to take again my father, for example, he would, I would not say that he loves Chang Kai-shek, but he would never speak foul of him. People of my father's generation, they grew up thinking he is a great leader, a liberator. But if you ask other people, they might say he's a oppressor, a brutal killer. So it really depends on who you ask. This is the highly divisive issue I would say. I can actually give you a very interesting example. So we see that now over a Europe and UK, people are becoming aware of the bronze statues of, for example, slave owners or dictators or people who were doing slave trading. People were becoming ashamed and they're taking the bronze statues down. So this movement took place a few years ago around Taiwan. There was a movement to take down Chang Kai-shek statues. So now these statues are all placed in some park in Taoyuan. That is the Mausoleum of Chang Kai-shek where he is allegedly buried. So these statues were just collected there. So if you are a fan of Chang Kai-shek, that's where you can go and admire these statues. But this tells you that there is a new movement now to kind of erase Chang Kai-shek from people's everyday life. I think there's a pretty clean dividing line when it comes to the age. I can't think of anybody under the age of 45 who would say that good things about Chang Kai-shek. Maybe there's some and I just don't know them. Even I think the people who I think of as more pro-blue, they wouldn't actively say nice things about Chang Kai-shek. The fact of the matter is, it is some terrible, terrible things. Things that we don't hold with as liberals. And I think that the KMT truly to become regularized as a political party that is, I think, to be a political party I can support. We need to make a clean break with Chang's legacy and positions themselves as a center-right party focusing on bread and butter issues. And I think that would be a way forward for them, but it's very hard for them to do that because the party is still tightly controlled by the old guard. I think the DPP party, when I first came to Taiwan, by the way, I was a COVID refugee, so I was actually in LA before COVID. When I first came back to Taiwan, I was super, super taken with the Taiwan administration. They're just a breath of fresh air compared to the KMT politician in terms of style. By the way, I feel like Taiwan government has some of the best government Twitter, public Twitter on the planet. They're really smart, really funny people. And they're fresh. You know, anti is a smart lady. And she goes on the YouTuber's shows and she's definitely somebody I would rather have a beer with than the former president of mine, Joe, let's say. But also, over time, I've seen weaknesses as a reporter, for instance, I cover energy policy. And I've seen weaknesses in terms of her energy transition policy and how that's going to be carried out. I believe that by turning her back on nuclear power, which by the way, is kind of like a DPP article of faith in nuclear power at bad. They are quite left in that way. I believe that she's setting Taiwan up for power crisis down the road or just much more fossil fuel use than is optimal. I also believe that she is tiptoeing into a possible defense crisis because one thing we should mention that Taiwan might have kind of forgot about China and decided to do its own thing and have its own identity. But China never, ever forgot about Taiwan. And China never stopped preparing to take Taiwan back. And it's just a matter of they weren't able to do it back then. But people forget, the US held out 25 years from recognizing Mao's government in China. And when Nixon went to China in 1972, it took seven long years before relations were actually normalized in 1979. And guess what the sticking point was? Yep, it was Taiwan. It was Taiwan, Taiwan, Taiwan. And the Chinese were insistent on this point and the US essentially caved on the point of Taiwan. And as outlining the three communicates, Washington's shift recognition to Beijing abrogated its defense pact with the KMT and promised ever since then to only have informal relations with Taiwan. And basically that was when the Washington committed to the one China framework and Taiwan was left in this diplomatic orphan status. We're definitely going to get to that in just a little bit. But before we ask the really hard questions about the future of Taiwan and dealing with China, I want to talk about something else you mentioned. Which is being liberal in Taiwan. So this is kind of a two part question. The first thing is, what does it mean to be a liberal in Taiwan? Because the word liberal can mean different things in different places. In Europe versus Latin America versus the United States, liberal can mean many different things. So I guess the first question is, what does liberal mean in Taiwan? Is that something that Taiwanese people would call themselves? And in general, what political or ideological labels do Taiwanese people give themselves? Is it just blue and green? Is it liberal? Is it conservative? What are the camps that people are divided into? Again, it's blue and green. And people in Taiwan don't really, I have never heard anyone identify themselves as liberals here. It's almost always only blue and green. But I myself identify as a liberal. I think there is an increasing number of people who identify with neither blue nor green. And I think these are the people who would identify themselves as liberals. Yeah, I think a lot of people can identify with that. They see how toxic the blue, green dynamic is. And I can give you an example of that. There are some policies that if you are the party in power, you would just try to push it through because you know it's the thing to do. If you're out of power, then you would try to sabotage it. Even if you came up with the idea to begin with, there's a lot of flip-flopping because you have all these issues that aren't really attached to your party's position because your party, the beginning of your party is an ideological right. It's tribal. And so you have the KMT. They started the third liquid natural gas receiving terminal in the 90s. And tying when she was opposition, you know, wanted to block it. said, oh no, this algorithm. something. And now the position's completely changed. She's in power. She's trying to pursue the third LNG terminal because she needs that for her energy transition policy. Meanwhile, the KMT was never cared about the environment in their entire existence. Somehow teamed up with some environmentalists and they're managing to pursue a referendum to block the third liquid natural gas terminal, which is so badly needed for our energy security. So they're basically willing to kick Taiwan's energy security in the ribs just to hurt the tying one's administration's energy transition policy. And this is what I see. A lot of flip-flopping, Tai herself did a lot of flip-flopping. She flip-flopped on Ractopamine pork, for instance. And it's just that when you don't, when you can't attach these issues to a party, it's generally not a good thing. Yeah, I believe these parties apart from their really different attitudes toward China. They really don't have core values. It's always if you occupy one side, I'm going to occupy another and explore an enemies. Yeah, and that's it. So every time you're in power, you try to get it done and the other party would try to obstruct. This reminds me of a mix of different American situations. Because back in the 1950s and 1960s, the Republican and Democratic parties in the United States were not very different ideologically. You had Republican conservatives, but you had Democratic conservatives from the south. You had liberals in both the Republican and Democratic parties. And they were different in some ways, but in a lot of ways, it was really more conservatives in the Republican and Democratic parties would fight liberals in the Republican and Democratic parties. And so it was interesting that it's not ideological, but it's like you've got that situation, but with the stubbornness of modern American politics. Very much so. Yeah. It's definitely a collegial. Of course, the next thing that we have to talk about is only logical. It's ancient Rome, where I wonder if you have any knowledge about the blues and the greens in ancient Rome? Have you heard of that before? No, no, I haven't. Fascinating. So the blues and the greens were chariot racing fans in ancient Rome, and they were responsible for huge riots, famous riots in ancient Rome, where these blues and greens would fight each other in the streets after chariot races. And the blue team was one famous group of chariots, and the green team was another group. And they would race each other, and then their supporters would kill each other and riot in the streets. And it makes me wonder that now you have blues and greens in Taiwan fighting each other in parliament. Well, let's not give our legislators any ideas. No. But yeah, some things, this is literally 2000 years ago. Wow, I know I do. It's. I do feel like there is a current of liberalism, that is almost detached from the parties, but Taiwan is liberal in a lot of ways. For instance, it's one of the best countries in Asia for working women. And also it's the first country in Asia that passed gay marriage. So let's talk about that then. If Taiwan is very liberal in certain ways, and if it's the first country in Asia to pass gay marriage, it has a thriving gay culture that you might not see, even in other rich countries, not just, you know, forget China for a second, but even in Japan or Korea, I don't think you have as much public LGBT presence as you might in Taiwan. And if it's better for working women in Taiwan, why is that? Why did that happen? I think we can take it one step at a time. First of all, the women working women with you. Actually, I read recently that it has a lot to do with the fact that Taiwan also have very tight labor markets. So it's not so much that patriarchy isn't here. It's more like because we needed the women as labor units. They were more accepted in the workplace. And eventually, you know, boss ladies and managers became very, very common and widely accepted. Not to say that there's no racism, but it's a lot better than say in Japan or Korea. And you also had these like smaller companies or family owned companies where there's just, it's just a lot more heterogeneous, which meant that there were more opportunities for women to come up as leaders. But they weren't liberated in the home from these very sexist expectations of what a good dollar in law should do, what a good mother should do. So that led to actually, I believe, the major reason for why Taiwan now has the lowest birth rate in the whole world. I believe it's something like 1.07 or 1.09 child per woman. It's super low indeed. Super low. Yeah. I think Jure Maya asked a very interesting question. Yeah. What gave rise to the liberal ideas, the liberal cultures that we see in Taiwan? So I have a few theories. I think because Taiwan, it's a very small place. We are very export oriented. Many businesses, so 98% of the businesses in Taiwan are small and medium enterprises. And many of them since the 1970s had to do business with other countries. So many of them were just, we always like to say that in the old days, the businessmen would just take a suitcase, hop on a plane, and they would land in the US and start selling things. I think for a long time, Taiwanese people have been exposed to a lot of different ideas from the West. And people are really susceptible to new ideas. We are very flexible. We adapt very quickly to new situations. So I think compared with Japan and Korea, there was not so much emphasis on upholding the traditional values like Confucius or traditional Chinese. I think maybe that was one of the reasons. So I don't know what Angelica has any different interpretation. Well, I think that for specifically gay marriage and the gay rights in general, it helped that the religion is not as ideological about homosexuality, imposing ideas about homosexuality across family lines. So if you were, a lot of my friends have a lot of problems coming out to their family because they'd still get a lot of pressure from within the family. But it's not like in the US where people would feel, you know, a cake shop owner will feel okay to judge their customers. There's more of an idea that within the family, yeah, sure, you you would put pressure on your kids not to be gay, but more tolerance if it's outside of the family. In a way, you can see that as analogous with the situation with the women where outside of the home in the workplace, they were given more freedom to work and be managers and even, you know, the president of Taiwan is an unmarried woman. And pet mom, proud pet mom, but within the family, they're still given so much pressure. And I think that's also true with homosexuality. People are more societies more liberal than many of the family units. It's very interesting because I also think about comparisons not just to the United States, but to some of the other Asian democracies like Japan and South Korea. And I wonder what the difference was just because, like South Korea has a lot of the same features. It's a relatively small country that had to export a lot, you know, influenced by Chinese culture, obviously. I wonder if it's simply because Korea has a lot more Christians, maybe than Taiwan does. And I know that like 25% of South Korea's Christians, so I wonder if that makes a difference or not. I bet it does because the main forces against gay marriage last time in Taiwan were the Christians. They were the ones that really were up in arms. Is it a significant percentage of the population as Christian? Not as anywhere like Korea. And also I think you have to remember Korea is dominated by the the tables, the giant chairs. corporations. So in that way, I think even though we walk quite a similar path, we are actually quite different societies and I would think just from what I hear the amount of conformities, a lot higher in South Korea. I think it has also, I think it has a lot to do with the fact that Taiwan is actually immigrant society. So this tiny place has seen different people. So at first it was the Austronesians who were here first and then you have the early immigrants coming from coastal provinces of China, from Guangdong and Fujian provinces. And then you have the nationalists and then there are a lot of migrant workers from Southeast Asia. So I think just the fact that it's a very hybrid and highly diverse society. Unlike Japan or Korea, which is very mono-ethnic societies, I think maybe that plays a role. That's true. Japan is one of the most mono-ethnic countries in the world and was for a long time. They have a few more immigrants now but for a long time, I think, if you went there in the 1990s, Japan was literally 99% Japanese. It was crazy. And I don't know, it's interesting because this is all very conservative thought that our culture is the best. We should never change our culture. Women should stay in the home. Gay people should be quiet or not exist. All of these are very conservative thoughts about our culture being the best culture it should never change. And maybe it's difficult to have that thought if you're a country of refugees who had defle and had to adapt. It's very difficult to have that thought about, well, we should never change because everybody knows that you've already changed. Yeah, that's true. In nature, we're all defendants of refugees, essentially. So I think adaptability and flexibility is really in our blood. Okay, so let's talk about the 1 billion pound gorilla that is standing over Taiwan all the time. Literally. It is the people's Republic of China, mainland China. Obviously, this is the most important political issue in Taiwan and probably has been forever and will continue to be for at least several decades more. Is there a particular way that Taiwanese liberals think Taiwan should deal with China or do you think that there's not really a liberal approach to this? There's just a smart approach to this. I take a geopolitical realist view of our situation and my point of view is cannot help but be informed by the fact that I am Taiwanese American. So I also look at the problem from an American point of view and as an American, how far would I go to defend Taiwan as Taiwanese? How much risk do I want to expose myself to? This is fundamentally really difficult situation because I think the people of Taiwan have kind of, I don't want to say kind of forgot about the threat of a Chinese invasion but they've just been under the sort of damn clease for such a long time. That they become tired, they become fatigued and they've also just been a lot more comfortable with declaring independence and so far of course China has not yet invaded. So I think there is this idea that the most liberal thing is for Taiwan to declare the maximum amount of independence because what's more illiberal than China, right? And I just think that needs to be tempered with some geopolitical realism about what China is likely to do and the amount that Taiwan can do to guarantee its freedom or to mitigate the risk to its freedom by ensuring of its defenses and allies. I think this is a very very difficult question to answer and I've actually thought about this a lot. So instead of anti-China or embracing China, I've always been thinking about a third way to go about it and there's this growing tendency in Taiwan that worries me is that everything, anything if it has to do with China, it must be bad. This to me is the very illiberal attitude. I think maybe a little bit even nationalistic. In my opinion, a liberal approach to China would be, I think China should be treated as any other country. Like we should treat China Chinese people, Chinese citizens or investments companies coming from China as any other companies or people coming from any other country. I don't think there should be any discriminatory ways to handle Chinese people or Chinese money because that's the only way we can say that, yes, we are a liberal democracy. We do things differently than communists. But I don't think my opinion would be very popular here. I have to say, first of all, I have to agree with Guanyin a little bit here first of all. I don't actually like the nationalism that has grown up in reaction to China's belligerence. I was just hard as a CCP sympathizer on Twitter very recently and people tried to get me de-platformed and unfortunately it's something that happens all the time now. If you say anything that's out of line with what's politically correct, you are hard as a CCP and a Chinese politician. To me that is just detestable and it's everything I hate about the Chinese government. But I don't think that we can just treat them like anybody else when they are literally threatening our survival as a country. I don't think we can trade with them like everybody else. I don't think the world should treat with them like any other country in the world because it's becoming very clear now. They don't think of themselves that way. They think of Taiwan as a piece of property. They are meaning to take back. By the way, the change in tone between a leader like Hu Jingtao who would say that, "Oh yeah, sure, China and Taiwan will eventually be reunited perhaps after a thousand years." And Xi Jinping, who's planning to get it done on his watch, is just so extreme to me. I think the average American doesn't understand necessarily how influential Xi is that he is probably the most important Chinese leader since Mao. I don't know. Would you agree with that? I would agree with that. He is also the one Chinese leader that has, I think, eliminated term limits. So yeah, he could rule forever. He lives forever and he's probably going to live forever. And look at the technology that he now has at his control, right? We're not just talking about military technology, but also within China now with the 5G IoT information revolution. You're basically able to technologically enforce thought control. So I don't think we're going to see distant coming from within China. The trend is the young people are now super cosmopolitan, very sophisticated consumers, but extremely scarierly patriotic. There's no, I think that Francis Fukuyama idea that countries will get rich and then they will want freedom. I don't think that's going to happen anymore. I think technology has killed that route. And I think for Taiwan to remain free as China starts to gain more military might, we need our allies. And it's hard because I identify as neoliberal, right? I identify as a liberal. And I want to trade. I want to have freedom of movement and people. I want to treat Chinese people like anybody else. But I don't think that's a possibility at some point. I think this is a question that you know, the realism needs to take on. I think this is a question that America needs to take on. The world needs to take on. What do we do with a very strong country that is not being a good actor? So it sounds like in Taiwan, there's essentially two camps here. At least among the, there's the KMT who might just want friendly relations with China period. But even among people who who are pro-independence, there's two different camps. There's the idealist who say we just want to be loud and proud and talk about how independent we are and you know, go to hell, CCP, and then there's the people who are not happy with the idealists. I think you called yourself a realist where you want Taiwan to remain independent. But you're almost frightened of making China angry because who knows what they might do. They're clearly not afraid of inflicting suffering on people. Is that an accurate representation like idealism versus realism? Yeah, I think so. And I think right now it's very easy for the idealist to have the upper hand. Luckily, I think the president's high, she's sensible. Well, it's very easy to be an idealist when all you have is a Twitter. Yeah, it's true. When you run the country, when you're in charge of the country, it's a lot harder. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs declares independence on Twitter about twice a month. But the president is sensible. So she's kept the flag. She hasn't changed the constitution. We've made little moves. They call themselves a cat warrior. Democrats. We've made little moves like make the Taiwan on the passport a little bit bigger. And all that has been fine. And I don't think that's going to really provoke China into war. But I think that China does see Taiwan slipping from its fingers in terms of the Taiwanese identity truly taking hold. And what I'm afraid of is that we are now, we don't know, right? We might be up against the timeline. She might have a plan. And maybe what we say now won't provoke him, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't be getting ready. In case history comes calling. So here's a question about that. If we've got all these young people who are very, very nationalistic and proud of being Taiwanese and they're loud, they're direct, they say, we are independent. Go to hell, Xi Jinping. Are they also ready to join the military? Are they as the youth very involved in the military or is military participation declining? Oh dear. This is where it's all messed up with history because the military as an institution is so deeply identified with the KMT as an institution that the young people who are the most likely to declare independence and be very anti-CCP. That's probably the last thing they want to do is to join the military plus the fact that it's just in general a bit of a dysfunctional organization. So I think we have a real problem. I don't think we have the level of preparedness militarily that we need to basically be backing up. I don't think we should call China's bluff until we are in a stronger place. Yeah, I think many people they have convinced themselves that yes, Americans will come to our rescue when push comes to shove and we have bought many advanced weapon systems from the US, we are protected. We have the seventh fleet. I think many people would just be comfortable with that, which is non-early enough. Well, this is the thing that really drives me crazy is that because of Taiwanese, you have to understand like America for decades have the strategy of strategic ambiguity, right? So that they would never, and there are good game theory reasons for this. They don't want to show their hand to the Chinese, right? So they'll never say they'll come to China's defense or not. And this makes sense, but from the point of view of Taiwanese people, this was absolutely crazy making, you know, to live under this sword of damacles. So when Trump came into power, he really handed out diplomatic favors like candy to the Taiwanese. He upgraded diplomatic relations quite significantly. His secretary of state Pompeo also did that and continues to do that. And there were very pro-Tiwanese, and the Taiwanese love that love Trump and were crazy about him. We were the most pro-Trump country, probably more pro-Trump than certainly the US. But the crazy thing was if you look at Michael Bolton's book, Trump liked to point the tip of one of his sharpies at the Resolute Desk and say, "This sharpie is here. This is Taiwan." And the Resolute Desk, this is China. Taiwan's like two feet from China. We're like 8,000 miles away. And they're invading. There isn't a thing we can do about it. So he was really ready to throw Taiwan under the bus. And by the Taiwanese people loved him anyhow because they were just so starved for any kind of diplomatic attention. And. So what you're telling me is that Trump is a Taiwanese teenager on Twitter. He's very loud, but he's not necessarily willing to fight. I would say it's more like Trump treats his Taiwanese fans exactly how he treats his American fans. He, you know, even as he is giving them all this attention and demagoguing them, he's not really serious about backing up his words with deeds. He's not actually helping them. And I actually think that the Joe Biden administration has been a lot, a lot better for Taiwan security. In terms of America's no longer like this is own wolf that everybody's back in and away from. America has quite successfully rallied the allies around the globe. They revive the quad as a alliance. And there's a feeling that the free world need to align against China because individually none of us are going to be strong enough. But together we can hold it together and stand up to the challenge. We can as the world's free people stand up to China and Taiwan is the front line of neoliberalism. It's interesting that you mentioned the quad. I think I think one of the great missteps of Chinese foreign policy recently is picking a fight with India over some dumb mountains in the Himalayas that if we're being honest, the mountains don't really mean anything. Like taking a couple miles of land, maybe there's some tiny, tiny benefit. But all it really did was make India's nationalists hate China a lot. And I think it was a really big blunder because I think it led India to be more committed to the idea of the quad. Being with America and what is it? Japan, India, Australia. I don't know. It's so interesting to see how that works out. I also think the idea of strategic ambiguity from the Americans is very interesting that you almost don't want to let China know. You don't want to antagonize them by saying we will definitely come to Taiwan's defense. But then you just kind of leave all your ships there and kind of wink at the Taiwanese people. It's actually very dangerous for Taiwan if America breaks that strategic ambiguity because it will change China's optimal attack behavior. So China might start with a blockade or other less full-on invasion tactics. That's to try and take Taiwan bloodlessly. This will give the United States some time to come to Taiwan's rescue. But if China knows for sure that the United States is going to come to Taiwan's rescue, that changes the whole game plan and they would launch with a full-scale invasion just in terms of what makes sense for them. Because for them failure would not be an option. They would have crippled their economy and they're standing in the world for nothing. So I think one reason why they haven't invaded yet is because they're being very careful about this because they don't want to miss. Are there other issues with China other than the simple military invasion scenario? Because Taiwan, despite having a great deal of conflict with China, still does a lot of things. There's a shared culture, there's a great deal of trade. So what are the other topics that come up other than just military invasion when Taiwanese people think about China? I think there's still a very large part of the Taiwanese business communities that continue to deal with China. But they are all very low profile now. So actually a lot of the Taiwanese businesses apart from the most famous ones like Foxconn, Peikotron, those you can. The ones that you can name, they all have manufacturing sites in China and probably also in India and all over the world. So many of them continue to deal with China. Many of them continue to make money from China. So I think the only difference now is that back in the days when Mindjou, the KMT, was in power, they were pretty vocal. They would continue to voice for closer collaboration between Taiwan and China. And they would try to shape policies. They would try to drive the government to offer more incentives to help them more in terms of business. But ever since the TPP is in power, the business communities in China have been really silent or silenced. I'm not sure which one. So maybe you'll look a bit of both. But there's still pretty much active, just under the radar. The interesting thing is trade with China actually have been increasing. Like it's now higher than under the Ma administration. So I don't think we've cut off trade with China by any means. But the interesting thing is we now have a bifurcated supply chain. There's more of a demand to manufacture outside of China. US clients are asking for things that are made outside of China. So to some extent, Taiwanese business people have come away well from the whole situation because they are in demand on both sides of this bifurcated supply chain. Now actually, TSMC and Pegatron and Taiwanese companies are actually now going to the US to do foreign direct investment, which I think is interesting. All right, so we've got just a little bit of time left. So I want to ask about some political issues in Taiwan outside of the China question. Obviously, mainland China is the biggest thing in Taiwanese politics. But there's like any other country, there's a lot of other issues. So we talked about how most of Taiwanese politics is centered around the blue-green divide. But there's a lot of other issues that I imagine impact everyday people. How is the economy doing? What is the transit system like? What is housing like? What are the social liberal policies that we need? So as a self-identified liberal in Taiwan, what are some issues that you think you'd like to see change in? What are the biggest issues outside of China that liberals should focus on? It's so interesting that you say that because I think I've surprised myself with how much guanin and I disagreed on this episode. Whereas we actually agree on so much that's outside of China. We're both liberals and we both like to see Taiwan to be a more liberal, dynamic society. We would like to see Taiwan as a more immigrants, become more multicultural. We'd like to see Taiwan be more free and in terms of all these different ways. I personally think that Taiwan will be a safer country if we had people from all over the world living here. I think it will also make our economy which is not doing badly but wage growth has been stagnant for the last 20 years while housing prices are out of control. That might make us feel more prosperous. I hate to say it right now in any Tier 1 city in China, you probably get better maternity policy, you probably get better wages, you probably get better labor policies, which is sad. It's interesting that the politics in Taiwan are really not defined by the traditional left and right division that you see so often in Western democracies. For example, in the US the Republicans would advocate for lower taxes and Democrats would maybe want higher taxes. In Taiwan, both the parties don't want to raise taxes because people really like low taxes here so tax is a non-issue and about transit systems. They don't have different opinions on that. I really think the most pressing issue as a liberal is really to raise taxes. If you compare Taiwan's income tax rate to other advanced economies, Taiwan is really high. The taxable income is only at 12% if that, so it's definitely lower than 12%. So compare with it and how much is that in the US? The top tax rate, like the highest one, Joe Biden wants to move it up to 39%. I think it might be lower than that right now, but I think Biden's plan, it's maybe 28%, was what Trump had and now Biden wants to move it up to 39%. The United States is known for being relatively low tax. The top rate, the rate for the highest income, in terms of tax to GDP, I can look that up real quick. I just looked it up. It's about 24% of US GDP is brought in as taxes. There's this huge problem for Taiwan, which none of the major parties are not willing to talk about it. The income tax rate in Taiwan is really low. The numbers are at 12%, and none of the politicians have been able to raise that. It's really low, I think it's among the lowest in advanced economies. If you compare it with the Scandinavian countries, European countries, which come very easily to 40%, 50%, even in the States, I think the average is 24%. The average percent is really low, and a lot of people don't pay taxes. They find all kinds of ways to avoid taxes. I think many people are growing in the planned economy era, when the government would be responsible for all infrastructure. All kinds of handouts from the government, while thinking they should be able to keep the majority of their wealth. That's just not going to be sustainable in the long run, because then you cannot build a very functional transportation system or infrastructure or support the people who are doing not so well. Economically, and let alone investing in the future. I really think the most pressing issue if Taiwan wants to prosper long run, we really have to raise income tax. That's so interesting, Gwenean. I actually didn't know myself that the income tax in Taiwan was that low. It's super low. I think we're talking about the total tax to GDP ratio. - The D.P. - The total judge. - So as of all Taiwan's GDP, only about 12% of it is collected as taxes, which is indeed that's very, very low compared to other rich countries. - But you'd be surprised how far that gets us. We have a national health insurance system that is really, really great for how little money we pay for it. - But going bankrupt. - But going bankrupt is going bankrupt for the past 10 years. - I was covering how for the Taipei Times in 2008 and it was going bankrupt. And so it is interesting how much, and we had a really great transportation system, the MRT system here in Taipei is fantastic. So in terms of what we've been able to get for those taxes, I guess we've got some quite good services. I think Taiwan can do better though, and I think there's a lot of graft that's going on that does cut down on how optimal our infrastructure is. I would love to move to a higher tax, higher transparency society. It is holding down Taiwan's growth if the government doesn't have enough resources to work with. - I totally agree. - Well, I think it sounds like a plan to me, more immigrants, a better government services and just more competent government services. Taiwan gets a lot of things right. I think their transportation system is very highly considered in many places, but you can always do better. So I-- - We have to talk about COVID, right? I at least for-- - Oh yeah, that's true. - That's true. - A few minutes. - I mean, it's true. You moved there because of COVID, and Taiwan has had one of the best COVID responses in the world. Why do you think that is? Is there a simple explanation? - We remember SARS and COVID is nothing but SARS to the return of the San nos SARS. And we remembered-- We didn't deal with SARS very well the first time around. And I think there is a competent bureaucratic core in Taiwan that is very vigilant. A Taiwanese deep state layer of you well that goes through the transitions of government. And I think at an institutional level, the hospital staff remembered they have a plan and they executed it. And I think the people remembered and they masked on and masking culture never went away. So I think that's all a huge part of it. And if I lose my ID card here in Taipei, the National ID card, which is basically the equivalent of the driver's license in the United States, I can get it replaced in literally 20 minutes. It's that efficient on that level. In fact, that became a problem because there was a sushi store promotion. - You're gonna talk about that. - For anybody named Sammon, they would give you all you can eat sushi and people started changing the name to Sammon. That's how efficient the bureaucratic-- - That's how liberal you are. - That's how liberal you are. - Wasn't there a story about someone who didn't realize that you can only do it three times and they didn't realize they were on their last time and so now they're stuck with Sammon? - The story made it to you, Jeremiah. - I think you wrote about this on your blog, I think I did. - Your story. - The Sammon guy, yeah. - Well, I mean, Taiwan certainly seems to do very well with the state capacity that they have. And if there's a case for giving anyone more government money, you'd want it to go to a government that seems to do pretty well with the money that it has. So maybe there's a case there for rising taxes. And I don't know, I wish you guys luck with dealing with that. I especially you, Angelica, because I know you are one of the new leaders of our neoliberal project type-a chapter. - Why yes, Jeremiah? - I have. It's going to be, now I realize it's not the first because there is a neoliberal Singapore, which makes sense. But I am. - I don't think the Singapore chapter is very active, though. - No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. - I don't think they've done much so. - We are going to put type-a on the map as the first active chapter of the neoliberal project in Asia. And I think for, yay. And for all the reasons that we talked about on this podcast, it's going to be a really useful, it's going to be a really useful entity for introducing the kind of ideas that break out of the Lou Green access. Because if you look at how much Guanian and I disagreed on things on the podcast, and if you actually look at how much we agreed on the agenda of the neoliberal project, we realize there will be a tremendous benefit to being able to call people to stand behind this agenda for more freedom, more economic prosperity, more functional governments. I think those are all things that the neoliberal project has done a very good job of outlining. - Well, I hope it puts Taiwan on the map, but just don't let China see the map. That's just Taiwan on the map. - It's tidied behind a great firewall. - Well, so the traditional last question, the final question that we always ask is, where should people go if they want to learn more? If they are really interested by what they've heard today, what should they go read? So I'll start first and just say that everyone should go read. Obviously, the publications you guys work for, which is the Taipei Times Commonwealth Magazine and the Substack Typology. All of those are great sources, but beyond those, is there anything else you would recommend as reading, and this can be books or newspapers or blogs, anything at all, for people who want to understand Taiwan or who want to keep up with Taiwanese news. - Right, so for people who are interested in following the everyday news in Taiwan, there is a website called Focus Taiwan. And I'm sorry, Angelica is the competitor of Taipei Times, but so Focus Taiwan is part of the central news agency. It's like the, it's a wire service. So Focus Taiwan, the good thing about that is they have, they have a lot of stories, they have a lot of reporters. So if you want to keep up with what's happening in Taiwan every day, that's a good place to go. But keep in mind that Focus Taiwan is run by a state-owned news agency. So it's, they're always conforming with the party line, so to speak. So that's one place people can go if they're interested in following news stories happening in Taiwan. - I would like to recommend Emily Wu's podcast "Taiwan Take". It's a super easy way to just get into Taiwan society and what's going on there. And I'd also like to recommend a blog post called "Taiwan Is a Civilization by the Economist and the Columnist Noah Smith". I think it's a really good sex sync take on the issues from outsider points of view, but I found it pretty fair. - All right, well, I hope that our listeners learned something today and I hope they walk away with some additional ways that they can follow with Taiwan if they need to. Angelica Kwang Yin, thank you so much for coming on the show today. - Thanks so much, Jeremiah. - Thank you, Jeremiah.