Recent developments in the LY

Dear Legislative Yuan, I’d like to ask you for a small favor. You already helped me a lot by having them brawl a few days before my book about legislative brawls was supposed to come out. I really appreciate your thoughtfulness. However, I need to trouble you one more time. You see, Oxford University Press changed the estimated release date of my book from May 24 to July 10. Could you see it in your heart to schedule another dramatic melee sometime around early or mid-July? I see that the first legislative session is scheduled to end on July 16 and the KMT is promising to pass a lot of controversial legislation by that date, so it shouldn’t be that hard to stage another brouhaha. I’d really be grateful. Thanks, Nathan.

(removes tongue from cheek)

I shouldn’t be surprised that the KMT is trying to leverage its position in the legislature to the fullest extent possible and is decidedly NOT seeking to find common ground with the DPP. After all, I just published a book chapter about the fight over vaccines in which the KMT energetically opposed the DPP at every opportunity it could find. Some of their objections were reasonable, others … not so much. It’s not the opposition’s job to make the government’s life easier. A vigorous opposition is part of democracy, and it doesn’t necessarily lead to bad policies. Taiwan didn’t achieve one of the highest vaccination rates in the world because the parties put aside their differences to pursue a critical national interest. Rather, this was achieved in the context of a fully competitive, adversarial, cutthroat democratic structure. But if everybody couldn’t get along and cooperate in year two of a global pandemic, why should we expect to see that now?

I’m not really surprised that the KMT is taking what one of my friends called a scorched-earth approach towards the DPP in an effort to ensure that Lai’s presidency is seen as a failure. As soon as the election results came in, I fully expected them to pass the investigation power, so they could use that as a cudgel to harass the government over the next four years. I didn’t expect that there would be popular protests so soon against the KMT’s strong-arm tactics in the legislature, but I’m not surprised at all that the KMT has chosen to dismiss those protests as creations of the DPP and politically unimportant.

However, I am surprised by a few things. First, the breadth of the KMT’s agenda is a bit shocking. They seem to think their very narrow plurality of seats legislature (on fewer votes than the DPP won and clear loss in the presidential election) gives them a mandate to do undo the everything from previous eight years. They have floated bills addressing party assets, pension reform, and the anti-infiltration act. They’ve also proposed diverting a lot more money from the central government to local governments, the majority of which they conveniently control. And of course, there is the massive East Coast infrastructure proposal. Taken together, these bills would render central government almost penniless and put the KMT completely in charge of spending.

Oh, and when the protesters started circulating lists of legislators who had barely won, insinuating that these might be good targets for a recall effort, the KMT proposed changing the election and recall law to make recalls harder. I’ve written a bit about recalls, and I actually think their proposal is mostly reasonable. The current law makes it too easy to recall an elected official, and requiring the recall to get more votes than the politician got in the general election is a good first step.  But it’s not a good look to propose this immediately after you ram through a controversial piece of legislation and it seems like a backlash might be brewing. (Let’s also remember that one of the strongest voices demanding this very low recall threshold eight years ago was none other than current TPP caucus leader Huang Kuo-chang.)

I don’t remember hearing most of these proposed in KMT campaign rallies.

One thing they have talked about every now and then for several years (almost exclusively in events on the East Coast) was an East Coast infrastructure package. I do remember hearing them talk about extending freeway number six through the mountains to the East Coast and building an Expressway up and down the East Coast. I don’t remember the third (and most expensive) part of the current proposed package: the high speed rail line on the East Coast (alternatively billed as a high speed rail line circling the entire island).

Let’s think about these three projects. The Expressway is a legitimate option. People have been debating whether or not to build this for quite a few years, and there are reasonable arguments on both sides. It might be difficult to extend freeway #5 all the way to Taitung, but an Expressway from Hualien to Taitung through the eastern Rift Valley is a feasible and defensible plan.

The second project, extending freeway number six, which currently runs through the northern part of Nantou County (in central Taiwan) to Puli, through the central mountain range all the way to Hualien on the East Coast is not nearly as reasonable. If you’ve ever been on one of the cross-island highways, you’ll be aware that there are no easy routes through the central mountain range. There is certainly nothing straight or flat enough to easily put a high speed freeway through those 50 kilometers. This project would require lots of long, deep tunnels and high bridges. I suppose Taiwan probably could build this, and we might even be able to make it sturdy enough to withstand most earthquakes and/or typhoon-induced landslides. But we’d have to ignore the enormous environmental impact of a huge road right through the heart of the deep mountains. Also, is there really that much demand for travel between Taichung and Hualien? I don’t hear much clamoring from the Taichung side.

And then there’s the East Coast high speed rail proposal. Putting aside the enormous costs of building this line through several mountains in Taiwan’s most earthquake-prone zone, let’s think briefly about the high speed rail line on the West Coast. Over 90% of the population lives on the West Coast, but ridership was lower than expected and the project almost went bankrupt about a decade ago. The government had to inject a lot of cash and restructure ownership to save it. Is there any way that a HSR line on the East Coast where only about a million people live makes financial sense?

I’ve seen estimates for the price tag of these three projects at anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 trillion NT dollars, with most people saying 2 trillion. For perspective, Taiwan’s current GDP is about 24 trillion. President Tsai’s huge infrastructure plan totaled about 800 billion, but that covered hundreds of projects all over the country, not just three mega-projects all on the East Coast.

This brings me to KMT floor leader Fu Kun-chi 傅崐萁, who seems to be orchestrating the KMT’s ambitious LY agenda. We’re not hearing a lot about the domestic agenda from other KMT heavyweights like party chair Chu, Speaker Han, former president Ma, or recent presidential candidate Hou. Fu is front and center defining party priorities. Fu has publicly stated that he wants to pass a lot of these bills, including the infrastructure package, by the end of this legislative session on July 16.

Let me remind you that Fu’s district is Hualien. That is, he has effectively demanded that the KMT commit itself to spending the entire national budget for transportation and development (and probably more) on his local district. How in the world has this not caused an immediate revolt within the party? Don’t other KMT legislators have roads, bridges, or MRT lines that they want to build or upgrade? Fu’s proposed spending package is so massive that it will crowd out other spending priorities, perhaps including some of the social welfare programs that are quite dear to many KMT constituencies. Would you rather have a little-used highway through the mountains or a fully funded national healthcare program? How can the KMT legislators explain this choice to their constituents?

I can’t shake the notion that there is something different about Fu’s leadership. I can’t think of another KMT figure who has tried to bend the party to his will in such an audacious way who was not a mainlander. Well, I can think of one, but we’ll get to him in a minute.

We don’t talk about provincial origins 省籍as much these days. It’s no longer a driving force in most people’s everyday lives. For younger people, the idea is almost meaningless. You can even omit this variable from most voting models without losing any significant explanatory power. It has almost become a topic that we don’t talk about in polite society. But there is one realm in which provincial origins still matter quite a bit: elite KMT politics. Mainlanders are disproportionately represented at the top of the KMT pyramid. But even more importantly, they dominate the KMT’s ideas. The leaders and thinkers who shape what the contemporary KMT stands for and will do are overwhelmingly mainlanders. It was quite important inside the KMT that “native Taiwanese” Hou Yu-ih’s running mate was mainlander Jaw Shao-kang in order to balance the ticket.

I think this is a result of a historical legacy, one of those long tails of the authoritarian era. When the KMT relocated to Taiwan after 1949, it had to figure out how to govern an unfamiliar and potentially hostile population. Its solution was a mixture of repression and patronage, and this turned out to be quite successful for the regime. Some local elites were repressed, but most were offered a nice deal: Stay inside the party structures, run the local governments under the KMT banner, and we will let you govern locally as you please. You will enjoy social prestige, and we will turn a blind eye if you make a little money here and there. Stay in your lane, leave the high politics to us, and everyone will do well. In some places, the existing social elites were happy to accept this deal and become local faction leaders. In other places, the KMT created new elites using the same framework. It’s important to remember that while these local elites were enjoying the carrot, the stick always loomed in the background. Everyone understood the local office holders were not just living on their official salary; they were almost universally taking advantage of their position to line their pockets (or their friends’ pockets). Sometimes this was done using the grey areas of the law, and sometimes it was outright soliciting bribes. Regardless, it wasn’t very difficult for the KMT regime to deal with an uppity local official by finding them guilty of corruption since they were, in fact, almost always guilty of some degree of corruption.

Think about what this does to the psychology of both sides. During the authoritarian era, the KMT mainlander elite needed the local factions to win votes and maintain its popular legitimacy. But they could always look down on the local politicians as corrupt collaborators with no real core values. Of course, there was plenty of corruption among the mainlander elite as well, but it wasn’t quite so overtly embedded into the social contract. This allowed the mainlander group to see themselves as natural leaders guided by lofty ideals who were rightfully responsible for deciding the direction of the country. Taiwanese faction leaders also learned this lesson. It was not their place to ask about national politics. They were wise to keep their heads down and go along to get along.

This was the model of the KMT’s authoritarian era, but I think vestiges of it have it have persisted to this day. The most jarring example came in the clash between Ma Ting-jeou and Wang Jin-pyng in September 2013. When laying the foundations to pass the services trade agreement with China, potentially fundamentally altering Taiwan’s future, Ma decided he needed to first purge Speaker Wang to ensure smooth passage in the legislature. Without much actual evidence, Ma and his allies made a big show accusing Wang of massive, systemic corruption and tried to evict him from the party. The charges seemed quite flimsy to most of society, but they seemed to be quite persuasive among the die-hard KMT true believers. Wang came up through a local faction and was renowned as a masterful dealmaker in the legislature. (Deals always seem corrupt to true believers who don’t want to sacrifice anything, no matter how small.) Wang never trumpeted or pushed his own agenda; rather, he facilitated other people’s goals. He was the epitome of an amoral local KMT politician. Of course they thought he was corrupt!

I said above that there was one glaring exception. Lee Teng-hui was a native Taiwanese KMT politician who had a clear vision and bent the party to his will to pursue it. LTH did not lack efficacy. However, even in his case you can see some of these traditional attitudes and behaviors. Before he was president, he famously kept his ideas to himself. In his first few years as president, he went along with traditional KMT positions such as the national unification guidelines, the famous 1993 meeting in Singapore with the PRC delegates, and talked about establishing a new Chinese culture 建立新中原. It wasn’t until he had fully consolidated his power and won a popular mandate in the 1996 elections that he started openly talking about things like special state to state relations. And how did the mainlander lead attack him? They accused him of relying on systematic corruption. His power base was in the local factions and in big business, so this was an easy accusation. (Note that when Ma Ying-jeou was supported by local factions and big businesses, they didn’t call him corrupt.)

OK, that’s a lot of verbiage, and we should probably get back to Fu Kun-chi. He seems like a departure from traditional KMT norms. He is THE traditional local politician. He’s nicknamed the King of Hualien, and he has a few corruption scandals under his belt. He is precisely this type of person who would have kept their head down in the past. But he seems to feel empowered free to act in the same way that, I don’t know, someone like Jaw Shao-kang might. Fu recently led a delegation of KMT legislators to China, apparently unconcerned with any blowback from society or the governing party. And now he’s pushing bills to increase the power of the legislature, roll back some of the DPP’s policies, and financially hamstring the government by directing massive funds to his own district. It’s quite an audacious agenda.

Maybe the KMT is turning a page and shedding some of its authoritarian heritage. Maybe it matters that Fu is Hakka, not Hoklo. Maybe I’m completely off base. It just seems strange to me that Fu Kun-chi, of all people, is suddenly the public face of the KMT.

Somehow I hijacked this post about current events in the legislature with a long digression about provincial origins. Oops. Let’s get back to the legislature.

The KMT and TPP were united under Fu’s lead in the fight over investigation power. However, his grip over the legislature isn’t absolute. No one is coming out directly against Fu, but there are some cracks emerging. Lai Shih-pao, who most people thought would become the KMT floor leader, recently suggested that there is not an internal KMT consensus about the three East Coast infrastructure bills and more discussion within the party is needed. TPP floor leader Huang Kuo-chang suggested that his party is willing to support good infrastructure projects, but then he threw in a couple of caveats. First, the TPP is against using special budgets as a matter of principle. This could be a major stumbling block, since that would mean the infrastructure projects must be funded through the regular budget, which is written by the Executive Yuan. (You can also imagine they are laying the groundwork for how they might oppose a major weapons purchase.) Second, the project must be fiscally responsible, which could mean anything the TPP wants it to. However, a major part of Ko Wen-je’s appeal was that he didn’t increase Taipei City’s debt burden when he was mayor, so it would be a major departure from his brand if the TPP supported the budget-busting East Coast infrastructure plan. And then a few days ago, the KMT central standing committee decided to put the infrastructure plan on hold for a while. Fu responded by saying that the number six highway extension and the East Coast high speed rail project were actually policies advocated by speaker Han, not him. It’s true that I have heard Han advocate the number six freeway project several times, but it was usually on a stage standing next to Fu. I think what we’re seeing is the KMT pulling back from such an obviously indefensible financial sinkhole. But the rest of the agenda is still on the table.

I’ve been writing this blog entry for several days, the new events keep forcing me to go back and rewrite sections of it. So I think I’d better stop here and just post this before something else happens.