Demonstrations Now Routine, Press Freer : New Openness Enlivens Taiwan Politics

Li Tse-mao, a straw farmer’s hat shading his head, thrust his fist into the air and joined about 300 demonstrators shouting slogans on a busy street corner in downtown Taipei.

“Down with the Nationalist Party!” the protesters demanded. “Down with (Taipei Police Chief) Liao Chao-hsiang!”

Despite the protesters’ anger, aimed at alleged police brutality during an earlier demonstration, Li acknowledged that over the past year a new openness has come to Taiwan’s political life.

“Before the lifting of martial law, this would have been impossible,” Li, a junior high school teacher, said in a brief sidewalk interview. “We would have been arrested immediately.”

Since the ending of martial law last July, 38 years after it was first imposed, Taiwan has seen an extraordinary upsurge of pluralistic political activity--including a total of more than 1,700 street demonstrations, by official count.

The more open political mood has been accompanied by a continuing economic boom, which has raised per-capita annual income to the equivalent of $5,000. There is also dramatic new flexibility in the government’s policy toward China.

The death Jan. 13 of President Chiang Ching-kuo, who set the changes in motion during the final year of his life, has not led to a slowing of the reforms, as some had feared. On the contrary, Taiwan-born President Lee Teng-hui, a reformer and technocrat, now has consolidated sufficient strength in both the ruling Nationalist Party and the government that people are beginning to say that the “Lee Teng-hui era” has arrived.

Demonstrations Routine

Demonstrations as a routine feature of public life are one mark of this new era.

The vast majority of protests have been peaceful. A few, however, have involved rock-throwing or more serious violence. Most prominent among these was a May 20 protest by farmers, workers and political activists that ended with battles between demonstrators and police. It was this clash that prompted the opposition Democratic Progress Party and a coalition of religious and human rights organizations to organize the more recent demonstration, which Li joined. The protest was legal and ended peacefully.

There is also a vociferous new liveliness to the press, which now writes freely about virtually anything. The key exception to this is advocacy of communism. The Nationalists fled to Taiwan in 1949 after the Communists took over mainland China, and Taipei still officially considers itself at war with Beijing.

‘No Taboos Now’

“There are no real taboos now,” said Antonio Chiang, publisher of the Journalist, a widely respected weekly news magazine, which leans toward the opposition.

In a country where the government was dominated for four decades first by President Chiang Kai-shek and then by his son, Chiang Ching-kuo, elevation to the presidency of someone born in Taiwan has created a broad sense of new possibilities, Antonio Chiang said.

“Children have thought that ‘President Chiang’ is a noun,” the publisher said. “They will say, ‘I want to become a President Chiang.’ But now people feel liberated in a way. If Lee Teng-hui can be president or chairman (of the ruling party), why can’t we? We are from the same background, the same experience. Chiang and the Nationalist Party came from the sky . . . but Lee Teng-hui is from the same society. We feel equal. Anyone can take his job. That kind of feeling is very important for true democracy.”

Huang Tsung-wen, the top staff assistant for the opposition party’s legislative caucus, commented that “there is more news about the Democratic Progress Party than before.”

“The Chiang dynasty can now be criticized in the newspapers,” he added. “During the past six months, the Chiang dynasty has become big news. All newspapers can report about his family--such as Mme. Chiang Kai-shek trying to get more power after Chiang Ching-kuo died. This six months’ openness of newspapers is favorable to Lee Teng-hui. This is the base of his power.”

A key factor in the new openness of print media was the lifting on Jan. 1 of a variety of restrictions on newspapers, allowing the licensing of new publications and ending limits on newspaper size. Broadcast media remain under tighter government control.

But Taiwan still has only one important daily newspaper, the Independence Evening News, that is viewed as politically neutral or leaning toward the opposition. Most major dailies either lean toward the Nationalist Party or are openly controlled by the party itself or leading party members. There is no major daily controlled by the opposition, but there are several opposition magazines.

The death of Chiang Ching-kuo, with the resulting division of the Nationalist Party into factions jockeying for power, has been another key factor in the new openness.

Press Now Factionalist

“When Chiang Ching-kuo was alive, all newspapers were his tool,” said Wu Hsiang-hui, editor in chief of the Democratic Progressive Weekly, a pro-opposition magazine. “After he died, the power struggle within the Nationalist Party became very intense, so the newspapers became tools of different factions within the Nationalist Party.”

Despite the increased freedom of speech, press and political activity, the Democratic Progress Party continues to be hobbled by the country’s constitution, which ensures Nationalist Party domination of the government even if the opposition sweeps elections.

This is because a large majority of seats in both the Legislative Yuan, which enacts laws, and the National Assembly, which elects the president, are held by aging representatives who were first elected on the Chinese mainland in the late 1940s. They have held office, without facing reelection, ever since the Nationalist government fled to Taiwan in 1949.

Within the ruling party, moderate reformers led by President Lee have promised constitutional revisions that would provide for a gradual increase in representatives elected in Taiwan. Such changes are intended to go part way toward meeting demands for greater democracy, while preserving aspects of the system by which the Nationalists claim to be the legitimate rulers of all China.

Lee and his reformist supporters strengthened their hand at a Nationalist Party congress that concluded last week. The congress also approved further liberalization in the party’s policy toward China.

In the wake of the congress, political debate is focused on the pace of change, not the direction.

“Next year, there will be another very important election,” commented legislator Chao Shao-kang, an outspoken leader of the most liberal wing of the Nationalist Party. “That’s for the 21 mayors, for the legislators, for the city councilmen, for the Taiwan Provincial Assembly members. That will decide if the KMT (the Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party) can really be a majority or even a ruling party. The people expect that the KMT (will) expedite the reforms. Otherwise, I think the people will be impatient.”