BOOK REVIEWS

Taiwan de zhuzhang (Taiwan’s Viewpoint), by Lee Teng-hui

Taiwan’s democratisation has been more than democratisation. It also gave birth to “Taiwanism”, a term that I believe captures the essence of the emerging civic identity on Taiwan and the delicate cross-Strait relationship. Lee Teng hui’s recent book, Taiwan’s Viewpoint, is an eloquent exposé of the intricate dynamics of this relationship.

Taiwan’s Viewpoint was first published in Chinese on May 19th 1999, closely followed by its Japanese version in June. While the Chinese version attained only modest sales, the Japanese version was an unprecedented best-seller among books authored by foreign political figures. By the end of July, it had sold over 100,000 copies. Naturally, this must have appeared an ominous event to Beijing, and perhaps it was a reflection of Japanese people’s dislike of China’s over-nationalistic behaviour on the international stage in recent years. Since Lee once audaciously claimed that he was Japanese until he was 22 years old, some Chinese readers may perhaps be concerned that whether any secrets were revealed to the Japanese in the Japanese version of the book. As a Japanese reader, I can attest to the analogous content of both versions.

While the date of publication of the Japanese version bore no political significance, the publication date for the original version, May 19th, did. This date, exactly one year before Lee’s presidential term expires, was a clear indication that Lee intended to have the book serve as a statement of his political will to the people of Taiwan. Lee Teng-hui is widely known as the first popularly elected and native Taiwanese president who successfully guided the Taiwanese people into full democracy through an election-led, gradual and peaceful process that some international observers have praised as a “quiet revolution”. Therefore, one would naturally expect to find in this book, published after ten years of Lee’s leadership over Taiwanese politics, a first-hand account of how he handled the democratisation process. Surprisingly, only the importance of well-balanced and a gradual implementation of democratisation policies are mentioned in this regard. One finds the author devoting himself to an interpretation of the history of Taiwan, not of China. By doing so, Lee explores the meaning that the transformation has had for Taiwanese people in recent years.

In the preface to the book, Lee claims that one objective in writing this book was to explain how his perception of the history of Taiwan had changed from one that stressed the “sorrow of being born Taiwanese” to the one that emphasies the “happiness of being born Taiwanese”. The “sorrow of being born Taiwanese” was once a cliché frequently used by native Taiwanese political activists to arouse grievances among the native Taiwanese electorate against the Kuomintang’s (KMT) authoritarian rule. For the opposition activists, the KMT regime was perceived as one among the line of alien rulers that had repeatedly dominated the island. In an interview with the late Ryotaro Shiba, a renowned Japanese writer of historical novels, Lee also expressed his acceptance of the idea, which naturally surprised and angered the China nationalists both inside and outside of Taiwan. Now, after accomplishing his scheme of democratisation, Lee began to argue that the “sorrow of being born Taiwanese” cannot fully depict the truth of Taiwan’s history: “It is certain that Taiwan’s complicated history brought sorrow to the Taiwanese people, but we cannot ignore that with it Taiwan also attained a culture of abundant diversity and sufficient flexibility with which the Taiwanese people overcame adverse circumstances”. With this new interpretation of Taiwan’s history, Lee attempts to boost the confidence of the people of Taiwan and asserts that, at the moment, nothing is more important for Taiwan than consolidating the “Taiwanese identity”.

This is not unlike the discourse of a Taiwanese nationalist whose final goal would be the establishment of a “Republic of Taiwan”. No doubt, Lee wants to create a new nation by way of “democratic participation” in public affairs on the island, where Taiwan’s citizens—or the “New Taiwanese”, according to Lee’s own words—play the key role. However, something makes me hesitate to call Lee Teng-hui a Taiwanese nationalist. Although the rejection of Beijing’s formula for reunification—“one country, two systems”—by Lee’s government has been categorical, Lee has never denied the cultural and historical bonds between Taiwan and mainland China. In this book, he still seems to suggest that the issue of Taiwan’s future political relationship with China remains open. This implies that some sort of reunification is a possibility, as long as the Taiwanese identity is respected in Taiwan’s terms. Besides this, his notion of the “New Taiwanese” is entirely a non-ethnic and civic one. This suggests some compatibility with a civic “New Chinese” identity, so to speak. Hence, I prefer not to call Lee’s stance Taiwan nationalism, but rather “Taiwanism”.

Since Lee Teng-hui recently defined the cross-Strait relationship as a “special state-to-state” relationship, seemingly one-step-short of an independence declaration for some observers, it would seem more plausible to see his “Taiwanism” as a disguise for his nationalist inclinations. Moreover, upon the release of Lee’s book, Chinese nationalists in and outside of Taiwan promptly and exclusively criticised his “seven regions theory”, which already provided them too ample proof for Lee’s intention to divide China. However, re-reading his book casts doubts on this “disguise theory”. A more plausible observation is that Lee astutely recognises that “Taiwanism” has already taken root in Taiwan’s political soil and will continue to yield influence even after Lee’s personal influence deteriorates. In other words, “Taiwanism” already is and will continue to be the reality of Taiwan: a reality that the policy-making community in Beijing, Washington, and to a different extent, Tokyo, must face seriously and study carefully.