Taiwanese independence: solidarity in the civil sphere?

This is a photo of Taiwan's newly elected president, Lai Ching-te, who 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 representative of the past Kuo Min Tang (KMT) party, a totem under the previous government extended into 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, as well as the three principles under the KTM: nationality, civil rights and people's livelihood.

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 completely committed to its form of rule that stand directly oppose 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 that sharply criticize the intentional segregating act. In addition, Lai even self-consciously select the past flag of the KMT party as the totem of the island's civil rights and independence, regardless of its illegitimacy by the official national government in Beijing decades ago. 

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 a sovereign nation, and all its ongoing processes and affairs concerning social, political, and economic spheres can be decided only by its 23.5 million Taiwanese population.

According to Alexander, the civil society is terrirotial and spatially fixed that is meaningful only in a limited, 'civilized space' base on the geographic and regional bifurcation. Thus, Lai has demarcated a sphere recognized as the civil society through internal separation, generating a particular moral community based on the totem and shared, 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 the 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 the essentialized, exclusive 'Taiwanese membership' and its corresponding moral communities, with the endless reproduction of binary codes rooted in the histotry 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 totem, even capable of eliciting a civil war (in fact, some suggest that it has already started, with warning drills and increased military surveillance from Beijing considered war signs by the Taiwanese) (Alexander 2019:62-63). 

As a conclusion, under Lai Ching-te's administration, Taiwan's claim of independence against the control of the ruling community party in Beijing exemplifies how regional partition fragments the national society and solidarity. Lai's self-claimed sovereignty continues to spark flabbergasted, binary cultural codes that encourage solidarity only within the 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 distort and devastate its function in return (Alexander 2019:205-206). 

Source:

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

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/taiwan-president-elect-lai-face-chinas-ire-after-victory-2024-01-13/

Taiwan’s president set to visit Hawaii and Guam, drawing Beijing’s ire