Shadows of Authoritarianism: The Outdated National Anthem - 國歌

by Charles DeBenedetto

三民主義，吾黨所宗，以建民國，以進大同，

咨爾多士，為民前鋒，夙夜匪懈，主義是從，

矢勤矢勇，必信必忠，一心一德，貫徹始終。

(The complete text of the Republic of China's national anthem)

Taiwan is a geographic term, not a political one. It is an island, and the government that governs Taiwan is the Republic of China. This government, once a one-party authoritarian regime under the Kuomintang (KMT), originally ruled over all of mainland China. But, after losing the Chinese Civil War, they retreated to Taiwan, where they have remained to this day.

The Republic of China government was on par with the communist mainland in human rights abuses and infringing on basic freedoms, but in the 1990's it morphed into a democratic and free society. And yet, some remnants of that recent and horrific time still exist in our daily lives here, and one such example is the national anthem of the Republic of China, which I hear every week during school assemblies.

My translation will be crude, but I will do my best to retain the original message. The first sixteen characters read, “The three principles of the people are the purpose of our Party. We have created the Republic, and we are closer to the perfect society.”

The "three principles" refer to democracy, civil rights, and social welfare, all of which Taiwan has now, but are laughable to include in the national anthem of the brutal authoritarian regime that came before. “Our Party” also is a remnant of that past, since there was only one party at that time. Now that Taiwan is a multi-party democracy, why is that still included in the anthem? The "perfect society" is a Confucian term for a society in which we could all keep our doors unlocked at night because we would not fear burglars. Perhaps in the dictatorship days they did not fear burglars, but they did fear KMT Party members coming into their homes and taking them away because of their counter-party opinions.

The middle sixteen characters read, “Take counsel, my soldiers. Be the vanguard of the people. Work tirelessly, and follow the doctrine.” Be the vanguard? That sounds like something Mao Zedong or Karl Marx might have said, and goes to show just how similar the Communist Chinese regime and the KMT regime really were at that time. “Follow the doctrine,” sounds like “be mindless lemmings in the great party machine…”

The final sixteen characters read, “Swear to be diligent, and swear to be brave. You must have faith, and you must be loyal. We must be of one heart and one mind. We must carry on until the end.”

Does “one heart and one mind” mean that we must stand together, or does it mean that there is no room for thoughts or opinions outside of the official party line? I believe it means the former now, but it meant the latter originally. And what does “we must carry on until the end” mean? Does it mean we fight until we all die? Chiang kai-shek probably felt that way. But then, he would have fought until the end to retake China, whereas people here want to fight to hold onto their freedom and democracy on this island.

The national anthem makes it obvious that the Republic of China was a brutal, militant regime, and we are truly blessed to live in the post-KMT dictatorship era.

I can understand, then, why many people do not want to sing the national anthem. It’s because those people love Taiwan, but they do not love the Republic of China. The Republic of China, the flag, and the national anthem all represent the brutality of the KMT regime, with all of the senseless killings of indigenous peoples, capturing of political opponents, and stamping out of indigenous and Taiwanese languages and culture.

Taiwan miraculously transitioned from that oppressive regime to a first-class democratic society, but the next step is to get rid of these shadows of authoritarianism. The debate over whether to switch from “The Republic of China” to “The Republic of Taiwan” is a heated one, but at the very least I think we can agree that the national anthem needs a makeover to better reflect modern, democratic Taiwan.

Cram Schools: Knowledge Without Learning - 補習班

by Charles DeBenedetto

(Billboards for various Taiwanese cram schools. Photo Credit: Taiwan News)

Sitting across from me, a little boy is dangling his legs and looking down. I sit up straight and ask him, slowly, trying to pronounce every syllable clearly, “How, old, are, you?”

“I am five years old,” he says quickly and fluently.

“Great. Okay, next question. What, do, you, do, after, school?”

He looks up at me and says “I go to the after school.”

To an American, you might think he goes to an After School Program where adults supervise while children run around, play games, and make arts and crafts. But this five year old boy, like many other Taiwanese children, goes to a cram school.

Cram school is exactly what it sounds like; being crammed with knowledge that does not engage critical thinking, but instead requires rote memorization on an astounding level. The word “cram” of course is very negative, and was probably coined in disgust by one of the first foreigners to see these “after schools” in Asia. But, in Chinese, the word is “buxiban,” which comes from the verb “to repair.” This is a much more positive term, implying that something went wrong in their normal education, and the buxiban can help them catch up to their peers. This sounds closer to our summer school.

But buxibans are not just for kids that are falling behind. Instead, everyone who can afford to go to a buxiban will go, and then the result is that the kids who cannot afford to go wind up being the ones most in need of “repair.” Kids go to buxibans for various reasons, but two of the most prominent reasons are (a) Mom and Dad need a place for the kid to be until they finish work, and (b) the child is under extreme pressure to perform well on standardized tests.

From sixth grade, students will take a junior high entrance exam which will impact their entire lives, then again in ninth grade for high school entrance exams, then of course in twelve grade for college entrance exams. In Taiwan, the public universities are the most prestigious and the cheapest as well, so testing well also means that the cost of your education will be more affordable. This means that, especially for kids from average-income and low-income families, testing well enough to earn one of the very limited spots at public universities is very high-stakes.

And so, even that five year old student goes to the “after school,” but only because his parents have the financial resources to do so. For some kids, cram school is not an option, and the result is that, in any classroom across Taiwan, the level gap between the cram school kids and the other kids is a chasm. Whenever I enter a new classroom for the first time, I know within minutes which kids are the cram school kids and which kids are going to struggle to keep up throughout their adolescence.

If you are lucky enough to go to a cram school, you have a very busy day. Even from elementary school, you will be in school from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00-5:00 p.m., before you go to cram school, some of which are open until 9:00-10:00 p.m. The end result of this is twofold. First, Taiwanese students have a lot of facts in their heads, yet they are not taught to critically think. From a very young age they can recite hundreds of English vocabulary words, but they cannot create original English sentences. Second, they are mentally exhausted. This creates students that either are very difficult to manage, because they have so much potential energy that ought to be spent playing, or are just so beat that they groan whenever they are asked to respond to a question or write something down. Eventually the quantity of time in the classroom is having a negative effect on the quality of learning.

So, if you are a foreigner teaching in Taiwan or a cram school environment like this anywhere in Asia, what can you do? We can start by acknowledging their test pressure, and recognizing the culture we are working within. Students need to be crammed with knowledge because, unfortunately, the tests that will determine their futures require that they are crammed. Parents expect their kids to be able to recite lists of English words because they believe that is what proper education is, so we need to provide that to an extent.

Yet, we also should try to be double agents, working within this system, but trying to fight it as well, for the good of the children. If you teach first graders, play a silly game with them that makes them giggle, because they still have many long hours to go before they can get home and squeeze in a few minutes of playtime before bed. If you teach older kids, give them opportunities to practice critical thinking, and when they stare at you in silence, persist. Tell them there is more than one possible answer, and let them work through the silence and apprehension until they finally begin to use parts of their brain that have until now been drastically underutilized. When they come to your class expecting a lecture, learn to shut your own mouth and get them to open theirs. The cram school system creates students who do well on tests, and until the tests change, we are going to have to work within that framework. But let’s also try to create students who not only retain facts in their brains, but use their brains, too.

The Taipei Act: A Small Step out of the "One-China" Quagmire - 台北法

by Charles DeBenedetto

(Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen with US senator Cory Gardner (R - CO), co-author of the Taipei Act. Photo Credit: The Diplomat) 

The “Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative,” colloquially known as the Taipei Act, passed the House earlier this month, and I believe it is still awaiting a signature from the President before it becomes law. And the President will most definitely sign, because it passed the House nearly unanimously, with 415 yes to 0 no (meaning 20 people chose not to vote). But still, that is about as unanimous as a vote can get in an otherwise extremely divided government, and why is that?

I think that everyone in the US can get behind Taiwan because everyone has at least one reason to want to support Taiwan. Perhaps you believe Taiwan is important militarily, as it has famously been described as “an unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Pacific.” Or, maybe you are a China hawk, and view supporting Taiwan as a way to further infuriate China. Or, maybe you acknowledge that it is wrong to support authoritarian China at the expense of Taiwan, a democratic country with guaranteed freedoms in line with Western ideals.

When President Nixon first visited China, and subsequently President Carter officially switched diplomatic recognition from the Republic of China (Taiwan) to the People’s Republic of China (Mainland China), both sides were oppressive authoritarian regimes with lamentable human rights records. At that time, it did not really matter, morally, which side the United States recognized.

But that was over forty years ago. Since then, as the Taipei Act states, “Taiwan [has become] a free, democratic and prosperous nation of 23,000,000 people.” But still, the world continues to play Mainland China’s One-China Policy game, where countries must choose to acknowledge only Mainland China or only Taiwan, and all but fifteen countries around the world have chosen Mainland China. Why then, does the United States continue to play China’s game of isolating Taiwan?

In the Taiwan Travel Act of 2018, the US acknowledges that the limitations on the US-Taiwan relationship are “self-imposed.” We do not need to have pseudo-embassies and pseudo-ambassadors and pseudo-diplomacy. We could have real diplomacy, if only we allowed ourselves to. But what would be the consequences? A war with China? World War Three? We expect the worst, and so we choose the “status quo” which is not what Taiwan deserves, but we seem to conclude that it is the best that Taiwan can get.

So I wonder, who is the intended audience of the Taipei Act? Is it for the fifteen countries that still officially recognize Taiwan? Perhaps, because part of the act states that the United States should “reduc[e] its economic, security, and diplomatic engagement with nations that take serious or significant actions to undermine Taiwan.” Read: you mess with Taiwan, and you mess with the United States. But, this sounds hypocritical, because the United States has also abandoned Taiwan, so why shouldn’t those remaining allies do the same?

Or maybe this is for Mainland China to read. Part of the Act also states that “the President should conduct regular transfers of defense articles to Taiwan that are tailored to meet the existing and likely future threats from the People’s Republic of China.” This is doubling down on our current procedure, as outlined in the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, that the US provide Taiwan with defense articles, and is telling China that we do not plan on stopping anytime soon.

But, more than anything, I think that this Act is for the Taiwanese people themselves to see. I think it is about reassuring the Taiwanese people that, even though the world is treating them poorly, giving them a terrible situation, we know that they deserve to be treated as an equal member and partner of the international community. We neglect them because, as King Arthur observed, we live in a world where “Might is Right,” and, since China is much more powerful than Taiwan, we listen to China’s Might, instead of doing what is Right and standing up for them.

But King Arthur created the Knights of the Round Table and they followed chivalry because they believed that we should strive for “Right is Right,” that regardless of the dangers and risks, that doing what is Right should be the only thing that matters.

Reading the Taipei Act, I know that it will most likely result in little change in the real world, but it is an acknowledgement that we know we are doing something wrong. We know that the One-China Policy is ridiculous, that it is built on lies that China has claims to Taiwan when it doesn’t. Lies that they share an inevitable fate of reunification when they don’t. Lies that Taiwan and China cannot exist as two independent states when they can.

In our personal lives, lies tend to slowly eat away at us. We obsess at covering them up with more lies, creating more and more disharmony until eventually, usually in some kind of pathos or watershed moment, the lie comes out, because it has to in order for us to realign ourselves with Order. And so, international lies work in the same way. They do not reflect reality, and they become messier and messier until they have to be confronted, and that is what the US is doing now. We are trying to get out of the lie that we have allowed ourselves to be caught in. The Taipei Act is a small step out of that quagmire, because, regardless of all the ways we neglect Taiwan and embrace China, we are fully cognizant that embracing China’s Might is wrong, and standing with Taiwan is Right.

Update: The US President signed the Taipei Act on March 26th. It is now law.