Islands of Democracy: Taiwan and Hong Kong Show the Way

In March, Taiwan will hold its third free election for president of the Republic of China, as the country is still formally known. There is a good possibility that executive power will, for the second time in Chinese history, be peacefully and efficiently transferred from one political party to another. Later in the year, elections for Legislative Council in Hong Kong could give democratic activists there more seats in the city’s flawed but feisty legislature. In both instances, Chinese people will be engaged in responsible political competition that lends popular legitimacy to their governments. And all the while, leaders in Beijing will be looking on nervously, sensing the symbolic threat to their professed “dictatorship of the proletariat.”

The geopolitical maneuvering surrounding People’s Republic of China Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to the United States in December seemed to harm Taiwan’s democratic aspirations. Wen extracted a clear statement from President Bush opposing any effort by Taiwan to change the status quo in its relationship with China. This was a blow to Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian’s support for an islandwide referendum on the delicate question of independence. As things now stand, and have stood since 1949, Taiwan has never declared formal independence (hence its official name, “Republic of China,” instead of “Republic of Taiwan”), and the Communist leadership of China has said that it would invade if Taiwan were to make such a declaration. A referendum victory on this question would be something just short of an official declaration of Taiwanese independence, and it would push China closer to military action. Bush, his foreign policy mired in Iraq, does not want Taiwan to fan the flames of potential conflict in East Asia, so he publicly sided with China against an exercise of democratic choice in Taiwan.

But the apparent setback for Taiwan’s democracy is not as serious as it may appear. The referendum issue is a political tactic for Chen, who finds himself in a relatively weak electoral position. He won the last presidential election in 2000 because the then-incumbent party, the Nationalists, split apart, and a third-party candidate was added to the ballot. Chen won the three-way race with just under 40% of the vote. Now, the Nationalists have mended their divisions and Chen is having to work hard to both shore up his base, which includes staunch advocates of independence, and reach out to moderates who did not vote for him and who are warier of goading China. The dicey referendum move is part of Chen’s playing to his base. To win moderates, however, he will have to temper his independence message or risk losing reelection.

Redefining the referendum in narrower national-security terms, as Chen has chosen to do, in no way damages Taiwan’s democracy, however. The more important point is that Taiwan is demonstrating its ability to conduct peaceful and honest elections. Civil rights are protected, the economy is growing and people are free to pursue their happiness in myriad forms. They have the right and power to reject any government that fails to maintain the island’s freedoms and accomplishments. When compared with China’s historically anachronistic Leninist, one-party authoritarianism,Taiwan’s politics are progressive, flexible and fair. It is an embarrassing contrast for Beijing.

Hong Kong makes a similarly uncomfortable comparison for mainland China.

In recent months the usually staid Special Administrative Region, as Hong Kong is labeled by its Beijing overlords, has unexpectedly become a hotbed of political dissent and protest for more and better representative government.

It all started July 1, when about 500,000 people thronged Hong Kong’s streets, demonstrating against a proposed law that would have established expansive new definitions for sedition and treason and the draconian punishments that would accompany their prosecution. The size and scope of the outpouring caught everyone by surprise. Only once before, in May and June 1989 during the Tiananmen protests in Beijing, had so many Hong Kongers voiced their displeasure with China in such a public and political manner. But July 1, 2003, was different. It had a sharper and more immediate political edge, aimed not at repression in distant Beijing but at civil liberties at home. It got results.

In September, Hong Kong’s chief executive was forced to withdraw the controversial bill. Then, in November elections, opposition-party candidates increased their seats in district councils, setting the stage for a resurgence of democratic activists and reformers in the legislative council elections scheduled for September. And on Jan. 1, about 100,000 people took to the streets to call for faster progress toward more thoroughgoing democracy. China’s response to all of this has been to announce that it would not countenance significant political reform any time soon. Yet, all in all, political participation in Hong Kong is increasing and strengthening those leaders interested in expanding democratic rights there.

So, in the Chinese cultural contexts of Taiwan and Hong Kong, democracy is alive and gaining strength, while in China proper it languishes. Communist apologists in Beijing will argue that their system is democratic too. But if the mainland is a democracy, it is one in which an elite political party “represents” the people without having to trouble itself with elections. Increasingly, the Chinese people are likely to ask: If actual democracy can work in some Chinese locales, why not in China itself?

Defenders of the current system will argue that China is too poor and backward to allow for a democratic transition. Unlike in Hong Kong and Taiwan, the peasants of mainland China are, the argument goes, too ignorant and destitute to be capable of responsible democratic participation. India, of course, puts the lie to this excuse: Democracy works there in a society much more contentious than that in mainland China.

There is no good reason for China to avoid moving toward a more genuine democracy, as Taiwan has already done and Hong Kong is trying to do. Even Chinese leaders have tacitly recognized this. For more than a decade they have been implementing a village-level electoral system that has, in some places, allowed average citizens, unaffiliated with the Communist Party, to gain a modicum of control over local affairs. But village election reforms are slow-going and still limited. No real democratic reforms have happened at the national level.

In light of the stunning economic and social changes that have swept over China in the last decade, the start of a transition to democracy is more possible now than ever before. It is only the ruling elite’s fear that holds the country back.