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In an era that believes America's future lies in Asia, what is the Asian democratic model? Singapore and Malaysia are single party states refreshed a bit by economic freedom. Hong Kong, still a colony, has lately been given a measure of self-government--which Americans of 1770 would have scorned--only to be swallowed whole by the not-so-democratic People's Republic of China in little more than 18 months. South Korea? It's dominated by a government party whose last president is now up on charges of stealing $600 million--give or take a couple of hundred million.
Japan, for 38 years, has been run by a corrupt single party (the LDP) only to cede power to a collection of reformers who themselves squandered the chance for real change. Today the LDP is back in a cynical misalliance with its nemesis, the socialists, whom it hopes to shortly expel.
When does that leave us? With the Burmese, or the Indonesian generals, or perhaps Thailand, where politicians are so corrupt they stay out of jail?
Reading the Mainland press, Taiwan's recent peaceful, multiparty elections never happened. No mention--the dog that didn't bark. A decade ago, the phrase `Taiwanese democracy' would have been rightly dismissed as an oxymoron, though compared to Mao's mainland, the island republic was widely seen as an economic miracle.
Ironically, it is this economic strength today--$100 billion in hard currency reserves and America's ninth-largest trading partner--that has obscured Taiwan's political evolution. The late Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomingtang single-party rule, was replaced by his son and successor Chiang Ching-kuo, who created a supportive environment for democratic pluralism before he died in 1988. Martial law was lifted, opposition parties were legalized, press restrictions were eliminated and it was agreed that Chiang's successor would not be a member of the family or even a transplanted mainlander. Instead President Lee Teng-hui is a native Taiwanese so far determined to further reform by supporting younger, Taiwan-born politicians as leaders of the KMT.
In the last eight years, three legislative elections have been held, each time with slowly shrinking KMT majorities. The old National Assembly dominated by KMT geriatrics has been mercifully stripped of its powers. Direct presidential elections will be held for the first time in Chinese history next March.
Literally nowhere in Asia, except Taiwan, has a ruling party allowed itself to be eclipsed. Nowhere has the attack on political corruption been so singleminded as it is in Taiwan. Vote fraud, unlike Thailand and Korea, has been almost eliminated. Vote buying in the recent Dec. 2 poll has been reduced to rural areas and to a level that would boggle the minds of most Japanese and Thai voters.
At present, the KMT holds a six-seat majority in the legislature. Sessions will continue to be raucous, often undignified--not unlike the 19th century U.S. Congress or for that matter Congress today, recall the Moran-Hunter fight a few weeks ago--but so what? The opposition has strengthened as the exhausted Nationalists confront the reality of an increasingly pluralist Taiwan.
Though Democratic politics is often a matter of shades of ugly, the alternatives in Asia--both left and right--are vastly less attractive. Why the, despite Taiwan's effort, has it's progress been ignored? Are American interests served by recognizing and nurturing democratic growth--or has some blend of security and mercantile priorities cast our lot with the Mainland? The Clinton administration, still struggling with this Wilson-Rossevelt policy cleavage, has said nothing on the subject, even while embarrassing itself before and after Lee Teng-hui's summer address at Cornell, his alma mater.
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