ROC democracy’s low-water mark

Zhang Mingqing, vice chairman of mainland China’s semi-official Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS), was roughed up by a score of protesters led by Wang Ting-yu, a DPP member of Tainan’s City Council. They surrounded and manhandled Zhang at the Confucius Temple in Tainan, southern Taiwan, during a sightseeing tour. Without adequate police protection, the hapless Zhang was harassed, chased, punched, kicked and thrown to the ground, falling heavily on his back with his glasses flying away. During the pandemonium, a thuggish, 52-year-old man wearing green headband leapt onto the roof of Zhang’s car and stomped wildly. Zhang was later helped to his feet by plainclothesmen who escorted him to a waiting car and escaped narrowly.

The incident shook Taiwan like a bombshell. It was a frontal attack on democracy by the island’s extremists who acted like lynch mob in supreme disregard for law. It was a dark day for Taiwan, a day of infamy for all those who cherish and champion the true cause of democracy.

It was sad to note that Wang Ting-yu, leader of the violent protest, denied any wrongdoing. “The protesters came by themselves,” Wang said. “There was no violence. Zhang fell by tripping over a stump,” he said on television which showed him pushing shoving Zhang around. Another DPP heavyweight, Wang Hsing-nan, said violence was justified. “It’s hard (for the protesters) to be rational, given the circumstances.” But ruling Kuomintang (KMT) legislators reacted angrily. Hung Hsiu-chu, an outspoken lawmaker nicknamed “little pepper” for her pungent remarks, described the incident as a “shame” for Taiwan and a disgrace for all the world to see.

For Zhang Mingqing, the incident was really an eye-opening experience. Now he might have second thoughts about Taiwan’s widely acclaimed democracy, which George W. Bush hailed in March this year as a “beacon” in Asia and the world. If democracy means a free-for-all, lawlessness and barbarism as Zhang has tasted in person, it would be something the mainland would rather dispense with.

For CNN and the Times, Taiwan’s “rambunctious democracy” of fist-fighting and hair-pulling on the parliament floor is common fare. It makes Taiwan’s democracy amusing and famous. But manhandling a “Chinese envoy” is beyond the pale. It is not the way the Chinese people treat their guests. Zhang, a scholar who also serves as the dean of the School of Journalism and Communications at Xiamen University in Fujian, was invited to speak at a seminar on media exchange at the University of Arts in Tainan.

The gratuitous assault on Zhang is a blow to the cross-strait relations which President Ma Ying-jeou is determined to develop after a decade of deep freeze under former Presidents Chen Shui-bian and Lee Teng-hui who pursued confrontational, separatist policies that have resulted in Taiwan’s diplomatic and economic marginalization. Since his election in March, the long-suspended cross-strait dialogue has resumed between Taiwan’s Strait Exchange Foundation (SEF) and its mainland counterpart ARATS, two quasi-official bodies empowered by both sides to handle day-to-day issues in the absence of official ties.

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