Version imprimableCompared to 2016 when Tsai Ing-wen came to power she was carrying her constituency’s great hope for social progress and reform, Lai Ching-te’s victory at the beginning of 2024 instead showed a lack of such political enthusiasms among the electorate. Instead, the DPP and its supporters (commonly referred to as 台派, the Taiwanese Camp) have adopted an increasingly right-leaning and conservative stance, reflected in the following examples:
• During the last years of Tsai’s administration, after Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan and the PRC’s military drills, DPP members began advocating for pro-military policies, with the purpose of “safeguarding peace in the Taiwan Strait”. In confronting the issue of militarization, those identified with the Taiwan Camp and its flanks who previously sought progressive reforms and constitutional change either supported the militarized policies or chose to remain silent. Meanwhile, all anti-war voices were labeled by the Taiwan camp as “surrenderism”, “US-skepticism”, “fifth column”, or “Chinese Communist fellow travelers” (a trend that continues even today). Yet few in the Taiwan camp noticed that Taiwan is merely a pawn in America’s anti-China strategy, a tool for the US to deal with the Chinese regime. [2]
• On Labor Day, because labor movement groups criticized Lai’s appointment of Minister of Labor, the flanks insinuated that the labor movement was whitewashing the KMT proposals on “cutting wages to 80%” and “pension reform.” However, the crux of the issue has always been that as the ruling party, the DPP’s decision to appoint Ho Pei-shan — a hatchet person behind the previous weakening of the Labor Standards Act — as labor minister and its attempt to revise the Labor Standards Act for a third time which only cause grassroots workers to suffer even greater losses in labor rights under DPP rule. [3]
• During the Blue Bird Movement, the DPP and its flanks unthinkingly accused the Blue and White parties for having proposed a bill to expand legislative powers as “selling out Taiwan.” Yet they ignored that in 2012, when the DPP was in opposition, they had likewise put forward a similar bill for legislative reform.
• In a teaser clip of the forthcoming film Zero Day Attack—slated for release next year, supported by the Ministry of Culture’s “Tai-Flow Cultural Black Tide” project, and advised by Black Bear Academy founder Shen Bo-yang and pro-US, anti-China businessman Robert Tsao—the anti-war faction is depicted as fence-sitters, gangsters, and thugs, while the clip offers no criticism of American imperialism whatsoever.
The above indicates that after eight years of DPP governance, the party has become increasingly unable to accept oversight and increasingly intolerant of political voices outside the DPP. However, this political stance to some extent continues Tsai Ing-wen’s “Resist China, Defend Taiwan” approach, yet it is not founded on a Taiwan independence aspiration under national self-determination. Rather, it stems from a right-wing nationalist fervor that parasitizes American imperialism and defends the “Republic of China under DPP rule.” In short, this constitutes the DPP’s fourth “transformation” since its founding—namely, serving as a vanguard of right-wing nationalism in service of America’s anti-China strategy.
How exactly did this development come about? How did the DPP, which started out as a liberal reformist party, transform today into a US vassal? This article will start from the DPP’s history, examining the processes of its first three transformations and where the fourth transformation will take the DPP.
First Transformation: Turning to Electoralism
After the DPP was founded in 1986, the main debate within the party (between the New Tide faction and the Meilidao faction) was whether the DPP should develop mass movements or move toward electoralism. The relatively progressive New Tide faction in the DPP believed that mass movements were a vital foundation for Taiwan’s independence [4], as they could help overthrow KMT rule and achieve a bourgeois democratic system in Taiwan. [5] Because of this line, New Tide established an organizational strategy modeled on Leninist democratic centralism. [6] However, in terms of New Tide’s aims, it was not to advance a socialist revolution, but rather bore the political character of a democratic revolution and national revolution.
However, the DPP’s subsequent development ultimately reconciled this debate over its direction. Firstly, the DPP at its founding was not a mass party of the working class, but a liberal party serving the interests of the petite bourgeoisie and small-to-medium entrepreneurs. [7] Therefore, from its inception the DPP could never sever itself from capitalism and electoralism. After 1991, then-chairman Hsu Hsin-liang proposed an “all-out electoral line,” which gradually replaced the New Tide faction’s social movement line, turning the DPP into a party that served an electoral machine. [8]
From another perspective, after 1989 Lee Teng-hui exploited the DPP as a tool to attack rival forces within the KMT, thereby promoting KMT restructuring and the process of bourgeois democratization in Taiwan. [9] Later, because Lee prevailed within the KMT and began to collaborate with the DPP to carry out constitutional amendments, the DPP’s political mission of constitutional reform was fulfilled. This process on one hand strengthened the DPP’s shift toward an electoralist political line, and on the other hand pushed the DPP to make the parliamentary arena of official politics its main battleground, rather than mass movements. [10]
Embracing electoralism was the DPP’s first transformation. It can be said that the expansion of political and economic liberties under capitalist development allowed the DPP’s political demands to be realized, and also ensured the DPP could never become a party of the working class. Although quite a few “leftists” attempted to “enter” the DPP in hopes of transforming it from within and pushing it leftward, these attempts not only failed but instead delayed the timetable for Taiwan’s working class to build its own independent power. [11]
More precisely, the DPP was a weapon used by Taiwan’s native political elite to attack the KMT, with the main goal of enabling emerging native Taiwanese elites to obtain real economic and political power. While freedom of speech was indeed one of its appeals, their purpose was still to serve the pursuit of political and economic power.
Second Transformation: Toward KMT-ization
In the 1993 local elections (for 23 counties/cities mayors), the DPP won only 6 seats compared to the KMT’s 15, which was undoubtedly a crushing defeat. It was in this context that the DPP began absorbing second- and third-tier KMT local factions and politicians into the party, in order to strengthen the DPP’s power in local elections. [12] However, because of the entry of these local factions, the ties between the DPP and local elites grew ever closer (though still unable to rival the KMT’s native factions), and the DPP’s political program was further diluted.
This situation continued up to 2000, when Chen Shui-bian unexpectedly won the presidency due to a split in the KMT. Not only did this mark Taiwan’s first electorial change of ruling party, it also enabled the DPP to successfully seize control of the state apparatus. However, this victory highlighted an even bigger problem: the DPP not only lacked governing experience, but as a “minority government” it also didn’t have enough technocrats to manage the state apparatus. In order to smoothly maintain its hold on power, the DPP had no choice but to learn from the KMT’s past model of governance—beginning to rely on conglomerates for funding support [13], finding ways to increase incentives for local faction bosses to join the DPP [14], and recruiting technocrats who had worked for the KMT in the past (though not necessarily KMT members). [15] For those faction bosses and officials who had served under the KMT, joining the DPP represented new opportunities for advancement, so they were happy to accept the DPP’s invitation.
Although Chen Shui-bian won twice, allowing the DPP to accumulate governing experience, the pan-Green coalition in Chen’s era was a minority government, meaning that throughout Chen’s eight-year rule he was always reliant on those faction bosses and officials. However, these DPP “new subordinates” were not entirely drawn by the DPP’s political ideals, but rather by opportunism and calculation for their own political careers. Conversely, the uneven quality of these “new subordinates” again further diluted the DPP’s political program.
This was the DPP’s second transformation — essentially the DPP’s beginning of “KMT-ization.” Even though Chen Shui-bian’s administration also implemented many reformist policies [16], it also perpetuated the money-power patronage networks that had been established between the old KMT regime and big capital, even culminating in subsequent corruption scandals involving the Chen family.
Third Transformation: Upholding Plutocracy
During the Chen Shui-bian administration (2000-08), the US and China relationship was still in a cooperative phase: the US needed to rely on China’s vast and cheap labor; China likewise needed foreign investment to help build its capitalist system. In 2006, Chen Shui-bian abandoned the “Four Noes and One Without” pledge against de jure independence of his first term and instead pivoted to consolidating political support by leveraging the Taiwan independence movement. However, this not only hindered capitalist cooperation across the Strait, but also threatened to undermine peace in the Taiwan Strait and the US-China relationship. [17] Therefore, toward the end of Chen’s presidency, the US pivoted to favoring the KMT, who pledged to maintain cooperation with China, enabling Ma Ying-jeou’s landslide victory in 2008.
During Ma Ying-jeou’s eight years in office (2008-16), the growth of Chinese capitalism increasingly threatened US hegemony, forcing the US to re-examine its China policies. In 2012, Barack Obama announced the Pivot to Asia, which on the one hand signaled that the US shifting its focus to East Asia (primarily China), and on the other a shift towards competitions for US-China relationship. At the same time, the people of Taiwan, afraid of China’s rise, turned towards an anti-KMT consensus. A movement started from Taiwan’s urban areas in 2014 and culminated in the Sunflower Movement. This change in social mood caused the Ma administration to lose public support; and unlike before, the US was much more ambiguous toward Taiwan’s anti-China movements. [18]
Under this dual pressure, the KMT government ultimately lost power, and the DPP captured the political vacuum left by the 2014 anti-KMT protests, returning to power in the 2016 elections. It should be noted that by this time the DPP no longer treated social reform as its top priority, instead leaning more toward protecting the interests of big corporations. Tsai Ing-wen’s administration, like Chen Shui-bian’s before her, appointed a large number of technocrats [19], and the “Kuomintang-ization” was further reinforced—for example, colluding with big capital, worsening labor laws, freezing liberalization of the Assembly and Parade Act (which was long criticized by DPP themselves for enabling police brutalities at protests), and breaking its political promise to lower the threshold for forming unions. [20]
Under Tsai’s administration, the DPP became even further removed from mass movements and no longer seeks radical reforms. Serving the moneyed interests and plutocracy became its new mission. This marked DPP’s third transformation. This coincided with the shifting of US-China relationship between the US towards competitions. When Trump launched a trade war, a new US-China Cold War fully erupted; coupled with the rise of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement in 2019, anti-China sentiment became the general consensus among Taiwanese people, giving the DPP—campaigning under the banner of “Resist China, Defend Taiwan”—a landslide victory in 2020, the highest vote count since direct presidential elections began in Taiwan.
Fourth Transformation: Catering to America’s Anti-China Strategy
In 2022, as US-China tensions escalated, Pelosi insisted on visiting Taiwan despite warnings, leading the PRC to conduct island-encircling military drills. This event underscored the DPP’s fourth transformation process, namely that the DPP has become a US vassal, subservient to America’s anti-China strategy.
In fact, ever since the DPP pivoted to electoralism, its previous stance on Taiwan independence has gradually shifted toward the “Taiwanization/Democratization of the Republic of China” (with internal tussles and turbulence along the way). Under Tsai Ing-wen’s rule, it moved decisively toward “defending the Republic of China under DPP governance” in place of “establishing an independent Republic of Taiwan”. [21] This diluted the pro-independence element, but in the process incorporated the “Chinese independence” camp (those DPP supporters/faction who are in favour of merely maintaining the status quo, ie, the Republic of China as an independent sovereignty, or “de facto independence” – translator’s note). In short, to preserve the stability of Taiwanese capitalism, the DPP unified the struggle between the Taiwan independence and Chinese independence factions, and designated the People’s Republic of China as the common enemy of both.
In the early opposition (tangwai) period, the New Tide faction still maintained a critical attitude toward the United States. [22] However, after the Hong Kong National Security Law was introduced in 2020 and Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement was suppressed, DPP members began strengthening their political loyalty to the US. Objectively speaking, the “Resist China, Defend Taiwan” line that brewed from 2014 and helped the DPP win in 2019 carried a democratic political character, but as the DPP unreservedly followed America’s strategy, “Resist China, Defend Taiwan” has morphed into a more authoritarian “Pro-US, Anti-China,” and the DPP has become increasingly intolerant of voices that do not align with its ruling interests.
In 2012, when the US mad cow disease outbreak reoccurred, the DPP had demanded that the Ma administration pull US beef products off the market in Taiwan. Yet by 2020, after the DPP took power, it not only opened up imports of ractopamine-tainted US pork, but even insisted that allowing US pork in would bring a more stable economic and trade relationship between Taiwan and the US However, to this day Taiwan has gotten nothing in return but an insignificant 21st Century US-Taiwan Trade Initiative that might “hollowing out Taiwan.” In 2021, environmental groups initiated the “Cherish the Algal Reefs” referendum, but the DPP and its flanks responded by smearing the environmentalists with their habitual label of “Chinese Communist fellow travelers.”
After Lai Ching-te took office, the Blue and White parties attempted to use their legislative majority to constrain the DPP’s oversized executive power, which triggered the Blue Bird Movement. During this movement, the DPP and its flanks once again whipped up a “sense of national doom,” painting the legislative power expansion reform as a treasonous bill—selectively forgetting that 12 years ago, when it was in opposition, the DPP itself had proposed reforms against contempt of the legislature and to strengthen legislative investigative powers. [23] Confronted with the political pincer attack from the Blue and White parties, the DPP immediately petitioned for a constitutional interpretation, and Lai Ching-te even used the Blue Bird Movement to threaten the opposition. Compared to the DPP before Chen Shui-bian’s presidency, which was still pursuing democratic reforms, the difference is stark.
This change is also reflected in the DPP’s Taiwan independence platform. What began as a vision of Taiwan independence tinged with national-revolutionary and democratic reform ideals has, in the Tsai–Lai era, degenerated into a right-wing nationalism that depends on the United States and seeks the protection of American imperialism. Under this narrative framework, it no longer appeals to a just transitional justice or pursues substantive social equality, but instead relies on America’s umbrella to prolong the DPP’s rule. Confronted with the PRC’s military threats, the DPP has rolled out a series of militarization policies such as extending conscription, expanding US arms sales to Taiwan, and establishing an “All-Society Defense Resilience Committee.” Meanwhile, any voices questioning America’s intentions (for example, calls for equidistant diplomacy or peace advocacy) have been completely silenced by the DPP and the pro-Taiwan flanks.
Today, no matter what high-sounding language the DPP uses or what justifications it gives to defend its militarization policies, if war breaks out it will inevitably become a proxy war — one that could even turn “Taiwan independence” into a weapon of American imperialism against China.
A Decade of Change in the Sunflower Generation
As the DPP has become increasingly plutocratic and conservative, the left-leaning political fervor of the 2014 Sunflower generation has all but vanished over ten years of capitalist changes. Ten years ago, due to competitive pressure from Chinese capitalism and an industrial vacuum created by Taiwanese businesses moving to China, coupled with pro-capitalist policies under Ma Ying-jeou such as cuts to the inheritance tax, stimulation of the housing market, and the stingy youth internship subsidy plan (22K low starting salary policy), the younger generation widely felt anxious about their future. [24] Thus, under the banners of housing justice, anti-low wages and anti-China, they took to the streets.
Today, members of the Sunflower generation have gone from being restless young students to becoming workers under capitalism or small and mid-sized business owners and property holders. Many have bought homes, married and established their careers, while other student movement leaders have entered establishment party politics. The biggest change facing the Sunflower generation in the workforce is that they went from “without a house” to “having a house,” which has made them beneficiaries and supporters of capitalism’s sky-high housing prices. As for those movement leaders who entered politics, since progressive social advocacy cannot be translated into steady votes, the best way to sustain their political careers is to throw in their lot with the DPP or become pro-Green flanks. In either case, the common features are the fading of left-wing political fervor, a retreat from social movements, and becoming the DPP’s echo chambers and apologists in defense of capitalism.
This explains how the Sunflower generation’s cries for reform have today degenerated into voices echoing the DPP’s alignment with America’s anti-China strategy. Their developmental trajectory is similar to how the DPP went from a reformist, enlightened party to a US vassal—both came about by abandoning mass movements, embracing electoralism, and pursuing only piecemeal reforms within capitalism.
Lessons from the DPP’s Transformations
For Marxists, we can summarize the following key points from the DPP’s four transformations as follow:
The example of the DPP proves that replacing class issues with the Taiwan independence issue and electoralism will only lead to political regression and futile efforts. There are no shortcuts or tricks to achieving social equality; only by organizing workers and building class consciousness and political education among Taiwanese laborers can we develop a solid and unshakable organizational foundation.
Without a working-class foundation, merely pursuing democratic reforms is not enough. The fundamental reason the DPP gravitated toward electoralism and simultaneously began “KMT-ization” is that by adhering to electoralism, the DPP became more conservative with each instance of “bowing to popular sentiment.” This explains why the left needs a revolutionary socialist program: only in this way will we not be satisfied with the immediate reforms at hand, but instead be able to focus on a more far-reaching revolutionary vision.
From the history of the DPP and the Sunflower Movement, we can see that the petty-bourgeois inclination toward reformism is weak and unreliable. The reason the Sunflower generation abandoned mass movements over ten years to turn toward maintaining capitalism is that on the one hand they were unwilling to challenge capitalism, and on the other hand they failed to anchor their mass movement in the correct class. This allowed the DPP to become the biggest winner of the Sunflower student movement, and prompted the Sunflower generation’s student leaders to devote themselves to the DPP’s and its flanks’ petty-bourgeois political reforms. Now, this petty-bourgeois reformism has also “shifted right” along with the DPP.
The task of achieving social equality and defending democracy cannot rely on bourgeois politicians or petty-bourgeois reforms, and even more so cannot depend on any imperialism to carry it out on our behalf. Confronted with the PRC’s saber-rattling and threats of force, throwing oneself at American imperialism to preserve peace in the Taiwan Strait is not only a fanciful delusion, but will further inflame the conflict. What we need is a workers’ anti-war solidarity based on internationalism—only then can the Taiwanese masses preserve the greatest degree of democracy and peace.
In view of the above, Marxists need to draw on these lessons to ensure Taiwan’s left does not repeat the DPP’s mistakes. Especially given the increasingly acute US-China confrontation and the heightened tensions in the Taiwan Strait, we have no room for error.
Because Taiwan has always lacked a tradition of labor movement, the left in Taiwan often constitutes a tiny minority in society. Carrying out leftist work is undoubtedly beset with difficulties, but this indirectly proves the correctness of a leftist program. In our experience, examples of reformist parties betraying the grassroots are very common — the DPP is merely one more typical example.
For this reason, the people of Taiwan need to rethink why we must challenge capitalism and why we must establish a new socialist system. And we will heed the lessons of history and continue our work until the day the oppression of capitalism is completely swept away.
July 29, 2024
