Taiwan's democracy threatened from within

Photo: Yasuyoshu Chiba Agence France-Presse A Taiwanese Air Force Mirage 2000 fighter jet approaches to land at an air base in Hsinchu after China surrounded Taiwan with warships and military aircraft, during war game exercises, in northern Taiwan, May 23, 2024

Fabien Deglise

Published at 0:00

• Asia

Tensions have risen once again this week between China and Taiwan, following the announcement on Thursday of a first official trip abroad for Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, including two stops on American territory. One in Hawaii. The other on the island of Guam.

For Beijing, the itinerary is a “bad signal” sent by Washington “to the separatist forces” of Taiwan, an autonomous territory governed democratically since the 1990s, supported by the United States, but which China claims as one of its provinces. It systematically attacks any sign of its diplomatic autonomy.

And the revolt should accentuate the persistent threat of the Chinese dictatorship on the island with military maneuvers that are multiplying above the Taiwan Strait and, since the beginning of the year, an asset for Beijing in its strategy of retaking the territory: political allies coming from within.

Two pro-Chinese political parties are now in control of Taiwan's legislative apparatus. A power play in a normal democracy, but which, in this Asian territory, now raises the risk of a “Hong Kong” scenario, where democracy has slowly collapsed, since 2014, under the effect of increasingly liberticidal legislative reforms.

“That’s what we fear here,” said Paul Jobin, a sociologist at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica, reached this week in Taipei during a video conference. “Some of my colleagues are talking about a parliamentary coup and a parliamentary dictatorship that is being established. Clearly, we are in the midst of a constitutional crisis with a body of evidence and signs that speak for themselves about Chinese interference in Taiwan’s political affairs.”

In late October, Taiwan’s Constitutional Court, one of the guardians of democratic order on the island, repelled an initial attack by invalidating a series of measures aimed at strengthening legislative powers, to facilitate the targeting and persecution of citizens, civil servants, business leaders or military personnel in the context of political interrogations conducted within parliamentary commissions of inquiry. The lawmakers also wanted to gain influence over the executive branch through a law that would subject the presidency to parliament, thereby challenging the separation of powers in Taiwan.

These reforms were led by the Kuomintang (KMT), a pro-Chinese party which, with the support of the Taiwan People's Party (TPP), a political party calling for a rapprochement between the island and Beijing, now forms the majority camp in Parliament. The executive is still in the hands of the pro-Western and sovereignist Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), whose rise to power in 2016 irritated the Chinese dictatorship and brought the relationship between Taiwan and mainland China into a state of acute tension. The election of Lai Ching-te earlier this year only amplified the acrimony.

Last spring, after a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, former KMT chairman Ma Ying-jeou called through his foundation for changes to the “anti-infiltration law,” which prevents Chinese interference in Taiwan’s politics. Eric Chu, the current chairman of the pro-China party, has embraced the move.

A few days ago, one of its deputies submitted a bill to allow the military and key government officials to salute the Chinese national flag, sing the Chinese national anthem, and engage in actions that recognize the political authority of the Beijing government. A legal framework that seeks above all to “sell Taiwan to China” and “suppress laws protecting the national sovereignty” of the island, denounced two elected officials from the ruling DPP, quoted by the Taipei News.

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Unhealthy climate

“It's very worrying for democracy in Taiwan,” says Paul Jobin. “Especially when we see what's happening elsewhere in the world, in Georgia [where the rise of a pro-Russian party has undermined the pro-European ambitions of this Caucasian country], with the rise of the extreme right and anti-democratic leaders in Europe, in the United States… The global climate is increasingly unhealthy. The air is no longer just red, it's rather fascistoid.”

On November 16, a hundred lawyers from Taiwan marched in the streets of Taipei, the capital, to demand the withdrawal of a bill put forward by the pro-Chinese majority in Parliament to review the law governing the procedures of the Constitutional Court. This reform seeks to impose decision-making by two-thirds of the votes, rather than a simple majority, within the government body, a way of reducing the influence of this court which has just put spokes in the wheels of the KMT and the PPT, denounce Taiwanese pro-democracy voices.

Pro-Beijing lawmakers could also use their majority to paralyze the institution, where eight of the 15 judges must be renewed in the coming months, under the Constitution.

“This is not just a disagreement between the ruling Democratic Progressive Party and the KMT in the Legislative Assembly, but a question that affects our country's constitutional system,” summarized lawyer Hong Wei-sheng, quoted by the Taiwanese news agency CNA.

This week, a small group of citizens gathered in front of Taiwan’s parliament to draw attention to the threat that this pro-China majority in the legislature poses to Taiwan’s young democracy. Last May, thousands of democrats took to the streets to express their concerns, but the movement has since lost momentum, says Paul Jobin.

“The sense of urgency and crisis is not easy to stimulate in the face of questions of constitutional rights, which are not easy to popularize,” explains the sociologist, a specialist in Taiwanese social movements. The KMT and the TPP know this very well and they are not going to stop their attack on Taiwan’s democratic system, with three more years now to continue to rub the boards and drag us towards the worst. »

A democratic instability fueled by the return of Donald Trump

In early November, Elon Musk’s company SpaceX reportedly asked its Taiwanese electronics suppliers to move production to other countries, such as Vietnam, Thailand, and beyond. The request, reported by Reuters, is said to be aimed at protecting the company’s supply chain before a potential conflict between the island and China disrupts it.

In the business world, the move is not surprising, but it becomes a little more worrisome coming from this close friend of Donald Trump, who in a few weeks is preparing to play a major role in the Republican’s next administration. A change of guard at the White House with new hands on the reins of American foreign policy, which adds uncertainty about the future of the Asian territory, already subject from within to the growing threat of a pro-Chinese majority within its legislative apparatus.

From Washington, Taiwan’s historic ally, the signs are indeed contradictory. In September 2023, Elon Musk, who has been whispering in the ear of the next American president for months, claimed that Taiwan was nothing more than a Chinese province whose reunification is blocked by the presence of the American army in the Pacific. The previous year, he had called on the island’s government to accept a level of control from Beijing similar to that imposed on Hong Kong, a prospect widely rejected by the Taiwanese.

Donald Trump’s position on the island maintains the United States’ “strategic ambiguity” on the territory, but also expresses frustrations with Taiwan, which the populist accuses of cannibalizing the American computer chip industry, but also of not contributing enough to the financing of the security offered by the United States.

Conversely, the appointments of Senator Marco Rubio as Secretary of State and Michael Waltz as National Security Advisor are viewed favorably by Taipei because of the two elected officials’ past statements in favor of Taiwan and a strengthened defense against Beijing. Michael Waltz believes, among other things, that Washington is in a “cold war with the Chinese Communist Party” and should learn the lessons of Ukraine by further arming Taiwan before an attempted invasion by China.

An invasion increasingly likely, according to Admiral Samuel J. Paparo, head of the United States Indo-Pacific Command, who last week, at a conference at the Brookings Institution, said that he had seen China’s hostility toward Taiwan growing since this summer. He also recalled that Xi Jinping had asked his People’s Liberation Army to be ready to seize Taiwan in 2027, eight years earlier than China’s initial target date of 2035.

Democratic instability fueled by the return of Donald Trump