by Brian Hioe

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The Pro-Unification Left, Anti-War Left, and the “Yaya in Taiwan” Case

A CONTROVERSY HAS again broken out regarding the pro-unification left in Taiwan. In particular, this scandal revolves around the strong stance that pro-unification left groups have taken in defense of “Yaya in Taiwan”, the Chinese Douyin influencer who expressed support for the military unification of Taiwan and China. Defense for Yaya has largely been framed as defense of freedom of speech–and against the DPP’s curbs on freedoms of speech in the name of security.

Such groups historically claimed to be critical of both the DPP and the KMT. Yet one has seen a decided tendency in the pro-unification left to align with the KMT in past years.

This trend can be traced back as early as the first transition of political power in Taiwan, with noted labor activist Zheng Chun-qi joining Ma Ying-jeou’s Taipei mayoral administration as head of the Department of Labor. The justification for joining a political administration belonging to a party that had been persecuting Taiwanese leftists not too much earlier in the process of Taiwan’s democratization was apparently that, in the transition to democracy, both major parties had become the same and were to be resisted, but this claim often disguised that such individuals may have culturally and politically identified with China. In this sense, it is nationalistic identification with China that fundamentally pushed such individuals to join the KMT.

Likewise, starting in 2020, one has seen leftist labor rallies such as Autumn Struggle, which historically framed itself as non-aligned with both the KMT and DPP, see participation by KMT political heavyweights including Eric Chu, Ma Ying-jeou, and Johnny Chiang. Even as organizers officially claimed to maintain distance from the KMT, that the demonstration was then swarmed by KMT supporters effectively turned the event into a political rally for the KMT.

More recently, leftist intellectuals who have historically not been seen as pro-unification, such as the members of the Anti-War Working Group, have been uncritically praising of the KMT. Trips by Ma Ying-jeou to China, for example, were praised as an effort to maintain peace in the Taiwan Strait, even as others in Taiwanese society perceived Ma as routing around democratic institutions to directly conduct negotiations with the CCP in a way that could be deleterious to Taiwan’s political freedoms.

Indeed, the 75 scholars who signed a open letter against the deportation of “Yaya in Taiwan” were often members of the Anti-War Working Group. But public anger has broken out against them, seeing as the letter has been seized upon by the Chinese government for propaganda purposes, as feted by Xinhua News and other state media.

The “Yaya in Taiwan” Case as Reflective of Taiwan’s Historical and Political Particularities

THE “YAYA IN TAIWAN” case should lead to a public conversation about what have been longstanding and unresolved political issues in Taiwan.

At the same time, that conversation will probably not take place, lost in the wave of anger against members of the pro-unification left, in that they have become the public face of defending freedoms of speech against what is hyperbolically and sensationalistically termed DPP authoritarianism–ironically enough, from individuals who themselves experienced the authoritarian period, and were involved in the struggle against authoritarianism. The reputation of the political left in Taiwan is also likely to be damaged in Taiwan, with the left all the more associated with China because of the pro-unification left’s stances on the matter.

There are a number of issues at hand, none of which have easy answers. Any answers that are arrived at are likely to be unsatisfactory to some parties. For example, an issue that has been raised is whether it is support for military unification between Taiwan and China that is problematic, or if support for peaceful unification would not require such a response.

But one notes, there are in fact many Taiwanese who advocate the military annexation of Taiwan or China. So is the issue at hand that a Chinese national is supportive of such views?

In response to the debate, it has sometimes been suggested that the issue at hand fundamentally returns to one of context, in that the issue is specifically of a Chinese national expressing such views. China is, after all, a hostile country to Taiwan.

To this extent, the controversy raises the question of whether influencers with large followings–Chinese or otherwise–should face regulations, given that they could potentially disseminate malicious disinformation or hate speech. But what does hate speech constitute in Taiwan? One routinely sees Internet comments by foreigners in Taiwan spouting discriminatory comments toward Indigenous, migrants, members of the LGBTQ community, and others, and yet there is scarcely any suggestion of legal punishment—much less deportation.

Indeed, many of the issues at hand return to the fact that Taiwan lacks a clear concept of what constitutes hate speech. Likewise, Taiwan’s peculiar political environment, in which annexation by a foreign country is considered a permissible and acceptable political view leads to further contradictions.

US president Donald Trump. Photo credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0

Unsurprisingly, some have reached for answers through comparison to other countries. For example, the pro-unification left has been among those to compare the Lai administration’s actions to the arrest and expulsion of pro-Palestine student activists residing in the US, or the numerous ICE detentions that have taken place in the second Trump administration. Taiwan’s understanding of the international often stops at America, so this comparison is not surprising.

At the same time, such arguments rely on guilt by association via the actions of the American empire. And it is not exactly as though Taiwan disappeared Yaya into a labyrinthine prison system, sent her to a foreign black site, or that the deportation was carried out by immigration authorities in defiance of court orders. Transparency still clearly was upheld with regard to the expulsion, even if a flaw of the process seemed to be the lack of an appeals system.

DPP legislator Puma Shen compared the expulsion of Yaya to the Gapoņenko v. Latvia, involving the expulsion of a pro-Russian activist living in Latvia. Coolloud editor Wang Hao-zhong, defended Yaya with the claim that the situation differs, seeing as Russia was already at war with surrounding countries and Gaponenko was in direct contact with Russian authorities. Once Taiwan’s dominant social movement publication, Coolloud is known for its pro-unification leanings in past years, including publishing articles that labeled the Sunflower Movement a fascist movement. Wang’s positions in past years include defending Coolloud publishing articles by the homophobic “Protect the Family Alliance”, framed as somehow a radical critique of the bourgeois institution of marriage,

Yet one more broadly expects pro-unification leftists to endlessly finesse the point, to suggest that Taiwan has not reached the level of danger in which security measures are needed, never mind the fate of Hong Kong, or that there are Taiwanese currently detained in China on political charges, as if they ever considered China a threat.

There are no easy answers to any of these problems. It should be concerning to leftists when states expel individuals from their borders.

But the Taiwanese left is not alone in grappling with such issues regarding military threats vs freedoms–one notes that leftists in Ukraine have since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion had to grapple with the securitization of public life in the face of ongoing warfare, including the suspension of eleven pro-Russian political parties, a pause in elections, and a military draft.

Taiwanese leftists, then, should seek answers in dialogue from Ukrainian leftists or leftists in other contexts who have had to navigate restrictions on freedoms of speech due to war in self-defense. Still, one can scarcely imagine that this would ever happen from members of the pro-unification left–or even the Anti-War Working Group–who would more likely only ever bring up Ukraine as a means of fear-mongering about Taiwan’s potential future in the event of a Chinese invasion. It has probably never occurred to such individuals that Ukrainian leftists even exist and have persisted in their leftism through the many years of war.

At the same time, it is important to note another parallel to Ukraine here. Russia justified its unification of Ukraine by claiming that this was a valid and justified response to the mistreatment of Russian nationals or individuals who identified with Russia. China appears to also be building up a narrative of victimhood around Yaya and other Chinese influencers who have been expelled.

Indeed, the recent list of “Taiwanese independence hired thugs” released by the Taiwan Affairs Office disproportionately lists individuals who are Taipei prosecutors involved in legal cases against “Yaya in Taiwan”, as well as the corruption charges that currently have Ko Wen-je of the TPP jailed. Ironically, turmoil about the parameters of freedom of speech in Taiwan’s liberal democratic society will be weaponized by a society in which there is no freedom of speech against Taiwan. And China will seize upon any missteps by China in order to justify escalation.

A Failure of Bottom-Up Perspectives

WHAT THE PRESENT controversy gets at, then, is a fundamental historical shortcoming of the left in Taiwan–its lack of internationalism. Again, there are many places in the world that have faced similar issues, and Taiwan can learn from the leftists of these places. But groups such as the pro-unification Left or Anti-War Working Group have historically had their eyes narrowly focused on either the West and China–great powers, rather than the small countries caught between small powers who are more similar to Taiwan.

The supposed leftism of the pro-unification left can largely be dismissed as a form of Chinese nationalism, in that China is inherently associated with leftism. This takes place at the same time as a curious blindness to what actually takes place in China, with China instead only becoming a romanticized object of projection. Never mind that Chinese leftists domestically struggle against a state that oppresses workers, or that there are many nameless and anonymous Chinese leftists who speak out against the ethnic cleansing of Uyghurs, Tibetans, the political oppression of Hong Kong, and threats directed at Taiwan–usually overshadowed in public discourse by much louder Chinese left nationalists. These are not voices that the pro-unification left pays any heed to.

Indeed, individuals who perhaps always culturally identified with China have come to politically side with the KMT in post-authoritarian times, with the Chinese nationalism that they cling to swallowing up their leftism. The critique of Taiwanese nationalism that pro-unification leftists advocate, then, proves all the more ironic, in that they just cling to another form of nationalism, while failing to develop connections with Chinese leftists who struggle against the state. Pro-unification leftists, in fact, dismiss the actual, lived political realities of the nation-state they identify with, and can be said to know relatively little about China. Ironic, then, when the Taiwanese pro-independence left proves more solidaristic with our Chinese counterparts than the pro-unification left, the latter of which simply pretends such individuals do not exist.

As for the Anti-War Working Group, one also notes the trend of cultural identification with China, as in outlandish proposals that China would drop its threats directed at Taiwan if Taiwan were simply to embrace Chinese culture. This proves a decidedly unrealistic and non-materialist analysis of China. China may veil its claims over Taiwan in nationalism, but this is ultimately what Marxists historically referred to as “superstructure.” The materialist, economic, and geopolitical reasons as to why China desires Taiwan is because of Taiwan’s geostrategic location at a juncture critical for the expansion of its power outward into the Pacific, as part of its contemporary rise–this is why colonizers have desired Taiwan for centuries, whether that be premodern Chinese dynasties, Koxinga’s putative kingdom of the Tungning, the Japanese empire, or the KMT.

More generally, even if such individuals may not exactly be pro-unification leftists, one notes that their view of China has remained frozen to resemble that of several decades past–before contemporary China’s political and economic rise, in which Taiwan commanded more economic and political heft on the international stage relative to China. Perhaps this, too, returns to their background, predisposing them to culturalist views of Chinese culture.

This fixation on China, ironically, dovetails with how such academics draw heavily on American theory in their work. The critique of US imperialism found in their work is usually a mimetic copy of the critique of US empire from Americans, who scarcely need to be concerned with direct geopolitical threats from China, rather than a bottom-up view from the standpoint of small countries caught between the US and China, the way Taiwan is, and drawing from other such regional or global views.

Noam Chomsky is one such thinker that the Anti-War Working Group has embraced, and yet Chomsky has long been criticized for his narrow analysis of global geopolitics in such a manner that America is all that matters. His leftist self-flagellation, as an American, for the US empire’s many crimes has led him to many questionable ends, such as backing nominally leftist authoritarian regimes.

In this sense, whether the Anti-War Working Group or the pro-unification left, the critique of Taiwanese nationalism from such individuals often turns into simply advocacy of Chinese nationalism. On the other hand, the critique of US empire quickly turns into whitewashing or turning a blind eye to the actions of Chinese empire.

In this light, criticisms of the DPP–or claims to be critical of both parties–also rapidly become uncritically siding with the KMT. “Internationalism” or “pan-Asianism” from such individuals often means “China.” Perhaps it is simply that many so-called leftists have failed at the task of the “ruthless critique of everything existing”; instead, critique becomes a shell for ideology.

Certainly, when it comes to the “Yaya in Taiwan” case, neither the US nor China offer any helpful examples. The US has an absolutist stance on free speech, which is a contributing factor to the rise of the far right in recent years, with disinformation and conspiracy theories in online spaces proving a factor in the rise of the Trump administration. China, of course, does not exactly have free speech, given the repression of domestic freedoms that has been ongoing for decades. Any Taiwanese influencer in China who had, say, supported the democratization of China on Douyin would have since been taken into custody.

But the Taiwanese left has too long understood the world not from the perspective of Taiwan, rather from the standpoint of the empires that have fought over Taiwan–both that of the US and Taiwan. Whether the Yaya in Taiwan case or more broadly, the time is long due for the Taiwanese left to develop and articulate its own perspectives.
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