Timothy Nerozzi has an excellent and compelling look in the Washington Examiner at how Western-style progressivism has suffused Taiwan (or at least, its ruling class), and what this may mean for the future of the self-styled Republic of China. As Nerozzi details, this includes a revisionist backlash against Chiang Kai-Shek, the founder of the modern Taiwanese state, as well as a broader rejection of the Chinese cultural heritage that came with the ROC’s original claim to be the legitimate government of China after 1949, and that reflects the more than 96 percent of Taiwan’s population that is Han Chinese.
Chiang, of course — as was well-known and much-debated at the time — was no model of liberal democracy. He was an autocrat in the traditional Chinese mold, complete with a disregard for human life and liberty that reflected itself in how he governed China, how he fought the Japanese and the Maoists, and how he ran Taiwan. That said, there would be no independent Taiwan without Chiang, who to his credit was a bitter foe of both Japanese imperialism and the communism of Mao and his party. And the rejection of Chinese culture can be a factor binding Taiwan further to the West and the outside world that provides its own ballast against absorption into Beijing’s cultural autarky.
Still, the question remains whether a society so constituted, conceived in nothing more than bromides about multiculturalism and tolerance, and with no sense of itself as a distinct nation, can long endure under the stresses of war or its constant threat. However much they have each partaken of Western fads themselves, the people of both Israel and Ukraine have a strong, vivid sense of themselves as a distinct nation with a culture, history, and language of their own that will perish from this earth if their enemies win. That has tremendous sustaining power when sacrifices are demanded. With what will the Taiwanese hold themselves together to defend their island home?