ANOTHER VOICE
Birds in their little nests agree with Chinamen, but not with me
AUBERON WAUGH
Taipei The government of the Republic of China, based in Taiwan, holds sway over 20 million Chinese. It is now the 12th trading power in the world, exporting a third more than the Peking-based People's Republic, which holds sway over 50 times the number of Chinese and 320 times the land area. Its per capita GNP is a whisker short of $5,000, at $4,989, compared to the communist Chinese figure of $250. By such dismal yardsticks as politicians use to judge . what they call 'the quality of life' television sets per 100 households, re- frigerators, telephones, motor cars, num- ber of university students per 1,000 people, hospital beds, libraries — the Taiwan Chinese lead by factors of three, 46, 48, 21, six, one and three quarters, and four, respectively.
Perhaps it was to announce such in- teresting figures as these that the Taipei government invited me, at considerable expense, to pay the area a visit. They help to make the point, which Mrs Thatcher feels cannot be made too often, that socialism does not work, even by its own base standards of providing maximum wel- fare for those most in need. But such information can be imparted without bringing journalists halfway across the globe, putting them up in the second best hotel and providing chauffeur-driven limousines to take them from point to point. In fact, having visited the area, I would have to qualify the rosy picture painted by these figures, pointing out that pollution in Taipei is appalling for most of the year, that traffic jams frequently leave traffic stationary for half an hour at a time, that urban and industrial development have made large parts of the island as ugly as Teesside and prices are abominably high. A very small glass of sherry in my hotel cost over £6.
No doubt I shall find worse things to complain about after I have visited main- land China, as I plan to do in May. However, on that tour I shall be paying my own expenses. The mystery of why the Taipei government chooses to transport journalists from all over the globe remains. What do they hope to gain from it?
The vulgar mind will assume that they have something to hide, but it could surely be better hidden by not asking journalists to come and look around. When I asked Dr Shaw Yu-ming, director general of the government information office, what he had to gain by inviting journalists, he replied that for many years Taiwan, while being known as an economic success, had suffered the reputation of being inflexible in its approach to the mainland and author- itarian in its domestic policies. While not acknowledging that there was ever any truth in these charges, Dr Shaw felt that since the lifting of martial law in July of last year and the election of a Taiwanese President to succeed Chiang Kai-shek's son, Chiang Ching-kuo, who died in Janu- ary, the previous denials had gained even greater validity.
No doubt this is true, but why do they bother what the rest of the world thinks about them? Most of the countries of south-east Asia have had military govern- ments, usually the result of coups d'etat, for most of the time since the war. Taiwan has never had curfews, nor has the military ever intervened in the running of the country. It is true that the iconography of the Chiang cult has many affinities with pre-war fascist art — a temple to his memory bears a colossal bronze statue, perhaps 60 metres high — but it also has affinities with Catholic peasant religiosity. A pair of his trousers shown in the Chiang Memorial Hall rather touchingly has his braces still attached.
However, loyalty to Chiang's memory is only part of the Nationalist predicament. Taiwan has no serious prospect that Britain — or any other major country — will recognise it as the legitimate government of mainland China. Some 22 countries do, including Saudi Arabia, South Korea and South Africa, but so far as diplomatic recognition goes, the Kuomintang claim to represent the legitimate government of mainland China 40 years after losing the civil war seems a bit of a charade. Although Taiwan has effectively been an independent sovereign state for 40 years, to urge independence remains treason, along with openly supporting communism. In every other way, the country appears a model modern liberal democratic state.
Mr Jaw Shaw-king, generally thought of as something of a firebrand among the younger Kuomintang MPs, described Taipei's refusal to drop its claims on Peking — and Peking's refusal to drop claims on Taipei — in terms of losing face. I think the apparent illogic of their two positions, in a race which seems impress- ively pragmatic and even frighteningly topical about everything else, can be ex- plained by a different emotion: homesick- ness. Of Dr Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles in founding the Republic of China in 1911 — Nationalism, Democracy and Welfare — the first, which involves the territorial integrity of a single Chinese state, is one which the Chinese have taken to heart.
There are three circumstances under which the People's Republic has warned that it will resume efforts to occupy Taiwan: if Taipei goes nuclear, if it plays the Russian card, and if it declares inde- pendence. For the rest, both sides are prepared to sit it out — Peking waiting for the inevitable victory of proletarian revolu- tion in Taiwan, Taipei waiting for the inevitable acceptance of capitalist demo- cracy as providing a better life than social- ism. Nobody in Taipei is remotely impress- ed by Peking's offer of 'one country, two systems' on the Hong Kong model, under which Taiwan would even be allowed to retain its own army, but not its own foreign policy. They do not suppose such an arrangement could last more than 15 years before the Chinese Communist Party moved in.
Yet they are prepared to grasp any straws in the wind — last year, mainland China sent 20,000 students to the United States — which encourage them to believe that pressures to liberalise the mainland economy are building into an irresistible force; at some point of which the Party, which controls everything, will voluntarily dissolve itself and make way for liberal, welfarist democracy. When I made sceptic- al noises about this, they tended to shrug their shoulders. In China's 5,000 years of history, provinces have been separated and come back again. It may take 50 to 100 years, but they are prepared to wait. Meanwhile, they see Taiwan as the model province which is setting the pattern for the China of the Future. They, at least, have no doubt that the Taiwan experience could usefully be reproduced among 50 times as many people, and across 320 times the area.
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