TAICHUNG (Taiwan News) — Taiwan’s transitional justice process has two very significant differences from the processes that have played out in other countries. The removal of authoritarian symbols has been slow-walked, and the issue of addressing the perpetrators of human rights crimes has been entirely ignored.
To be sure, there have been important advances and steps taken. In part one of this series, we examined the history of the process through to the early years of the Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) administration, and in part two, we examined what has been accomplished, and what has not during her time in office.
The important accomplishments that transitional justice has accomplished in Taiwan have been the politically easy ones. The remaining ones are much more contentious.
President Tsai is notable for very carefully expending her political capital. The remaining issues would require spending far more political capital, and she preferred spending that political capital on other issues she prioritized.
Transitional justice appears to be an issue that a small group cares about a lot and a larger group cares about a little. Every year someone will splash some red paint on a statue of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) somewhere in the country, but these cases are relatively isolated.
Polling is sparse on the subject. In a 2016 poll, 76.3% felt that transitional justice was incomplete, indicating that it was an issue with the public.
However, in another 2016 poll, only 13.9% picked this issue as a top priority, and in a 2022 poll, only 44.97% were aware that Taiwan was going through the process and only 42.28% had heard of the Transitional Justice Commission (TJC). These polls suggest a public that is broadly for it but is not paying much attention or prioritizing the issue.
Why is it not a bigger issue?
Why are the Taiwanese not more angry about the 228 Massacre and the White Terror? Certainly, other countries have been more angry, and to this day, notable numbers of Koreans and Chinese still bitterly hate the Japanese for events long in the past.
For many people, no doubt they are simply used to seeing authoritarian symbols around them and do not give them much thought being busy with their lives and other concerns. When many people stop and think about the issue, they recognize it exists, but income stagnation and high home prices are more immediate and pressing.
There is also a cultural element. Unlike Chinese, who view history through the lens of a series of repeating cycles, Taiwanese culturally are closer to Americans or Canadians in viewing history as a linear, if bumpy, progression towards a better future.
Though Indigenous populations rightly view this very differently, settler populations like Taiwan Han and North Americans view the future as full of possibility. The people who settled in Taiwan had to be bold, tough, adventurous, and optimistic to make the dangerous trek across the Strait and face an unknown land.
Unlike in China, each generation would witness tremendous change and growth as their new society took root. After hundreds of years of experiencing this, the culture changes and adapts to this reality.
This experience has been especially pronounced since the economic boom times starting in the 1960s. It is possible that American culture and media influences played a role in boosting the trend.
These cultures tend to be aware of the past, including the dark parts, but are more focused on the future than the past, because they are not so fixated on the past repeating itself.
Taiwanese portrayals of the White Terror
This comes out in Taiwanese popular culture when the White Terror is examined. For example, Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s (侯孝賢) seminal 1989 film A City of Sadness (悲情城市) depicts the horrors inflicted on both a Taiwanese family, but also violence perpetrated against the newly arrived refugees from China in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
The 2017 video game (and later movie) Detention is set during martial law in the 1960s and also depicts the horrors of the White Terror, while also cleverly using that backdrop to add to the horror atmosphere.
Taiwanese representations of the White Terror commonly portray the tragedy and horrors of the period with a strong emphasis on ensuring what happened is not forgotten. Unlike in other countries, the emphasis is not to inspire people to bitterness, anger, and revenge, but rather remembrance so that it will not happen again.
This is an important distinction between Taiwanese and Chinese and many others around the world. The Chinese have made an art form out of teaching their children to be bitter, angry, and wanting revenge.
The so-called “Hundred Years of Humiliation,” the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) war on the Kuomintang (KMT), the invasion by the Japanese Empire, and the Korean War are taught in schools and portrayed on state-controlled television in ways that do not lend themselves to forgiveness, though they have softened somewhat on the KMT in recent years. Having enemies builds nationalism and the CCP manipulates that to its ends. Chinese views on history buttress that.
The CCP has gone so far as to put some children in military-style boot camps and teach them to want to kill Americans and Japanese. This would be unthinkable in Taiwanese society.
Taiwanese view history as something to be mindful of to avoid making the same mistake on the way to a better future. This distinct Taiwanese cultural viewpoint is explicitly laid out by rap artist Chang Jui-chuan (張睿銓) in the first verse of the song Hey Kid (囡仔, Gín-á), which was inspired by the birth of (if I recall correctly) his nephew to ensure the child would be mindful of the lessons of the White Terror:
“Hey kid, you gotta remember
History teaches us to forgive mistakes, not forget them
You have to turn around, see where you’ve come from
If you want to figure out where you should go
Hey kid, you gotta remember
History says that people may disagree with you, anger you
Understand and respect each other, work it out together
If you oppress and exploit them, one day the tables will turn
And you’ll have nowhere to hide”
Conflicting priorities
This cultural viewpoint is only one factor, but it forms a backdrop for many of the political decisions made by the Tsai administration. The incoming administration of Lai Ching-te (賴清德) on May 20 is almost certainly not going to take a different approach.
In the next part of this series, we will examine the political decisions made, the reasons for them, and why making moves on the big remaining aspects of transitional justice would make getting other priorities done much, much harder.
