Tsai Ying-Wen Brings Taiwan to the Crossroad

          The ticket of Tsai and her running mate, former premier William Lai (賴清德), won 8,170,231 votes, or 57.13 percent of the 19,311,105 registered voters, with the Han-Chang ticket garnering 5,522,119 votes (38.61 percent) and the Soong-Yu ticket receiving 608,590 votes (4.26 percent). The only winners in this Taiwan election are U.S. hegemony and driftwood expats using Taiwan as a way station.

For me, with an Alien Resident Card as the spouse of a Taiwanese woman, things couldn’t be better. With a low cost of living (2/3 less than living in NYC) and Universal health care, I can save my money for travel abroad to see my children and the world, but I didn’t plan it that way. Taiwan is great place to live, despite the air pollution and inconsiderate citizenry. I choose not to schmooze with privileged expats on the Westside and have no problem in the backwater called Taichung; I wouldn’t want to live in Taipei again. But the nature I increasingly want to enjoy is slipping away; the Han River bike trail will parallel a mess of highway overpasses as Taichung urbanizes in the blink of an eye in this capitalist hellhole.

I would have liked to live in an independent Taiwan not dominated by clandestine U.S. intelligence and militarism hedging in China. China had  better back off a Hong Kong style one nation-two systems solution to Taiwan, the last vestiges of western colonialism; it didn’t work in H.K. and Tsai Ying-Wen’s DPP is having no part of it, only using it to push China further away, claiming China is Taiwan adversary when in fact the U.S. is.

Time is on China’s side as the U.S. continues its slide and the Chinese economy and standard of living continue to surpass Taiwan’s and even the U.S. Until then, I will accept the underhanded benefits of others low wages and inexpensive services in Taiwan even as I applaud every worker’s gain. Young workers don’t organize themselves unless it’s a campaign to scare them with anti-China, anti-communist propaganda; they are left in the dark. There is no anti U.S. propaganda to be found here; AIT has made sure of that, dominating social English media. Tsai-Ying-Wen’s acceptance speech was bilingual; Mandarin and English (not Taiwanese as it should have been) as it plays into the hands of its real class oppressors: capitalism.

A distant third place finisher, People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) said it best in his concession speech. “The nation will face a major change in the global political situation this year,” Soong said.“If cross-strait relations remain unstable and Taiwan takes the wrong side in dealings with Japan, the US and China, all these factors will affect Taiwan,” he said. He also went on to defend the “18%ers”, privileged Chinese interlopers in the 1947 retreat from China that the DPP rightfully suppressed along with the KMT’s “ill-gotten gains.” “This government should stop pitting one party against another, stop destroying the civil service by offering lucrative jobs only to those who agree with it and stop using drastic measures to carry out social reforms,” he added. Taiwan is at a crossroad. The times are changing. To stay the same is impossible. 

The Monday after the election and all the exploited fools are returning to work on their noisy polluting scooters and cars. They’ll work overtime without compensation and then thank the boss next week when they get a yearly bonus at his whim. Whatever bonuses they get will not make up for their low wages and dangerous overwork all year round. The bonuses are used to enslave the working stiffs; they give overtime and don’t take sick days because they’re afraid of losing it. They start no unions to fight for collective higher compensation and benefits; can’t even if they wanted to if their workplace has less than thirty-two employees. Yet these fools are worried about Chinese communism ruining their lives. Let them fuck themselves, suffer in their ignorance, and give consumers like me more than we pay for in this corrupted capitalist hellhole. 

      I see well past my predicted re-election of Tsai Ying-Wen to the chaos that will ensue as Chinese NGO’s give Taiwan a taste of the same medicine U.S. NGO’s gave Hong Kong. But the outcome must be different. It’s only natural that Hong Kong remain a part of China and Taiwan be cajoled into their cohort. The poison of colonialist exploitation and racism will dissipate with the final stages of capitalist imperialism. China need only bide its time. A leader will come along one day in Taiwan who will be worthy of election with the same epiphany that Moon Jae-in and the people of South Korea had that the United States is no one’s ally and cares not for the common man; only the vested interests of its ruling class and corporate interests.