TAICHUNG (Taiwan News) — Former Kaohsiung mayor and presidential candidate Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) is back, crisscrossing the country stumping for Kuomintang (KMT) candidates. He still draws crowds of fervent followers in the “Han army.”

We previously noted the bulk of his followers are middle-aged, and came of age during the late authoritarian era. Youths who grew up in the democratic era largely hate and fear his authoritarian tendencies, and Han’s support also drops off among those old enough to remember the earlier, more brutal period of the White Terror.

His campaign rallies featured Republic of China (ROC) flags, singalongs, and calls to “make big money” and “we’ll all get rich” — all intentionally reminiscent of the 1980s. Late authoritarian era nostalgia is Han’s calling card.

Why are they so nostalgic for the later authoritarian era? This is selective and viewed through rose-tinted glasses, and there is a curious lack of recollection among many Taiwanese for what life was really like back then.

Essentially, back then, as long as you kept out of politics and had enough money to bribe the right person, you could do anything. It was a largely lawless period, at least in the 1980s.

Late authoritarian era positives

There are many things that this nostalgic cohort do remember, however. At the core was a profound and overwhelming sense of optimism. It was infectious and intoxicating.

This was partially demographic, since a much higher percentage of the population was young and forward-looking. They brought hope and energy in levels not seen today.

Crucially, these were economic boom times. Starting around 1960, Taiwan’s economy skyrocketed, and through the end of the 1980s it wasn’t unusual for annual GDP growth to reach double digits.

That meant that almost every year take-home pay increased, and sometimes double-digit raises were expected. When I arrived in 1988, barely 19 years old, this had been the norm for nearly three decades. People just took it for granted, and never thought it would stop.

From farm to table

Today’s younger generations, which have grown up in an era of wage stagnation that started around 1999, have an entirely different mindset. They aren’t so hopeful, and don’t have the expectations of their parents.

People were getting rich by the bushel. Former farmers now had factories on their land, or if they lived near Taipei, got rich selling their land to developers.

With virtually no barriers to entry, because a little bribery made any regulations go away, anyone with a good idea and someone to borrow the seed money from, could go into business. Everyone, it seemed, had a hustle.

In Hemei Township, in Changhua County, where I moved after living in Taipei my first year, many of the homes doubled as mini-factories. When real factories couldn’t handle all their orders, they’d subcontract labor to people in the neighborhood.

Walking down the street sometimes, on the first floor of many homes, you would see grandmothers and the older kids putting together paper cocktail umbrellas, or assembling widgets of all kinds.

Bucket houses, which are illegal gambling rings that use real price moves in the commodity and stock markets to make their bets, proliferated. They held lavish parties at discos and ordered XO Cognac by the container load.

Taiwanese were proud at the time that it was the second-largest XO market in the world after France. It wasn’t sipped and savored like the French did, it was a symbol of conspicuous consumption, and with a "gan beni" chugged down by the shot.

The world changed

Then that world ended. Growth moderated, wages stagnated, and opportunities left for China. People got fed up with toxic pollution and safety lapses and could finally elect politicians who could do something about it.

For a generation raised on constant growth and opportunity, this was a harsh turn of events. Some have never really recovered, a theme that the band EggPlantEgg explores in some of their videos.

Many working-class individuals grew up thinking they would eventually be able to move beyond it, or at the very least be making enough money for a good life for themselves and their children. Wage stagnation and the transplantation of many working-class jobs to China have left them feeling stuck and disillusioned.

You are likely not aware of this, but at least in this part of the country, the most common type of murder follows an almost exact script. A working-class man in his 50s or 60s is drinking with his “friend” and the pair get into an argument and the man stabs his “friend” with a fruit knife.

They’re always men of that generation, in a rural or working-class area, always frustrated, angry, and eventually crack. They are, of course, the most extreme cases. But they’re not alone, many of that generation feel robbed of the opportunity and hope they’d been raised to expect. 

They feel robbed of the opportunity and hope they’d been raised to expect. So they voted for Han Kuo-yu because they wanted their hope back.