In Taiwan, is democracy at an inflection point?

Ruminations on today's election in Taiwan from our own Ansel Herz

My son and his friends at Xiaoliuqiu, near Kaohsiung

For the past year-and-a-half, Taiwan has been home to my family. We’re Americans, hailing from Seattle. So why are we living in Taiwan? Simple: We loved our short experience of the island on a trip years ago. During that week-long vacation, everything felt refreshingly harmonious, easy, clean, and safe compared with the chaos of the United States. We didn’t need to lock our bikes up, we could leave our keys in our rented scooters, a doctor’s visit costs $10, and it was often cheaper to eat out than to eat in. 

Of course, that was the shallowest of surface-level views of the island. But it made such an impression that ever since that trip, we intended to come back. My wife has family in Taiwan, and what’s more, living here during this stage of our lives would offer my young son the chance to speak Mandarin Chinese without having to study it intensively. The capacity to effortlessly absorb a new language when you’re four years old is, as I’ve now witnessed, absolutely incredible.

For us, everything has worked out. We love Taiwan. We especially love the sun-drenched, mid-sized city of Tainan that we call home. But whether it’s the rainy alleys of Taipei, the mountainous interior region, or the beachy southern coast, we’re hard-pressed to find much to complain about. It feels like Taiwan has got an awful lot of things right. Step back and compare it to the rest of the world: it is the third-safest country on the Earth, healthcare is cheap and universal, poverty is the lowest in all of Asia, there is freedom of press, reproductive choice for women and legal gay marriage, and tons of productive industry. Perhaps most importantly for us, we’ve made plenty of friends.

Taken together, these living standards are what one might call “The Good Life”—that’s the term Brookings Institution scholar Richard Bush uses and indeed, it’s what we feel we’ve experienced. 

(Needless to say, there are those in Taiwan who might not experience “The Good Life” in this way: migrant workers, delivery drivers, those in low-wage jobs or the many with long working hours in companies where workaholic-ism is expected. There are problems as in any society; our experience no doubt has to do with the fact that we are college-educated foreigners with relatively high incomes.) 

Today, Taiwan is in the international spotlight more than usual because it is holding a presidential election. There are some remarkable things about that statement. 

The first is that only fifty years ago, Taiwan was a dictatorship where secret police and martial law reigned. One of my wife’s relatives worked in a notorious prison (now a “human rights park”), guarding people who may have been innocent. It is amazing that in such a short period of time, Taiwan has become so prosperous — not under dictatorship, or even “soft” authoritarianism like Singapore, but under a system of free elections and free press. 

It is also remarkable, in its own way, that whatever happens in Taiwan’s election will literally affect the rest of the world. That’s not hyperbole. Taiwan is a key source for the world’s semiconductors—the tiny chips that make our electronic devices function. This has become, in geopolitical terms, what some call its “Silicon Shield." In a different world, Taiwan might have been absorbed or controlled by its massive neighbor, China, by now. Although the Chinese government says it wants to annex Taiwan, and it could overrun the island with a massive invasion of ground troops, it has not. If it did, it would “decimate” the global economy, costing at least $10 trillion.

Both of these observations—Taiwan’s freedom and its indispensability to the rest of the world—are tributes to the Taiwanese people themselves. One feels they are proud of being Taiwanese, because, after all, on a small island preyed upon by larger powers throughout its history, they did this themselves. 

For all this progress, then, why do I ask in the headline whether Taiwanese democracy is at an inflection point? 

History is made by our hands and I cannot shake the feeling that Taiwan’s “Good Life” may be precarious. Why? Let us look at Taiwan’s people themselves: are its up-and-coming generations united, organized, optimistic, and in a position to make far-sighted choices? Or, are they increasingly fragmented, frustrated and cynical? Recently, it’s begun to feel as though Taiwan is suffering from the limits of the modern democratic system. 

As in the United States, there are two overwhelmingly dominant political parties, and there is growing dissatisfaction with them: their feuding, manipulation, and corruption. As Bush warns in his book, at times it seems they are more concerned with defeating their counterparts than respecting democratic principles, or, for that matter, making sure housing is affordable. Since 1986, the governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which grew out of Taiwan’s pro-democracy movement, has become the establishment—and is now generating its own new forms of opposition.

Down the street from where we live in Tainan, a young man I’ll call James owns a ramen shop. I go there with my son after school. While cooking up ramen with a boiled egg, James told me he’s thinking about voting for Ko Wen-je, the idiosyncratic physician who claims to offer voters a viable third option to the DPP and the KMT, its main opposition. When I probe as to why, he says the DPP might be agitating things too much, making it more difficult for his farmer friends in the countryside to do business with China, Taiwan’s largest trading partner. He says the KMT, while more China-friendly, might not be trustworthy. 

But James says these things without much conviction, shrugging his shoulders. He says he’ll make up his mind on who to vote for at the last minute. James hasn’t felt much of “The Good Life” recently: he complains about how much he has to work to make ends meet, the way young people feel crushed by the school system and intensive cram schools, and he wants to visit Europe.

Before the election, the DPP put out a viral campaign ad. Tsai Ing-wen, the current president, is seen driving along Taiwan’s stunning coastline with the party’s candidate to succeed her, Lai Ching-te. The ad very much conjures this notion of “The Good Life” having reached a crossroads. As they drive on a spotless highway looking out over the Pacific Ocean, they muse on how far Taiwan has come, its precious freedoms, its distinct identity, and they resolve—not out of bravado, but out of serene reflection—to make the right choices to safeguard the good life for decades to come. As an American who is still, at times, in awe of Taiwan, I would like to believe in this vision. 

But like many, I’m conscious that the ad is political agitprop. It would be silly to entrust the future of Taiwan to political party leaders alone, no matter how wise or well-intentioned they may be. Our DemocracyNext International Advisory Council  member Felipe Rey Salamanca has written about plural representation — the way that people’s hopes, dreams, and agency are represented through many forms of organizations, beyond periodic votes or parliaments. Taiwan itself is innovating in this area: through vTaiwan and by allowing ordinary citizens to act as judges. Without devaluing Taiwan’s elections (this New York Times story is a reminder to never do such a thing), today feels like an opportune moment to reflect on the role that each of us must play in constructing a good life that is accessible, as well as sustainable, over the coming years. It is too precious a treasure: one that all of us, paradoxically, must take the responsibility of both guarding and sharing at the same time.