Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: KMT/Facebook
THE GROWING SPLIT between the KMT and some members of the pan-Blue camp has been highlighted with the emergence of the “True Blue Army.”
The True Blue Army, which consists largely of veterans, has taken a stance against the contemporary KMT, terming the KMT to have defected to the CCP. Otherwise, members of the True Blue Army are individuals previously associated with deep Blue groups, such as the Huang Fu Hsing branch of the KMT, which mostly consisted of veterans and their relatives. In this sense, the True Blue Army claims to uphold the values that members of the KMT and military once stood for, frequently referring to the present KMT as a “Fake Blue Army” in its messaging.
Leaders of the True Blue Army, such as Hsu Pai-yueh, known as “Eagle Dad”, have been active in efforts to mobilize retired and active-duty members of the military in the recalls. Hsu stated that he supported the KMT until recently, having previously been a supporter of Han Kuo-yu. However, at present, Hsu and other members of the “True Blue Army” routinely make appearances at pro-recall rallies alongside traditionally pan-Green groups such as the Peng Ming-min Foundation, the Presbyterian Church, the Taiwan Association of University Professors, and the Union of Taiwanese Teachers.
Indeed, Hsu has spoken of other veterans who have gone over to meet with Chinese counterparts and begun collaborating with the CCP. Hsu has attributed this shift to a failure to adjust to Taiwan’s contemporary transition to democracy, in that former members of the military see Taiwan’s democratic present as disorderly and hope for the rigidity of military discipline in society. This is part of what draws them to the CCP, which has embraced the critique of Taiwanese democracy as disorderly and chaotic, unlike governance in China.
One notes that Hsu was born in 1969, making him 18 at the time of the end of martial law in Taiwan in 1987. It may not be surprising that he has relatively liberal views, given his age. At the same time, it is clear that Hsu’s view of history differs from many members of the pan-Green camp. At a recent press conference on the recalls held with pan-Green groups, Hsu brought a portrait of Chiang Kai-shek.
The viral photo in question. Photo credit: double_lucky/Threads
The convergence in the recalls between the pan-Green camp and members of the pan-Blue camp who feel alienated from the KMT has been previously noted. An example proves a viral photo from April that showed the ROC flag flying side by side with a flag that called for Taiwanese independence during a recall rally.
To this extent, the Sunflower Movement eleven years ago, was hailed at the time as a social movement that transcended the split between waishengren and benshengren for the first time. Young people of both backgrounds participated in the movement, as both groups are increasingly indistinguishable three generations since the KMT came to Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War. Likewise, third-generation waishengren largely do not have the direct experience of China or the political nostalgia for China that their parents and grandparents had, identifying instead with Taiwan. That being said, it should be noted that as early as the Wild Lily Movement in 1990, prominent social movement leaders as Fan Yun, or the martyred journalist Cheng Nan-jung were waishengren.
Either way, whether the 2014 Sunflower Movement or the 1990 Wild Lily Movement, these were largely social movements consisting of individuals who were young people at the time. It proves an entirely different matter for elderly veterans to cross political lines in demonstration against the contemporary KMT.
Perhaps this shift has to do with changes in the contemporary KMT. The KMT has lurched in an increasingly pro-China direction in past years, leading to visible changes in political orientation among the KMT’s leading politicians. Party chair Eric Chu was once seen as a comparatively pro-American moderate, for example, while at present he has taken on hardline positions such as accusing the DPP of orchestrating “Green Communism” and engaging in “Gestapo-like tactics” in Taiwan. Legislator Hsu Chiao-hsin is another visible example, in that she was previously a pro-reform moderate who called on the KMT to change its pro-China image. Now she aligns closely with Fu Kun-chi, a politician she previously criticized for corruption, and downplays Chinese threats against Taiwan.
Regardless of the outcome of the referendums, it is unclear if the “True Blue Army” will have staying power as a political force afterward. Moreover, one notes that there have been splinter groups from the KMT in the past, such as the New Party and the People First Party. Yet these were usually traditionalist groupings that sought to be deeper Blue than the KMT, rather than groupings that sought to have more mainstream stances on cross-strait relations. And though past years have seen the emergence of the TPP as a party that claimed to be beyond traditional blue/green distinctions but whose politicians were largely drawn from the pan-Blue camp, the TPP’s rise was tied to the political career of Ko Wen-je, rather than to some splinter tendency in the KMT. The “True Blue Army” proves a phenomenon reflective of unexpected shifts in Taiwanese politics, then.