No T-Shirts For Taiwan

"When I was twenty I spent the summer on a kibbutz"

It takes a while to sink in. It is 2001 and myself and Bob, an ageing English communist, are standing in Bir Zeit, home of the finest university in the Occupied Territories. Given that the pair of us are on a Palestinian solidarity visit, I find Bob’s Zionist youth somewhat surprising. But when he explains his rationale for supporting the Jewish state three decades earlier it all makes sense.

Back then Israel, tiny, vulnerable, socialist Israel, led by people who had fought British colonialism, was surrounded by hostile Arab states. Any good leftist knows who to support when David fights Goliath - hence Bob’s summer of communal farming. It was only in the 1980s, with the war in Lebanon and the first intifada, that the left’s sympathies swung decisively to the Palestinians.

Bob’s life story, from long-haired Zionist to balding friend of the Palestinians, gives me hope for another conflict close to my heart - the struggle between Taiwan and China. Having spent two years on the island, I’m infuriated by the lack of interest shown by the global left in the plight of the Taiwanese people. A small island of 23 million people, Asia’s most democratic society, is harangued, marginalised and threatened by a dictatorship of 1.3 billion. Yet progressives do nothing.

There are no concerts for a free Formosa, no solidarity visits, no "I Love Taiwan" T-shirts on campuses. The conflict across the strait excites no emotion among the left. But why should this be the case? Do we believe in suporting democracy in South Africa but not in Taiwan? Do we oppose American belligerence but not Chinese?

If anyone outside of Asia cares about Taiwan at all, it is American conservatives, often extreme ones at that. Perhaps this is why progressives are so cool towards the Republic of China. In days gone by it was understandable that the left’s sympathies should lie with the communist dictators in Beijing rather than the capitalist tyrants in Taipei. Mao’s People’s Republic, for all its evident evil, it did at least pay lip-service to a more just world. The regime of Chiang Kai-shek was lambasted by the left (quite rightly) for its pro-American autocracy.

But, as Bob would no doubt attest, changed times call for changed attitudes. Whatever residual support which may have existed for the despicable regime in Beijing must now be dispensed with. Having dropped any pretence of wanting to create a more equal society, China’s rulers have instead gone full steam ahead with economic growth at all costs. A small elite have grown fantastically rich while the great majority of China’s urban proletariat and peasantry remain as desperately poor as ever.

A strengthening China flexes its muscles on the international scene with increasing ugliness. It is not just Taiwan which suffers from this new Chinese jingoism. The entire eastern Pacific may soon earn that most unwanted status, that of a superpower’s "backyard".

Taiwan too is not the place it once was. The autocratic regime of the Kuomintang was swept away in the 1980s and 90s by an extraordinary democracy movement, a story which remains largely unknown to the outside world. Having lived under the longest period of martial law in human history, the Taiwanese people have embraced democracy with gusto. The level of freedoms - of speech, of assembly, of religion, of the press - compares favourably with any other Asian country. It is this, Taiwan’s vibrant democratic society, which is at risk from Beijing’s sabre-rattling against the "renegade province".

So much of China’s strategy towards Taiwan depends on the use of the "one China" dogma, the assertion, against all evidence to the contrary, that there is one China rather than two. A central plank of this policy is Beijing’s version of the old West German Hallstein doctrine, whereby any country which recognised the rival DDR would swiftly see their ambassador expelled from Bonn. There are less than thirty countries with full diplomatic ties with Taipei, all of them poor and all of them essentially bought. No major power dares to open an embassy in Taiwan for fear of breaking off links with the oft-quoted "world’s largest market".

But economic co-operation is a two-way street. China could easily afford to break off links with a small country like say, Jordan if it recognised the government in Taipei. But it couldn’t sever relations with a large group of powerful states, such as the European Union, if they decided en masse to open embassies in Taiwan.

In the current political climate, with some European states eager to sell advanced weaponry to China, such a move is highly unlikely. But it does not have to be this way. When the streets of Taipei rumble under the feet of a million people marching against China’s "anti-secession" law, why do the streets of Europe not also rumble? Why is there a Taiwan Caucus in the US Congress but no such body in the European Parliament?

The struggle for a free Taiwan will be long and hard. But that sort of thing doesn’t put off the Friends of Tibet, does it?

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Your comparisson to the two struggles is unique. Both the Palestinians and theTaiwanese are victims in this game of 'big nation' domination. They are not the only examples, there are many. Wherever imperialism existed, the suffering remains. Just look at the former British colonies in Africa, look at India and Pakistan, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, the list is endless.
People today will not tolerate what they were forced to years ago. The sun has set on the British Empire and it will set on all other ones. The Soviet domination of Eastern Europe has ended, Taiwan and Palestine will one day be independant and free as well... the clock of progress cannot and will not be stopped.

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