Updated Saturday, November 29, 2008 9:58 am TWN, By Dr. William Fang, Special to The China Post

Anti-China mentality largely political

In an article entitled “The Gap from Anti- to Pro-Communism” published on Nov. 27 in the United Daily News, Chen Fang-ming, a noted scholar on Taiwanese literature, attributed the bloody violence that occurred in the mass protests sponsored by the Democratic Progressive party (DPP) during the recent visits to Taiwan paid by Zhang Mingqing, vice chairman of the Beijing-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS), and Chen Yunlin, chairman of the ARATS, to a gap between the anti-Communist policy adopted by the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) during the martial-law period and the current pro-Communist stand taken by the KMT. After several decades of the white terror and thought control, the people on this island are not only highly anti-Communist but also maintain an extreme degree of Communism-phobia, Chen said. It is because of living in such an unenlightened state for a long time that the people of Taiwan have suffered from ignorance of China.

Chen’s views leave much to be discussed and considered.

First, since everyone in Taiwan received the same kind of anti-Communist indoctrination in the past, why was the DPP the only political party that sponsored the anti-Zhang and anti-Chen protests?

In fact, the anti-China mentality of many native Taiwanese stems largely from their support for the Taiwan independence movement and the provincialism-complex stirred by ill-intentioned politicians. Almost all DPP leaders, including Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen, are quite knowledgeable about China through travels or various information sources, but their intention to manipulate the emotions of the native Taiwanese people against China is either for partisan or for personal gains or for both.

Just as a well-known retired diplomat pointed out some time ago, all contents of the Unification Guidelines comply with the interests of Taiwan and its people. But, so far, President Ma Ying-jeou is still hesitant to reactivate the Guidelines. Why? It is because the idea of ‘unification’ has been so distorted and demonized by some Taiwan politicians that it has become something like a plague to many locals.

Let’s take the visit by Chen Yunlin for another example. All the activities during his visit, including the signing of four important documents that promote cross-strait relations, were charted on the basis of parity, which means that Taiwan and Beijing were treated on an equal footing. But, even so, the protesters insisted that the government under President Ma was ‘dwarfed’ and that it tilted toward China.

The current anti-China attitude among many people in Taiwan should not be considered a product of past anti-Communist ideology and education under the KMT rule, but rather an outgrowth of ethnical emotions and the propaganda spread by advocates of the Taiwan independence movement.

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