Urs Hecker, REVOLUTION, Infomail 1243, 28 January 2024
Global development in recent years has been characterised by an increasingly strong confrontation between China and the United States and the rest of the Western bloc. In an already divided world, as the new and growing imperialist power, China wants its own piece of the pie of global exploitation, while the hitherto dominant superpower, the United States, wants to secure its position and booty. This confrontation is driven by the ever-deepening global capitalist crisis, which is forcing the imperialist states to conquer new markets. Taiwan is right on the front line of this confrontation and is one of the most hotly contested positions. Now, Taiwan has elected as president the “China-critical” candidate of the liberal DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) Lai Ching-te. But the question arises whether Taiwan is actually able to choose its own path in this world system.
Brief outline of Taiwan’s history
The earliest settlements of Taiwan by Homo sapiens can be dated back to about 20,000 BC, when a land bridge connected the island to present-day China during the Ice Age. Even though there were repeated waves of migration from the mainland to Taiwan in early Chinese history, it was not until the first half of the 1st millennium that the first Sinification began under the Han Dynasty. After that, however, connections with the mainland largely broke off and remained peripheral until the 15th century.
With the onset of the age of colonialism, European trading powers expanded into Taiwan from 1517 onwards, especially the Netherlands and later Spain. From this period on, Taiwan also became more visible to China, or more precisely, to competing dynasties in China. Due to the Manchu encroachment, loyal supporters of the Ming Dynasty sought to build a new base in Taiwan for the reconquest of China. In 1661, an army of 35,000 men under the Ming loyalist Zheng Chenggong conquered Taiwan and in 1662 also conquered the Dutch possessions.
But this rule quickly came to an end when the island was conquered by the Qing dynasty in 1682 and Taiwan became part of the Chinese Empire for the first time. At the time of the conquest, the state was based on a pre-capitalist mode of production, which Marx characterised as “Asiatic”, which cannot be compared with bourgeois nation-states, complete with national identity and aspirations. In 1895, the Qing Dynasty lost the island to Japan and Taiwan remained a Japanese colony until the end of World War II.
After World War II, a civil war broke out again in mainland China between the nationalist Guomindang (GMD) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). As the victory of the Stalinist CCP became apparent, the GMD leadership around Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan along with sections of the mainland bourgeoisie and administration. There, they established a Bonapartist dictatorship with the support of the United States. This continued to pose as the legitimate government of all of China, even though it no longer controlled any part of the mainland. The GMD represented the interests of those sections of the bourgeoisie that had fled from the mainland and raised the slogan of its reconquest. However, it owed its survival to US imperialism, which protected it from any invasion by the People’s Republic.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Taiwan experienced strong economic growth and this allowed the development of indigenous Taiwanese capital, that is, rooted in the traditions and descendants of the people who lived there before 1945. They now founded their own party, the DPP, and demanded not only political independence, especially from the People’s Republic, but also an end to martial law. In this they eventually succeeded. By the end of the 1980s, Taiwan was slowly transforming itself into a bourgeois democracy. Despite the end of the dictatorship, however, the GMD continued to rule for the time being and began to soften its attitude to the mainland after the capitalist restoration on the mainland. Central to this was the 1992 agreement with the People’s Republic on the “One China Principle”, according to which both countries recognise that there is only one China, so that today very few countries conduct independent diplomacy with Taiwan. The DPP won the presidential and parliamentary elections for the first time in 2013 and has been in government ever since. It rejects the “one-China principle” and stands for Taiwan’s independence.
Economic upswing slowed
Taiwan’s economic boom after World War II was based on huge U.S. investment, similar to that in the Republic of (South) Korea. The military regime ensured cheap labour and martial law did not end until 1987, while the first elections were held in 1996.
Now, however, Taiwan’s economy is facing massive problems. Outside of the semiconductor technology sector, its position in the global value chain is stagnating. Industries with low capital productivity, such as textiles, chemicals and raw metals, contribute to half of its industrial production. In addition, its position within the international value creation ladder is seriously endangered. Ironically, the increasing inter-imperialist competition demands more and more imperiously that Taiwan’s key sector should shift to the USA (Arizona), Japan and Germany (Chip Act). At the same time, the same logic means that trade with the People’s Republic, which is so important, is declining. Outside the high-tech sector, productivity growth is steadily losing momentum. The Taiwanese “Tiger”, which from the late 1970s onwards was even considered by some to be a safe candidate for accession to the select club of imperialist powers, seems increasingly to share the fate of other tiger states, not finding its way into the comfort of the imperialist bed, but in front of it – as a bedside rug.
The election and the candidates
On January 13, 2024, presidential and parliamentary elections were held in Taiwan.
The winning presidential candidate was Lai Ching-te of the ruling DDP. He held various ministerial posts within the previous government and stands for a continuation of the previous, confrontational and pro-American policy towards the People’s Republic of recent years. He once described himself as a “pragmatic worker for Taiwan’s independence”. However, as a result of the election campaign, he has rowed back for fear of encouraging an even greater escalation within the population. Today, he talks about maintaining the status quo, strengthening ties with the West and increasing defence spending. As already mentioned, the electoral base of the DPP is that part of the population whose roots go back to the settlement during the Qing Dynasty. This group sees itself primarily as Taiwanese and, at most, secondarily, as Chinese. Above all, the DPP represents the interests of the “smaller” bourgeoisie, which sees itself as Taiwanese, and the Taiwanese petty bourgeoisie. It is a close ally of U.S. imperialism and is correspondingly strongly supported by Western media in the election campaign. It is trying to fight for a formally independent, liberal-democratic Taiwan with strong ties to the West.
The Guomindang presidential candidate, Hou Yu-ih, also appeared to have a good chance. The former police chief of Taipei is the classic representative of the bureaucracy and the upper middle class. Since the capitalist restoration in the People’s Republic, the GMD has been much more sympathetic to it than before. Prior to 2013, for example, its governments pursued a course of détente and rapprochement with the People’s Republic and, above all, greatly expanded economic ties. Even today, it accuses the DPP of plunging the country into war and itself seeks dialogue with the People’s Republic. The GMD’s electoral base remains primarily the descendants of mainland Chinese who immigrated after the civil war, but it also has some support among the indigenous Taiwanese. As a party, it primarily represents the interests of big business, which, due to its close economic ties to the mainland, is striving for détente vis-à-vis the People’s Republic. It calculates that it could also benefit from a potential “reunification”, becoming part of an imperialist state, with the private capitalists becoming a more important part of the ruling class. Despite the rhetorical focus on détente, the GMD also stands for an increase in military spending. It is mainly supported by Chinese media.
The surprise candidate, Ko Wen-je of the Taiwanese People’s Party, had only a slim chance. Ko is a former surgeon and tries to present himself as a “middle ground” between GMD and DPP. He rejects the DPP’s harsh policy towards the People’s Republic, but also accuses the GMD of being too friendly to it. Ko primarily attracts young voters and people who do not feel represented by the current two-party system. He represents a populist “people-oriented” policy. While he looked to have good support at the beginning, he tended to fade into the background towards the end. In the meantime, a coalition between the GMD and his People’s Party was discussed, but this ultimately failed due to disputes over posts and offices. But Ko is also interesting because, partly due to his political inexperience, he tends to name things more clearly. In an interview with Bloomberg, he said of the question about alignment with China: “Right now, the status quo is the only choice we have because the U.S. would not allow Taiwan to unite with China, and China would not allow Taiwan to become independent.”
Self-Determination and Global Order
This refreshing honesty in a bourgeois politician hits the nail on the head. One, if not the, central question for most people on Taiwan, that of the right to national self-determination, comes up against the great power interests of both China and the United States within the imperialist world system. Taiwan is a semi-colony, this means that its position in the world order is determined by finance capital and the geostrategic interests of others, both economically and politically. Taiwan is mainly dependent on the United States.
This dependence arose historically, as Taiwan would have been conquered long ago without US military and economic support. It was consciously built as a capitalist alternative when the People’s Republic was still a degenerated workers’ state. After capitalist restoration, this dependence persisted. The U.S. interest in Taiwan is economic as well as military-geostrategic. In addition to the expanded resource and sales market that Taiwan offers to U.S. capital, a large part of the world’s semiconductor chips are produced there. These are central to digital products of all kinds. From a military-strategic point of view, Taiwan is important for the United States because, together with Japan and the Philippines, it forms a chain of islands that makes it possible to deny the Chinese fleet access to the Pacific.
For these reasons, China also wants to move Taiwan into its sphere of influence and ultimately annex it. In addition, it plays a particularly important ideological role for the Chinese government: through annexation, the “CCP” could present itself as having achieved the ultimate goal of “Chinese unity” and stifle the hope of the broad masses for a bourgeois democracy.
For the imperialist powers, Taiwan is the prize in their conflict, a state that is at the centre of the struggle for the redivision of the world! The Taiwanese bourgeoisie cannot manoeuvre itself out of this situation either by a continued policy of subordination to the United States or by a rapprochement with the People’s Republic. Taiwan is being forced into a conflict whose possible consequences – a war between the US and China – the vast majority of people on the island rightly fear. At the same time, however, it justifiably does not want to sacrifice its right to self-determination.
In some parts of the bourgeois media, we can read that Taiwan’s important position in semiconductor production would prevent war because that would cause enormous damage to the global economy (including the US and China) and would not be in the interests of the “superpowers”. Undoubtedly, this plays a role in the fact that the current conflict has not yet gone beyond threats and diplomatic military manoeuvres, but reference to the existing economic benefits of peace fails to recognise the potential for intensification of inter-imperialist rivalry. There were economic interdependencies between the great powers before the First and Second World Wars as well but that did not prevent rivalry turning into hot war. Indeed, the imperative of imperialist expansion will, at some point, lead to that again if the working class does not first overthrow “its” ruling classes.
It is therefore no coincidence that the states are beginning to hedge against a “default” by Taiwan. For example, China is currently building up its own semiconductor production and will become independent of Taiwan’s semiconductor production over time. On the other hand, it is precisely the important economic role of Taiwan that increases the competition of the imperialist countries for the island.
Of course, on the basis of the capitalist mode of production, Taiwan, like any other semi-colony, can never become truly independent, because economic dependencies continue and nothing would prevent the capitalist countries from subjugating Taiwan again. On the other hand, however, we must note that, as Lenin repeatedly emphasised in the discussions on the national question in the communist movement, the right of national self-determination is not an economic but a political category. That is, it refers to the question of political self-determination (one’s own territory, one’s own form of government, …). This is achievable under capitalism, even if the realisation of national self-determination does not eliminate economic dependencies on the world market and imperialist competition. That is why the struggle for national self-determination, and even more so the control of one’s own resources, is so closely linked to the global struggle against all imperialism, especially in the case of countries that are so strategically important and which are, so to speak, at the point of maximum friction between the spheres of influence of the great powers.
What can real self-determination look like for the people of Taiwan?
Since the various wings of Taiwan’s bourgeoisie have linked their fate and the country’s fate to that of competing imperialist powers, there can be no real self-determination under their regime. They will always be, more or less openly, despotic or “democratic” vassals of a great power.
So there needs to be a system change in Taiwan, but ultimately worldwide, of course. Only if the foreign corporations are expropriated and placed under workers’ control, only if Taiwan closes the US bases, can it break away from the pro-imperialist policies of the ruling class. Such a development would, of course, meet with resistance from both great powers. In Taiwan, this would require a revolution and the establishment of a workers’ government based on councils and militias.
Above all, such a socialist Taiwan would have to reckon with interventions by both great powers. It would therefore require the solidarity of the working class worldwide, but above all of the Chinese and US. Revolutionaries in both the US and China must therefore advocate the recognition of Taiwan’s right to self-determination. They must fight in China against the nationalist myths and the Greater Chinese imperialist plans of conquest. In the U.S., they must advocate the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Taiwan, as from all other naval and military bases in Asia. In Germany and other countries allied with the US, we must fight against their imperialist aims, against military rearmament, against any troop deployment in East Asia and against any intervention.
Only in this way can a foundation be laid that combines the defence of Taiwan’s right to self-determination with the struggle against the global system of imperialism. This is the only way to prevent the imperialist countries from dragging Taiwan and the whole world into their war. To lead this struggle, we need to build an international movement of workers and youth in Taiwan, Germany, China, the U.S., and everywhere else in the world. We must oppose all imperialist aggression and link the struggle for national self-determination with that against this system. In Taiwan, this means that we support the right of the Taiwanese people to decide for themselves which nation they belong to. We must combine this with the struggle for a socialist federation throughout East Asia.