Taiwanese independence: solidarity in the civil sphere?

This is a photo of Taiwan's newly elected president, Lai Ching-te, who was screened while speaking during Taiwan's national day. He made several overseas official visits last year, aiming to bolster friendship and form new relations with like-minded democracies to assert the island's independence from the People's Republic of China. In this image, Lai is speaking under the flag that is the official representative of Taiwan (ROC), a totem in modern times understood as a provocative response against the Communist Party. The flag is composed of blue, white and red, symbolizing the spirit of freedom, equality and fraternity. In addition, the flag is derived from and modified base on the previous flag held by the Kuo Ming Tang (KTM) party that Lai vows to pursue, with the three color symbolizing the party's three principles: nationality, civil rights and people's livelihood. Noticeably, in this image, the flag occupies half of the space, almost about to cover Lai himself despite that he is the speaking person that is meant to be the center of the focus. The flag of Taiwan, with its bright and contrasting colors that draws the audiences' first attention to, is a vigorous and clear symbol that Taiwan is not governed by the same administration as the mainland China, illustrated through this unique flag that is being intentionally exaggerated and underlined with its figurative effect even exceeds Lai's speech and manner. 

The issue of Taiwan's independence stems from the Chinese Civil War, with China's government in Beijing officially claiming Taiwan as part of its territory under the People's Republic of China. Yet Lai Ching-te rebukes the claim, arguing that the ruling Communist Party in Beijing has no legitimate right to intervene with the independent nation's own decision-making and self-employed democratic politics and has never really controlled the nation's territory. Instead, President Lai and his government insisted on KMT's political rights, and are completely committed to its form of rule that stands directly opposed to the Communist Party. As a result, Lai established a specific 'Taiwanese National Day' for the island, meanwhile ignoring all objections and condemnations from the Beijing government. He even selected the ROC flag on this noteworthy day he established, as an explicit protest that aims to distinguish and separate the island from the same jurisdiction control under the mainland China. In addition, despite of its illegitimacy announced by the official government in Beijing decades ago, the presence of the flag of the ROC that is different from the flag of the People's Republic of China (PRC) is an obvious declaration of the island's autonomous civil rights and independence, segregated from the flag of PRC that inhibits the meaning of 'one united nation' in which Lai consciously denied. 

The Taiwan problem of independence reflects the modern dynamic of solidarity. Despite being born under the same bloodline, nurtured on the same geographical ground, and belonging to the same nationality, under the direction of Lai's democratic administration, Taiwan declared its independence from mainland China, which operates under a separate democratic government instead of under the same ruling communist party as Beijing. Lai suggests that Taiwan is on its own has sovereignty, and maintained already as an independent country under the name and flag of the ROC recognized by its internal government. Thus, he concluded that Taiwan exercise full autonomy through his governance, with official diplomatic relations built under his effort that acknowledge the ROC's legitimate sovereignty and independence.  

According to Alexander, civil society is terrirotially and spatially fixed. Its meanings are limited to a 'civilized space' based on geography. Thus, Lai has demarcated a sphere recognized as the civil society through internal separation, generating a particular moral community based on different totems and contradictory binary civil codes (Alexander 2019:58-59). His administration intentionally generated meaningful, symbolic cultural codes, labeling the independent Taiwanese government as democratic and liberal that operates as a 'sacred civil society', whereas repressing the ruling communist party of Beijing as the absolute enemy of democracy that administers a 'profane form of society' with dominance, coercion, and dictatorship. In this circumstance, collective nationality is decentralized and destroyed, with a new 'national identity' being culturally coded as 'liberal' and 'democratic' to resist against the undemocratic, uncivilized ruling communist party. Consequently, the essentialization of Lai's civil society into practices has taken place, given its empirical foundation and practical application. Taiwanese declared themselves as belonging to another group, as a moral community with identities different from the majority of the Chinese population in the mainland, under the ruling party of Beijing. Civil solidarity and 'Nationality' thus becomes primordialized, with physical attributions like pure Taiwanese ethnicity and blood all analogized as 'unique qualities' necessary to be included into the grid of the civil society in which other 'outsiders' can never attain (Alexander 2019:194-195). Under Lai's control, repressive discourses are also constantly being made. Both his private, governmental institutions and public communicative institutions like news outlets and popular media portray the central Chinese government as uncivilized and anti-democratic, with the goal of threatening and oppressing Taiwan's idealized, independent “civil society.”

Hence, civil society becomes a social fact through history— a constructed, objective relative reality that is unique and meaningful in its particular spatial domain. A new sphere of civil solidarity is cultivated based on an essentialized, exclusive 'Taiwanese membership' and its corresponding moral communities, with the endless reproduction of binary codes rooted in the history labeling contemporary actors, Lai and the Central Communist government, as 'naturally' liberal and evil. The moral understanding of civil solidarity can be intensified and radicalized under the materialized binary codes and the affecting flag of the ROC that are even capable of eliciting a civil war (Alexander 2019:62-63). 

As a conclusion, under Lai Ching-te's administration, Taiwan's claim of independence against the control of the ruling Communist Party in Beijing exemplifies how regional partition fragments the national society and solidarity. Lai's self-claimed sovereignty continues to spark binary cultural codes and discourses that encourage solidarity only within Taiwanese civil society and endanger overall national stability. His act of dissociation, regardless of the shared history and nationality, exemplifies the dynamic of modern solidarity. This dissolution of national solidarity, however, is dangerous. As Alexander stresses, in concrete terms, such an internal mode of organization is always vulnerable to destructive intrusion, either from the constructed, 'uncivilized society' in other national spheres under binary codes that can forcibly change civil criteria, or external manipulation that introduces activities and products into the civil society to disturb and devastate its space in return (Alexander 2019:205-206). 

Source:

Alexander, J.C. 2019. The Civil Sphere. Oxford University Press, New York.

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Reuters. 2024. Lai Ching-te, Taiwan’s new president-elect, will face China’s ire | reuters Available at https://www.reuters.com/world/china/taiwan-president-elect-lai-face-chinas-ire-after-victory-2024-01-13/ (verified 21 April 2025).