Taiwanese are an educated, prosperous, successful people -- riven with complex anxieties they no longer even recognize they have.

Typical of this, last week the education minister proposed that school students sing the national anthem during morning assemblies, just as students do in many schools around the world. Here, though, the proposal set off angry argument. Parents protested, and the opposition political party complained that Taiwanese have nothing to be proud of as long as the nation's sovereignty remains under continual threat from China.

China, of course, remains determined to bring about Taiwanese "reunification." But Taiwan is a thriving democracy, and almost no one here favors that. They don't trust China, even for a minute, and see a dark motive behind everything Beijing does. This 61-year-old conflict animates everything that happens here.

Taiwanese also remain afraid of China, even to the point that they sometimes question whether they should wave the Taiwan flag at sporting events. Their diplomats generally refrain from political interaction with others societies. They put on cultural events instead.

After years of conflict, the present government is trying another approach, greater commerce with China. This summer, Taipei and Beijing signed a free-trade agreement, the first major cross-straits economic accord.

"Negotiations are much more effective than antagonistic relations with the other side," President Ma Ying-jeou averred last week. But Taiwanese also see a subplot. Even Foreign Minister Timothy Chin-tien Yang acknowledged, when pressed in an interview: China "may want something else" in addition to free trade.

Bi Khim Hsiao, director of international affairs for the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, told me: China "isn't using missiles anymore. They're trying to buy us -- use economic leverage in a sophisticated way."

Frankly, I agree with her. Even now, six decades after Chinese nationalists fled to Taiwan during the communist revolution, China remains utterly obsessed with this place. It parades around the world doling out billions in financial aid -- as long as recipients agree to Beijing's "one China" policy, meaning that Taiwan is actually part of China. As a result, Taiwan is able to maintain embassies in only 23 nations. Honduras is the largest. Right now, China is trying to peel away the Dominican Republic with an offer of copious aid.

On the very same day President Ma spoke last week of the benefits he hopes the free-trade agreement will bring, the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, meeting in Beijing, issued a statement saying it would "continue to promote peaceful development of relations between the mainland and Taiwan -- while seeking reunification of the nation."

What's ambiguous about that?

For decades, the two sides never even spoke to each other. Once, 14 years ago, China fired unarmed missiles at the island, just to scare the people. Now, China has changed tactics. It is sending hundreds of thousands of tourists to Taiwan and as many as 2,000 students to Taiwanese universities.

The opposition party openly despises China and fears that Beijing's intent now is to make itself so dominant in the Taiwanese economy that the island has little ability to resist -- just as many other nations are reluctant to anger China, for fear of economic repercussions.

Already, Bi said, voters tell her: "I want to support you, but I do a lot of business with China."

President Ma has a motto: No declaration of independence, no unification with China and no war. That leaves Taiwan continually dangling in the netherworld -- a nation most others don't recognize, a people disenfranchised from international society.

That brings consequences. Taiwan has one of the lowest birthrates in the world. The latest government figures show that each family has, on average .9 children. Taiwanese generally cite economics; it's expensive to raise children. But I have to wonder whether many people also are reluctant to bring children into this neither-here-nor-there existence.

Taiwan has a free press, but people here despair about the trivial nature of what it reports. In the last few days, several papers carried stories on a male college student who dressed up as a girl so he could slip into girls' bathrooms and watch them take showers. One paper published a full-page story about a Filipino maid who gave birth on an airplane. Taiwanese have a hard time explaining this. But again, if you lived under constant threat from a powerful neighbor, would you want to read about that every day?

China has bullied the world to turn against Taiwan. But the Taiwanese soldier on, wounded and wary. We all should hope they can persevere.

 

Available at Amazon.com:

The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations?

Running Out of Water: The Looming Crisis and Solutions to Conserve Our Most Precious Resource

Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water

Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization

The Great Gamble

At War with the Weather: Managing Large-Scale Risks in a New Era of Catastrophes

 

 

(C) 2010 Joel Brinkley