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Taiwan Corner
Young People Hit the Streets, Asking for a Job and Some Change
By Chieh-Ting Yeh, Former Co-President of the Harvard Asia Law Society and former Vice President of the Harvard Taiwanese Students Association
The people in Taiwan have witnessed much change throughout the years, but they are facing times of change yet again. The relationship with China sailed into uncharted waters as President Ma Ying-jeou rushes further economic integration with China, the United States seems to have swept Taiwan under the carpet, and no one really knows when the economy will boom as it once did.
In the middle of all this change around them, Taiwanese voters begrudgingly went to the polls last weekend to cast ballots in the so-called “Trinity Election”. Yes, most people are focused on the results in Yilan. Commentators jumped at the chance to talk about why someone won or lost, and hogged bandwidth to lecture to us what this all means for next year’s metropolitan elections.
However, I want to propose that we look a bit farther into the future, about 15 years or 25 years. Neither Chen Shui-bian nor Ma Ying-jeou, or even Tsai Ing-wen, will be of any significance. What would be different? I wonder, if the battle lines in Taiwan will still be along national identity lines, or whether organized crime will still influence local politics, or the same political parties will still use the same slogans and make the same policy promises. (If they make the same promises every election, doesn’t that mean the promises were never fulfilled?) Will there have been any structural change in Taiwan for the better?
The answer of course, partially, will lie with the political leaders at that time. These leaders would be in their 20s and 30s today, either slaving away at their first or second jobs, staying up all night studying for finals, or traveling the world. Some of them would have already entered politics today. Or last weekend, in fact. The local elections this year had a little twist, which anyone who watches Taiwanese cable news would know what I am talking about---the so called “pretty assassins” ploy by both parties. The Pretty Assassins are young, good looking men and women who ran for various spots all over the country. In addition, there were many more candidates this year who belong in the same age group, all fighting for a chance to offer their services to their constituents.
Aside from being young and ridiculously good looking, they also share some other things in common. Most of them have advanced degrees, some from prestigious institutions in the United States or Australia, in political science or economics. They have extensive working experiences, especially as staffers or secretaries for legislators and presidential candidates. They are well-spoken, poised, and have sincere smiles. They connect very well with their constituents, who watched these young candidates grow up in their very own neighborhoods. And all of them promised some sort of “change”.
I am looking forward to the changes they will bring. The candidates in Yunlin and Chiayi in the south touched on the issue of taking care of their senior citizens, and drawing young people to return. They talked about increasing benefit packages and job opportunities. More importantly, underlying their young candidacy itself is the message that they will do things differently---they will be more outspoken, they will be more attentive to opinions, they will have more professional expertise. They will also have Facebook and Plurk accounts and actually know how to use them. They are supposed to lead us into a new era of Taiwanese politics.
Of course, trapdoors await in their paths. There are too many people who profit off of the power structure in the current era of Taiwanese politics, and they will not go away so easily. You have your local political bosses and political families, who decide how things are done in the neighborhood. There is organized crime trying to hold onto power in the local councils and money making businesses. Then there are the political party heads who are struggling for power themselves, and hogging up seats at the steering committee meetings. Finally, constituents themselves can be finicky and demand that their representative follow their every whim and fancy. Everyone in the game has learned to depend on the other players in the game to survive. In other words, we need structural change but the structure is built to resist change.
Then isn’t getting new blood into the structure the way to change it? Yes, but it is hard. Harder, because these young leaders of tomorrow are already tied up with the structure of today. Most if not all of the candidates come from political families themselves, and even in the best political families there will be some pressure to keep doing things their way. How would they navigate the local councils, if the people out to hurt them know of their histories? Furthermore, they owe the party so much for helping them in the election that the debt has to be paid somehow, whether through publicly supporting the party line against their better judgment, or by entering nasty power struggles with the people at the top. Finally, constituents who are resisting to change will not be so kind next time they go to the voting booth if God forbid someone is trying to do things differently.
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