by Brian Hioe

語言:
English
Photo Credit: Kremlin/WikiCommons/CC BY 4.0

TAIWAN CONTINUES TO find itself enmeshed in questionable political alignments, with a recent tweet by President Lai Ching-te congratulating Indian President Narendra Modi on his presidential victory. Modi later responded to this tweet by thanking Lai.

Modi won another term in office, though his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost the majority in the legislature. Under his tenure, the Modi administration has increasingly leaned into Hindu nationalism. This has included efforts to stoke Hindu nationalism against Muslims, passing laws to limit citizenship based on religion, and drawing on violent anti-Muslim sentiment by stoking fears about racial replacement. Likewise, the Modi administration undid laws that granted limited autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir, which are disputed between India, Pakistan, and China alike.

It proves ironic for the Lai administration to congratulate Modi, then. At a time of increased immigration to Taiwan, including from Muslim-majority countries such as Indonesia, DPP presidential administrations have sought to emphasize contemporary Taiwan’s pluralism. This would be to distinguish Taiwan from China, the government of which has increasingly sought to emphasize Han ethnonationalism, inclusive of the forced imprisonment of Uyghurs in “reeducation camps”.

Still, territorial disputes between India and China have increasingly been a driver for closer relations between Taiwan and India. It is also the case that Indian nationalists, such as those who support Modi, have also sometimes thrown support behind Taiwan as a means of hitting back at China for perceived slights. In turn, seeking allies as a result of its lack of international recognition, Taiwan has welcomed closer ties with India. This is also the case seeing as Taiwan hopes to open borders to blue-collar Indian migrant workers in the near future, given labor shortages. Modi signaling alignment with Taiwan over China may also be intended as a signal to the US about where its alignments lie at a time in which the world is increasingly divided into geopolitical blocs contending with each other.

Either way, Modi’s India seems to have more in common with Xi’s China than Lai and the DPP otherwise like to pretend, in hailing India as a fellow democracy. One notes how India has itself sought to repress self-determination struggles within its own borders and how the violence targeting Muslims is at odds with the pluralistic values that Taiwan claims. Yet it appears that geopolitics here takes precedence over values.

Indeed, this proves similar with regards to how Philippines President Bongbong Marcos, Jr. also tweeted at Lai during his presidential victory, congratulating him. Lai, of course, thanked Marcos for the sentiment–never mind that Marcos is the son of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. Efforts to whitewash the Philippines’ authoritarian past continue with Marcos Jr. in power, as do the political killings that took place under his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte, even if such killings are not as high-profile as power.

In this case, it would also be tensions with China that drive alignment with questionable political actors. What occurs in the Philippines today is reminiscent of Taiwan’s authoritarian past, in which the dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek was succeeded by the dictatorship of his son Chiang Ching-kuo. Tens of thousands, too, were killed during the period known as the White Terror, which once saw what was then the longest martial law period in history. This took place because, like Chiang, Marcos was one of the right-wing dictators the world over that the US backed in the interests of anti-Communism.

Arguably, there is more awareness of the killings that took place under the auspices of a war on drugs during the Duterte presidency in Taiwan relative to the religious targeting that currently takes place in India, given geographic proximity. Even so, it remains the lack of knowledge of these political contexts that allow Taiwanese political leaders to blithely pretend these are fellow democracies, much as is the case with many of Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic allies. One sees this, too, with Taiwan’s alignment with Israel in spite of Israel’s genocidal actions against Palestinians. Since the start of the invasion of Gaza, Taiwan has generally directed aid and expressions of support toward Israel, with scarcely any mention of the death and destruction that has now faced Palestinians for months. In this, much of the master narrative for which countries Taiwan decides to align itself is set by the US, with Taiwan uncritically idealizing allies of the US, even when–like China–they are simply other authoritarian countries.
No more articles