BOOK REVIEWS

Samia Ferhat-Dana: Le Dangwai et la démocratie à Taïwan — Une lutte pour la reconnaissance de l’entité politique taiwanaise (1949-1986)

A reworked doctoral thesis, this book offers a substantial and sophisticated historical overview, not only of the Taiwanese opposition movement, but in the process also of the history of the nationalist regime (that is of the Kuomintang, KMT) which withdrew to Taiwan after 1949. Based on a great array of primary sources—interviews and especially a detailed study of opposition periodicals—the work recounts the progressive setting up of the dangwai (literally outside the party) up to the illegal formation of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in 1986, which was to precipitate the process of democratisation. A first part (itself related in fact to a preliminary section) gives the background to the dangwai movement whose history takes up the second part of the work. And to explain better the multiple, and often contradictory, logic underpinning the formation of this opposition, the author both reconstructs the personal paths of some of its most emblematic figures or paints a portrait of the typical voter (p. 275).

The richness and perceptiveness of this study incline one to pass over its occasional methodological flaws, such as the fact that the investigative methods and sources are not given; that the thesis propounded by the author is only revealed in piecemeal fashion as the work unfolds and would have warranted a more vigorous and in-depth exposition in the introduction; and that the very short conclusion stresses the particular nature of the Taiwanese opposition movement but without making any attempt at comparative analysis.

The work’s thesis is not, one must say, highly original: “This study will be conducted in relation to one main thread: to show the development of political discourse from calls for democracy through to nationalist demands, by highlighting those factors likely to explain the coexistence of these twin demands in the 1980s” (p. 123). The author subsequently states: “The analysis of how the movement came into being, the stages of its formation and its political activity at the time of local and national election campaigns will be complemented by the study of the emergence and development of a concept: that of “‘the strength of Taiwanese society’” (pp. 123-124). This explains the book’s subtitle. However, contrary to the works of the sociologist Wang Fu-chang—which have clearly brought out the succession of two periods, the one “democratic”, the other “nationalist”—, Samia Ferhat-Dana regards this transformation as being irreducible to a mere change of strategy, having been brought about rather by “a natural development, linked to numerous players most often beyond the control of the movement’s leaders” (p. 121). Already in the introduction, the author had implicitly set out her analysis from a perspective of historical sociology, thereby distancing herself especially from works that make economic growth the main variable for explaining the process of democratisation. She feels that the analysis of “the transformations of the Taiwanese political system must be carried out with regard to historical, political, institutional and sociological parameters specific to Taiwan” (p. 20).

Any opposition is structured in terms of what it is fighting against and the great merit of Samia Ferhat-Dana’s study is precisely to remind us continually of the particular nature of the nationalist regime holed-up in Taiwan.

The peculiarity of the Taiwanese opposition movement is most certainly this coexistence of two apparently irreconcilable demands. The democratic one is reformist in nature. Its advocates denounce the flaws in the political system of a particular state framework within which they are placed but which they do not call into question. On the other hand, the nationalist demand, which underlies the discourse on independence, presupposes a challenge to the state framework. Activists long for the creation of a new political entity corresponding to the historical, cultural and social reality that they are in favour of. (p. 121)

For the author, the electoral campaign of Kuo Yu-hsin, one of the founding-fathers of “‘outside the party’ activism”, at the time of the 1975 legislative elections was the pivotal moment of opposition political action on Taiwan as it enabled the two forms of protest to come together:

The one, given impetus by the ‘intellectuals’ from magazines whose main demand was the democratisation of the regime, gradually enhanced by a new demand: the increased recognition, within the Republic of China, of the potential of Taiwanese society, that is the implementation of a political, social and economic system that is just for all of its communities. The other form of protest is that expressed by political action independent of the Kuomintang which brought together the dangwai candidates. In 1977, such activity became the essential vector of the Taiwanese opposition. (p. 241)

But if the call for independence has, for the writer, never excluded the demand for democracy, it may be regretted that she does not adequately highlight the connection between the reform of institutions frozen by virtue of the fatong principle—the legitimate and legal nature of the Republic of China’s institutions that their election by the whole of the Chinese population bestowed on them—and the increasingly open, if diffuse, call for independence. Such interaction is of course suggested on a number of occasions: “The emergence of the dangwai movement had given birth to Taiwanese consciousness, that we regard as a political consciousness tending to promote respect for the rights of the majority within a protected framework of the state” (p. 349). But the called-for dialectic of democratisation-redefinition of sovereignty peculiar to the particular circumstances in which Taiwan found itself and which, under the presidency of Lee Teng-hui, was to mark the whole reformist process, is not systematically analysed.

In the final analysis, more than an original problematic, the essential contribution of this work lies not only in the precise way in which events are detailed, but also in the great accuracy of its presentation of the different perspectives. In the process, this book offers much food for thought, two examples of which will suffice here. First of all, it contributes to seriously relativising the 1949 break. To be sure, it is out of the defeat of the nationalists on the mainland that central institutions claiming to be representative of the whole of the Chinese population were superimposed onto local ones, something which, in principle, postponed any possible democratisation until the reconquest of the mainland. But right from 1945, that is from the end of Japanese colonisation and the island’s handover to China, the Taiwanese population was dominated by a mainland minority both economically and administratively. The recovery of Japanese colonial possessions was mainly of benefit to the mainland authorities, while the Taiwanese were excluded from numerous civil service jobs (whereas the Japanese colonial administration had employed 46,955 Taiwanese, only 9,951 posts were given to the latter after 1946). Similarly, this work provides specific details on the policy of sinisation undertaken from 1945 on—with the prohibition on using Japanese and the promotion of the learning of Mandarin—and which was of course to be generalised on a much broader scale after 1949.

Overall, this book clearly sets out the relations of the dangwai with the autonomist movements that had developed under Japanese occupation or with the democratic forces on the mainland formed around the review of Hu Shi and Lei Chen (Free China). Henceforth, the allegiance to the Chinese nation was uppermost when the Taiwanese reformist and democratic movement was set up. In this regard, the writer shows the strong connection between the dangwai movement and the Nationalist Party. Of course, any opposition is shaped by the regime within which it develops. But through the career paths of individuals traced out in this book, one can see how the dangwai was able to gather up a number of KMT defectors. One can also understand how this opposition was right from the outset virtually normalised, in the sense that it was prepared to play the game of nationalist institutions, that is to place its hopes in a reformist rather than revolutionary process. Regarding Kang Ning-hsiang: “being ‘outside the party’ did not signify, so it seems, a systematic attitude of opposition to the government, but rather an undertaking to defend the rights and interests of those people who had elected him. As such, each criticism had a concrete basis in a particular policy or judicial act, and was not motivated by any desire to represent the Taiwanese people in confrontational relations with the Chinese nationalist regime” (p. 205).

In fact, and this is the second lesson to be learned from this work, Samia Ferhat-Dana’s research clearly shows the importance, beyond democratisation as such (that is the setting up of a representative, pluralist and competitive regime), of the “social question” in the structuring of the Taiwanese opposition. In this regard, one may cite the tract “What should there be in a modern democratic state?” distributed by Kuo Yu-hsin on the eve of the 1975 legislative by-elections (which were specifically to mark the turning point in the electoral strategy of the dangwai). At the top of the list of the 20 demands was “social welfare for all”, then “the guarantee of the right to work and of subsistence” (p. 225). Likewise, the author relates that Hsu Hsin-liang (a defector from the KMT who was later to become president of the DPP), when he sat in the Provincial Assembly in the mid- 1970s, had had the goal of “defending the interests of farmers who, along with workers, made up the most disadvantaged social class on Taiwan” (p. 244). Many more examples could be found. Now, 12 years after this opposition movement became legal and after the reform of institutions had made it possible for the DPP to gain power, the importance of social issues in the development of the dangwai movement takes on, retrospectively, still greater importance. Not only does it indicate that the call for independence was not paramount in the gradual structuring of the opposition, resulting rather from the very particular institutional configuration in which it was found, but it indicates that the DPP quite naturally occupies the ground of a party “of the left”, although today it has a lot of trouble taking on board this legacy.

Such are, in our opinion, the two most interesting byways of this work. But the painstaking research carried out by Samia Ferhat-Dana assuredly offers others. Indeed, the essential merit of the book is the way in which it reconstructs the formation of this movement in all its contradictions and hence in all its richness.